[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds

[vulcanlogician]

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.

The debate seems to have drifted into metaethics... but, I want to respond to Neo.

Assuming moral realism, I think we can say something about a moral commitment to future generations.

Our actions affect future generations whether we want them to or not. The fact that they don't exist yet doesn't change the fact that our actions will affect people in the future. We ought to feel the same obligation to them as we do with people in the here and now. There is some uncertainty involved however... we more precisely know the circumstances of those who are present currently. We can less gauge the wants or needs of those who will be born in the future. But we have a pretty good idea that things like rising ocean levels will impact them negatively.

As for abortion, I think "our commitment to a possible world" is to make the world better for those who exist in it. It could, but doesn't necessarily mean, making sure everyone who could exist will exist. Abortion could be seen as preventing lives of anguish and poverty. Only "desired" children are born in the best hypothetical future, when the parent(s) are ready. That "world" contains less grief because it will (theoretically) have it in less impoverished/ignored/uncared for children.

ie. There is a moral argument for abortion-- of course not one that you'd be prone to accept, Neo-- but one that does consider a possible world and one that wants to reduce the amount of suffering in that possible world.


Of course that viewpoint (if anyone should adopt it) also may suggest that abortion is wrong if the child probably would have a happy life. And --also-- this viewpoint only considers the rights of a child who doesn't exist, and ignores the arguments about the negative impact such a child may have on the parents. The rights a woman has to her body etc.