: On The Importance Of Being Necessary Abstract: This paper motivates and attempts to defends Necessitarianism, the person-affecting view in population ethics on which the only persons who matter are those who exist whatever we do. I begin by outlining Ralph Bader’s recent arguments for the ‘same-number’ person-affecting view. I claim that, while his arguments are compelling, they undermine his proposed view and instead support Necessitarianism (the ‘same-people’ person-affecting view). Necessitarianism faces three putative objections: (1) it is intransitive, (2) it gets the wrong answer in ‘Non-Identity’ cases, (3) the view is implausible unless conjoined with the Procreative Asymmetry, but the Procreative Asymmetry is hard to justify. I show Necessitarianism isn’t intransitive and propose both that, on reflection, it gets the right answer in Non-identity cases and that accepting a Procreative Symmetry is not implausible.
When
Thu Oct 3, 2019 5am – 6:30am Coordinated Universal Time
