Future Generations
Part 4 deals with questions of our responsibility towards future generations. It raises questions about whether it can be wrong to create a life, whether environmental destruction violates the rights of future people, and so on.
One question Parfit raises is this: given that the course of history drastically affects what people are actually born (since it affects which potential parents actually meet and have children; and also, a difference in the time of conception will alter the genetic makeup of the child), do future persons have a right to complain about our actions, since they likely wouldn't exist if things had been different?
Another problem Parfit looks at is the mere addition paradox, which supposedly shows that it is better to have a lot of people who are slightly happy, than a few people who are very happy. Parfit calls this view "repugnant", but says he has not yet found a solution.
Read more about this topic: Reasons And Persons
Famous quotes containing the words future and/or generations:
“I say—the future is a serious matter—
And so—for God’s sake—hock and soda-water!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term “unconditional surrender.” ... The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech—in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)