On the survival of humanity

Abstract What moral reasons, if any, do we have to ensure the long-term survival of humanity? This article contrastively explores two answers to this question: according to the first, we should ensure the survival of humanity because we have reason to maximize the number of happy lives that are ever lived, all else equal. According to the second, seeking to sustain humanity into the future is the appropriate response to the final value of humanity itself. Along the way, the article discusses various issues in population axiology, particularly the so-called Intuition of Neutrality and John Broome’s ‘greediness objection’ to this intuition.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Canadian Journal of Philosophy

• Publication date

  2017-03-30

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Philosophy

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/00455091.2017.1301764
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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