Also, person-affecting views can lead to the bizarre conclusion that we don’t need to worry much about contributing to climate change because the people in the future wouldn’t have existed if we hadn’t done so—so we won’t actually have harmed them (provided their lives are net good).
I would assume that progressives concerned with the welfare of future generations (maybe most?) don’t have these specific kinds of person-affecting views, although most probably have not thought that much about population ethics or metaphysical identity issues at all. I think the closest steelman might look like:
the wide and soft asymmetry view here (Thomas) or here (Frick), which does fine on the non-identity problem,
dying is bad, so extinction would at least be bad for the people who die and don’t want to,
and maybe they separately value the preservation of humanity, like this (Frick), or something like an animal conservationist way, but more humans isn’t (always) better. Or, they aren’t actually person-affecting, but recognize decreasing marginal value in additional lives as a population increases.
Also, person-affecting views can lead to the bizarre conclusion that we don’t need to worry much about contributing to climate change because the people in the future wouldn’t have existed if we hadn’t done so—so we won’t actually have harmed them (provided their lives are net good).
AKA the non-identity problem.
I would assume that progressives concerned with the welfare of future generations (maybe most?) don’t have these specific kinds of person-affecting views, although most probably have not thought that much about population ethics or metaphysical identity issues at all. I think the closest steelman might look like:
the wide and soft asymmetry view here (Thomas) or here (Frick), which does fine on the non-identity problem,
dying is bad, so extinction would at least be bad for the people who die and don’t want to,
and maybe they separately value the preservation of humanity, like this (Frick), or something like an animal conservationist way, but more humans isn’t (always) better. Or, they aren’t actually person-affecting, but recognize decreasing marginal value in additional lives as a population increases.