I realize now I interpreted “rights” in moral terms (e.g. deontological terms), when Halstead may have intended it to be interpreted legally. On some rights-based (or contractualist) views, some acts that violate humans’ legal rights to protect nonhuman animals or future people could be morally permissible.
The longtermist could then argue that an analogous argument applies to “other-defence” of future generations.
I agree. I think rights-based (and contractualist) views are usually person-affecting, so while they could in principle endorse coercive action to prevent the violation of rights of future people, preventing someone’s birth would not violate that then non-existent person’s rights, and this is an important distinction to make. Involuntary extinction would plausibly violate many people’s rights, but rights-based (and contractualist) views tend to be anti-aggregative (or at least limit aggregation), so while preventing extinction could be good on such views, it’s not clear it would deserve the kind of priority it gets in EA. See this paper, for example, which I got from one of Torres’ articles and takes a contractualist approach. I think a rights-based approach could treat it similarly.
It could also be the case that procreation violates the rights of future people pretty generally in practice, and then causing involuntary extinction might not violate rights at all in principle, but I don’t get the impression that this view is common among deontologists and contractualists or people who adopt some deontological or contractualist elements in their views. I don’t know how they would normally respond to this.
Considering “innocent threats” complicates things further, too, and it looks like there’s disagreement over the permissibility of harming innocent threats to prevent harm caused by them.
Separately, note that a similar objection also applies to many forms of non-totalist longtermism. On broad person-affecting views, for instance, the future likely contains an enormous number of future moral patients who will suffer greatly unless we do something about it. So these views could also be objected to on the grounds that they might lead people to cause serious harm in an attempt to prevent that suffering.
I agree. However, again, on some non-consequentialist views, some coercive acts could be prohibited in some contexts, and when they are not, they would not necessarily violate rights at all. The original objection raised by Halstead concerns rights violations, not merely causing serious harm to prevent another (possibly greater) harm. Maybe this is a sneaky way to dodge the objection, and doesn’t really dodge it at all, since there’s a similar objection. Also, it depends on what’s meant by “rights”.
I realize now I interpreted “rights” in moral terms (e.g. deontological terms), when Halstead may have intended it to be interpreted legally. On some rights-based (or contractualist) views, some acts that violate humans’ legal rights to protect nonhuman animals or future people could be morally permissible.
I agree. I think rights-based (and contractualist) views are usually person-affecting, so while they could in principle endorse coercive action to prevent the violation of rights of future people, preventing someone’s birth would not violate that then non-existent person’s rights, and this is an important distinction to make. Involuntary extinction would plausibly violate many people’s rights, but rights-based (and contractualist) views tend to be anti-aggregative (or at least limit aggregation), so while preventing extinction could be good on such views, it’s not clear it would deserve the kind of priority it gets in EA. See this paper, for example, which I got from one of Torres’ articles and takes a contractualist approach. I think a rights-based approach could treat it similarly.
It could also be the case that procreation violates the rights of future people pretty generally in practice, and then causing involuntary extinction might not violate rights at all in principle, but I don’t get the impression that this view is common among deontologists and contractualists or people who adopt some deontological or contractualist elements in their views. I don’t know how they would normally respond to this.
Considering “innocent threats” complicates things further, too, and it looks like there’s disagreement over the permissibility of harming innocent threats to prevent harm caused by them.
I agree. However, again, on some non-consequentialist views, some coercive acts could be prohibited in some contexts, and when they are not, they would not necessarily violate rights at all. The original objection raised by Halstead concerns rights violations, not merely causing serious harm to prevent another (possibly greater) harm. Maybe this is a sneaky way to dodge the objection, and doesn’t really dodge it at all, since there’s a similar objection. Also, it depends on what’s meant by “rights”.