Definition
Population Ethics is the branch of moral philosophy that evaluates actions that change who is born, how many people are born, and the quality of their lives. It is a critical field for Longtermism because it determines how we value the potential loss of future generations.
Why It Matters
Our actions today change who is born and how many exist in the future. Population ethics is the only way to assign a value to those potential people. If we ignore them (the “Intuition of Neutrality”), we will prioritize petty current gains over the existence of a quadrillion future humans. It is the “Moral Accounting” system for the long-term survival of our species.
Core Concepts
- The Total View: One population is better than another if it contains more total wellbeing. (Basic logic: more of a good thing is better).
- The Average View: One population is better than another if it has a higher average level of wellbeing per person.
- The Intuition of Neutrality: The idea that bringing a new, happy person into existence is morally neutral. (This is generally rejected due to logical contradictions like the “Migraine Problem”).
- The Non-Identity Problem: The observation that large-scale policy changes (e.g., ending fossil fuel subsidies) change who is born in the future, making it impossible to say we “benefited” a specific person who would have existed anyway (Non-Identity Problem).
- Theory X: The term coined by Derek Parfit for a yet-to-be-discovered theory of population ethics that avoids all the “repugnant” or “sadistic” conclusions of current models.