Here is the basic question.  Do we have moral obligations to future generations?

Intuitively, it would seem so and it is a common consideration for many current policy debates. For example, why should anyone alive today care about preventing environmental catastrophe, say 200 years from now. Everyone alive today will presumably be dead and the beneficiaries of our prevention do not even exist yet, and might never exist. At the same time, if we do have obligations to people not even yet conceived, how can we say that no one has moral obligations towards those who have been conceived but not yet born, as in the case of legal abortion?*  This is philosophical question about if one can be morally obligated to a possible world. One potential solution, would be to treat potential as a kind of existence. In my estimation, the Scholastic tradition seems do so, at least in the following sense. While something may not exist "in act" it still isn’t necessarily nothing at all; it could still exist "in potency".

I don’t know. It’s just something I ponder lately and thought it might be fun to discuss without taking a position.

* Just to be clear, I am NOT interested in playing the “you’re-a-hypocrite-if-you’re-for-one-and-against-the-other” game or having a climate change/abortion debate. The bigger question is more interesting to me and I want to know how some of the more philosophically minded members would approach it.

I’m not sure that we can be morally obligated to a ‘possible world’. The term is far too broad. We can be morally obligated to a potential world, in the sense of striving for a world we’ed like to see, but how can we know what moral obligations we have towards a world where, say, the Arcturian squid creatures have taken over?

Boru

If responsibility to a hypothetical future generation, not yet conceived, seems too intangible to understand - consider debt and reciprocity. The current actual generation has already benefitted from exactly this sort of responsibility.

Or, perhaps, consider our own actions purely in the present. Would it be better to lead a life which respects future life, or one which doesn't? What do the two types of lives look like? Does living one life entail things we would otherwise describe as bad, does another entail things we would otherwise describe as good?

We can repeat the latter case for possible -other- worlds, not just a possible future for this world. If there were another world, and there where good and bad ways to lead our lives in present in this world with respect to that world - it's not clear that or how our moral obligations conceived of in this world wouldn't extend to our interactions with that other.

Put another and far simpler way - If murder is wrong - is it less wrong or not wrong if we hopped over to world b for some murder tourism?

define moral obligation.

(May 5, 2021 at 4:37 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: define moral obligation.

Something you ought to do for moral reasons.

That's one (simple) definition.

(May 5, 2021 at 4:17 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Put another and far simpler way - If murder is wrong - is it less wrong or not wrong if we hopped over to world b for some murder tourism?

Yes, if murder is a moral imperative in world b (I’m assuming the ‘murder’ has the same definition in both worlds).

No, if murder is equally morally wrong in both worlds (same caveat).

Boru

My hierarchy of values are 1. actual things 2. inevitable things 3. potential things.

That there is a future world with future people is inevitable. It isn't as important as present-day people, but it is important.

Now, potential people is a different matter. For instance, do I have a responsibility to ensure that the population of the planet continues to increase, because those potential people all have a right to be born? No, not really.

(May 5, 2021 at 2:44 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Do we have moral obligations to future generations?

At the simplest, least complicated level, my short answer is yes.

(May 5, 2021 at 4:46 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(May 5, 2021 at 4:37 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: define moral obligation.

Something you ought to do for moral reasons.

That's one (simple) definition.

Then yes.


We have moral obligation to act to encourage future events transpire in a manner as we would find it morally important to facilitate if it were to transpire now, our moral obligation however must be scale by the aggregate probability of all the scenarios in which that future event would occur. 


So we have a strong moral obligation to not let our civilization suffer misery of severe climate change in 100 years, because we would be morally bond to avoid letting out civilization suffer such misery today,  And the aggregate probability of all the scenarios in which such misery would occur in 100 years is high.