Imagine the following totally crazy scenario:
Assume that you're house is terrorized by a lot of rats. The only way how you could get rid of them, would be to flood your whole house with a deadly gas which kills mammals in seconds (I assume for this case that killing the rats would be permissible). Assume further that your house is build on a spot were the normal natural laws are crazy in a certain respect: You know that if you will use the poisonous gas this would result in 10 normal human beings spontaniously and instantly being created in your house, who will then immediatelly die from the poisionous gas. What do you think? Is it permissible to use the poisionous gas?
I think rather not.
This crazy scenario came up into my mind, when I thought about what we owe to future generations. The problem with future generations seems to be the following: How can it be that non-existent beings can make moral demands on us?
My position is that we do not owe anything to any individual in particular. This is of course the case, because future individuals do not yet exist (4-Dimensionalism left aside...) and we can't owe anything to an individual who doesn't exist. For example, I do not owe my potential children that I bring them into life, because my potential children do not yet exist and therefore there is nobody whom I could owe anything. But, since we know that there will be individuals who exist in the future we still have to consider that fact in our moral considerations. That is we have to take account morally of the fact that there will be people in the future although we owe nothing to any person in the future in particular.
Just some random thoughts...
Assume that you're house is terrorized by a lot of rats. The only way how you could get rid of them, would be to flood your whole house with a deadly gas which kills mammals in seconds (I assume for this case that killing the rats would be permissible). Assume further that your house is build on a spot were the normal natural laws are crazy in a certain respect: You know that if you will use the poisonous gas this would result in 10 normal human beings spontaniously and instantly being created in your house, who will then immediatelly die from the poisionous gas. What do you think? Is it permissible to use the poisionous gas?
I think rather not.
This crazy scenario came up into my mind, when I thought about what we owe to future generations. The problem with future generations seems to be the following: How can it be that non-existent beings can make moral demands on us?
My position is that we do not owe anything to any individual in particular. This is of course the case, because future individuals do not yet exist (4-Dimensionalism left aside...) and we can't owe anything to an individual who doesn't exist. For example, I do not owe my potential children that I bring them into life, because my potential children do not yet exist and therefore there is nobody whom I could owe anything. But, since we know that there will be individuals who exist in the future we still have to consider that fact in our moral considerations. That is we have to take account morally of the fact that there will be people in the future although we owe nothing to any person in the future in particular.
Just some random thoughts...
1 comment:
I support you. I can only add that we may doubt that animals have a conception of what it is like to be dead (do we by the way have it?), but what cannot be doubted is that animals have an instinct of self-preservation. They "smell" the death and fear. Anyone who think that animals would happily embrace painless instant death from a “caring hand” of a man (rather than from “cruel hand of nature”, as Bentham said) should follow Leo Tolstoy’s example and go to a slaughterhouse him/herself and, upon seeing cows pouring tears, try to persuade him/herself that animals have no conception of death!
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