Harming Future Persons - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Harming Future Persons write by Melinda A. Roberts. This book was released on 2009-07-31. Harming Future Persons available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman 1 Purpose of this Collection What are our obligations with respect to persons who have not yet, and may not ever, come into existence? Few of us believe that we can wrong those whom we leave out of existence altogether—that is, merely possible persons. We may think as well that the directive to be “fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” 1 does not hold up to close scrutiny. How can it be wrong to decline to bring ever more people into existence? At the same time, we think we are clearly ob- gated to treat future persons—persons who don’t yet but will exist—in accordance with certain stringent standards. Bringing a person into an existence that is truly awful—not worth having—can be wrong, and so can bringing a person into an existence that is worth having when we had the alternative of bringing that same person into an existence that is substantially better. We may think as well that our obligations with respect to future persons are triggered well before the point at which those persons commence their existence. We think it would be wrong, for example, to choose today to turn the Earth of the future into a miserable place even if the victims of that choice do not yet exist.
The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People
The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People write by David Boonin. This book was released on 2014. The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. David Boonin presents a new account of the non-identity problem: a puzzle about our obligations to people who do not yet exist. Our actions sometimes have an effect not only on the quality of life that people will enjoy in the future, but on which particular people will exist in the future to enjoy it. In cases where this is so, the combination of certain assumptions that most people seem to accept can yield conclusions that most people seem to reject. The non-identity problem has important implications both for ethical theory and for a number of topics in applied ethics, including controversial issues in bioethics, environmental ethics and disability ethics. It has been the subject of a great deal of discussion for nearly four decades, but this is the first book-length study devoted exclusively to its examination. Boonin begins by explaining what the problem is, why the problem matters, and what criteria a solution to the problem must satisfy in order to count as a successful one. He then provides a critical survey of the solutions to the problem that have thus far been proposed in the sizeable literature that the problem has generated and concludes by developing and defending an unorthodox alternative solution, one that differs fundamentally from virtually every other available approach.
Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (Norton Global Ethics Series)
Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (Norton Global Ethics Series) - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (Norton Global Ethics Series) write by John Broome. This book was released on 2012-07-23. Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (Norton Global Ethics Series) available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A vital new moral perspective on the climate change debate. Esteemed philosopher John Broome avoids the familiar ideological stances on climate change policy and examines the issue through an invigorating new lens. As he considers the moral dimensions of climate change, he reasons clearly through what universal standards of goodness and justice require of us, both as citizens and as governments. His conclusions—some as demanding as they are logical—will challenge and enlighten. Eco-conscious readers may be surprised to hear they have a duty to offset all their carbon emissions, while policy makers will grapple with Broome’s analysis of what if anything is owed to future generations. From the science of greenhouse gases to the intricate logic of cap and trade, Broome reveals how the principles that underlie everyday decision making also provide simple and effective ideas for confronting climate change. Climate Matters is an essential contribution to one of the paramount issues of our time.
Doing and Allowing Harm
Doing and Allowing Harm - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Doing and Allowing Harm write by Fiona Woollard. This book was released on 2015-01-08. Doing and Allowing Harm available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Doing harm seems much harder to justify than merely allowing harm. If a boulder is rushing towards Bob, you may refuse to save Bob's life by driving your car into the path of the boulder if doing so would cost you your own life. You may not push the boulder towards Bob to save your own life. This principle—the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing—requires defence. Does the distinction between doing and allowing fall apart under scrutiny? When lives are at stake, how can it matter whether harm is done or allowed? Drawing on detailed analysis of the distinction between doing and allowing, Fiona Woollard argues that the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is best understood as a principle that protects us from harmful imposition. Such protection against imposition is necessary for morality to recognize anything as genuinely belonging to a person, even that person's own body. As morality must recognize each person's body as belonging to her, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing should be accepted. Woollard defends a moderate account of our obligations to aid, tackling arguments by Peter Singer and Peter Unger that we must give most of our money away and arguments from Robert Nozick that obligations to aid are incompatible with self-ownership.
Child Versus Childmaker
Child Versus Childmaker - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Child Versus Childmaker write by Melinda A. Roberts. This book was released on 1998. Child Versus Childmaker available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Child Versus Childmaker investigates a 'person-affecting' approach to ethical choice. A form of consequentialism, this approach is intended to capture the idea that agents ought both do the most good that they can and respect each person as distinct from each other. Focusing on cases in which a conflict of interest arises between 'childmakers'_parents, infertility specialists, embryologists, and others engaged in the task of bringing new people into existence_and the children they aim to create, the author considers what we today owe those who will come into existence tomorrow. Topics addressed include: what the person-affecting intuition is and how it differs from other forms of consequentialism; the consistency of the person-affecting intuition; the non-identity problem; wrongful life; and human cloning and other new reproductive technologies. This book is intended for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in philosophy, law and economics and for anyone interested in bioethics, population policy, normative theory, children's rights, constitutional privacy, or family law.
