Persons, populations, and value

Thesis

This thesis consists of six independent papers on personal identity, population ethics, and value theory. The central theme of this thesis is the unimportance of personal identity. I begin in Chapter 1 by developing new Parfitian arguments for the unimportance of personal identity in morality, paying special attention to their implications in population ethics. In Chapter 2 I analyse Mark Johnston’s similar metaphysics driven challenge to person based morality, but argue that it is less successful than my own. In Chapter 3 I lay out choices facing egalitarians in population ethics, arguing against some recently prominent forms of egalitarianism. In Chapter 4 I provide new decision theoretic arguments against deontic constraints on harming, suggesting that it is consequentialism rather than deontology that can better respect persons. In Chapter 5 I introduce transfinite extensions of the familiar value theoretic principles of transitivity and acyclicity. I use them to try to resolve some key issues in population ethics, concerning the value of creating new people and the procreative asymmetry. In Chapter 6 I aim to support these transfinite principles by analysing their role in the theory of rational choice.

Authors: Kowalczyk, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-jvap45w1r
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: transitivity; value theory; population ethics; personal identity; egalitarianism
• Subjects: Metaphysics; Ethics