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This chapter examines the extension of egalitarian justice theory to relations between generations (or intergenerational justice), as climate change likewise has effects upon future generations that are regarded as giving rise to claims of intergenerational justice. Two main challenges to this extension of justice principles are considered: the problems associated with the difficulty in using egalitarian principles to make interpersonal comparisons among non-contemporaries, and the fact that it is apparently impossible for current policy decisions to harm specific persons in the future, given what Parfit terms the non-identity problem. It defends a foundation for obligations to futurity by appealing to the idea of foresight, which allows persons to reasonably predict the future effects of current actions, and thereby to account for them ethically.

This chapter examines claims that compensation should be paid as a result of the lasting harm and benefit caused by historic injustice. It argues that present day parties who have benefited from the automatic effects of past wrongdoing may possess compensatory duties if others are still disadvantaged, insofar as the victims and beneficiaries are not in a state of moral equilibrium. It argues that any claims relating to compensation must make reference to some account of counterfactual reasoning in order to assess the degree of harm which has been suffered. The question of identifying the morally relevant counterfactual is something which has been frequently misunderstood, particularly in relation to exploitation. Having considered, and dismissed, objections stemming from the ‘non-identity problem’, the chapter concludes by putting forward a substantive defence of the claim that benefiting from injustice can give rise to rectificatory duties, even when the receipt of benefit is involuntary.

Engaging the non-identity problem, this chapter begins by showing that it is possible to be harmed by being brought into existence. In the process, a distinction is drawn between two quality of life judgements — ‘a life worth starting’ and ‘a life worth continuing’. The chapter argues that coming into existence is always a harm. An asymmetry between pleasure and pain (and between benefit and harm more generally) is described and defended. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. However, by coming into existence one does suffer harm.

Consider a teenage girl who is contemplating motherhood. Prior to her becoming pregnant, it seems that she might truly judge that it would be a bad thing on balance to have a child at this stage in her life. After giving birth as a teenager, however, she might also truly judge that it is not a bad thing on balance that her child exists. These attitudes have commonly been thought to be in tension with each other. This chapter argues, however, that when correctly interpreted in deliberative terms, as judgments about the agent's reasons, the apparent conflict disappears. Giving birth changes the girl's situation, in ways that give rise to corresponding changes in her reasons for action and for various emotional responses. A consequence of this analysis, however, is that there may be mistakes or errors in deliberation that the agent is unable to regret having made. The teenage mother ought not to having conceived and given birth to a child at that stage in her life; and yet, as a mother, she can hardly regret having made the wrong decision in this particular matter. This raises large questions about the relation between justification and regret. Williams argues in ‘Moral Luck’ that our decisions can be justified or ‘unjustified’ retroactively through intervening circumstances that make regret either impossible or unavoidable. The chapter challenges Williams' assumption that justification and regret are necessarily connected in this way, and shows that the things that drive a wedge between justification and regret need not have anything to do with epistemic luck.

Reflecting the normative significance of specific features of intergenerational relations this chapter investigates the justice claims of future people vis-à-vis currently living people. It discusses sufficientarian and egalitarian conceptions of justice, and argues that a sufficientarian approach is appropriate in the intergenerational context. This conclusion is based, first, on the argument that by relying on a threshold conception of harm we can solve the non-identity problem and that there are good reasons to specify the relevant threshold in sufficientarian terms. Second, it is based upon an examination of reasons given for a sufficientarian understanding of global justice. These reasons are shown to speak even more strongly for a sufficientarian understanding of intergenerational justice.

It is argued that the strength or scope of the right to reproductive freedom currently recognized in liberal democracies needs to be reconsidered, such that it does not include a right to engage in very risky or harmful procreation. More specifically, it is argued that if there would be no right to impose risk X of harm Y to some other person in non‐reproductive contexts, then there should be no right to do so in reproductive contexts. Thus, some (but not all) methods, including some coercive methods, of preventing or discouraging such reproduction are morally acceptable. Two arguments against this thesis are examined. The first is the ‘non‐identity’ argument that people cannot be harmed by being brought into existence. This is an argument against the possibility of wrongful life. The second argument is that, although the interests of future people are important, these are outweighed by their parents' right to reproductive freedom. After discerning different senses of a right to reproductive freedom, four arguments for the special importance of reproductive freedom are considered. It is argued that none of them is sufficient to undermine the thesis that there should be limits on the right to reproductive freedom. Because of the long history of bias and arbitrary discrimination in curtailments of reproductive freedom, some suggestions for avoiding bias are provided.

The discussion of obligations to future generations often assumes that though the global poor can be wronged because there are obligations the affluent owe to them, those who will live in the further future can't. They can't be wronged, the thought goes, because though we have obligations with regard to future generations, they aren't obligations owed to them. This chapter argues that the assumption is mistaken. Adopting a Scanlonian contractualist account of what it is for one person to wrong another, it turns out that there is no good reason to think that those who will live in the further future can't be wronged by the choices we make now. This conclusion, it is suggested, has importance for how we understand the normative basis of claims to reparations for past injustice.

This chapter explores the ethical issues raised by reproductive technologies. The authors discuss the idea that relief of infertility is in itself a worthy ethical goal. They evaluate the concept of autonomy in the context of reproduction, and evaluate the role of law and regulation in constraining people's reproductive desires. The risks associated with reproductive technology are discussed, and the effects of individual reproductive decisions on the public are considered. The importance of consent in the context of fertility treatment is explored, and the idea that reproduction is inherently private is analysed. Ethical considerations related to children born as a result of reproductive children are also considered.

Examines how our identity depends on when we were conceived. It discusses cases that involve all and only the same people, same numbers but different people, and different numbers of people; what weight we should give to the interests of future people. It examines the case of a young girl's child; how lowering the quality of life might be worse for no one; and whether this fact makes any moral difference.

This chapter outlines three large, difficult, and important problems, connected to the social welfare function (SWF) framework. First, what is the appropriate legal role of the SWF framework? Should governmental officials be legally required to use SWFs in evaluating laws and regulations, just as they are currently required (at least to some extent) to use cost-benefit analysis? Second, how should the SWF framework be outfitted to handle non-identity problems, variable populations, and infinite populations? This book has assumed that each of the members of a “population” (the individuals whose well-being is of interest to the decisionmaker) exist in all of the possible outcomes of choice; that the size of the population is the same number in all outcomes; and that this number is finite. What happens when these assumptions are relaxed? Finally, how should considerations of individual responsibility be integrated into the SWF framework? This chapter addresses these final questions.

This chapter spells out what it means to respect the independence of future persons. People frequently overlook the dangers inherent in the asymmetry of the relationship between the generations. They think that adults are always entitled to make decisions about the “good” of their offspring, even if that entails interfering with their future children’s genetic constitution. In contrast, in this chapter independence is defended as the central notion for a morality of creating future persons. The only legitimate reason for members of the present generation to genetically intervene with future persons’ genetic make-up is to make sure that the latter are mentally and physically equipped for leading independent lives in order to protect them from domination by their contemporaries. The chapter proceeds by addressing five possible objections to this account. It closes with an argument about procreative responsibility, which maintains that the primary addressees of intergenerational obligations are not the child’s parents but society more generally.

This chapter argues that the distant future poses a severe moral problem, the nature and extent of which has not yet been adequately appreciated. It also claims (1) that the problem is the main concern of distinctively intergenerational ethics, and (2) that it occurs both in a pure, long-term form manifest across human history and global populations, and also in degenerate forms which apply to shorter time periods and to social institutions. The problem is compared with the traditional prisoner's dilemma analysis, and climate change is offered as a leading example. Three major objections are also considered: the invisible hand, future uncertainty, and the philosophical non-identity problem made popular by Derek Parfit

Why is reification so resilient, and critique so difficult to sustain? Developing a critique of knowledge with its roots in Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, this chapter shows the depth of the problem in conceptual-philosophical terms and sketches a conceptual path for meeting it.

The chapter argues that, as a narrow person-affecting problem, the non-identity problem doesn't target modern ethical theories since none of them (including Kantian, consequentialist, and virtue ethics) are narrow person-affecting theories. Further, the chapter dissolves the non-identity problem, demonstrating that it's a mistake resulting from considering existence itself (which everyone has and nobody needs), as a good bequeathed by one's ancestors and capable of outweighing life burdens. Existence is a precondition of being subject to benefits and burdens. If we don't count existence itself as a benefit, then we don't have a non-identity problem. Finally, deontology solves the non-identity problem by pointing at a particular person wronged by procreative negligence (deontology doesn't require a person's first-personal interests be set back in order to claim a wrong). Deontology can consider an act wrong because of the way the people involved treat each other, regardless of the consequences.