Obligations to Future Generations
Posted on June 13, 2008 - Filed Under College, Environment/Conservation, Philosophy |
What follows is a rather mangled essay that I lashed together in a hurry during the last semester. It seems vaguely related to other recent posts. All footnotes have been removed, so apologies in advance is this leads to any confusion. Please keep all “tl;dr” style comments to yourself.
“Those who have quitted the world and those and those who are not yet arrived in it, are as remote from each other, as the utmost stretch of moral imagination can conceive. What possible obligation can exist between them?”
This essay will argue, contra-Paine, that obligations do exist between past and present generations and future generations. The essay will examine the main arguments raised in opposition to the idea of intergenerational obligation, and in each case demonstrate why these arguments are insufficient. The arguments and issues herein examined are, in order: that one cannot be under obligation to those that are not currently alive; that the preferences of future generations are unknowable; the economic concept of ‘social discounting’; and the complications stemming from the ‘non-identity-problem’.
Before progressing to these arguments, a caveat is in order. Rather than attempt to articulate its own theory of obligation, this essay will assume a libertarian definition of the term, with “obligation” here being understood largely in the sense of a duty not to harm others. It is appropriate to assume an ethical framework of this nature in discussions of intergenerational justice, since most contemporary debate on this issue turns on the idea that we can negatively effect future generations through our actions at the present time.
Perhaps the most intuitive argument that can be raised against the idea of intergenerational obligation is the claim that we can only bear obligations towards living people, and therefore we cannot have obligations to future generations. This argument is usually presented in terms of rights, with the assumption being that if someone can be shown to have a right to something then we have an obligation not to hinder or otherwise interfere with that right. A proponent of this view is Richard De George, who writes that:
“Future generations by definition do not exist now. They cannot now, therefore, be the present bearer or subject of anything, including rights”
However, De George’s claim only holds true if it is accepted that only presently existing rights require our observance. It is not hard to conceive that future generations, should they come into existence, will bear certain rights that are linked in some sense to their interests. It is equally easy to imagine how certain actions taken by the present generation can negatively effect these interests, and in doing so violate the rights of future generations. Thus, we in the present can violate the rights of those in the future, even if those in the future do not, as yet, exist.
Another objection to the notion of intergenerational obligation arises out of the claim that the preferences of future generations are unknowable. John Barry elaborates this assertion in terms of a disagreement between “technocentric” and “ecocentric” perspectives. The “technocentric” position essentially holds that today’s environmental challenges can be overcome by new technologies, and so constraining the present generation’s action in order to benefit future generations is both unnecessary and unjustifiable. The “ecocentric” position is less enthusiastic about the possibilities of technological innovation, and instead emphasises the importance of each generation leaving a light environmental footprint on the Earth, so as not to spoil it for future generations.
To fully understand the issue at stake here, it is necessary to not think about it as merely a debate between the forces of conservation and those who advocate outright plunder, but rather as a question of conservation verses, in the words of Brian Barry, “depletion with compensation”. John Barry captures the essence of the “technocentric” position with a hypothetical example of a future where there are no more blue whales, but where whale-based research, made possible by their destruction, has lead to the elimination of cancer. How are we to decide, from our vantage point in the present, whether future generations would prefer to live in a world with both cancer and whales, or a world with neither?
While both the “technocentric” and the “ecocentric” positions assume some sense of obligation toward future generations, the “technocentric” position views the “ecocentric” position as being essentially lopsided and over-privileging toward future generations. This is because, technocentrists maintain, “ecocentrism” demands that we in the present make unnecessary sacrifices in order to conserve an environment that future technology will be able to re-establish. However, the “technocentric” position also holds that the ecocentrists unfairly disadvantage future generations, since they seek to limit technological progress if it is damaging to the environment (e.g., whale-destroying cancer research). Given such criticisms, might we not be better off just ploughing forward on our current path and not concerning ourselves with the unknowable preferences of future generations?
This objection to the notion of intergenerational responsibility can be overcome if we think in terms of probability. The crux of this objection is that in order to do right by future generations we have to first know what doing right by future generations amounts to, and since we cannot know this with any degree of certainty then we can’t be said to bear obligations toward them. However, just because we can’t know for sure the extent to which future generations may prefer conservation to development (or vice versa), this does not mean that we cannot make a decent estimate, or err on the side of caution and pursue a path of development that strives to maintain the natural environment to the greatest possible extent. After all, not knowing how to perform our responsibilities does not absolve us from them; we ought to at least attempt to perform them.
Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that treading such a path between development and conservation would, in reality, be all that challenging. For instance, the example cited above about whale-based cancer research adopts an ‘all or nothing’ assumption that would almost certainly never arise, since it is highly unlikely that such research would necessitate the killing of every single blue whale. Our own experience is also informative: while there are few people in the industrialised West who think that the industrial revolution was, on balance, a bad thing, this calculation might be different if the period had caused so much pollution that a thick layer of black smog now pervaded the atmosphere. Thus, if we follow a path of development that seeks to conserve the natural world to a large extent then we can probably muddle through this objection and meet our obligations to future generations, even if we do not conduct ourselves precisely as they would have wanted.
Another challenge to intergenerational obligation comes from what economists call “social discounting”, which Terence Ball explains as “the practice of discounting the utility or welfare of future people in favour of presently existing ones.” Ball expands this explanation further by writing that:
“In effect, social discounting treats a people, a society, or even our entire species as if it were a single super-individual existing over many generations of individuals (the latter being rather like cells that the larger organism sloughs off and replaces periodically). This super-individual then ‘discounts’ its own future utility, as ordinary individuals typically do, so as to favour the present over the further future.”
Thus, if we adopt such a collectivist, generation-spanning view of human existence it makes little sense to think in terms of intergenerational obligation, since on this view future generations are not seen as distinct from present generations to the same extent that is normally supposed.
There are several problems with this perspective. Firstly, the idea of a generation-spanning collectivist entity is, in the words of Ball, “a fiction”. While it may be true that the human race exists uninterrupted across generations, the practice of “social discounting” does not pay due consideration to the distinct individuals that comprise this species, and so it allows the rights of future individuals to be damaging in order for individuals living in the present to benefit. Ball further criticising “social discounting” on the grounds that “might does not make right.” Since one cannot deduce an “ought” from an “is”, the fact that present generations can despoil the Earth and leave nothing but a wasteland for posterity obviously does not confer any right on them to do so. Finally, Ball criticises “social discounting” for violating J.S. Mill’s harm principle, since it enables the living to harm the interests of those yet to come. This argument is more contentious than it might at first appear, as shall be discussed below.
This essay now turns toward a discussion of the “non-identity-problem” and the challenge that this poses for the notion of intergenerational responsibility. The “non-identity-problem” was first identified by the philosopher Derek Parfit and is perhaps best explained by means of an example. Suppose that all the world leaders came together at the United Nations and decided upon a vast and far-reaching set of policies intended to deal with the problem of global warming. Such policies might include banning private motor vehicles, severe curbs on population growth, and other such drastic measures. These measures would have a profound effect on the way people live, and so would alter the course of their lives to a considerable degree, with the result that they would meet and procreate with people that they would never have met had these environmental measures not being introduced. Thus, after about 100 years or so every human on Earth would have been born partly as a result of the UN climate-control measures, which we can assume to have been successful, for the purposes of this example. However, rather than benefiting the future generations that the world leaders were so concerned about, their policies have instead now resulted in an entirely different set of people being born. This is the “non-identity-problem”.
The “non-identity-problem” poses a problem for the idea of intergenerational responsibility in two ways. The first of these relates to the idea of harm, and how the actions of the present generation could be said to harm members of a future generation if the future generation’s very existence is contingent on the supposedly harmful action. In order to better illustrate this point, it is useful to introduce a scale of wellbeing, where 10 represents the highest possible state of wellbeing and 1 represents the lowest. The idea of harm is generally conceived of as an action that results in a decrease in a person’s level of wellbeing that would not have occurred had the action not been taken. For example, if Trent steals Matt’s bicycle then Matt’s level of wellbeing will slip from, say, 8 to 3, and this decrease in wellbeing is what we mean by harm. The important point here is that this typical conception of harm presupposes an already existing level of wellbeing that can subsequently be lowered by the harmful action but will remain unchanged if the harmful action is not taken.
However, the “non-identity-problem” raises the issue of how we can be said to harm somebody if our supposedly harmful action is a necessary condition for that person’s existence. In this scenario there can be no decrease in the wellbeing scale, because the person being ‘harmed’ would not exist were it not for the ‘harmful’ action. Therefore, it can be claimed, it is impossible for the present generation to truly harm future generations, since their very existence depends on our ‘harmful’ actions in the present, and so on this view all notions of obligation to future generations go out the window.
It is possible to overcome this problem if we re-conceptualise what we mean by harm. Again, the wellbeing scale is useful here. Instead of conceiving of harm as a decrease in wellbeing level (going from 8 to 3, say) we might instead conceive of it as any action that results in somebody’s wellbeing being below a certain point on the wellbeing scale. Thus, we could stipulate that an action is harmful if it causes the object of the action’s wellbeing to be below 3 on the wellbeing scale. This is sometimes referred to as the “threshold conception of harm”. Thus, if our actions in the present result in individuals in the future coming into existence with a wellbeing level of 3, then we can be said to be harming those future individuals through our actions, even though the existence of the future individuals is contingent on the harmful actions. While quantifying things like wellbeing and utility is notoriously difficult, this alternative definition of harms at least offers the possibility of overcoming this particular difficulty that the “non-identity-problem” poses to notions of intergenerational obligation.
The other challenge that the “non-identity-problem” poses to the idea of intergenerational obligation is related the first. This is the problem of how we can be said to have obligations to future generations if we are incapable of making any particular person in the future either better off or worse off (since their existence is contingent on our actions). If there’s nothing we can do to improve the future wellbeing of particular individuals, then any notion of obligation toward such individuals appears to be redundant.
However, there is also a way around this difficulty. Instead of thinking in terms of particular individuals whose existence is contingent on our present actions, we can instead think in terms of humanity and future generations in general. As discussed already, knowing the exact preferences of future generations is impossible, but we can still presume with reasonable certainty that future generations would rather inherit a world similar to our own than an over-populated, resource-plundered and barren Earth. While we may not be able to benefit or harm particular future-based individuals by our present actions, our present actions can certainly benefit or harm posterity.
This essay has examined various problems associated with the notion of obligations to future generations. Briefly, these are the idea that one cannot be under obligation to those that are not currently alive, the idea that the preferences of future generations are unknowable, the economic concept of ‘social discounting’, and the complications stemming from the ‘non-identity-problem’. In each case this essay has argued that the perceived obstacle can be overcome, and thus the idea of intergenerational obligation cannot be refuted on the basis of any argument examined in the essay.
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2 Responses to “Obligations to Future Generations”
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[A caveat: I’m bored. Sue me.]
“It is equally easy to imagine how certain actions taken by the present generation can negatively effect these interests, and in doing so violate the rights of future generations.”
Does it follow that acting in a way which negatively effects someone’s interests must be considered a violation of their rights?
We can think of many examples where our actions negatively effect the interests of others, yet we do not view such actions as being necessarily immoral.
[For example: Mr. Brown and Mr. Black both apply for the same job.]
Perhaps you might offer an example?
“This objection to the notion of intergenerational responsibility can be overcome if we think in terms of probability……this does not mean that we cannot make a decent estimate, or err on the side of caution and pursue a path of development that strives to maintain the natural environment to the greatest possible extent. After all, not knowing how to perform our responsibilities does not absolve us from them; we ought to at least attempt to perform them.”
- How exactly does one assess, in “terms of probability”, that the “cautious”, approach with a view to maintaining the natural environment, is the most likely to succeed?
Attempting to do something without sufficient knowledge might be more damaging to future generations depending on the nature of the attempt. If the most cautious approach had been advocated prior to the industrial revolution for example, we might have found ourselves in a disadvantaged world. Or perhaps not. The very fact that such disagreement could exist alludes to a further problem - how likely is it that future generations will have a uniform or (adequately uniform) conception of the ideal environment?
Overall, I’m having most difficulty in wrapping my head around a conception of morality which places obligations on humans towards people who not only do not exist now, but who may never exist.
If we have obligations to those who are living to preserve the environment and ensure maximum amount of utility for all - then everyone who is living benefits, and everyone who will ever live will benefit. Is it really necessary to attend to future generations if we simply ensure at all times that everyone who is presently alive achieves maximum quality of life?