sabato 8 novembre 2008

Tutorial # 7. Consequentialism. What We Owe To Future Generations?

Once, my friend Sebastian Koehler came up with this scenario:

"Assume that your house is terrorized by a lot of rats. The only way you could get rid of them, would be to flood your whole house with a deadly gas which kills mammals in seconds (I assume for this case that killing the rats would be permissible).
Assume further that your house is built on a spot were the normal natural laws are crazy in a certain respect: You know that if you will use the poisonous gas this would result in 10 normal human beings spontaniously and instantly being created in your house, who will then immediatelly die from the poisionous gas.
What do you think? Is it permissible to use the poisionous gas?"

Sebastian thinks rather not.
The problem with future generations seems to be analogous: How can it be that non-existent beings can make moral demands on us?

What do you think about it?
In light of consequentialism, do you think we should take into account long-term consequences of our actions, consequences that will affect other people not-yet existent?

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