Justice Between Generations

1
Justice Between Generations

• Introduction
• The Intergenerational Justice Argument
• The non-existence of future persons
• Uncertainty and future generations
• Reciprocity and future generations
• The non-identity problem
• Further questions

2
1. Introduction

• Concepts and definitions
• Intergenerational justice
• What is a future generation / future person?
• Context
• Pollution, radioactive waste, non-renewables
• Ozone layer, Climate change
• Art, culture and language
• Natural and social-scientific understanding
• Contrasting approaches
• Impartiality, cosmopolitanism and individual
  rights
• Partiality, nationalism and collectivism

3
2. Intergenerational Justice Argument (IJA)

• P1 Depletionary policies threaten the well-being
  of future persons
• P2 Human activities that threaten the well-being
  of future persons are unjust
• C Depletionary policies are unjust

4
Some problems with the IJA

• Against P1 The optimists
• Against P1 Uncertainty
• Against P1 Non-Identity
• Against P2 Non-existence
• Against P2 Reciprocity

5
3. Non-existence of future generations

• Claim the formal nature of rights bars
  non-existing entities, whether dead or unborn,
  from being valid sources of just claims entities
  that do not yet exist cannot possess rights now
• But is this true? It seems to depend on our
  theory of rights
• Interest-theory justice involves the protection
  of interests of a sufficient importance to hold
  others under a duty to protect them (Raz)
• Choice theory justice involves the protection of
  the freedoms, property and equality of persons
  who are active, choosing, agents (Steiner).
• The former is (1) more in tune with the
  considered convictions of most people (2) fully
  compatible with future persons rights
• Reconciliation with IJA there will be people in
  the future who come into existence with interests
  vulnerable to our acts/policies.

6
Future imperfect obligations

• Another doubt about non-existence arguments is
  that justice also seems to contain elements not
  reducible to the discourse of rights and
  correlative duties.
• Onora ONeill (eg) argues that there are
  imperfect obligations of environmental
  preservation towards as yet unspecified, and
  possibly unborn, agents whom we can assume will
  feel the impacts of our acts policy choices
• Irrelevant, ONeill, that future people be
  ascribed a list of essential properties for
  rights-possession, but rather whether we already
  make assumptions about them in our actions
  practical reasoning.

7
4. Uncertainty and future generations

• Risk vs. uncertainty
• Predicting future events
• Predicting future needs/interests
• Low probability, high impact events
• Predicting future technologies

8

• The Generalised Uncertainty Argument (GUA)
• P1 Obligations presuppose reliable information
  about the interests they protect
• P2 Unlike the present and near future, we can
  have no reliable information about the remote
  future
• C We have no obligations to the remote future

9
The Practical Uncertainty Argument (PUA)

• P1 Obligations presuppose enough information
  about future events to discriminate between
  alternative hypotheses
• P2 Uncertainty about the future is to great for
  us to discriminate between alternative hypotheses
• C While we may be theoretically bound by
  obligations to future people we cannot in
  practice take future interests into account.

10
Key areas of uncertainty

• Environment (ice age ? climate change ? ??)
• Health (Spanish Flu ? H5N1 ? ??)
• Technologies (guns ? semiconductors ? ??)
• Resources (whale oil ? Germanium ? ??)
• Warfare (rifle ? nuclear weapons ? ??)
• Socioeconomic/political change (collapse of
  Soviet Union ? globalization ? ??)
• Tastes (headware ? consumer goods ? ??)
• Values (extended ? nuclear family ? ??)

11
(No Transcript)
12
Some Erroneous predictions

• Health if excessive smoking plays a role in
  lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one (HC
  Heuper, US National Cancer Institute (1954))
• Technology Fooling around with alternating
  current is just a waste of time. Nobody will ever
  use it (Thomas Edison (1889))
• Technology Rail travel at high speed is not
  possible, because passengers, unable to breath,
  would die of asphyxia (Dr Dionysys Larder,
  Astronomer, UCL (1820))
• Nuclear energy/weapons Atomic energy might be
  as good as our present day explosives, but it is
  unlikely to produce anything more dangerous
  (Churchill (1939))
• Tastes TV wont last because people will soon
  get tired of staring at a plywood box every
  night (Darryl Zanuck, 20th C Fox (1946))
• Tastes There is no reason anyone would want a
  computer in their home (Ken Olson, DEC (1977))
• Socio-political It will be years not in my
  time before a woman will become PM (Margaret
  Thatcher (1969))

13
Are the uncertainties exaggerated?

• Against GUA
• Overstates the certainties of present near
  future
• Moral judgment is inherently speculative and
  sketchy
• Assumes an epistemological double-standard !
• Against PUA
• Enough knowledge to identify key risks
  uncertainties
• Biomedical interests
• Environmental interests (clean air, water)
• Socio-political interests (stable institutions)

14
One Approach to Intergenerational Uncertainty

• Avoid harm, be sensitive to sleeper effects
• Low or zero discount rate
• Substitution, not absolute conservation
• Preserve options not promote welfare
• Two Key Principles
• Sustainable development Development that meets
  the needs of the present without harming the
  needs of future generations
• Precautionary principle Actions giving rise to
  possible but quantitatively unknown and
  potentially large risks ought to be avoided or
  corrected

15
5. Reciprocity and future generations

• Earlier generations seem to perform their
  laborious tasks only for the sake of the later
  oneswithout themselves being able to share in
  the happiness they were preparing
• Immanuel Kant
• We are always doing something for Posterity,
  but I would fain see Posterity doing something
  for us
• Joseph Addison

16
The non-reciprocity problem

• P1 Requirements of justice are owed only to
  those who can reciprocate with us.
• P2 reciprocity exists only between persons who
  can affect each others interests.
• P3 it is not possible to affect the interests of
  those who belong to earlier generations.
• C social policies that threaten the well-being
  of future generations are not unjust.

17
Limits of the reciprocity problem

• Against P1 Is justice reciprocity-based?
• Limiting P1 Negative vs. positive duties
• Against P2 Indirect and Cost Reciprocity
• Against P3 Posthumous harm
• Taking reciprocity seriously

18
Solving the Non-Reciprocity problem The Chain of
Concern Model

• P1 Human beings share a sentimental concern for
  their nearest descendants
• P2 Because this concern is (near) universal, the
  well-being of the next generation can be treated
  as a public good
• C Each person in this, and all subsequent,
  generations is obliged to contribute their fair
  share to activities that protect the needs and
  interests of the next generation

19
(No Transcript)
20
Problems with the Chain of Concern Model

• People who are not motivated to save for the sake
  of future generations
• Non-procreators
• Harming remote generations

21
The Stewardship-Trusteeship Model

• P1 many of the benefits enjoyed by present
  persons were produced by past persons with the
  intention that they be preserved indefinitely or
  for a specified amount of time.
• P2 although the intended recipients of these
  benefits are not always specified, these benefits
  are nonetheless intended for someone.
• P3 the obligation to pass on these benefits to
  future persons is analogous to the obligation to
  reciprocate for benefits received from unknown
  contemporaries.
• C it is fitting and proportionate that
  existing persons pass on these benefits to our
  successors to satisfy the moral requirements of
  reciprocity (Becker, Reciprocity, p. 231).

22
(No Transcript)
23
Problems with the Stewardship Model

• Unintentionally produced benefits
• Involuntarily received benefits
• The Principle of Fairness

24
6. The non-identity problem

• It may help to think about this question how
  many of us could truly claim, Even if railways
  and motor cars had never been invented, I would
  still have been born?
• Derek Parfit (1984)

25
How to think about the identity problem
26
How not to think about the identity problem
27
The identity problem

• P1 If any particular person had not been
  conceived when s/he was in fact conceived, s/he
  would never have existed.
• P2 A social policy is unjust only if it harms a
  particular person.
• P3 A social policy harms a particular person
  only if it makes them worse off than they
  otherwise would have been.
• P4 Adopting a depletionary policy would be a
  necessary condition of all future persons coming
  into existence.
• C Adopting a policy of depletion would not be
  unjust.

28
Limits of the identity problem

• Depletion affect identities of existing persons
• Depletion affect identities of all future
  persons
• Depletion may result in some people leading lives
  that are not worth living
• Taking non-identity seriously

29
7. Further questions

• Is justice person-affecting or impersonal?
• Can later generations harm earlier generations?
• What is the appropriate currency of
  intergenerational justice?
• How far into the future does justice extend?
• Can there be natural injustices?

30
Next week.

• Solving the identity problem.
• Group interests?
• Impersonal values?
• Specific interests?
• Subjunctive harm?