I think in ordinary cases, necessitarianism ends up looking a lot like presentism. If someone presently exists, then they exist regardless of my choices. If someone doesn’t yet exist, their existence likely depends on my choices (there’s probably something I could do to prevent their existence).
Necessitarianism and presentism do differ in some contrived cases, though. For example, suppose I’m the last living creature on Earth, and I’m about to die. I can either leave the Earth pristine or wreck the environment. Some alien will soon be born far away and then travel to Earth. This alien’s life on Earth will be much better if I leave the Earth pristine. Presentism implies that it doesn’t matter whether I wreck the Earth, because the alien doesn’t exist yet. Necessitarianism implies that it would be bad to wreck the Earth, because the alien will exist regardless of what I do.
Yup!
Hm, then I find necessitarianism quite strange. In practice, how do we identify people who exist regardless of our choices?
I think in ordinary cases, necessitarianism ends up looking a lot like presentism. If someone presently exists, then they exist regardless of my choices. If someone doesn’t yet exist, their existence likely depends on my choices (there’s probably something I could do to prevent their existence).
Necessitarianism and presentism do differ in some contrived cases, though. For example, suppose I’m the last living creature on Earth, and I’m about to die. I can either leave the Earth pristine or wreck the environment. Some alien will soon be born far away and then travel to Earth. This alien’s life on Earth will be much better if I leave the Earth pristine. Presentism implies that it doesn’t matter whether I wreck the Earth, because the alien doesn’t exist yet. Necessitarianism implies that it would be bad to wreck the Earth, because the alien will exist regardless of what I do.