Journal article
Was evolution worth it?
- Abstract:
- The evolutionary process involved the suffering of quadrillions of sentient beings over millions of years. I argue that when we take this into account, then it is likely that when the first humans appeared, the world was already at an enormous axiological deficit, and that even on favorable assumptions about humanity, it is doubtful that we have overturned this deficit or ever will. Even if there’s no such deficit or we can overturn it, it remains the case that everything of value associated with humanity was made possible by our evolutionary history and all that animal suffering. It can seem indecent to regard all that past suffering as having been worth it simply because it was a causal precondition for our existence. But when we consider the realistic alternatives to the way evolution in fact unfolded, there is nevertheless a conditional case for regarding past sentient suffering as a kind of necessary evil.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 891.6KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11098-022-01893-4
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Philosophical Studies More from this journal
- Volume:
- 180
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 249–271
- Publication date:
- 2022-11-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-09-30
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-0883
- ISSN:
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0031-8116
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1278072
- Local pid:
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pubs:1278072
- Deposit date:
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2022-09-09
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Guy Kahane
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- ©2022 The Author(s). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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