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Why Worry About Future Generations?
The things we do today may make life worse for future generations. But why should we care what happens to people who won't be born until after all of us are gone? Some philosophers have treated this as a question about our moral responsibilities, and have argued that we have duties of beneficence to promote the well-being of our descendants. Rather than focusing exclusively on issues of moral responsibility, Samuel Scheffler considers the broader question of why and how future generations matter to us. Although we lack a developed set of ideas about the value of human continuity, we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our existing values and attachments are a variety of powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This has implications for the way we think about problems like climate change. And it means that some of our strongest
reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.
reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.
- GenresPhilosophy
156 pages, Hardcover
Published June 26, 2018
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November 29, 2021
Why Worry about Future Generations is one of those rare philosophical works that actually inspires the sort of curious, open-ended reflection many of us seek in the study of philosophy. With its modest length and its conversational style, you could enjoyably read it in a weekend, and yet will still be bound to occupy your thoughts for weeks to come. It develops the central themes of Scheffler’s now seminal Tanner Lectures, published as Death and the Afterlife (2013), and plunges ever deeper into its daunting question: Not simply—why should we care what happens to the generations of people who will be born after we have all died?—but more fundamentally—why should we care that there be such generations in the first place?
Scheffler is critical of the practical value of much extant philosophical work regarding our obligations to posterity, which largely concerns what can be demanded of us now to promote the well-being of those who don’t yet exist. But Why Worry about Future Generations is not a polemical book. Its goal is to clear new paths for our thinking about future generations—a goal it takes up, as the author puts it, “in a frankly speculative spirit.”¹
I won't attempt to summarize all the lines of argument in the book, but its main argument can be captured in a pair of theses Scheffler defends. First, what we might call his “latency thesis”—that implicit in our existing values is a deep concern that there be generations to come after us. To help tease out the nature of that concern, Scheffler asks us to imagine learning we were in the situation of the characters in P. D. James’s novel The Children of Men (1992). That is, facing immanent extinction because the whole human race has become incurably infertile. He speculates that although none of our own lives need be any shorter in this doomsday scenario, most of us would react with horror to the news about the coming end of humanity. Indeed, he suggests, much of what matters to us now would cease to do so. For Scheffler, something very important is revealed by this reaction. “[O]ur anticipated reaction to humanity’s imminent extinction,” he writes, “may teach us that the actual value of our activities depends, to a degree that we do not always recognize or acknowledge, on the survival of humanity long after we ourselves are gone.”² This is the second of Scheffler's two central theses—what we could call his “dependency thesis.”
Much rests on Scheffler’s dependency thesis and on the cogency of the intuitions that inspire it. He argues that if much of what we care about depends for its value on the survival of humanity, there emerge a great variety of reasons for us to worry that there be future generations.³ For starters, he says, it means that our ability to lead fulfilling lives, full of valuable activities, depends on there being future generations, giving us reasons of interest to safeguard their existence. Yet he also suggests that our reaction to doomsday reveals that the survival of humanity matters to us in its own right; we value it not merely for our own sake, nor merely for the sake of those to come. Indeed, he goes so far as to describe our reaction as indicating a love of humanity, giving us reasons of love to preserve its future. There quickly follow two further reasons for concern about the future. We also have reasons of valuation to ensure the survival of humanity, because we want to preserve what we value and what we value depends on the existence of future generations. And we have reasons of reciprocity, too, because the value of future generations' lives depends on us (that is, our actions) while the value of our lives depends on them (that is, their existence).
The ultimate upshot of Scheffler’s argument is that our reasons for concern about future generations are grounded not only in duties to promote the well-being of our descendants, as others have argued, but also in our attachment to what we already value.
When it comes to critiquing Scheffler’s argument, one may raise concerns about the implications of his views. Mark Johnston, for instance, asks whether Scheffler’s position commits us to thinking of life as a kind of Ponzi scheme in which each generation creates the next in order to satisfy its own interest in leading a valuable life.⁴ Alternatively, one might ask whether further considerations complicate our obligations to future human generations. Todd May asks whether the world wouldn’t be better off without us, given the massive suffering and death of nonhuman animals caused by our species.⁵
For my own part, I find myself not so much getting off Scheffler’s train of thought early or at a different destination as failing to get on it in the first place, failing to share the intuitions that motivate the project. When I contemplate Scheffler’s doomsday scenario, bearing in mind that it will happen after my death (as he stipulates) and setting aside whether it is bad for all those people who might have been but now never get to exist (as he asks us to do), I can certainly imagine myself distressed at being a member of the last generation of human beings. Yet I find that’s partly because I’d fear how others will take the news (it’s a mad enough crowd out there already) and partly because I don’t know if we’ll have decent enough robots ready to take care of us by the time we’re old folks.
What about the projects and activities I value now? I would certainly have to make some changes. Many things wouldn’t be useful to do anymore and I wouldn’t want to waste my time on them. No point in writing my last will, for one thing. And if I do still try to become a writer, it had better be for a contemporary audience only. That said, very many things would remain perfectly worthwhile. The joys of music, travel, and sport; the intellectual and emotional invigoration of the sciences and the arts; the comforts of friendship and conversation; the delights of love and companionship. Add to this that there would certainly still be value in helping those who share the here and now with me, alleviating their suffering and promoting the conditions of their well-being.
Why, then, couldn’t I lead a fulfilling life, full of valuable activities, under these conditions? What is threatened by this sort of doomsday is apparently only what I value instrumentally, for the sake of beneficiaries who I am now asked to imagine will never come into existence. What I value for its own sake seems unaffected. Of course, Scheffler would not agree. He suggests that the value of many of our activities derives from their involving participation in ongoing collaborative projects, their preserving a valuable heritage, or their helping us understand the social world (see op. cit. pp. 49–52). According to him, all of these valuable features of our activities disappear or are diminished as doomsday draws near. However, he overlooks another, more plausible explanation of why these features of our activities confer value on what we do: namely, that they promote the interests of people living now, soon and in the far future. Scheffler seems to treat what has only instrumental value as having intrinsic value.
It could be that, as Scheffler believes, many people would struggle to enjoy themselves and become absorbed in what they do. They may even be devastated and suffer a “disabling grief,” knowing that humanity is soon to be extinct. However, that reaction strikes me as at once very unfortunate and unreasonable. To his credit, Scheffler is certainly alive to the possibility that this reaction to his doomsday scenario may involve a sort of evaluative error. But he does not look to a further argument to persuade those like me who fall outside the scope of the “we” Scheffler calls upon throughout his book, the “we” who see the value of their projects vanishing with humanity's future. To such a reader, the book instead offers an invitation to look at the problem in a new way. At this bedrock level, where all we have are opposing intuitions, it is difficult to a fulcrum to shift the weight of the argument in either direction. It is easy for the discussion to end in a sort of dialectical stalemate, which can only be broken by reaching for a different sort of argument, one which aims to persuade a broader audience or which suggests a promising avenue of concession.
Those, like myself, who don't share Scheffler's intuitions must meet this challenge by showing why the value of our activities would not be diminished by doomsday. Now, I am not sure I have the skill to do that here. But I can point to a pair of books that, though not directed at Scheffler’s work, provide a compelling counter-argument, taken together. Richard Kraut’s Against Absolute Goodness (2011), which argues that while there are things we should value because they are good for us or for others, there's nothing we should value that is simply good, without being good for anyone. And the same author’s The Quality of Life (2018), which argues that what’s ultimately good for us is the quality of our experiences. Given something like Kraut’s perspective, while we could have reason to worry that the experience of being the last generation would be a miserable one, and could have reason to worry that there be future people if their lives would be good for them, there couldn’t be any further loss of value posed by human extinction left for us to worry about.
Why Worry about Future Generations provides a refreshingly different take on an urgent and yet too frequently ignored topic, and it offers a much more detailed presentation of Scheffler's thinking on the matter than Death and the Afterlife. Where its central project could be developed further is in seeking the sort of arguments that can break through the stalemate one reaches in such debates.
------------------------------------------------
1. Why Worry about Future Generations, p. 1.
2. Ibid., pp. 43–4.
3. Ibid., ch. 2–3.
4. Mark Johnston's review: http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/m...
5. Todd May's review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/op...
6. See op. cit., pp. 43–4, 59–60.
Scheffler is critical of the practical value of much extant philosophical work regarding our obligations to posterity, which largely concerns what can be demanded of us now to promote the well-being of those who don’t yet exist. But Why Worry about Future Generations is not a polemical book. Its goal is to clear new paths for our thinking about future generations—a goal it takes up, as the author puts it, “in a frankly speculative spirit.”¹
I won't attempt to summarize all the lines of argument in the book, but its main argument can be captured in a pair of theses Scheffler defends. First, what we might call his “latency thesis”—that implicit in our existing values is a deep concern that there be generations to come after us. To help tease out the nature of that concern, Scheffler asks us to imagine learning we were in the situation of the characters in P. D. James’s novel The Children of Men (1992). That is, facing immanent extinction because the whole human race has become incurably infertile. He speculates that although none of our own lives need be any shorter in this doomsday scenario, most of us would react with horror to the news about the coming end of humanity. Indeed, he suggests, much of what matters to us now would cease to do so. For Scheffler, something very important is revealed by this reaction. “[O]ur anticipated reaction to humanity’s imminent extinction,” he writes, “may teach us that the actual value of our activities depends, to a degree that we do not always recognize or acknowledge, on the survival of humanity long after we ourselves are gone.”² This is the second of Scheffler's two central theses—what we could call his “dependency thesis.”
Much rests on Scheffler’s dependency thesis and on the cogency of the intuitions that inspire it. He argues that if much of what we care about depends for its value on the survival of humanity, there emerge a great variety of reasons for us to worry that there be future generations.³ For starters, he says, it means that our ability to lead fulfilling lives, full of valuable activities, depends on there being future generations, giving us reasons of interest to safeguard their existence. Yet he also suggests that our reaction to doomsday reveals that the survival of humanity matters to us in its own right; we value it not merely for our own sake, nor merely for the sake of those to come. Indeed, he goes so far as to describe our reaction as indicating a love of humanity, giving us reasons of love to preserve its future. There quickly follow two further reasons for concern about the future. We also have reasons of valuation to ensure the survival of humanity, because we want to preserve what we value and what we value depends on the existence of future generations. And we have reasons of reciprocity, too, because the value of future generations' lives depends on us (that is, our actions) while the value of our lives depends on them (that is, their existence).
The ultimate upshot of Scheffler’s argument is that our reasons for concern about future generations are grounded not only in duties to promote the well-being of our descendants, as others have argued, but also in our attachment to what we already value.
When it comes to critiquing Scheffler’s argument, one may raise concerns about the implications of his views. Mark Johnston, for instance, asks whether Scheffler’s position commits us to thinking of life as a kind of Ponzi scheme in which each generation creates the next in order to satisfy its own interest in leading a valuable life.⁴ Alternatively, one might ask whether further considerations complicate our obligations to future human generations. Todd May asks whether the world wouldn’t be better off without us, given the massive suffering and death of nonhuman animals caused by our species.⁵
For my own part, I find myself not so much getting off Scheffler’s train of thought early or at a different destination as failing to get on it in the first place, failing to share the intuitions that motivate the project. When I contemplate Scheffler’s doomsday scenario, bearing in mind that it will happen after my death (as he stipulates) and setting aside whether it is bad for all those people who might have been but now never get to exist (as he asks us to do), I can certainly imagine myself distressed at being a member of the last generation of human beings. Yet I find that’s partly because I’d fear how others will take the news (it’s a mad enough crowd out there already) and partly because I don’t know if we’ll have decent enough robots ready to take care of us by the time we’re old folks.
What about the projects and activities I value now? I would certainly have to make some changes. Many things wouldn’t be useful to do anymore and I wouldn’t want to waste my time on them. No point in writing my last will, for one thing. And if I do still try to become a writer, it had better be for a contemporary audience only. That said, very many things would remain perfectly worthwhile. The joys of music, travel, and sport; the intellectual and emotional invigoration of the sciences and the arts; the comforts of friendship and conversation; the delights of love and companionship. Add to this that there would certainly still be value in helping those who share the here and now with me, alleviating their suffering and promoting the conditions of their well-being.
Why, then, couldn’t I lead a fulfilling life, full of valuable activities, under these conditions? What is threatened by this sort of doomsday is apparently only what I value instrumentally, for the sake of beneficiaries who I am now asked to imagine will never come into existence. What I value for its own sake seems unaffected. Of course, Scheffler would not agree. He suggests that the value of many of our activities derives from their involving participation in ongoing collaborative projects, their preserving a valuable heritage, or their helping us understand the social world (see op. cit. pp. 49–52). According to him, all of these valuable features of our activities disappear or are diminished as doomsday draws near. However, he overlooks another, more plausible explanation of why these features of our activities confer value on what we do: namely, that they promote the interests of people living now, soon and in the far future. Scheffler seems to treat what has only instrumental value as having intrinsic value.
It could be that, as Scheffler believes, many people would struggle to enjoy themselves and become absorbed in what they do. They may even be devastated and suffer a “disabling grief,” knowing that humanity is soon to be extinct. However, that reaction strikes me as at once very unfortunate and unreasonable. To his credit, Scheffler is certainly alive to the possibility that this reaction to his doomsday scenario may involve a sort of evaluative error. But he does not look to a further argument to persuade those like me who fall outside the scope of the “we” Scheffler calls upon throughout his book, the “we” who see the value of their projects vanishing with humanity's future. To such a reader, the book instead offers an invitation to look at the problem in a new way. At this bedrock level, where all we have are opposing intuitions, it is difficult to a fulcrum to shift the weight of the argument in either direction. It is easy for the discussion to end in a sort of dialectical stalemate, which can only be broken by reaching for a different sort of argument, one which aims to persuade a broader audience or which suggests a promising avenue of concession.
Those, like myself, who don't share Scheffler's intuitions must meet this challenge by showing why the value of our activities would not be diminished by doomsday. Now, I am not sure I have the skill to do that here. But I can point to a pair of books that, though not directed at Scheffler’s work, provide a compelling counter-argument, taken together. Richard Kraut’s Against Absolute Goodness (2011), which argues that while there are things we should value because they are good for us or for others, there's nothing we should value that is simply good, without being good for anyone. And the same author’s The Quality of Life (2018), which argues that what’s ultimately good for us is the quality of our experiences. Given something like Kraut’s perspective, while we could have reason to worry that the experience of being the last generation would be a miserable one, and could have reason to worry that there be future people if their lives would be good for them, there couldn’t be any further loss of value posed by human extinction left for us to worry about.
Why Worry about Future Generations provides a refreshingly different take on an urgent and yet too frequently ignored topic, and it offers a much more detailed presentation of Scheffler's thinking on the matter than Death and the Afterlife. Where its central project could be developed further is in seeking the sort of arguments that can break through the stalemate one reaches in such debates.
------------------------------------------------
1. Why Worry about Future Generations, p. 1.
2. Ibid., pp. 43–4.
3. Ibid., ch. 2–3.
4. Mark Johnston's review: http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/m...
5. Todd May's review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/op...
6. See op. cit., pp. 43–4, 59–60.
September 8, 2022
This book, as usual with Scheffler, reads marvellously. Academic philosophy with the appeal of public philosophy, without losing rigour. On top of that, it brings an exciting new perspective to a field of philosophy that is usually very dry and technical, and which has been stuck in a vacuous internal debate for years.
I agree with many things in the book. I think Scheffler's concept of "temporal parochialism" is useful and well thought out. And I am fully convinced by his attachment-based arguments for the existence of a plurality of interests/reasons for concern for future generations. They present a sound critique of beneficence-based theories of intergenerational morality, whose blind acceptance by many has, imo, left us in our current stalemate.
I am not so sure, however, about Scheffler's concept of reciprocity between non-overlapping generations. And, most disappointingly, Scheffler's decision not to offer any moral reasons for interest/concern is a bit of a cop out.
The book is great, nevertheless. And it does a great job at unveiling the many reasons - from self-interest to emotional dependence, to the maintenance and creation of value - that we have for worrying about the flourishing of future generations.
I am also particularly found of Scheffler's discussion of G.A. Cohen's case for small c conservatism. Going beyond Cohen, Scheffler provides a strong defence of value (not political) conservatism as a pervasive human disposition that is indispensable for our understanding of humanity as a temporal project.
I agree with many things in the book. I think Scheffler's concept of "temporal parochialism" is useful and well thought out. And I am fully convinced by his attachment-based arguments for the existence of a plurality of interests/reasons for concern for future generations. They present a sound critique of beneficence-based theories of intergenerational morality, whose blind acceptance by many has, imo, left us in our current stalemate.
I am not so sure, however, about Scheffler's concept of reciprocity between non-overlapping generations. And, most disappointingly, Scheffler's decision not to offer any moral reasons for interest/concern is a bit of a cop out.
The book is great, nevertheless. And it does a great job at unveiling the many reasons - from self-interest to emotional dependence, to the maintenance and creation of value - that we have for worrying about the flourishing of future generations.
I am also particularly found of Scheffler's discussion of G.A. Cohen's case for small c conservatism. Going beyond Cohen, Scheffler provides a strong defence of value (not political) conservatism as a pervasive human disposition that is indispensable for our understanding of humanity as a temporal project.
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