In philosophy, the ‘non-identity problem’ refers to what our moral obligations to future individuals should be, that is, to those who do not yet exist. It is a problem in moral philosophy because, typically, the ethical rightness or wrongness of an action is evaluated in terms of how it affects someone (who exists). To summarise…
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In his latest book Why? The Purpose of the Universe, and in his defence of a heretical form of Christianity, the philosopher Philip Goff makes a case for the ‘limited God hypothesis’. This is the idea that a god with limited abilities best explains what we observe in the universe. The hypothesis, therefore, challenges the…
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (1973) poses an interesting and thorny moral conundrum. In this story, the narrator describes the utopian city of Omelas, whose very utopianism, prosperity, and unspoiled happiness depend on the perpetual misery of a single child, hidden and locked away in a dark,…
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Many antinatalists embrace veganism, as they find these lifestyle decisions to be ethically consonant with each other. Yet most ethical vegans are not against having children. Whether one position entails the other depends on the particular ethic at play: If the goal is to prevent and minimise suffering, then does this not entail antinatalism? This…
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To the philosopher Rivka Weinberg, we need to think about the moral permissibility of procreation in terms of risk. In her book The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible (2015), she presents a conservative position on the ethics of procreation, deviating from both the strong antinatalist position which says…
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