All of Jack Malde's Comments + Replies

What assumptions are these specifically?

You're welcome to lay out your own theory of population ethics. The more I read about it though the more it seems like a minefield where no theory seems to evade counterintuitive/repungnant results.

Population ethics is the philosophical study of the ethical problems arising when our actions affect who is born and how many people are born in the future (see Wikipedia here).

In the example I gave we are judging the ethical permissibility of a change in population (one extra life) taking into account the welfare of the new person. You implied it can sometimes not be ethically permissible to bring into existence an additional life, if that life is of a poor enough quality. This quite clearly seems to me to be engaging in population ethics.

You say:

World-st

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2jasoncrawford
Thanks. So, of course I think we should discuss the ethics of actions that affect who is born. If that's all that population ethics is, then it's hard to be against it. But all the discussion of it I've seen makes some fundamental assumptions that I am questioning.

For instance, if I choose to bring one more person into the world, by having a child (which, incidentally, we just did!), that decision is primarily about what kind of life want to have, and what commitments I am willing to make, rather than about whether I think the world, in the abstract, is better or not with one more person in it.

Would you take into account the wellbeing of the child you are choosing to have? 

For example, if you knew the child was going to have a devastating illness such that they would live a life full of intense suff... (read more)

2jasoncrawford
Yes, of course I would take that into account. For the child's sake as well as mine. I don't see how that constitutes engaging in population ethics. Unless you are using a very broad definition of “population ethics.” (Maybe the definition I was working with was too narrow.)