Parfit Memorial Lecture 2024 - Theron Pummer (University of St Andrews)

Future Suffering and the Non-Identity Problem

Abstract

If we dramatically reduced our carbon emissions, the quality of life of future people would be much higher than it would be if we carried on with business as usual. Nonetheless, because adopting a widespread policy of reducing emissions would affect the timings of conceptions and thus the identities of who would come to exist, it is likely that after a century or so none of the particular people who would exist if we carried on as usual would exist if we instead dramatically reduced our emissions. Reducing emissions may therefore be better for no particular future person. Are we nonetheless morally required to reduce our emissions, and, if so, on what basis? This is one instance of the non-identity problem, made famous by Derek Parfit. Drawing upon the distinction between morally requiring reasons and morally justifying reasons, I provide a new solution to the non-identity problem. According to my solution, we can be morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower insofar as this involves reducing future suffering (negative welfare). Indeed, we are often morally required to do this. We can be morally required to reduce future suffering in this way even when it is not better for any particular future person and even when future people would have lives worth living regardless of what we do. However, we are never morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower insofar as this involves merely increasing future happiness (positive welfare). My solution to the non-identity problem captures the procreation asymmetry while avoiding implausible forms of antinatalism. It has important implications for global priority setting.

About the speaker

Theron Pummer is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. He focuses mainly on problems in ethics. Prior to joining St Andrews, Theron was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD from the University of California San Diego. Theron has also held visiting positions at the Australian National University and the University of Oxford. He is an associate editor of Journal of Moral Philosophy and a section editor of Philosophy Compass.

Selected publications

• Special Issue on Effective Altruism (2024) Public Affairs Quarterly (guest editor)
• The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance, and Effective Altruism (2023) Oxford University Press
• Rescue and Necessity: A Reply to Quong (2023) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 25(2): 413–419 (with Joel Joseph)
• Contrastive Consent and Secondary Permissibility (2023) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106(3): 677–691
• Lesser-Evil Justifications: A Reply to Frowe (2022) Law and Philosophy 41: 639–646 (with Kerah Gordon-Solmon)
• Sorites on What Matters (2022) Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, edited by Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 498–523
• Supererogation and Conditional Obligation (2022) Philosophical Studies 179(5): 1429–1443 (with Daniel Muñoz)

Full list available here.