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Human Extinction and Moral Worthwhileness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2021

Elizabeth Finneron-Burns Open the ORCID record for Elizabeth Finneron-Burns [Opens in a new window]
Elizabeth Finneron-Burns*
Affiliation:
Western University, London, Canada Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
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Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article I make two main critiques of Kaczmarek and Beard's article ‘Human Extinction and Our Obligations to the Past’. First, I argue that there is an ambiguity in what it means to realise the benefits of a sacrifice and that this ambiguity affects the persuasiveness of the authors’ arguments and responses to various objections to their view. Second, I argue that their core argument against human extinction depends on an unsupported assumption about the existence and importance of existential benefits.

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Utilitas , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 105 - 112
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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