What’s wrong with human extinction?

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Human extinction
• contractualism
• T.M. Scanlon
• intergenerational ethics
• population size

Acknowledments

I would like to thank Dan Butt, Simon Caney, Göran Duus-Otterström, Simon Gardiner, Clare Heyward, Martin O’Neill, Melinda Roberts, Anthony Skelton, the anonymous reviewer for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and the members of the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop and Institute for Futures Studies’ philosophy seminar for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Throughout I will discuss causing and allowing extinction interchangeably. Although there may be reasons in some cases why causing an outcome is worse than allowing it to occur, I do not find the distinction important in the context of human extinction.

2. Note that this does not entail the sometimes-included claim that an act can only be wrong if it makes someone worse off.

3. This was first proposed by (Narveson 1967).

4. Also, depending on how much weight we assign to the ‘good’ of existence, to say that a possible person could reasonably object to not being created would make every action or principle wrong if it outweighed the burdens we would have by not creating ‘them’. Any time we were not actively engaged in creating a person we would be acting wrongly. In fact, even if we were trying to create as many people as possible, simple biological facts make it impossible to bring into existence every possible person. Every sperm and egg combination represents a possible person, but women can only conceive and birth one combination every nine months. There will therefore always be thousands or even millions of possible people that we do not create even if we were trying to create as many as possible. If we act wrongly when we fail to bring a possible person them into existence, then we will be constantly acting wrongly. There is little use for a position in which it is impossible to avoid wrongful action.

5. Sidgwick writes: ‘I think that if we consider carefully such permanent results as are commonly judged to be good, other than qualities of human beings, we can find nothing that, on reflection, appears to possess this quality of goodness out of relation to human existence, or at least to some consciousness or feeling … Still, as soon as the alternatives are clearly apprehended, it will, I think, be generally held that beauty, knowledge, and other ideal goods, as well as all external material things, are only reasonably to be sought by men in so far as they conduce either (1) to Happiness or (2) to the Perfection or Excellence of human existence.’

6. Of course existing people might be negatively affected by the knowledge that the progress they made would be lost, but this is a matter of psychological harm covered in section (d) and not to do with the value of civilization/rationality per se.

7. For a good summary of the debate, see (Bradley 2009; Taylor 2013).

8. Note that the fact that a person has a reason to reject a principle does not mean that the principle is necessarily reasonably rejectable. If there are stronger reasons in favour of the principle, then it might not be rejectable despite the objections. Killing in self-defence is an example in which the reasons in favour of permitting the death might outweigh the reasons against it.

9. Göran Duus-Otterström suggests to me the following reply. He points out, correctly, that although impersonal reasons cannot on their own provide reasons for rejecting a principle, they may create other personal reasons. He cites Crake in Margaret Attwood’s novel Oryx & Crake. Crake embarks on a genocidal mission to rid the Earth of human beings in order to benefit the environment. Duus-Otterström suggests that the impersonal reason to preserve the environment is so important to Crake’s ability to live a fulfilling life that it creates a personal reason for Crake’s programme. However, even if one wants to accept that Crake’s reason is personal, it must still be weighed against the personal reasons of those who would be killed as a result of his programme. A person’s reason not to be involuntarily killed must surely outweigh another person’s reason to want to preserve the environment.

10. Thank you to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.