PPE and Philosophy
Owing the future
Do we owe anything to people who will be born in 200 years' time?
- Hint 1Can you wrong someone who does not exist yet?
- Hint 2Our choices now change who will be born. Does that matter?
- Many think we do: our pollution or debts will harm them.
- Puzzle: they do not exist yet, so who is wronged?
- The non-identity problem: different policies lead to different people being born, so a future person may owe their existence to the policy that harmed them.
- One response: we wrong whoever will exist by making their world worse than it could have been.
- Then ask how much weight distant people should get compared with people alive now.
Where it lands: Open: a strong answer meets the non-identity problem head on.
The trap: Asserting 'of course we do' without addressing how you can wrong a person who does not yet exist.
What a tutor might ask next: Is discounting the future, valuing later costs less than present ones, ever justified?
Now do one out loud. In the interview you think aloud with a tutor. Try a PPE problem with hints, follow-ups and Mia's feedback on how you think.