PANEL 14- Future sentience
Convenor: Catia Faria & Eze Paez
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] or [email protected].
How important is the future, including the far future? How important is it that the lives of future individuals go well for them? Should we work towards a future which contains as many worthwhile lives as possible? When making moral decisions, most people think in terms of their impact on present individuals or, at most, on near future generations. This view arguably expresses what T. S. Elliot (1944) called “the provincialism not of space, but of time”. It is a “temporal parochialism” (Scheffler 2015) or “bias towards the near” (Parfit 1984), that is, the unwarranted disregard of future interests and other locations of value. Yet, is there a moral justification for this? If not, how important are future interests compared to currently existing ones? Moreover, temporal parochialism often goes hand-in-hand with species parochialism, the moral view according to which it is justified to disregard sentient individuals who are not human. What happens when we introduce nonhuman well-being into our value assessments about the future? How does recent research in neuroscience, artificial intelligence and welfare biology may inform and support policy decisions that will shape the future?
Topics of discussion may include, but are not limited to:
If you want to apply, please submit an abstract, of 400-500 words along with five keywords, of your paper prepared for peer review by 17 April 2022. We will respond by 28 April 2022. All proposals must be submitted online through our website using the Abstract submission Form (please, click “Submit Abstract” and fill the form).
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] or [email protected].
How important is the future, including the far future? How important is it that the lives of future individuals go well for them? Should we work towards a future which contains as many worthwhile lives as possible? When making moral decisions, most people think in terms of their impact on present individuals or, at most, on near future generations. This view arguably expresses what T. S. Elliot (1944) called “the provincialism not of space, but of time”. It is a “temporal parochialism” (Scheffler 2015) or “bias towards the near” (Parfit 1984), that is, the unwarranted disregard of future interests and other locations of value. Yet, is there a moral justification for this? If not, how important are future interests compared to currently existing ones? Moreover, temporal parochialism often goes hand-in-hand with species parochialism, the moral view according to which it is justified to disregard sentient individuals who are not human. What happens when we introduce nonhuman well-being into our value assessments about the future? How does recent research in neuroscience, artificial intelligence and welfare biology may inform and support policy decisions that will shape the future?
Topics of discussion may include, but are not limited to:
- Temporal parochialism and the ethical disregard of future interests
- Epistemic and moral biases in thinking about the future
- Future sentient individuals and moral considerability
- Future sentient individuals and distributive justice
- Future sentient individuals and the limits of political enfranchisement
- Future wild animal well-being
- Policies with high potential to shape the lives of future sentient individuals
- Risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks)
If you want to apply, please submit an abstract, of 400-500 words along with five keywords, of your paper prepared for peer review by 17 April 2022. We will respond by 28 April 2022. All proposals must be submitted online through our website using the Abstract submission Form (please, click “Submit Abstract” and fill the form).
