Wasted Potential: The Value of a Life and the Significance of What Could Have Been

According to the orthodox view, the goodness of a life depends exclusively on the things that actually happened within it, such as its pleasures and pains, the satisfaction of its subject’s preferences, or the presence of various objective goods and bads. In this paper, I propose that the goodness of a life also depends on what could have happened, but didn’t. I then argue that this view illuminates three ethical puzzles concerning the standards for a life worth living for animals, the significance of a life’s shape, and the badness of death

Junk, Numerosity, and the Demands of Epistemic Consequentialism

Epistemic consequentialism has been challenged on the grounds that it is overly demanding. According to the Epistemic Junk Problem, this view implies that we are often required to believe junk propositions such as ‘the Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely in Canada’ and long disjunctions of things we already believe. According to the Numerosity Problem, this view implies that we are frequently required to have an enormous number of beliefs. This paper puts forward a novel version of epistemic consequentialism which avoids these twin demandingness problems. The key is to recognise, first, that the final epistemic value of a true belief depends at least in part on the duration for which it is retained by the agent and, second, that our cognitive makeup places important constraints on which beliefs are retained and for how long

Healthspan extension, completeness of life and justice

Recent progress in geroscience holds the promise of significantly slowing down or even reversing ageing and age‐related diseases, and thus increasing our healthspans. In this paper, I offer a novel argument in favour of developing such technology and making it unconditionally available to everyone. In particular, I argue that justice requires that each person be provided with sufficient opportunities to have a ‘complete life’, that many people currently lack such opportunities, and that we would substantially improve the status quo by giving them access to anti‐ageing technology

What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature

Past and Possibility: Essays on Value, Justice, Time, and Wasted Potential

This dissertation consists of five papers which examine relationships between value, justice, time, and wasted potential. In Chapter 1, “Wasted Potential”, I challenge the widely accepted view that how good a life is for a person depends only on what actually happens within it, such as its pleasures, achievements, and loving relationships. Instead, I argue that it also depends on the individual’s potential: what experiences, achievements, and relationships they could have had but perhaps didn’t. In Chapter 2, “The Shape of History”, I consider whether it is better if the history of humanity features a pattern of improvement rather than deterioration, holding other things equal. I argue that it typically is, use a broadly conservative view about value to explain that, and consider the implications of my view for matters related to the future of humanity. In Chapter 3, “Conservatism about Prudential Value”, I argue that we have a distinctive moral reason to preserve certain prudential goods, such as loving relationships and important personal projects, even when a superior replacement is available. I then show how this view illuminates several old and new puzzles about navigating childhood, adulthood, older age, and death. In Chapter 4, “Extension and Replacement”, I develop a novel conservative account of when and why it is better to extend the length of a happy life rather than to create a new happy life, even if the total welfare is the same in both cases. I then show how this account also applies to the choice between extension and replacement with respect to non-human animals and humanity as a whole. In Chapter 5, “Healthspan Extension, Completeness of Life, and Justice”, I argue that justice requires that we provide people with sufficient opportunities to have a ‘complete life’, that many people currently lack such opportunities, and that unconditional access to anti-ageing technology would substantially improve the status quo