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Reply to Spears’s ‘The Asymmetry of Population Ethics’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2022

Jonas H. Aaron Open the ORCID record for Jonas H. Aaron [Opens in a new window]
Jonas H. Aaron*
Affiliation:
LMU Munich, Max-Planck-Str. 1, 81675 Munich, Germany
*
Email: jonas.aaron@tutanota.com
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Abstract

Is the procreation asymmetry intuitively supported? According to a recent article in this journal, an experimental study suggests the opposite. Dean Spears (2020) claims that nearly three-quarters of participants report that there is a reason to create a person just because that person’s life would be happy. In reply, I argue that various confounding factors render the study internally invalid. More generally, I show how one might come to adopt the procreation asymmetry for the wrong reasons by misinterpreting one’s intuitions.

Keywords

Population ethicsprocreation asymmetryreasonsexperimental philosophyintuitions

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Type
Reply
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Economics & Philosophy , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , November 2023 , pp. 507 - 513
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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