Population ethics in an infinite universe

Marcus Pivato ()
Additional contact information
Marcus Pivato: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Population ethics studies the tradeoff between the total number of people who will ever live, and their quality of life. But widely accepted theories in modern cosmology say that spacetime is probably infinite. In this case, its population is also probably infinite, so the quantity/quality tradeoff of population ethics is no longer meaningful. Instead, we face the problem of how to ethically evaluate an infinite population of people dispersed throughout time and space. I argue that axiologies based on spatiotemporal Cesàro average utility are the most appropriate way to make this evaluation, because their unique properties make them superior to other axiologies that have been proposed.

Date: 2023-10-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Philosophical Studies, 2023, 180 (12), pp.3383-3414. ⟨10.1007/s11098-023-02014-5⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05106157

DOI: 10.1007/s11098-023-02014-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().