ABSTRACT:
An Ever-Changing Future: Obligations to Future Generations and the Future Environment

Do we have obligations to future generations? If so, what are these obligations? Do we have obligations to other aspects of the future such as the future environment? I begin this project by exploring Derek Parfit’s work on obligations to future generations. He first distinguishes several kinds of decisions. He then proceeds to search for a moral principle for dealing with different number choices, which are decisions that affect who will live in the future (the personal identity of future people) and how many people will live in the future. Although I find his method for seeking a moral principle that captures our obligations to future generations unconstructive and in many ways invalid, I believe Parfit makes several important distinctions and raises many important questions. Parfit forces us to realize that our decisions affect who will live in the future. However, he does not take his discussion far enough. Parfit fails to recognize that our decisions affect more than just future generations but the future in general. For example, our decisions affect what the future environment will be like. In light of this recognition that our decisions affect the future in general and the fact that Parfit’s method prohibits him from finding a moral principle that applies to decisions that affect the future I try another method for finding such a principle. I explore moral intuitions as a possible foundation for a moral principle that applies to decisions that affect the future. Ultimately, however, I come to the conclusion that the only moral principle that applies to all decisions that affect the future is the principle that our decisions are both infinitely significant and insignificant at the same time. While our decisions greatly impact what the future will be, which makes them infinitely significant, there are so many such decisions that any single decision is infinitely insignificant.