Deck 18: Obligations to Future Generations

Question 1

Your local moral community includes

A) family, neighbors, and all you can directly interact with.
B) only your family, including recent ancestors and next descendants.
C) everyone in the world who exist at present.
D) the people that you presently know and have a relationship with.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Regarding people who lived two centuries ago,

A) it is not possible for an individual today to affect any of their interests.
B) an individual living today cannot have any moral obligations toward any of them.
C) it seems that they had certain moral obligations toward those living today.
D) those living today cannot hold any of these people responsible for how their actions have affected them.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

It appears that I do not have any moral obligations toward

A) presently existing people.
B) past or future actual people.
C) merely possible people.
D) people that I do not know.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

A person is presently indeterminate if

A) we do not know who they are.
B) no one knows that they exist (e.g., a hermit).
C) that person's existence and nature have not yet been made definite.
D) they are not presently known to you, and you can therefore not imagine their existence.

Question 5

Which of the following supports the idea that people living today have moral responsibilities to presently indeterminate future people?

A) Utilitarianism's requirement that one maximize the overall utility of their actions
B) Kant's requirement that one never treat anyone else as a means only
C) Both of the above
D) Neither of the above

Question 6

There might be a moral obligation to

A) preserve humanity as a species with intrinsic value.
B) present people to preserve humanity, so that the significance of their endeavors is not diminished or destroyed.
C) past people to preserve humanity, so that the significance of their endeavors is not diminished or destroyed.
D) All of the above

Question 7

The "further" we are temporally from a future generation, the weaker our obligations become toward them, because

A) we are more alike and equal to those nearer to us.
B) our knowledge and ability to control events becomes less over longer periods of time.
C) temporal distance from people always weakens every obligation to them.
D) we can only be held responsible for how our actions affect the people alive today.

Question 8

The true part of our diminishing obligations to future people implies that

A) we can ignore obligations to people far from us.
B) we ought to invest ourselves in understanding the effects of our actions.
C) we are never powerless to address some obligation.
D) our ignorance concerning the future excuses us from any obligation toward those in the future.

Question 9

If it is true that we can knowingly do something that might harm future generations but are helpless to altering the course of that impact, then:

A) this cancels out every obligation we might have toward them.
B) we are justified in continuing that action as if we didn't know the consequence.
C) we may be obligated to compensate or help them deal with some of the problems and harms we are passing on to them.
D) None of the above

Question 10

People who will be living two hundred years from now are

A) future actual people.
B) present actual people.
C) merely possible people.
D) None of the above

Question 11

A merely possible person is

A) a person who exists in the future or past but not in the present.
B) a person who could exist but never does.
C) any person not presently existing.
D) None of the above

Question 12

Which of the following is not true regarding future actual people?

A) They are not in the same moral community as any of us today.
B) We and they cannot affect each other's interests in the same sorts of ways.
C) They are presently non-existent people.
D) We cannot have moral obligations towards them.

Question 13

An indeterminate person is someone that

A) we do not know.
B) we do not know exists.
C) no one knows exists (e.g., a hermit).
D) None of the above

Question 14

Presently indeterminate persons can include people

A) who lived in the past but no longer exist.
B) alive today.
C) living two hundred years in the future.
D) who could have existed today, but were never conceived.

Question 15

A couple has no children but would now have a child if they had not used birth control. Their use of birth control

A) commits a grievous wrong against that child.
B) does not wrong that forever non-actual child.
C) wrongs the society that could have benefitted from the child's existence.
D) is unethical.

Question 16

We can blame past people for what they did but cannot hold them responsible for how their actions affect us now.

Question 17

Although people two centuries in the past had certain moral obligations toward us, we do not seem to have any obligations toward people two centuries in the future.

Question 18

When my free choices can significantly affect important interests of someone else, it is possible for me to have moral obligations toward that person.

Question 19

It is well-supported by most ethical theories that I can only have moral obligations toward persons belonging to the same moral community as me.

Question 20

If people will exist at a future time, then they will each be actual persons at that time, since they will be no less definite and determinate than we are at present.

Question 21

We morally wrong a future person if we act now to make their existence impossible, for that denies them existence-the most important interest they can have.

Question 22

No obligation toward future people can take precedence over an obligation toward our contemporaries, since our "distance" from them weakens our obligations to them.

Question 23

Terrorists who launch a missile that immediately kills millions are doing wrong. However, they do not do wrong by launching a missile that will kill people two centuries from now, since those people do not presently exist.

Question 24

It is not possible for us to have any moral obligations toward indeterminate future persons.

Question 25

It is not possible to wrong persons who remain forever non-actual.

Question 26

Since acting to preclude the existence of all future persons cannot wrong any such persons, doing this cannot commit any sort of moral wrong.

Question 27

Imagine that all humanity chooses to have no more children and so blocks the existence of a later generation. This commits no wrong against any of the children that would otherwise have come into existence.

Question 28

Although we have obligations to ensure the welfare of both future generations and present people, their interests often conflict.

Question 29

Weightier obligations to future people can take moral precedence over less weighty obligations to present people.

Question 30

We may still have other obligations toward future generations even when we are unable to keep from harming them by doing something we have no choice about now.