Contingent Future Persons

by Fotion, Nick; Heller, Jan Christian

• ISBN13: 9780792347071
• ISBN10: 0792347072
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

This volume is concerned with how we ought to evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence, numbers and identities of future people depend - discussed here as the 'problem of contingent future persons'. For it seems that those future persons who are brought into existence by such actions cannot benefit from or be harmed by them in any conventional sense. This is a relatively novel problem in ethics and as yet there is simply no consensus on how we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. However, the pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature and source of value at its most fundamental level. Intended for professional ethicists, policy researchers, and graduate students, this volume explores the theological implications of the problem and advances the investigation of it both in philosophical and in theological terms.

Table of Contents

JAN C. HELLER
Preface	vii
NICK FOTION
Introduction	1	(8)
R. M. HARE
When Does Potentiality Count? A Comment on Lockwood	9	(10)
MICHAEL LOCKWOOD
Hare on Potentiality: A Rejoinder	19	(8)
CYNTHIA B. COHEN
The Morality of Knowingly Conceiving Children with Serious Conditions: An Expanded "Wrongful Life" Standard	27	(14)
INGMAR PERSSON
Person-Affecting Principles and Beyond	41	(16)
DAVID HEYD
Divine Creation and Human Procreation: Reflections on Genesis in the Light of Genesis	57	(14)
JAN C. HELLER
Deciding the Timing of Children: An Ethical Challenge Only Indirectly Addressed by the Christian Tradition	71	(14)
NICK FOTION
Repugnant Thoughts about the Repugnant Conclusion Argument	85	(14)
CLARK WOLF
Person-Affecting Utilitarianism and Population Policy; Or, Sissy Jupe's Theory of Social Choice	99	(24)
AVNER de-SHALIT
Down to Earth Environmentalism: Sustainability and Future Persons	123	(14)
LUKAS H. MEYER
More Than They Have a Right to: Future People and Our Future Oriented Projects	137	(20)
ROBERT ELLIOT
Contingency, Community and Intergenerational Justice	157	(14)
CAROL A. TAUER
Bringing Embryos into Existence for Research Purposes	171	(20)
WILLIAM P. GEORGE
Anticipating Posterity: A Lonerganian Approach to the Problem of Contingent Future Persons	191	(18)
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS	209	(2)
INDEX	211