2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
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Comment by Koboldilocks at 10/02/2020 at 05:41 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
No, I think the point you make really is useful here. In fact, this same idea comes up in part of the post:
For Derek however, both of these views were incorrect. While he raised many complex objections against both of them, one that he continually returned to is that sometimes a person's life may be so full of suffering and other bad things that we would be forced to accept that this person was harmed by coming into existence. Given that this is so, it would be wrong to overlook the value of these people's lives, even if they are in the far future or if their existence depended on our actions. Hence, neither Singer nor Narveson give us excuses for ignoring the harm we might bring to future people, even if it is sometimes compelling to believe that we do not need to worry about the benefits we might give them instead.
However, he went on to argue, if we only considered the harms we brought to future generations this would have highly counterintuitive results. For instance, it would imply that, even if we believed it was good that the world exists with its current population, because whilst some people suffer most people's lives are worth living, it could be wrong for us to have children who would live in a world that was like our own, or even much better, because that future world might still contain some suffering. Derek labelled this an ‘Absurd Conclusion'