Future Generations

Steve,

Can you think of anything that we "should do or not do on account of future generations"?

Under Objectivism, I think not, save what Ted said. I wasn't sure, so I thought I'd ask.

Jordan

(Edited by Jordan on 8/09, 1:15pm)

Post 21

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 5:25am

Ted:

Future delayed harms and past delayed harms are harms.

Harms to who? To factual people, or to merely potential people, in the future?

I made a similar claim once, and was accused of an ignorance of biology. Where are the factual, biological people who can be 'harmed' only in the future?

As opposed to the merely conceived, who are not biological people, and who can not only be 'harmed', but harmed with impunity, by other, real, people in the 'now', as if washing snot of off one's hands.

A consistant argument can be made for believing both simultaneously, as long as one firmly believes that only groups have rights, not individuals.

How believing or inadvertently supporting that aids Rand's objectivism is a total mystery to me.

Post 22

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 9:55am

Jordan,

No, I can't think of anything.

Post 23

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 11:26am

Fred, what is the point of quoting that one sentence out of context, and then challenging it as if the questions you ask hadn't already been answered?

I wrote (italics added):

Delayed Harms

There is a negative requirement that one do no actual harm. For instance, one cannot deliberately create defective human embryos and allow them to develop into deformed suffering people. One cannot intentionally bring upon a future disaster, such as building a dam one knows will fail. But these are very limited and concrete and negative obligations. If you built a defective dam 30 years ago, put a leaky barrel in the reservoir 30 years ago, or put a government cap on oil exploration 30 years ago, and the harm is real now, then you are just as responsible for the real damages you have caused now as would be someone who is advocating building a faulty dam now or not removing such a cap now. Future delayed harms and past delayed harms are harms.

The Republicans should be screaming daily that the anti-energy Democrats don't care about the children. The Democrat argument that benifits will only occur in the future means that they want our children to suffer.

Of course, this is rhetoric more than an agenda. There is no positive obligation to the future, no sin of omission, just of commission.

In other words, just as someone who did do something then is guilty now, someone who does the same thing now would be just as guilty in the future.

Now, without dropping the context of the entire statement, what do you disagree with or fail to understand?

Post 24

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 11:46am

Fred,

I don't understand your last post. Are you saying that people in fact don't exist in the future?

Post 25

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 11:47am

Steve,

That was your question to me, not vice versa.

Jordan

Post 26

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 11:55am

Actually, the FUTURE doesn't exist - yet... only the potential...

Post 27

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 1:51pm

Robert,

Doesn't much change my question. Are you saying (actual) people in fact don't exist in the (potential) future? I'm reminded of this thread which discussed philosophy of time.

Jordan

Post 28

Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 9:34am

Jordan:

I don't understand your last post. Are you saying that people in fact don't exist in the future?

No, I am saying I was once accused here of an ignorance of biology for asserting that people exist in 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time, and that there was a physical equivalence between our completeness in space, our completeness in time, and our completeness in space and time together. My argument was, if we as adults are dependent on our DNA processes for the foundation of our life, and if that DNA process has a continuous existence in R4 = R3+Time, then at what point is our present DNA process not totally dependent for its existence on the unmolested existence of that same DNA process at an earlier time, all the way to conception?

Your question is exactly about 'temporal bias', and I once used the same argument to point out the current rationalization of Rand's position on abortion, which I objected to, and still object to, on the basis of the damage it does to her philosophy. On this subject, she grants to others the right to dispose of any individual in the context of a conflict brought about purely by the actions of the others, based on their convenience/need/whim. This is exactly the carte blanche required by the Tribe to claim that only mobs("others") have rights.

Future generations exist only in the hypothetical, there are no guarantees. See "At the banquet table of Nature, there are no reserved seats: you get what you can take, you keep what you can hold."

So, future generations are hypothetical.

The merely conceived, as far less hypothetical members of future generations, currently have no rights whatsoever.

What is it that can be claimed for the far more hypothetical subset that can't be claimed by the far less hypothetical subset...unless one believes that only mobs/groups have rights?

regards,
Fred

Post 29

Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 9:59am