Extinction

'What’s wrong with human extinction?' by Elizabeth Finneron-Burns in (2017) 47(2-3) Canadian Journal of Philosophy 327-343 comments 

This paper explores what could be wrong with the fact of human extinction. I first present four reasons why we might consider human extinction to be wrong: (1) it would prevent millions of people from being born; (2) it would mean the loss of rational life and civilization; (3) it would cause existing people to suffer pain or death; (4) it would involve various psychological traumas. I argue that looking at the question from a contractualist perspective, only reasons (3) and (4) are admissible. I then consider what implications this limitation on reasons has for the wrongfulness of various forms of human extinction. ... 

There is any number of potential future population sizes, one of which is zero. That is, we could decide not to create any more humans at all. There seems to be a fairly widespread thought that it would undesirable for humans to become extinct as evidenced by the amount of research undertaken that wor- ries about such an outcome. The Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, for example, states one of its aims to be research into interventions that would reduce the risk of outcomes that ‘would end Earth-originating intelligent life’ (Institute 2016). Similarly, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge describes its goal as to ‘steer a small fraction of Cambridge’s great intellectual resources, and of the reputation built on its past and present scientific pre-eminence, to the task of ensuring that our own species has a long-term future’ (Risk 2016). Clearly, a significant quantity of financial and intellectual resources is being invested in the prevention or prolonging of human extinction. Presumably, this is because people see something wrong with the idea that we might cause or allow the human species to become extinct. 

However, there is little work being done to explain what would be wrong with causing or allowing humans to go extinct. Human extinction could come about in anthropogenic (e.g. climate change or a decision not to procreate) and/or non-anthropogenic (e.g. an asteroid hits the Earth) ways. We can also either directly cause extinction or passively allow it to occur, either intentionally or unintentionally. We could, for example, decide that we no longer want to procreate — perhaps we buy into David Benatar’s view that because all lives contain at least a degree of harm, we ought not to procreate at all (Benatar 2006). Eventually, humans would go extinct because we chose to follow a course of action that we knew would and intended to cause extinction. We might also directly contribute to extinction by failing to mitigate climate change even if extinction was not the intended consequence of our actions. Even facing the risk of a completely non-anthropogenic cause of extinction, there may be things that humans can do to prevent it occurring and if we do not, we could be said to have allowed extinction to occur. 

Since human extinction could, in many cases, be brought about by human activities or at least passively be allowed to progress, it therefore makes most sense to ask about its potential moral wrongness. This paper seeks to answer the question of whether or not it is morally permissible to cause or allow human extinction to occur. Put another way, under what (if any) conditions would peo- ple causing or allowing the extinction of the human race be wrong? 

I will consider the wrongness of human extinction from the perspective of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism (Scanlon 1998). This is for two reasons. The first is that I believe his theory is a convincing account of moral wrongness. Second, the application of contractualism to the area of future generations remains largely unexplored so approaching the question from this angle will also help us learn more about contractualism in an intergenerational context. 

The essence of Scanlon’s contractualism is contained in his well-known statement:‘an act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be dis-allowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement’ (Scanlon 1998, 153). We wrong others when we fail to consider their interests in our moral deliberations and do not give them the respect they deserve by virtue of being rational people. This happens when we cannot justify our actions to them using acceptable reasons or when we act according to a principle that they could reject for similarly acceptable reasons. 

Scanlon’s formulation is a type of person-affecting theory. By person-affect- ing, I mean that what is important is the effect of principles/actions on persons, rather than the world writ large.  Therefore, acceptable reasons must be, according to Scanlon, personal. Personal reasons ‘have to do with the claims and status of individuals in certain positions’ (Scanlon 1998, 219). In other words, they are grounds ‘that a person may find objectionable because of their bearing upon her being able to live a rationally self-governed, meaningful life’ (Kumar 2003, 9, fn. 6). Personal reasons include, inter alia, considerations of well-being, rights or fair treatment. In order to be a reason either to justify a principle or to reject one, the reason must be personal — it must have an impact on a person or persons. 

There are, of course, other reasons people might have for wanting to act in certain ways that do not bear on an impact on persons. Impersonal reasons are one such type. Scanlon understands impersonal reasons to ‘flow from the value of objects themselves, not (at least in the first instance) from anything having to do with my relation to other people’ (Scanlon 1998, 221) and ‘are not tied to the well-being, claims, or status of individuals’ (Scanlon 1998, 219). They may include considerations such as an appeal to the aggregate value of an outcome (e.g. total utility) and the intrinsic value of equality (to name just two examples). In the contractualist formula, since impersonal reasons by definition do not stem from impact on persons, this means that they cannot on their own provide reasons to reject a principle. Whilst Scanlon is not denying that impersonal considerations may be important to people, in order to be relevant to the rejectability of a principle, they must give rise to personal reasons. For example, assuming that non-human animals are not persons, their pain and suffering is not a personal reason to reject a principle permitting it. However, a person could have a personal reason to reject a principle permitting the pain and suffering of animals if it prevented her from living a life consistent with the impersonal values (the well-being of animals) that she finds to be important in her life. So impersonal values cannot on their own provide reasons to reject principles, but they can lead to personal reasons if a principle forbids that person from living a life consistent with those values (Scanlon 1998, 218–223).