The Procreation Asymmetry: Some Puzzles
All welcome - public event. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception for all attendees. Please register to attend at Bookwhen.
According to (one version of) the Procreation Asymmetry, it is wrong to create people with bad lives, but we are not morally required to create people with good lives. While many philosophers are attracted to the Asymmetry, it has been notoriously difficult to formulate a plausible moral theory that incorporates and explains it. It has also seemed difficult to square the Asymmetry with standard views in population axiology, on which adding sufficiently happy people to the world is a good thing, not merely “neutral.” This talk is about a more fundamental problem: the Asymmetry is simply inconsistent with seemingly plausible principles about what we are morally permitted or required to do. The first aim of the talk is to formulate some of these puzzles, inspired by Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox, using minimal assumptions. The second aim is to resolve them. I use the puzzles to motivate a view that incorporates the Procreation Asymmetry and which is not only consistent with the goodness of creating happy people, but which appeals to that goodness in resolving the puzzles.
Date: 16 June 2025, 16:30
Venue: Pembroke College, St Aldates OX1 1DW
Venue Details: Pichette Auditorium
Speaker: Professor Jacob M Nebel (Princeton University)
Organising department: Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Organisers: Professor Roger Crisp (University of Oxford), Dr Andreas Mogensen (GPI, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: axelle.duquesnoy@uehiro.ox.ac.uk
Hosts: Professor Roger Crisp (University of Oxford), Dr Andreas Mogensen (GPI, University of Oxford)
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro#focus=ev-s6qb-20250616163000
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editors: Rachel Gaminiratne, Axelle Duquesnoy