Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T23:48:22.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What’s wrong with human extinction?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Elizabeth Finneron-Burns Open the ORCID record for Elizabeth Finneron-Burns [Opens in a new window]
Elizabeth Finneron-Burns*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick, Politics & International Studies, Coventry, UK Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
*
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores what could be wrong with the fact of human extinction. I first present four reasons why we might consider human extinction to be wrong: (1) it would prevent millions of people from being born; (2) it would mean the loss of rational life and civilization; (3) it would cause existing people to suffer pain or death; (4) it would involve various psychological traumas. I argue that looking at the question from a contractualist perspective, only reasons (3) and (4) are admissible. I then consider what implications this limitation on reasons has for the wrongfulness of various forms of human extinction.

Keywords

Human extinctioncontractualismT.M. Scanlonintergenerational ethicspopulation size
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 2-3: Special issue: Ethics and Future Generations , 2017 , pp. 327 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beckstead, Nick, Singer, Peter, and Wage, Matt. 2013. “Preventing Human Extinction.” In Effective Altruism. http://effective-altruism.com/ea/50/preventing_human_extinction/.Google Scholar
Benatar, David. 2006. Better Never to Have Been. Oxford: Clarendon. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296422.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Ben. 2009. Well-Being and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557967.001.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardiner, Stephen M. 2009. “A Contract on Future Generations.” In Intergenerational Justice, edited by Meyer, Lukas H., and Gosseries, Axel, 77–118. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Institute. 2016. Future of Humanity. Accessed December 4, 2015. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/research-areas/Google Scholar
James, P. D. 2006. The Children of Men. Vintage Books: Random House.Google Scholar
Kumar, Rahul. 2003. “Reasonable Reasons in Contractualist Moral Argument.” Ethics 114: 6–37. 10.1086/378034CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumar, Rahul. 2015. “Risking and Wronging.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 43 (1): 27–51. 10.1111/papa.2015.43.issue-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahan, Jeff. 2009. “Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist.” In Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem, edited by Roberts, Melinda A. and Wasserman, David T., 49–68. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narveson, J. 1967. “Utilitarianism and New Generations.” Mind 76 (301): 62–72. 10.1093/mind/LXXVI.301.62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Reiman, Jeffrey. 2007. “Being Fair to Future People: The Non-Identity Problem in the Original Position.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (1): 69–92. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00099.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risk. 2016. Centre for the Study of Existential. Accessed December 4, 2015. http://cser.org/about/.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2012. Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sidgwick, Henry. 1874. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Taylor, James Stacey. 2013. The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751136.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Rivka M. 2008. “Identifying and Dissolving the Non-Identity Problem.” Philosophical Studies 137 (1): 3–18. 10.1007/s11098-007-9168-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar