Diachronic Obligation

Abstract

The moral status of future persons is problematic in part because their ontological status is problematic. It is often claimed that we should take very seriously the interests of the indefinite unborn because the indefinite unborn have a right to a decent life. On the other hand there is also a metaphysical intuition (not universally shared) that the indefinite unborn don’t exist and therefore don’t have any properties, and a fortiori don’t have rights. These conflicting intuitions give rise to prima facie difficulties. For example there it is claimed by some philosophers that we have duties to preserve the environment for the sake of future generations, even though there is no straightforward sense in which there are future generations in whose interests we now act.

I began this paper with a customary acknowledgement to traditional land owners, a regional courtesy which presupposes the existence of moral relationships extending over time. As well as this regional cultural courtesy I include a regional acknowledgment of philosophical debt, as New Zealand is the birthplace of the great twentieth century philosopher Arthur Prior, sometime student and teacher at Otago University, and more than any other the philosopher responsible for articulating and defending the conception of the world in time which embodies centrally the metaphysical significance of the temporal modalities of past, present and future. Prior should be credited not just for his seminal logical and metaphysical labours, but also for provoking much of the argument which has developed over the last half century articulating the dominant alternative position. Both sides of the metaphysical divide of philosophers of time therefore owe a huge debt to Arthur Prior.