POPULATION ETHICS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE July , University of Bayreuth. Overview

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1 POPULATION ETHICS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE July , University of Bayreuth Overview Population ethics is the part of moral theory that deals with acts that can affect the identity and the number of people that exist. This course gives an overview over theoretical and practical debates within population ethics. Among other things we will grapple with the following questions: Can we say that it is better for me to exist than not to exist? Can an action be wrong even though it doesn t harm anyone? Which population is preferable: a large population with lower average well-being or a small population with higher average well-being? Is it wrong to have a child when you know you are not going to be a good parent? Why should we worry about climate change? Should we worry about human existential risk? Which large-scale altruistic causes are most important to support? Saturday, July 15: 10:00-18:00 Session 4 The Repugnant Conclusion Can the best population be one where 100 billions of people exist at the subsistence level? Session 5 The Mere Addition Paradox Might it be bad to add people with lives worth living? Session 6 Procreation and Reproductive Technology Should we try to create only those children with the best chance in life? Session 7 Climate Change Why should we worry about climate change? Convenor: Korbinian Rüger (korbinian.rueger@balliol.ox.ac.uk) Friday, July 14: 13:00-19:00 Introduction Session 1 The Non-Identity Problem I Can we do wrong without harming? Session 2 The Non-Identity Problem II Can we benefit people by bringing them into existence? Sunday, July 16: 10:00-16:00 Session 8 Existential Risk Why would it be bad if humans died out? Session 9 Animals Should we care about wild animal suffering? Session 10 Effective Altruism and Population What is effective altruism and what does population ethics tell us about where to give? Should we aim to reduce population size? Session 3 The Neutrality Intuition We are in favour of making people happy and neutral about making happy people. 1

2 POPULATION ETHICS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE July , University of Bayreuth Reading List Readings marked with an asterisk* are REQUIRED reading for all students. Most of the required readings are quite short and all of them are very accessible, often from newspapers and blogs, rather than academic publications. I will expect everyone to have read them closely. The other readings are only required for presenters and respondents of the respective session, but recommended for everyone. The further recommended readings might be of interests for presenters and for those wanting to write a term paper. Introductory Reading Greaves, H. (2016): Population Axiology. Forthcoming in Philosophy Compass.* Session 1 The Non-Identity Problem I Can we do wrong without harming? a) Parfit, D. (1984): Reasons and Persons. Section 16. Oxford. b) Parfit, D. (2011): Energy Policy and the Further Future. Pojman et. al. (eds.) Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application. Cengage Learning. pp * Session 2 The Non-Identity Problem II Can we benefit people by bringing them into existence? McMahan, J. (2013): Causing People to Exist and Saving People s Lives. The Journal of Ethics. pp Session 3 The Neutrality Intuition We are in favour of making people happy and neutral about making happy people. a) Broome, J. (2005): Should We Value Population?. The Journal of Political Philosophy. pp * b) Narveson, J. (1967): Utilitarianism and New Generations. Mind. pp Session 4 The Repugnant Conclusion Can the best population be one where 100 billions of people exist at the subsistence level? a) Parfit, D. (1984): Reasons and Persons. Section 17. Oxford.* b) Tannsjö, T. (2002): Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion. Utilitas pp

3 Session 5 The Mere Addition Paradox Might it be bad to add people with lives worth living? a) Parfit, D. (1984): Reasons and Persons. Section 19. Oxford.* b) Mulgan, T. (2000): Dissolving the Mere Addition Paradox. American Philosophical Quarterly. pp Session 6 Procreation and Reproductive Technology Should we try to create only those children with the best chance in life? a) Bennet, R. (2009): The Fallacy of the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. Bioethics. pp b) Savalescu, J. and Kahane, G. (2009): The Moral Obligation to Create Children with the Best Chance of the Best Life. Bioethics. pp * Session 7 Climate Change Why should we worry about climate change? a) Broome, J. (2012): The Public and Private Morality of Climate Change. Tanner Lecture. b) Kahane, G. (2015): Remarks at the 2015 Uehiro-Carnegie-Oxford Conference on Global Warming-Environmental Ethics and Its Practice.* c) Porrit, J. (2010): Popoulation and Climate Change. The New Internationalist. Session 8 Existential Risk Why would it be bad if humans died out? a) Beckstead N. (2012): The Case for Prioritizing Existential Risk Reduction. Draft. b) Singer, P. et. al. (2013): Preventing human extinction. in the effective altruism online forum.* Session 9 Animals Should we care about wild animal suffering? a) McMahan, J. (2010): The Meat Eaters. New York Times.* b) McMahan, J. (2015): The Moral Problem of Predation. in Andrew Chignell, Terence Cuneo, and Matt Halteman, eds., Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating. Routledge. Session 10 Effective Altruism and Population What is effective altruism and what does population ethics tell us about where to give? Should we aim to reduce population size? a) Dickens, M. (2016): GiveWell's Charity Recommendations Require Taking a Controversial Stance on Population Ethics. from Effective Altruism Forum.* b) Gabriel, I. (2016): Effective Altruism and its Critics. Journal of Applied Philosophy. 3

4 c) MacAskill, W. and Singer, P. (2015): What is Effective Altruism?. from the Handbook of Effective Altruism.* d) Ord, T. (2014): Overpopulation or Underpopulation?. In I Goldin (ed.) Is the planet full?. Oxford. pp Further Recommended Readings Arrhenius, G., J. Ryberg, and T. Tännsjö (2010): The Repugnant Conclusion, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Arrhenius, G. (2011) The Impossibility of a Satisfactory Population Ethics. In H. Colonius and E. N. Dzhafarov (eds), Descriptive and Normative Approaches to Human Behavior, Advanced Series on Mathematical Psychology, pp World Scientific Publishing Company. (2016): Population Ethics and Different-Number-Based Imprecision. Theoria Broome, J. (2004): Weighing Lives. Oxford. (2012): Climate Matters - Ethics in a warming world. Norton. Bykvist, K. (2006): The Benefits of Coming into Existence. Philosophical Studies, 135 (3): Carlson, E. (1998): Mere Addition and Two Trilemmas of Population Ethics. Economics and Philosophy Das, R. (2014): Has Industrialization Benefited No One? Climate Change and the Non-Identity Problem. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. pp Dasgupta, P. (1994): Savings and Fertility: Ethical Issues. Philosophy & Public Affairs. Hare, C., 2007, Voices from Another World: Must We Respect the Interests of People Who Do Not, and Will Never, Exist?. Ethics. 117: Harman, E. (2004): Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?. Philosophical Perspectives. pp Heyd, D., (1989): Procreation and Value: Can Ethics Deal With Futurity Problems?. Philosophia. 18: Holtug, N. (2010): Persons, Interests, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huemer, M. (2008): In Defence of Repugnance. Mind. pp Hurka, T. (1983): Value and Population Size. Ethics. 93: Kavka, G.S., 1982, The Paradox of Future Individuals. Philosophy and Public Affairs. 11: Kumar, R. (2003): Who Can Be Wronged? Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 31, pp MacAskill, W. (2014): Doing Good Better. Penguin. McMahan, J. (1981): Problems of Population Policy. Ethics 92: (2016): Philosophical Critiques of Effective Altruism. retrieved from website, jeffersonmcmahan.com. Narveson, J. (1976): Moral Problems of Population, in Michael D. Bayles (ed.), Ethics and Population. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., pp NG, Y.-K. (1989) What Should We Do About Future Generations? Economics and Philosophy 5(2): Parfit, D. (1982): Future Generations: Further Problems, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11:

5 (2016) Can We Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion? Theoria 82: Rabinowicz, W. (2009): Broome and the Intuition of Neutrality. Philosophical Issues, 19 (1): Roberts, M. A., (1998): Child versus Childmaker: Future Persons and Present Duties in Ethics and the Law. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Savulescu, J. (2001): Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children. Bioethics 2001; 15: Singer, P. (2015): The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. Yale University Press. Temkin, L. (2011): Rethinking the Good. Oxford. Tomasik, B. (2015): The Importance of Wild Animal Suffering. Relations. pp Tooley, M. (1998): Value, Obligation and the Asymmetry Question. Bioethics. pp

6 POPULATION ETHICS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE July , University of Bayreuth Presentation Guidelines Every student will have to pick one of the ten topics and present it to his or her fellow students. Presentations should be quite short (between 15 and 20 minutes). Rather than merely summarizing the readings, presenters should try to present what they take to be important arguments from the readings and try to evaluate those arguments. Thus it is not your job to imply give an overview over the texts(s). What you do need to do, however, is to address the questions/prompts given before the respective readings in the list above. Your presentation should be kept simple and easily accessible to your fellow students. Each topic will have a team of two presenters. The 15 to 20 minutes is the time that you will have to divide between the two of you. It is your job to come up with a good way of dividing the work amongst the two of you. It is also possible that only one of you speaks. It is recommended to use at least a few slides for your presentation, but not required. If you do, please send me the slides in PDF format by 8pm the night before your presentation. Response Guidelines Every student will have to pick one session in which to respond to the presentation that has been given. The responses should be between 10 and 15 minutes long and fulfil two purposes. First, you should, well, respond to the presentation by critically evaluating what has been said. Second, you should fill in any gaps that you feel the presenters have left. Since the presenters are not meant to give a full summary of the literature, but rather pick what they take to be the central elements and present those, they might leave something out that others find important. It is therefore imperative that you know the relevant readings very well in order to be able to adapt your remarks in light of what the presenters have said. The responses are therefore as least as important as the presentations and you might also find them more challenging. As with the presentations, each topic will have a team of two respondents. Hausarbeit Guidelines If you want to, you can write a term paper to earn marked credits (5 or 6 depending on your Studienordnung). Term papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words long excluding references. The strict deadline for receipt of the term papers is September 30, 2017 (If you want to graduate this term, this might need to be earlier). Your topic must be related to the themes of the seminar, but need not correspond to any particular session. However, I need to approve your choice of topic before you start writing. If you already know that you want to write a paper, it s best to start thinking of potential topics early on, so that we can discuss it during the weekend I am in Bayreuth. Before you start writing, I very much recommend reading this guide on writing philosophical essays: 6