Do future generations have rights? 3

These are Matt Kramer's responses to my comments posted here:

Though I agree with the statement in your second - parenthetical - paragraph that there is no wrong here, the absence of a wrong has nothing to do with the fact that the future generations can't now complain. (I thought that you were an adherent of the Interest Theory rather than of the Will Theory of rights.) A permanently comatose person can't complain about anything that is done to him, nor can a quadriplegic who is deaf and mute and blind and mentally retarded; but one cannot validly infer that the comatose person and the quadriplegic have no rights (unless one is an adherent of the Will Theory). In the scenario which you contrive here, the absence of a wrong stems instead from the legitimacy of the aim of limiting the size of the human population. I take that aim to be legitimate, even though the deliberate pursuit of the objective of terminating the existence of the human species would be illegitimate.

The charge of begging the question (in your third paragraph) cuts both ways in this debate. I haven't claimed to be offering a conclusive argument in favour of the proposition that future generations en masse are endowed with rights. I've simply claimed to be showing that every argument against that proposition is either wrong or question-begging. In any event, at this stage of my remarks I wasn't even attempting to argue in favour of the aforementioned proposition at all. I was simply indicating that there are principled differences between acting deliberately in such a way as to avert the future birth(s) of some future individual(s) and acting deliberately in such a way as to avert all future births of all future individuals.

Regarding your argument that some hypothetical subgroup of a future planetary population may never come to exist, let me draw attention again to the fact that I'm speaking about future generations en masse rather than about subgroups of the future generations. That is, I'm talking about the continuation of the human species rather than about the materialization of some subset of the species. It is certainly true that processes which preclude the existence of future generations en masse might not involve the commission of any wrongs. For example, if a large asteroid collides with the earth and extinguishes all life thereon, no wrong will have been committed. My claim has not been that future generations en masse have a right to existence. My claim has been that they have a right that we not act collectively and deliberately in ways that will preclude their existence en masse.

I turn to what you say about duties in your penultimate paragraph. Of course future generations don't have duties, but that's not relevant here. The fact that X holds a right vis-à-vis Y never warrants any conclusions about duties borne by X (whether those duties are owed to Y or to X himself or to anyone else). The absence of any valid inferences about duties borne by X is a perfectly general absence, rather than an absence that obtains only when X does not yet exist. The only valid inference about a duty that can be derived from the fact that X holds a right vis-à-vis Y is that Y owes a duty to X.

In the same paragraph you ask: 'How can they have rights of which they cannot yet be the beneficiaries and of which they may never come to be the beneficiaries?' You're again begging the question by assuming (rather than establishing) that the time at which the future generations en masse benefit from any duties now owed to them is in the future rather than now. I maintain that they benefit from those duties now (through the current protection of their future existence).

In your final paragraph you give examples of relational properties that 'they [future generations] can't be endowed with'. Plainly, countless relational properties can never be applicable to future generations. For example, the property of having been born before 2007 is not a property with which anyone in the future could ever be endowed. Likewise, the property of having been alive when John Kennedy was assassinated is not a property with which anyone in the future could be endowed. This doesn't matter. My point was not that all relational properties are applicable to future generations en masse. Such a claim would be absurd. My point was that countless relational properties are applicable (or potentially applicable) to future generations en masse, and you've provided no grounds for thinking that the property of being owed a duty isn't among those latter properties.

[My response to be posted later...]