Why Worry About Future Generations? (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics)

by Samuel Scheffler

an idea of evaluative reciprocity governs our relations to future generations and that, in consequence, we have reasons of reciprocity to try to secure their survival and flourishing.

makes no difference to my argument whether we classify these reasons, or any of the other reasons I have been discussing, as moral reasons or not. What is important is simply that they are reasons with genuine normative force.

The pertinent point—the point I find illuminating and compelling—is that once we realize how much the future of humanity already matters to us, we can see that we possess reasons of a variety of kinds to help ensure the survival and flourishing of those who come after us.

Finally, there remains the question of how practical, political solutions might be found to the problems that threaten future generations. The four reasons I have described do not, of course, answer that question. They do not demonstrate what shape a politics of the future might take. But they do demonstrate that such a politics need not be left wholly at the mercy of the uncertain motivational power of sympathy. The reasons I have described—reasons of love, reasons of interest, reasons of valuation, and reasons of reciprocity—all have the potential to motivate action aimed at securing the survival and flourishing of future generations.

But the task is made needlessly difficult if we assume that utilitarian sympathy is the only motive that might be available to sustain any practical initiatives we undertake. Once we free ourselves from that assumption, we can see that, although the task of constructing an effective politics of the future represents a formidable challenge, there is no shortage of reasons or motives available to support such a politics. Insofar as there is a deficit that must be overcome if we are seriously to address the threats facing future generations, the deficit is as much political as it is motivational.

Whatever the potential practical significance of this fact may be, it also has implications for our understanding of ourselves and our values. It means that if we want to think further about the importance to us of our place in the chain of generations, the starting point of such reflection—the default setting from which we begin—should not be the assumption of indifference. We already care about our place in time and about the survival of future generations. We just need to allow ourselves to acknowledge that this is so, and then we need to do our best to draw the appropriate practical conclusions.

They are all, we might say, attachment-based reasons.

Valuing something, in my view, involves a complex syndrome of attitudes and dispositions, including a belief that the thing is valuable, a susceptibility to experience a variety of context-dependent emotions concerning the thing, and a disposition to treat considerations pertaining to the thing as providing one with reasons for action in relevant deliberative contexts.

most of us regard many things as valuable that we ourselves do not value. Valuing something involves more than just believing that it is valuable. Using the terminology I have introduced, we can say that it involves, in addition, a kind of attachment to or, alternatively, a kind of investment in or engagement with that thing.

That is why, as I said in Chapter Three, there is a conservative dimension to valuing, something approaching a conceptual connection between valuing something and wanting it to be sustained and to persist over time. A conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value is built into our valuing attitudes.

Of course, the mere fact that we value something does not mean that we are correct to do so. We may instead be making a mistake. Usually when this happens, it is because the thing that we value lacks the value that we think it has.

In addition, however, some undeniably valuable things can reasonably be valued, or can reasonably be valued in a certain way, only by people who occupy an appro...

For example, in the absence of some special explanation, I cannot reasonably value your friendships in the way that you can, although ...

It means only that, by virtue of valuing particular valuable things (that we are in a position to value), we have reasons for action that go beyond the reasons that we and others may have solely in virtue of the intrinsic value of those things.

One lesson of the argument I have been developing is that, with respect to value at least, there is a sense in which the present depends on the future. Without confidence in the survival of humanity into the future, our ability to find value in our activities here and now would be eroded.

Our reasons for concerning ourselves with humanity’s survival in the future are rooted in our present-day love of humanity and our existing attachments to all of the many things we now value that consist in or depend on forms of human activity. And it is because we care about humanity’s survival in the future that the prospect of its extinction would compromise our capacity to find value in our activities here and now.

This means that there is a virtuous circle that ties together our attitudes toward time and value now and in the future.

In the representative formulation of Hilary Greaves, “A population axiology is a betterness ordering of states of affairs, where the states of affairs include ones in which different numbers of persons are ever born.”

The axiological approach, at least when interpreted along the lines I have been discussing, treats the existence and well-being of human beings—or, perhaps, the existence of what Larry Temkin calls “high-quality life”8 more generally—as great impersonal values which we have strong reasons to promote. It would simply be a bad thing—indeed, Parfit says it would be “much worse than most people think”9—if humankind (and other forms of “high-quality life”) were to disappear from the universe forever.

According to the attachment-based perspective that I have been defending, by contrast, we have a variety of reasons, which are rooted in our existing attachments to humanity and to valued forms of human activity and endeavor, to care about the capacity of future generations to survive and to flourish.

that the chain of generations should be extended into the indefinite future and that our successors should be able to live under conditions conducive to their flourishing.

our attachment-based reasons presuppose other, attachment-independent reasons that apply to everyone.

It implies, for example, that our attachment-based reasons of love are genuine reasons only if humanity, which is the object of our love, is in fact valuable. And if humanity is in fact valuable, then even those who do not exhibit a love of humanity nevertheless have, at a minimum, attachment-independent reasons not to damage or destroy it.

Reasons of value depend not on our love of humanity but solely on humanity’s value, and not on our attachments to the many valuable things that consist in or depend on forms of human activity, but solely on the value of those things themselves.

The attachment-based reasons of valuation that one has in virtue of one’s love of baseball may presuppose that baseball is valuable, and the fact that it is valuable may mean that everyone has at least some attachment-independent reasons of value relating to baseball. Perhaps, for example, everyone has pro tanto reasons to avoid disrupting games of baseball, to respect the desires of some people to play baseball and of other people to watch baseball being played, and to refrain from disparaging people when they do these things. However, even if baseball is valuable, it hardly follows that everyone has pro tanto reasons to try to bring about states of the world that are optimal in baseball-related respects. Indeed, it does not follow that there are states of the world that are “optimal in baseball-related respects.” That is, it does not follow that we need, or should in principle expect to find, an axiological principle that would enable us to assess the relative value of alternative worlds, or alternative total states of a particular world, which differ only in the number of baseball games played, the quality of those games, and their temporal and geographical distribution.

Still less does this follow if we assume that such a principle would have to support the claim that everyone has pro tanto reasons, even if very weak pro tanto reasons, to try to bring about the best possible baseball-related states of our world. Not only do these things not follow, but nobody is tempted to think in these terms. Even if we are fully responsive to the value of baseball, there is no intellectual or practical pressure to develop a baseball axiology.10

One can acknowledge that, in general, our attachments are reason-giving only if the objects of those attachments are valuable independently of our being attached to them, and that this is no less true of an attachment to humanity than it is of any of our other attachments. One can also acknowledge that, in consequence, all people have at least some attachment-independent reasons with respect to humanity, whether or not they exhibit the distinctive form of attachment that I am calling a love of humanity. Yet it does not follow from these acknowledgements that one is committed to the existence of a population axiology: a reason-implying betterness ordering of total states of the world that differ only in relevant population-related respects. There is no automatic step from the value of humanity to the need for such an axiology. If there is pressure to develop one, it must have an independent source.

despite the reservations I have expressed about beneficence-based approaches to issues concerning future generations, my view is committed both to recognizing beneficence as an important value in general and to accepting that we have beneficence-based reasons for concern about future generations in particular.

What about an axiological approach based around value-based reasons? Might be a nonsensical question.

One suggestion might be that, as applied to questions about future generations, reasons of beneficence consist solely in reasons not to damage or destroy humanity, and that there are no attachment-independent reasons to take affirmative steps to sustain and preserve future generations.

For example, my attachment-independent reasons to treat (and to avoid treating) your friends and your family heirlooms in certain ways are undoubtedly significant, but they appear to be largely negative in character. I should not abuse your friends or damage or destroy your heirlooms, but your reasons, which include attachment-based reasons for treating your friends and family heirlooms in certain ways, are much more far-reaching. They are not limited to reasons to avoid abuse or mistreatment, but instead support a much richer and more varied array of actions.

Perhaps our attachment-independent reasons of beneficence are limited to “negative” reasons to avoid damaging or destroying human life, and only our attachment-based reasons include “positive” reasons to help sustain humanity. We can call this “the limited interpretation” of beneficence.

Nevertheless, it does not follow that these reasons must take the form of reasons to maximize human well-being or to maximize the numbers of people who can lead good lives or to promote optimal population outcomes as picked out by some axiological principle. Insofar as they bear on questions about future generations, they may instead be reasons whose content is no different from the content of our attachment-based reasons. That is, they may be reasons to ensure that the chain of human generations is extended into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. Where future generations are concerned, in other words, the content of our attachment-independent reasons of beneficence may be identical to the content of our attachment-based reasons, despite the fact that they have a different source.

The important point is this. From the fact that our reasons of beneficence have an attachment-independent source, it does not follow that their content must be understood along utilitarian or axiological lines. It does not follow even if we assume that, with respect to the future of humanity, our reasons of beneficence are more extensive than the limited interpretation would allow. If there is some reason to conceive of these reasons in utilitarian or axiological terms, it must come from somewhere else. There is no direct route from the bare fact that humanity is valuable to a conception of beneficence as requiring us, ceteris paribus, to promote optimal population outcomes. The content of beneficence depends not merely on the fact that humanity is valuable but, just as importantly, on how we have reason to respond to its value.12 And to me, at least, it is far less plausible that we have reason to respond to humanity’s value by trying to promote optimal population outcomes than that we have reason to respond by trying to ensure that the chain of human generations is extended into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. After all, if even a love of humanity does not give us a general, context-independent reason to promote optimal population outcomes, it is far from clear why the value of humanity alone should do so.

Normatively, there is a set of reasons, whether moral or non-moral, to secure the ability of our successors to survive under conditions conducive to their flourishing.

Motivationally, there is a conservative disposition to sustain the humanity we love and the existing values we affirm.

It would be interesting and perhaps fruitful to explore possible connections between the role I ascribe to attachment, here and in the remainder of this book, and psychological “attachment theory,” as developed by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and others. See, for example, Bowlby’s authoritative three-volume work Attachment and Loss (New York: Basic Books).

The conservative disposition to which I have referred in previous chapters is not a form of political conservatism. It is a disposition to preserve or sustain the things that we value, and both the things that we value and the steps necessary to preserve them may conflict sharply with the policies and practices endorsed by political conservatives.

In his wonderful essay defending what he calls “small-c conservatism,” Cohen advocates a “bias in favor of existing value” (p. 210), by which he means that we should regret the destruction of particular valuable things as such, even when it would lead to their replacement by things of greater value.1, 2 He thinks that “everyone who is sane” (p. 204) has this bias to some degree, and that it is “rational and right” (p. 210) that they should.

First, particular valuable things do not matter or count simply because of the amount of value that they bear or that “resides in them” (p. 206).

Second, we have at least some (defeasible) reason to preserve particular valuable things as such, even if by sacrificing them we could produce more value overall.

The upshot is that particular valuable things command a kind of loyalty. They do not become dispensable the minute we could replace them with something of greater value. Conservatives of Cohen’s sort will be (defeasibly) disposed to retain particular valuable things even if it means f...

Cohen too insists that the conservatism he defends is not political Conservatism (or what he calls “big-C Conservatism”) as it is understood in the United Kingdom or the United States. For one thing, what he favors is the conservation of intrinsic value, and since injustic...