Population ethics
Population ethics is the philosophical study of the ethical problems arising when our actions affect who is born and how many people are born in the future. An important area within population ethics is population axiology, which is "the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live."[1]
Moral philosopher Derek Parfit brought population ethics to the attention of the academic community as a modern branch of moral philosophy in his seminal work Reasons and Persons in 1984.[2] Discussions of population ethics are thus a relatively recent development in the history of philosophy. Formulating a satisfactory theory of population ethics is regarded as "notoriously difficult".[3] While scholars have proposed and debated many different population ethical theories, no consensus in the academic community has emerged.
Gustaf Arrhenius, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Futures Studies, comments on the history and challenges within population ethics that
Practical relevance[edit]
Population ethical problems are particularly likely to arise when making large-scale policy-decisions, but they can also affect how we should evaluate certain choices made by individuals. Examples of practical questions that give rise to population ethical problems include the decision whether or not to have an additional child; how to allocate life-saving resources between young and old people; how many resources to dedicate to climate change mitigation; and whether or not to support family planning programs in the developing world. The decisions made about all of these cases affect the number, the identity and the average quality of life of future people.[1]
One's views regarding population ethics have the potential to significantly shape what one thinks of as the most pressing moral priorities.[22] For instance, the total view in population ethics and related theories, have been claimed to imply longtermism, defined by the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford as "the view that the primary determinant of the differences in value of the actions we take today is the effect of those actions on the very long-term future".[23] On this basis, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that the prevention of existential risks to humanity is an important global priority in order to preserve the value of the many lives that could come to exist in the future.[22][24] Others who have endorsed the asymmetry between bringing into existence happy and miserable lives have also supported a longtermist approach and focused on the prevention of risks of scenarios of future suffering, especially those where suffering would prevail over happiness or where there might be astronomical amounts of suffering.[25][26][27] Longtermist ideas have been taken up and are put into practice by several organizations associated with the effective altruism community, such as the Open Philanthropy Project and 80,000 Hours, as well as by philanthropists like Dustin Moskovitz[28][29][30]