Jakub Wunderlich
University of Hradec Králové
With the book Reasons and Persons (1984), Derek Parfit effectively established population ethics as a distinct area of ethical inquiry. Population ethics is concerned with moral problems arising from the fact that our actions can affect the number of people born in the future, their identity, or the quality of life they will have. One of the main goals of this discipline is to find a “Theory X”, i.e., a moral theory that would avoid the paradoxes of population ethics, such as the non-identity problem, the repugnant conclusion, or the sadistic conclusion. These paradoxes are essentially strongly counterintuitive, hard-to-accept conclusions that logically follow from the application of particular moral theories to hypothetical future populations. In my talk, I will try to show that this classical approach to population ethics is deeply problematic in many ways, and to outline an alternative approach. I will begin with a brief overview of the field, focusing on Parfit’s paradoxes and the standard responses they have provoked. In the second part, I will present my own critique of traditional population ethics. I will argue that the paradoxes of population ethics are not problems that need to be solved, because they stem from several problematic assumptions, especially from a misguided understanding of the role of intuitions in normative ethics and population axiology. Since moral intuitions are, at least in part, evolutionary in origin, it is appropriate to approach their use in moral inquiry with caution. Even if we decide to grant moral intuitions some role in normative ethics, their use in population axiology is particularly problematic, because its subject matter is alien to the conditions under which moral intuitions evolved. I will conclude my talk with an attempt to outline an alternative, practically oriented approach to the problems of population ethics.
Chair: Sanjar Akayev
Time: 03 September, 15:20 – 15:50
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 