The Future – For Better or Worse
Environmental Values 11 (2002): 75-85
Several years ago, the editors of
Environmental Values (Cambridge, UK), asked me to referee
Alan Carter's paper, "Can We Harm Future People." My referee
report was sufficiently extensive that the editors then asked me to
write this responsive article. This paper adds to and expands upon
arguments presented in my article,
"Should We Seek a Better Future"
(Ethics and the Environment 3(1), 1998, and at this website). Parts
of this essay have been merged in the website version of
"Should We Seek a Better Future". The paper
below is admittedly technical and difficult.
Abstract
Alan Carter correctly argues that Thomas Schwartz’s
“future persons paradox” applies with equal force to utilitarianism,
rights theory and Aristotelian ethics. His criticism of Rawls’s “justice
between generations” is less successful, because of his failure (and
perhaps Rawls’s as well) to fully appreciate the hypothetical nature of
the “original position.” Carter’s attempt to refute Schwartz’s argument by
focusing on the individuality of moral action fails, since it evades the
essential point of Schwartz’s argument. The best response to Schwartz is
to concede the essential validity of his argument and then to turn that
argument into an ad absurdum refutation of his central premise, “the
person affecting principle.”
I
As Alan Carter fully recognizes in his article, "Can We Harm
Future People?" (Carter 2001), Thomas Schwartz has presented environmental
ethicists with a provocative challenge. Put simply, Schwartz claims that any
effective attempt to improve the life prospects of remotely future
generations will cause different individuals to exist in that future than
would have existed had no such attempts been made in the present. (We will
call this “the disappearing beneficiaries premise” or DB). Accordingly, the
life prospects of particular individuals in that future can in no way be
altered by policies adopted in the present. Such policies can only cause
different remote persons to come into existence.. And since present policies
can thus neither improve or damage the quality of remotely future lives,
those future persons can not correctly be said to be either benefited or
harmed by our policies – in a word, they will have no cause either to praise
or blame us for our provision for the future. For were we to do otherwise,
they simply would not exist. Essential to this argument is the “person
affecting principle” (PAP), which Carter, in concurrence with Schwartz,
expresses thus: “harming [or benefiting] a person is to make that person
worse [or better] off than he or she otherwise would have been.” (Carter
2001: 446: My alterations. EP)
Because Prof. Carter has given us an excellent summary of Schwartz’s
argument, I will not repeat that task here, except to point out that, if
anything, both Carter and Schwartz may have understated the radical
contingency of the genetic identity of future individuals.
Philosophers who deal with “the right to life” and other issues regarding
future persons often make the distinction between “merely possible persons”
(those who could but eventually will not come into existence) and “possible
and eventual persons” (those who will come into existence). In this regard,
further questions are raised as to whether mere-potential persons have a
“right to be born” and whether they are “benefitted” by coming into
existence or “harmed” by being denied existence. More often than not, it is
insufficiently appreciated that this first class (“merely possibles”) has
virtually infinite members.
This circumstance follows from well-known facts about human reproduction. A
healthy male ejaculates some two-hundred million spermatozoa, any one of
which could produce upon fertilization of the ovum, a genetically distinct
individual. As Carter correctly points out, which gamete heads the queue is
a matter of timing, posture and innumerable other accidental factors – plain
“dumb luck.” Multiply this with the behavior of a billion or so sexually
active males, and it becomes clear that at any moment in time a myriad of
“possible futures” come into and out of existence. Extend that “moment in
time” over weeks, months or years, and you have your “infinitude” of “merely
possibles.”
Thus, for example, when the terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center (two
and half weeks ago at this writing), the entire world community within the
range of modern communications (perhaps 90% of the global population) soon
became aware of this catastrophe, and their behavior was altered, profoundly
in some cases and very slightly in others. At that moment, all of the
“would-have-been” posterity vanished and a new set of “possibles” took its
place, surely to be supplanted over and over again as time moves forward.
The point of this recitation is that we do not and probably never will have
the capacity to choose the genetic endowment of our posterity, either
proximate or remote.1
Nor can we predict the cultural circumstances of future generations.
Accordingly, the identity of future individuals will be, as it always has
been, a complete mystery and, as Schwartz correctly points out, the members
of that class will change with every effective attempt to alter the future.
It follows that we can only deal with “future generations” as a class,
identifiable in terms of significant general human characteristics, and not
as an aggregate of individually unique individuals.
II
Carter’s paper begins with an entirely successful
demonstration that Schwartz’s argument (hereafter, following Gregory Kavka,
“The Future Persons Paradox,” or FPP) applies with equal effect to
utilitarianism, Aristotelian perfectionism, rights theory and John Rawls’s
“justice as fairness.” Next we encounter Carter’s carefully crafted attempt
to indicate that some acts by present individuals may favorably affect the
future without causing a total “repopulation” of that future. I will argue
that this tactic fails, since it evades rather than answers Schwartz’s
challenge. Near the end of his essay, Carter suggests a paradigm case which,
if carefully explored, may deal a devastating blow to Schwartz’s argument.
This essay will close with a sketch of what I have found to be the most
effective response to the Future Persons Paradox.
Utilitarianism, rights theory, Aristotelian ethics, and Rawls’s “Justice as
Fairness” all endorse acts and policies that will benefit, or forbear from
harming, remotely future generations. They differ in how they define
“benefit” – variously as happiness, preference satisfaction, respect for
rights, self-fulfillment, justice, etc. Accordingly, because the Future
Persons Paradox generally refers to unspecified “benefits” and “harms,” all
these moral theories are equally vulnerable to the Paradox – to the argument
that by attempting to “improve the future,” no particular individuals will
be benefitted or harmed.2
Thus far, I am in full agreement with Prof. Carter.
III
Carter proceeds next to a meticulous argument with the aim
of demonstrating that particular individuals in the present might, as
individuals, act to provide benefits or prevent harms to some future
persons without, through such attempts, causing different persons to
eventually exist (thus, according to Schwartz, benefiting no one). Thus, he
argues, Schwartz’s claim that attempts to “benefit the future” in fact
benefit no individuals applies to collective action, but not
necessarily to individual action.3
I find three difficulties with this argument: (a) Carter’s exception to
Schwartz’s challenge has application only to the degree that such individual
acts are insignificant and proximate; (b) such individual acts are directed
to the end of implementing the collective policies which Carter concedes
fall under Schwartz’s principles; and, most seriously, (c) Carter’s
“exceptions” are stipulated by Schwartz to be outside the scope of his
argument.
(a) Carter contends that not every act of each individual in the present
will determine the existence of all future persons. Therefore, there are
present individual acts which will affect for better or worse the lives of
specific future persons who will exist regardless whether these present
actions take place. If so, Carter claims, then these particular future
persons can meaningfully be said to be affected (harmed or benefited)
by these present acts, Schwartz to the contrary notwithstanding.
If this is a correct statement of Carter’s contention, then I must affirm
that it is obviously true – for the near future and for insignificant
personal acts. What an obscure Kansas farm hand may or may not do today
surely will have no effect whatever on a particular farmer in Papua or for
his descendants a few generations hence – including no effect on the genetic
identity of these individuals. For a while, at least, these two procreative
lines remain independent. Similarly, my small donation to the Sierra Club or
my letter to my Senator will not affect the procreative outcomes of most
couples in my generation or even the next. But that fact resides precisely
in the insignificance of my personal actions. However, if the “personal act”
in question is the deciding vote by my Senator in favor of the Kyoto treaty,
then the full force of Schwartz’s argument obtains, as that “individual act”
results, within Schwartz’s hypothetical six generations, in an entirely
different population coming into existence.4
(b) Furthermore, the very point of my donation to the Sierra Club and my
letter to my Senator is to provoke that very “collective action” which,
Carter concedes, has the result that Schwartz postulates. (Carter, VIII,
par. 1) I would not send that donation or that letter unless I believed that
either might, in some small way, bring about a policy that would “benefit”
future generations. Yet Schwartz asserts, and Carter concurs, that such a
policy (ergo a “collective action”), if enacted, would produce a
population of individuals, a few generations hence, that would not have
existed had that “collective action” not taken place – individuals who
therefore cannot be affected and thus not be harmed by our failure to adopt
the policy, or benefited by our adoption thereof.
(c) Most significantly, Carter’s hypothetical “non-contingent” individuals
in the present or near future, who are benefited by my individual acts
(i.e., who would exist whether or not I so acted), are simply outside the
scope of Schwartz’s theory and thus in no way refute it. About such
non-contingent individuals, Schwartz might say to me, with full
justification, “well good for you – you have behaved commendably, and
it is a fine thing that you have favorably affected other lives. But that is simply not the topic of my argument!” Then he might
continue, “my thesis is that acts and policies (either by individuals or
collectives) which successfully intend to alter the future will, in
approximately six generations, result in different (i.e. “contingent”)
individuals living in that future – individuals, qua different, whose
lives can not be affected by what we intend and implement in the present
generation. I will freely concede that there might be “non-contingent”
individuals in the near future that come about despite insignificant acts by
individuals, but these individuals are explicitly outside the scope of my (Schwartzian)
argument.”
IV
Late in his paper Carter suggests, with his “toxic waste
paradigm,” an argument with devastating implications for Schwartz and the
Future Persons Paradox. He writes:
... within a single future generation, two people might
suffer equally as a result of some action which we had performed – as in
our having buried toxic waste which later spilled from its container – but
only one of the two persons might be harmed [i.e., in the
“person-affecting” sense – EP]; namely, the one whose existence was not
dependent upon our having buried the container. (Carter 2001: 447, see
also 443-4).
The force of this paradigm resides in its apparent
dissolution of the moral significance of the distinction between
“contingent” and “non-contingent” individuals. I am so impressed with these
implications, that I would like to reformulate and expand the paradigm.
Imagine two ten-year old boys, James and John. They were born hundreds of
miles apart, at which time the parents of James had no acquaintance or
association whatever with the parents of John. Ten years later, they are
next-door neighbors.
Eleven years earlier, James’ father buried a container of toxic waste in his
back yard, and the following night, James was conceived. At time-present,
James and John are playing in the back yard, whereupon they uncover the
container and are poisoned by the toxic waste, causing serious and permanent
injury to both.
According to Schwartz’s analysis, James owes his very existence to that
container. Had his father taken the waste to a legal disposal site, a
genetically different child, “Jane,” would have been conceived. Accordingly,
James was not made “worse off” by his father’s negligence eleven years
earlier, and thus has no cause for complaint. On the other hand, John’s
conception was totally unrelated to and independent of that act. Thus, he
does in fact have cause for complaint – he was made “worse off” by the
burial.
That conclusion is intuitively bizarre on its face, and one cannot imagine
any legislature or subsequent court of law recognizing a substantive
difference in the moral or legal evaluation of the two cases, due to the
“radical contingency” of James’ conception. Both boys were injured due to
the negligence of James’ father, though James would not have existed
otherwise – another child, “Jane,” would have been born. But a distinction
between two different lives – that of a healthy Jane and a seriously and
permanently injured James – can not be regarded as morally indifferent.
In rebuttal, Schwartz might counter that his argument applies, not to the
contemporary generation or its immediate successors, but to remote
generations (at least six generations hence), wherein all individuals
will be genetically different from what they would have been had we acted
differently in time-present. Even if we grant this stipulation, the case of
James and John retains its force against the Future Persons Paradox. The
alleged fact that significant present acts and policies completely
“repopulate” the remote future with different individuals, in no way
gainsays the moral principle that if, somehow, there were remotely
future individuals who would exist in both alternative futures (i.e.,
“non-contingents”), these individuals would be equally “harmed” as the
“contingent”” individuals by our irresponsible acts. This consideration
obtains even if Schwartz is entirely and irrefutably correct about the
“repopulation” of the remote future, following the enactment of significant
policies in the present.
It get’s worse. Consider next this puzzle: Suppose a young father, following
the birth of his child Jane, sets up a fund for the college education of all
his children. Subsequently, another child, Joan, is born. According to
Schwartz’s hypothesis, had the father failed to set up that account he would
have harmed Jane but not Joan, for that foregone trip to the bank would have
“reshuffled” his genetic deck, thus causing a different child than Joan to
be born. This consideration, however, does not apply to Jane whose birth
took place before the father’s decision not to provide for both of the
daughters. Accordingly, Jane has cause for complaint, but Joan does not.
Which leads me to wonder: Does Thomas Schwartz have children, and did he, in
advance of their birth, provided for their college education? If so, what
was his justification for doing so?
It appears, then, that if it is wrong to harm someone by causing injury to
that person, it is equally wrong to be responsible for the existence of a
life that suffers injury, even if the cause of that injury to the latter
person is a sine qua non of that person’s existence. The moral
intuitions evoked by the “toxic waste” and “college fund” cases lead us
strongly to that conclusion. What is lacking is an argument to support those
intuitions. In the remaining sections, we will offer such an argument.
V
In analyzing the Future Persons Paradox, the foremost thing
to keep in mind is that it is a paradox. The argument appears sound:
the premises all seem to be plausible and the logic is valid. Those premises
and that logical structure yield an intuitively unsettling conclusion: “we
have no obligation to any of our distant descendants to adopt P” (i.e., a
policy to restrict population, conserve natural resources, preserve the
environment, etc.). (Schwartz, 10-11).
One is faced with three alternatives: (a) Demonstrate the invalidity of the
logical structure; (b) Reject at least one of the premises; or (c) accept
Schwartz’s conclusion.
My critique utilizes two of these alternatives. First of all, while I
concede the formal validity of Schwartz’s argument, I will then point out
that the conclusion stated above, which validly follows from his premises,
is not the conclusion that he asks us to accept, and this altered and
expanded conclusion does not follow from the formal argument. Secondly, I
will argue that an essential premise to his argument, “the person affecting
principle,” will not support his expanded conclusion.5
The extended conclusion.
The conclusion of Schwartz’s formal argument is “we have no
obligation to any of our distant descendants to adopt [policy] P.” (We will
call this C-1). However, this is not the thesis that he presents at the very
beginning of his paper. There he states that “we have no obligation
extending indefinitely or even terribly far into the future to provide any
widespread, continuing benefits to our descendants.”(C-2) (Schwartz, 3)
Implicit in that assertion and further on in Schwartz’s paper is a bolder
claim: “We have no moral obligations to improve the living conditions of
persons who will live in the remote future.”(C-3) The formal conclusion
(C-1) validly follows from the Person Affecting Principle; namely, that a
harm or benefit to an individual entails an affect upon that individual.6
The extended conclusions (C-2 and especially C-3) can only follow from a
stronger formulation of the PAP, which Schwartz neither articulates nor
defends: “only acts which affect or can reasonably be expected to affect
(i.e. benefit or harm) the ongoing lives of particular individuals can count
as morally significant.”
Formulation and implementation of environmental policy is not confined by
that “strong person affecting principle.” On the contrary, the
improvement of individual future lives is not the business of environmental
policy: rather, that business is to improve the prospects of those who will
live in the future. (A moral obligation rejected by Schwartz in his third
conclusion (C-3)). In other words, environmental policy-makers are choosing
among different populations with varying life prospects for those
populations. Moreover, these are forced decisions. Absent cosmic
catastrophes (e.g., an asteroid collision) and ultimate human folly (e.g., a
nuclear war), there will be future generations. Because of the
aforementioned radical indeterminacy of future populations (containing a
finite number of the infinitude of unrealized “possibles”), we are today in
no position to identify and to select among the individuals who will live in
the future. Instead, we have a forced choice of better or worse living
conditions for whomever may live in the future – which, as Schwartz
correctly points out, amounts to a choice between better and worse, albeit
different, human lives. And these remain morally significant decisions, even
though they are not decisions that will alter the quality of eventual
individual lives.
The Founding Father’s Argument.7
The force of our critique of the “strong” Person affecting
Principle might be better appreciated if we shift the time perspective from
that a predecessor generation (e.g., our own) “looking ahead” to its
successors, to that of a successor generation (again, our own) “looking
back” to its predecessor.
In 1789, a convention was called in Philadelphia to draft a constitution for
the United States of America, in the words of the Preamble of that document,
“for ourselves and our posterity.” At that convention, the delegates adopted
a Bill of Rights but failed to abolish slavery.
By Schwartz’s account, I should not be grateful for the Bill of Rights, for
I was not personally “made better-off” by that document. But neither should
I nor any AfroAmericans regret the continuation of slavery for had the
founders chosen otherwise, none of us would exist today.8
(Nor would any of us exist today if a countless number of intervening events
been otherwise, up to the micro-behavior of our parents the night of our
conceptions). Yet historians today generally agree that the founders are to
be praised for adopting the Bill of Rights, and blamed for not abolishing
slavery.
There is no inconsistency here. The founders did not draft the Constitution
for the personal benefit of Partridge, or George Bush, or Al Gore, or for
any of six billion present inhabitants of the Earth who would not exist
today had there been no Convention in 1789. They adopted the Constitution
for the benefit of future generations, as a class, regardless of what
particular individuals (among the infinitude of “possibles”) might
eventually come into existence, or for that matter be caused to come
into existence, in this and all other subsequent generations. They did so
because they had no other option. They could not anticipate much less
determine, the personal identity of future individuals, and so were left
with the forced choice among discriminably alternative futures for
whomsoever might eventually come into existence. They chose a future which,
to the best of their knowledge and political skill, would best achieve the
objectives of the Preamble: “... to establish Justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
It is outlandish, I submit, to suggest that because this effort by the
founding fathers did not affect the individual lives of remotely future
persons, the ratification of the Constitution was of no moral significance.
VI
To summarize: The Future Persons Paradox is an
argumentum
ad absurdum. Assume the premises – “disappearing beneficiaries” and “the
person affecting principle” – and Schwartz’s conclusion follows: “we have no
obligation to any of our distant descendants to adopt P” (i.e., a policy to
restrict population, conserve natural resources, preserve the environment,
etc.). If we concede the validity of the argument (as we have) and yet find
the conclusion to be morally reprehensible, our only recourse is to reject
at least one of the premises. Because the phenomenon of “the disappearing
beneficiaries” appears to be empirically secure, “the person affecting
principle” must be rejected.9
This is the preferred solution of Derek Parfit, Gregory Kavka, this author,
and most (but not all) philosophers who have responded to the Future Persons
Paradox. Thomas Schwartz is among the minority that have embraced the PAP,
and with it the repugnant conclusions.
Alan Carter chooses to accept both premises and yet rejects Schwartz’s
conclusion, which must mean that he finds the logical inference to that
conclusion to be invalid. Unfortunately, we have found no convincing
demonstration of this invalidity and so must conclude that his refutation of
Schwartz and the Future Persons Paradox has failed.
I reject the Person Affecting Principle, and with it Schwartz’s repugnant
conclusions, not because that principle is, strictly speaking, false,
but because it is incomplete as a moral principle. That is to say,
(a) while it is entirely correct that it is morally praiseworthy to
favorably affect (“benefit”) an actual individual life and morally
blameworthy to unfavorably affect (“harm”) that life, (b) such
“person-affects” do not exhaust the domain of morally significant acts.
(Thus we concur with Schwartz and Carter regarding (a) and dissent regarding
(b)). Beyond the scope of the Person Affecting Principle are those occasions
when it is in principle totally impossible to deal with identifiable
individual lives, and yet one is faced with a forced choice between
hypothetical populations with variable and discernable degrees of value in
their lives.10
Such an occasion is precisely that which was faced by the founders of the
American republic at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as they were
drafting a political charter “for ourselves and our posterity.” It is
likewise the occasion faced today by the American Congress along with the
governments of all industrialized states, as they face the informed
consequences of their environmental policies upon future generations.
Copyright 2002, The White Horse Press, Cambridge, UK
END NOTES
1. I am aware that some futurists claim that someday
biotechnology might allow us to select the genetic code of our prospective
children. Even if we grant this much, that determination will apply only to
one generation and its progeny. That generation will be unable to predict
the genetic choices of subsequent generations. Thus the indeterminacy of
remote generations remains.
2. Despite this neat generalization, I am tempted, as the
author of a book-length dissertation, “Rawls and the Duty to Posterity,” to
expound on Carter’s analysis of Rawls’s approach to this topic. (Partridge,
1976). However, I will resist this temptation. Let this note suffice as a
reply: Both Carter and Rawls fail to appreciate the full implications of
Rawls’s description of the “persons in the original position.” Due to the
veil of ignorance, these “persons” are neither persons nor a plurality.
Absent any distinguishing personal qualities of the “parties,” the original
position collapses to a more familiar concept of “the moral point of view,”
though Rawls’s book is no less magnificent for that fact. That “collapse”
also abolishes the distinction between Rawls’s “single generational,”
the Routley’s “omintemporal” or Hare’s “atemporal”
interpretations. (Routley, 1978 and Hare, 1973). So we are left with our
previous point: Rawls’s account of “justice between generations” proposes to
improve the life prospects of remotely future generations. Accordingly, the
challenge of the Future Persons Paradox to Rawls’s theory of justice is
undiminished.
3. “The mistaken Schwartzian view that [present-day] Andrea,
Ben and Clara cannot possibly harm [future persons] Xerksis, Yolanda and
Zak, depends upon regarding Andrea, Ben and Clara as, in effect, a
collective entity. When they are viewed in such a manner, then it appears
that they cannot harm Xersis, Yolanda and Zak. But when Andrea, Ben
and Clara are considered individually, it is clear that they can harm them.”
(Carter, VIII, par. 1).
4. Schwartz offers a mathematical proof of his claim that a
complete “repopulation” takes place in six generation. (Schwartz,
5. For an expanded version of these arguments, see my
“Should we Seek a Better Future,” (Partridge, 1998,
86-9).
6. Schwartz states the PAP negatively as the third premise
of his of his argument: “Were A not to do something, and were B not
significantly affected thereby, then B would not lack any significant
benefit he would have enjoyed (or could reasonably be expected to have
enjoyed) had A done that thing.” (Schwartz, 11).
7. This argument is presented with further elaboration,
including an employment of the concept of “the moral point of view,” in my
“Should We Seek a Better Future? (Partridge, 1998, 86-9).
8. In personal correspondence to me (which I am therefore
not free to identify), a defender of the FPP writes: “I should indeed be
‘grateful’ to Hitler for starting WWII... using ‘grateful,’ as I believe you
are, in a figurative way. Still, we’d have to be stunningly altruistic to
regret any of Hitler’s significant actions.”
9. At least the “strong PAP” as explicated above: “only acts
which affect or can reasonably be expected to affect (i.e. benefit or harm)
the ongoing lives of particular individuals can count as morally
significant.”
10. Here I am deliberately avoiding adherence to one or
another moral theory. That “value of lives” is open to various
interpretations – as happiness or preference satisfaction
(utilitarianism), rights, self-realization (Aristotle), or justice
as fairness (Rawls).
REFERENCES
Carter, Alan 2001. "Can We Harm Future People?",
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Hardin, Garrett 1978. "The Semantics of Abortion," in
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Hare, R.M. 1973. "Rawls's Theory of Justice -- II",
Philosophical Quarterly, 23: 241-52.
Kavka, Gregory 1982. "The Paradox of Future
Individuals", Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11: 93-122.
Parfit, Derek 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford
University Press.
Partridge, Ernest 1976.
Rawls and the Duty to
Posterity, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Utah.
Partridge, Ernest 1998.
"Should
We Seek a Better Future?", Ethics and the Environment, 3(1):
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Rawls, John 1971. A Theory of Justice,
Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Routley, Richard and Routley, Val 1978. "Nuclear
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