Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

On the Wrongness of Human Extinction

Issue: Issue 09 • Author/s: Simon Beard, Patrick Kaczmarek
Topics: Ethics

In recent papers, Elizabeth Finneron-Burns and Johann Frick have both argued that it is not a wrong-making feature of human extinction that it would cause many potential people with lives worth living never to be born, and hence that causing human extinction would be, in at least one way, less wrong than many have thought. In making these arguments, both assume that merely possible future people cannot be harmed by their nonexistence, and thus do not have any claim to be brought into existence. In this paper, we raise objections…