#1243 Jeff McMahan: Antinatalism, Extinctionism, Gene Editing, and Overpopulation

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricard Lops, and today I'm joined by a return guest, Doctor Jeff McMahon. He is Sakura and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. And today we're going to talk about uh reproductive ethics and uh within the topic of reproductive ethics, antenatalism, extinctionism, embryo selection, population ethics, and some other related topics. So Jeff, welcome back to the show. It's always an immense pleasure to talk with you. Thanks,

00:36 Jeff McMahan: Ricardo, and it's always a great pleasure to talk with you. As I've said before, you must be the the most learned person on earth, uh, with all the topics you cover, it's just amazing.

00:50 Ricardo Lopes: Well, I, I, I, I mean, uh, uh, I'm not sure about that, but I, I, I, I, I appreciate the kind words. So, um, let me just ask you before we get into, uh, the actual topics, uh, because, of course, on the show, I've already discussed with you the different kinds of topics related to, for example, your book, The Ethics of Kill. Killing in war, uh, we've talked about political violence, so I mean reproductive ethics. I, I wanted to ask you what got you interested in the in this topic specifically, and do you think that there's any link in terms of ethics between these topics specifically and other topics you've explored? In your work, because for example, we're going to talk a little bit about abortion and we also touched on that topic when we did our first interview on the ethics of killing. So I mean, is there any link at all between this topic and some of the other topics you've explored in ethics?

02:03 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, uh, sure, um. Reproductive ethics is technically, I would say a part of bioethics, um, it concerns obviously human reproduction, procreation, that kind of thing. It raises a number of theoretical issues in all kinds of areas of moral philosophy. Um, SOME of the fundamental issues in reproductive ethics are issues in what's called population ethics, which is the ethics of causing people to exist and uh Um, but it also links up with, as you know, the very a range of practical problems that are less connected with population ethics, for example, abortion, prenatal injury, uh, problem of wrongful life in, in philosophy and in law. Um, BUT then there are other practical issues like, uh, surrogacy. Um, THAT fall within the scope of reproductive ethics. I don't really address issues of that sort. But then there are questions that we're going to discuss briefly today, such as embryo selection and gene editing and so on, which again, um, If you pursue them deep enough, take you into uh deep areas of uh normative ethical theory. Uh, WHAT'S the what's the nature of our moral reasons? Are they reasons to do what's better or worse for people, or are our reasons impersonal in character or whatever? And we'll probably get to some of that at some point today.

03:51 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, certainly. So, um, let's start. Uh, YOU'VE already ended up explaining actually the scope of reproductive ethics. So, uh, getting into the first topic here, um, what are your views on anti-natalism? Of course this is not the only. Uh, ETHICAL theory or ethical position out there when it comes to the ethics of reproduction. We also have its counterpart pro-natalism, for example, but, uh, specifically on anti-natalism. What are your views?

04:33 Jeff McMahan: Well, antenatalism is the view that All things considered, uh, we have decisive reason not to cause new people to exist in most cases. Um, AND I think this view is profoundly counterintuitive, and I think it is insufficiently supported by arguments, um. The the vast majority of people in the world believe, rightly, in my view, that their lives are worth living, and consequently they fear death and they try to do what they can to avoid it. But if our lives are in general good and good for us, if what's intrinsically good in our lives uh is generally, uh, uh, significantly greater than what's intrinsically bad, and I think that's true in most cases, and I think we intuitively recognize that about ourselves, then what reason is there to prevent people like us from existing? If our lives are good and good for us, why should we prevent them from Coming about. Now there are arguments for anti-natalism, um. Um And we will discuss those. I, I think the very best argument for anti-natalism appeals to quite common moral intuitions about causing people to exist. And it takes some effort to resist that argument. I don't think it's an argument that Uh, is, uh, dominant in the literature on anti-natalism or or literature in support of anti-natalism, but I'm not sure because I haven't really read all of that literature. Um, AND so I really don't know. Um, BUT my, my view is that, uh, in order to avoid anti-natalism, we're going to have to accept that we have moral reasons to cause people to exist if their lives would be worth living. And most people don't think that that, that that's A moral imperative or even that there's a moral reason. No, nobody thinks that anybody's doing anything wrong if they don't cause somebody to exist. On the other hand, I've come to the view that, uh, if I have to choose between believing that there are reasons to cause well-off people to exist and believing that there are reasons, all things considered, not to cause anybody to exist, even if their life would be worth living. Then, uh, I will accept the, the, the first counterintuitive claim rather than the second.

07:19 Ricardo Lopes: Hm, that's very interesting. You know, there are different kinds of arguments that anti-Natalists and anti-atalist philosophers use to defend their position. I mean, I, I'm not sure if we have time to explore all of them here, but the one I'm, I'm, I'm at least going to tell you the one I think is the most persuasive, even just for. Uh, I mean, uh, people in general, uh, and then, uh, I want to hear your thoughts about it. So, I think that the most persuasive one is the argument, uh, or what I call the argument from risk, which is the argument, when anti-atalists argue that it is always a risk to bring someone new into existence because, um, The probability of them experiencing a lot of suffering, pain, and have bad and have negative experiences in life is Really, really, really high. I mean, there's a really high probability of that happening, and uh I mean, basically every time you reproduce or bring something, uh, someone new, a human or even sometimes they expand the argument to include other sentient beings into the world, your risk. THEM having a pretty bad or even miserable life because of those kinds of negative experiences and so it would just be better for you to not risk that even though perhaps people would say that sometimes or even many times uh someone. WOULD possibly have a life that we could consider worth living. So what do you make of that kind of argument?

09:27 Jeff McMahan: Well, I agree, obviously that there is a risk if one causes someone to exist, that that person will have a life that's not worth living, that is the intrinsically bad things in the life will outweigh the intrinsically good things in the life. I think statistically that risk is nowadays, uh, quite low. You look around yourself, how many people have lives in which what's intrinsically bad outweighs what's intrinsically good. Um, Uh, IN, in, in, and this is life as a whole, uh, often it happens that a person will have a good life up to a point, and then it happens that what's, uh, bad begins to outweigh what's good. In that kind of case, suicide or assistance in dying or euthanasia or whatever is, is a possibility. Uh, IN which case the life as a whole may well have been very well worth living. I think the, the cases in which a life as a whole, the whole thing has been not worth living when it comes to an end are quite rare. But there is that risk and that risk has to be offset or outweighed by something. And I think what that something is, is the high probability that the life will be good for the person whose life it is. And, but that, what that means is I think that If the good that a person will would experience in life has a high probability of outweighing what's bad in the life, that in itself offsets, uh, the risk. But that commits me to the idea, I think that we do have reason to bring about what is good for people by causing people to exist. So I've come to accept. That claim, which I think most people find counterintuitive, it runs, it directly contradicts the view in population ethics that most people have tried to defend, which in an article in 1981 I called the asymmetry, and that's the view that while there is a reason not to cause someone to exist if that person's life would not be worth living. There's no reason to cause a person to exist just because the person's life would be worth living. So I now reject the second of those two claims on the, on, for various reasons. Um, ONE is that I just find those 22 claims in tension with one another. It's hard to defend both of them. And so this has been a persistent problem in population ethics trying to defend this procreative asymmetry or procreation asymmetry as uh Johann Frick has called it. Um, And I think that's because, you know, the best explanation. OF why it's wrong to cause a person to exist if there's a high probability that that person's life would not be worth living, is that There's a high probability of doing what would be bad for that person. The explanation of why we have this reason is that if we bring a person into existence whose life contains, for example, almost nothing but suffering, what we've done is bad for that person. Now in my view, it's not worse for that person because worse is comparative, and that implies that it would be better for that person never to exist. But in my view, um, never existing can't be better or worse for anybody because there is no one who never exists. Uh, SO, uh, but I still think that it's bad for somebody, but if it's bad for somebody to come into existence with a life that's not worth living, then it must be good for someone to come into existence with a life that is worth living. And if we have a reason not to do what's bad for someone, then we should have some reason, even if it's a weaker reason. To do what would be good for a person, though it wouldn't be better for that person, by causing that person to exist with a high probability of having a life worth living, and what that means is that we have this reason to do what's good for people in this way, and I think that's what outweighs the risk of causing somebody to exist whose life would not be worth living. Um

13:56 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I, I understand, but I think that there's a very big, big question here that we have to address, particularly for people who will be watching or listening to this interview. I mean, how do we determine if a particular life will be worth living? I mean, I'm, I'm asking you beforehand. I mean before we create that. In this case, uh, we're focusing mostly on humans, that human life, because, uh, let's say for example that someone would be born into a very wealthy family with, with lots of opportunities or different kinds of opportunities in life and so on, and they would never suffer from material deprivation. I mean, there's still the risk that that person could suffer from a debilitating mental condition like I, I don't know, depression or schizophrenia or something like that, and they would still have a miserable life and also, I mean, Someone could be born into extreme poverty and I don't know, through their own efforts in some way be able to live those kinds of circumstances and actually have a life that He or she, him or herself would consider uh worth living even though at the very beginning they would have experienced those kinds of very dire circumstances. So is it possible to tell before the fact whether someone's life would be worth living?

15:57 Jeff McMahan: No, not with any certainty. Um, AS I said before, we have to be guided here by probabilities, um, and, you know, statistics. So you just Look around yourself, go to various parts of the world, even in very poor areas. Are the people in those poor areas committing suicide? No. Most of them find their lives well worth living, even if they are materially deprived. Um, DO they, want not to have children, no, they would like to have children and they're very distressed if the conditions of poverty, uh, are harmful to their children. Um, SO as I say, it's just a, it's a matter of probability. Now, I should concede that I do think that Whether a life is worth living for the person who lives it is in my view an objective matter. We can be wrong about this. Um, THIS is not a matter of, uh, uh, a subjective matter. Um, SO there are a lot of people, I think, who believe that their lives are not worth living, which involves projection into the future of what their life is going to be like. WHO are mistaken about this. They are temporarily depressed or whatever, and some, a lot of people I think kill themselves when their lives would actually have been worth living had they continued. Um, I also think they're probably lives, um, that people believe are worth living for them, um, but are not. They're, they're, they're insufficiently good human lives in certain Ways. So for example, I think that however sort of happy Hitler was and, uh, however well satisfied his desires were and so on, he did not have a life that was worth living for a human being. It would have been better for Hitler himself, and I'm not talking about his victims now, but just Hitler. It would have been better for Hitler himself to have died rather than lived that kind of human life. So, uh, This is, this is something that we can be wrong about. On the other hand, I think it would be very strange if we were all systematically deluded, and in fact, all, all of us who think that our lives are well worth living are somehow mistaken about this. That would be that that requires a lot of argument. It requires, uh, uh, it would require a very peculiar, um, Understanding of well-being.

18:36 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, OK, but, um, let me just, uh, uh, try to push back a little bit on, uh, when you say that, uh, we can evaluate that, uh, a life is worth living objectively. I mean, isn't there at least somewhat of a subjective element when it comes to evaluating that in the sense that for example, different people have different personality traits, have different psychological predispositions, different temperaments, and they would evaluate themselves. The similar kinds of experiences in different ways. Perhaps someone would evaluate a particular kind of experience as positive, and at the same time, a different person would evaluate that exact same experience as negative and so on. So I mean what I'm trying to suggest here. Is that um we have our own set of psychological mechanisms and different people evaluate the same kind of experiences and information in different ways depending on their personality traits, temperament, and so on. So, I mean, shouldn't we at least uh take that into account that there's Some, at least to a certain extent, a subjective element when it comes to that kind of evaluation of whether a particular life is worth living or not.

20:15 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, I, what you're saying I think is, is, is entirely correct, I don't think I would use the word subjective to describe it. What I would say is that objectively, uh, we should be pluralists about the good. OK, that is, um, given that people differ in their natures in various ways, um, what is good for one person might not necessarily be good for another, and what that means is that Uh, goodness for a person is often in some way or other relativized to that person's nature and psychology and and so on. And maybe even to that person's autonomous choices and so on, but the, but it's not that what's good for them is determined by what they believe is what's good for them. Um, WHAT'S good for them is determined by their nature and a Uh, uh, uh, uh, an acceptable theory of well-being. Now, I'm a pluralist about all of this. I think that, um, There are many dimensions to well-being. Some people are hedonists, some people are desire or preference satisfaction theorists, other people are objective list theorists. I'm an objective list theorist, but I think that hedonism is an important, uh, element on the objective list and maybe desire satisfaction as well. Um, AND I think there's actually more to A good life for a person than well-being. And I think, for example, just to me, the most prominent example of that is being a morally good person. I think it it it it is good for a person to be morally good and to act morally, and it makes that person's life worse for that person. If the person acts wrongly or wickedly or whatever, and this is, that's part of what I was trying to communicate when I mentioned Hitler as an example of somebody who I believe had an objectively bad life, and that's compatible with his maybe having a high level of well-being according to many theories of well-being or whatever. Uh, THE reason I think being a moral person has to be a distinct dimension of a good life for a person. Is that otherwise we might not be able to understand that. A person can sacrifice his or her well-being for the sake of being a moral person, and that may make the person's life all things considered better for that person, even though it lowers the person's well-being.

23:15 Ricardo Lopes: Right, right, no, no, I, I understand your, your position there. So, uh, before we move on to other topics, let me just ask you this because I think that, uh, even anti-Natalists themselves will appreciate us discussing this. Specific topic also to help perhaps clarify some of their positions and so on. So when it comes to approaching anti-atalism, do you think that the better way of doing it is to claim that there are, there are reasons not to cause individuals to exist? Or that there is no reason to cause individuals to exist. I mean, because those are, even though they might seem very similar, the, the, on the one hand that there are reasons not to cause individuals to exist in, to exist on the other end, there is no reason to cause individuals to exist. They are slightly different, right? So which do you think is the better approach?

24:22 Jeff McMahan: Uh, I think the second approach is by far the better approach, in part for the reasons that I've given, I think in most people's lives are worth living, good for them. Um, If you say that there is a positive reason not to cause a person to exist, even if that person's life would be worth living and good for that person, that view is very difficult to defend. I think most people actually do believe that there's no moral reason to cause a person to exist just because that person's life would be worth living. That's, as I mentioned before, one half of this, uh, claim called the asymmetry in population ethics, that, that is, I think the common sense view. And I do think that, um, combined with the idea, the other part of the asymmetry that we have reason not to cause people to exist if their lives would be bad for them, and we have reason not to risk causing people to exist because their lives would be bad for them. Um, THOSE two views together, um, may very well entail anti-natalism. So I think that the best argument for anti-natalism, uh, does invoke the idea that there is no reason to cause a person to exist just because the person's life would be worth living. The reason I think that the first argument is a bad one, well, they're quite a lot. Um, QUITE a lot of, uh, reasons why I think the claim is a bad one. I've already explained that I think it's, uh, it just doesn't make sense to say that it's, that it's bad and that we have reason, uh, uh, sorry, it's bad to cause somebody to exist whose life would be worth living and we have reason not to do that. The, that in itself is, uh, counterintuitive, um. We can think about uh this argument that we have reason not to cause people to exist, even if their lives would be worth living, is based on a variety of arguments. I mean, the most famous argument I think is they found that the early argument of David Benatar, who is probably the best known of the anti-natalists, um, and you, you interviewed him

26:39 Ricardo Lopes: fairly several times.

26:41 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, OK. Well, um, David is a friend of mine. I think he's a wonderful person and I'm glad he exists. I'm glad his parents decided to have children.

26:53 Ricardo Lopes: Well, maybe you would say that you would have preferred to not have existed. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if you would say that, but

27:05 Jeff McMahan: Well, he distinguishes between, uh, reason, reasons to, reasons for causing people to exist and reasons for continuing to exist. But, um, and I think he thinks he's got reasons to continue to exist, but it would have been better if he had never come into existence. But, um, his basic argument appeals to uh uh an asymmetry, and what he says here is this, that If we don't cause someone to exist whose life would have been worth living. Um, THERE'S, uh, no one we've prevented from having something good. This person never exists, and so, um, Uh, the absence of that happiness is not good. Because there's nobody for whom it's good. But he says that if we don't cause someone to exist whose life would have been full of suffering, that is good. The absence of suffering because there's no one who's suffering, it is good, but the absence of happiness because there's no one who's missing out on it is bad. He makes that claim. But I think that claim is Without good foundation, and it has all kinds of bizarre entailments. So for example, if you think the absence of happiness. Um, It is not bad. Let me, let me think about this for a minute. Um, mhm,

28:39 Ricardo Lopes: uh, NO, yeah, I, I, I, I understand your struggle there because I've also been struggling with, uh, David Bennett, the, uh, David Bennettar's symmetry argument for, uh, a long time. So, and particularly that bit about. OK, someone not experiencing happiness or pleasure because he or she never existed in the first place is not bad because they're not missing out on that, OK, but then there's no one there to begin with, so it's, it's really a weird argument. So

29:16 Jeff McMahan: let me, let me explain. I, I think they are. Any number of reasons why that argument fails. One is this, he says, It's good If someone who would have suffered doesn't come into existence, the absence of suffering is good. Well, if that's true, then the world is infinitely good, because of the infinite number of people who could exist. And suffer, but who don't. And this is true even after human extinction, even after extinction, if there were no life in the universe whatsoever, the universe would be infinitely good because it would, uh, it would be good because of the absence of all that suffering that could have occurred. And that seems to me crazy to say that, you know, a, a, a, a totally lifeless world, uh, is infinitely good because it doesn't contain all the suffering it could have contained. Um, THERE'S also this question of the, the, uh, Explaining the asymmetry here, um, if the reason why, um, The absence of happiness is not good, is that there's no one who's been deprived of it, then the same claim should be true about the absence of suffering, because there's no one who's been spared from it. If I don't cause a miserable person to exist, there's no one I've spared from suffering. So the, the basic claim seems to apply uh symmetrically here. And finally, one of the arguments that I have made in print against David's view is this. He's saying it's bad to cause suffering by causing someone to exist, but not good to cause happiness by causing somebody to exist. So suppose that one has, suppose that whatever one does, a person is going to come into existence. There's no way to prevent that. But one can choose which of two possible people will be the one who comes into existence. If one chooses one way, a person will come into existence whose life will have a little bit of suffering in it. But not much And overall, there will be more well-being in this life than in any human life that's ever been lived. It's, you know, better than any life that any human being has ever lived, because that's one possibility. The other possibility is that you can choose that a different person will come into existence, whose life would have even less suffering in it than the first life, but it would have no positive well-being at all. So, it would be neutral for most of the time and have some suffering, but less suffering. So that life would be not worth living because there'd be nothing good in it, but there would be some suffering. On Minotaur's view, I ought to bring that second life into existence because all that matters is the minimization of the amount of suffering. So if I can choose between bringing about, you know, and, and I can't make it the case that there'll be nobody who comes into this. Somebody's going to come into existence. It will either be a person with the best life that's ever been lived or somebody who has a life that's not worth living, and I ought to choose on Benatar's view, the second life. And I can't believe that

32:43 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. OK, so, uh, I would like to move on now to another topic. Uh, LET'S talk a little bit about the ethics of abortion specifically. I mean, just to, uh, go back, uh, a little bit to the, when I asked you before how we determine or how we evaluate whether a life is worth living or not. Do you think that Uh, that kind of, uh, evaluation should also play a role in the ethics of abortion, or is abortion a topic that you approach ethically, uh, through other perspectives or other kinds. Of arguments like for example, based on women's bodily autonomy, which is something that many times, uh, pro-choice, uh, fem pro-choice people, feminists, and so on appeal to, uh, I mean, what do, do you think that we should also, or, or that, um, discussing or determining whether life is worth living or not should also play a role in the ethics of abortion or not.

34:01 Jeff McMahan: Uh, YEAH, but I think it, it, it has quite a minor role. That is to say, if a woman is pregnant and discovers that Uh, the fetus she's carrying will develop into someone whose life will be not worth living, full of suffering and so on. Then I do think she has a positive moral reason to have an abortion. It's uh, it would be a form of non-voluntary euthanasia, you'd be, uh, you know, there's no question of the fetus having autonomy or being able to consent or whatever, but if, uh, if it's reasonable to believe that The life that the subsequent person would have would be a really dreadful life, then yes, we have reason to prevent that. Um, I think most cases of abortion. Depend crucially on um First of all, questions about personal identity, and secondly, questions about interests or what, you know, what, what matters in a, in a life, uh, but, but specifically about uh whether fetuses are would be one and the same individuals as a later person, and secondly, whether the fetus has an interest and if so, of what strength in continuing to live and becoming an adult person. And thirdly, um, do fetuses have some kind of moral status or not? I think by and large the morality of abortion is determined. With reference to three types of consideration. One is personal identity, the other is interests, and the third is moral status. I can explain each of those. Um, THE first one about identity is a question about when we begin to exist. Um, DIFFERENT people have different views about this, uh, some, a lot of people, I think probably most people believe we begin to exist at conception. Uh, FOR a variety of reasons, I don't think that's plausible. Uh, SOME people's views about personal identity imply that we don't actually even begin to exist until normally until after birth. I think that's implausible as well. My view is that we begin to exist when the capacity for consciousness arises in the developing fetus, and that happens sometime between about 22 and 28 weeks after conception. So what that means is that before that point, On my view, there's nobody there, there's nobody there who loses a good life, there's just an empty developing fetal organism, and you know, that's clearest when there's just a single-celled zygote immediately following conception. Could I exist as a single-celled non-conscious entity? No. Um, SECOND consideration is interests, um, Does the fetus have a strong interest in continuing to live? And in my view, um, interests are, uh, a function of two considerations. One is the amount of good or that one could have or the amount of bad one would avoid, and then the strength of the psychological connections between oneself at the present time and oneself in the future. And the fetus is totally psychologically unconnected with itself in the future, even after it becomes one of us. So a 30 week old fetus, I think I existed as a 30 week old fetus because there was a conscious being there then, and that conscious being didn't go out of existence and me come into existence. I was that conscious being. But did I then have any strong interests when I had no self-consciousness, no knowledge of myself as a continuing being over time, and no hopes, no fears, no desires, no beliefs, um, and I now have no memories. And so I think in the absence of those psychological connections, the interest that a fetus has in it, in its own future life is very, very weak. And finally I think, uh, fetuses. Clearly just lack the capacities, whatever they might be, that are the basis of the moral status of a person like you or me. We don't, uh, if we don't think, I mean, A fetus has lower psychological and moral capacities than a mouse. If we don't think a mouse has the same moral status that we have, how could we think that a, a, a, a conscious, but barely conscious human fetus does. So I think, um, early abortions which kill uh uh uh developing human organism before one of us begins to exist in association with it. They are always permissible. They don't, there's nobody there. There's nobody there who's harmed. Uh, LATER abortions, uh, there is somebody there, but that individual's interest in continuing to live is very weak, so the harm done to that individual is very, very slight. And finally, I just don't think fetuses have the kind of moral status that requires respect for them as individuals, as beings who matter highly for their own sake. And so I think, um, While there's a presumption, uh, a weak presumption against the permissibility of late term abortion, I think it's easily overridden by the kind of concerns you mentioned, uh, that, uh, feminists and others call attention to, um.

39:44 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh, BUT, but I mean, let me just clarify this point because based on your first criterion, uh, related to personal identity, I mean, you mentioned that, uh, time frame between the 22nd and the 28th, uh, 28th week. Uh, I mean, do you think that, uh, because, uh, in that time frame, fetuses acquire, or at least according to the best knowledge we have, they acquire consciousness and other psychological traits. Do you think that that would be sufficient to say that abortion is immoral after the 22nd or at the latest the 28th week?

40:38 Jeff McMahan: No, for the, for the other reasons I gave, at some point during that period, a new individual comes into existence. That individual will be identical with a later person if it continues to live. But as I said, I think that individual has only very, very weak interests and therefore, would not be significantly harmed by being killed. Now, it may be true that a very, very, very elderly person who's got only a couple of days left to live would also not be significantly harmed by being killed. On the other hand, That very elderly person has a kind of moral status that would make it wrong for us to kill that person without her consent, even though her interests are weak, and I'm denying that fetuses have that kind of moral status either. So, no, I don't think abortion becomes wrong, uh. Uh, IN any significant way after the 22nd or 28th week after conception.

41:46 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, OK, so, uh, one more question then about abortion. What do you make then, uh, about, uh, what do you make of the argument based on women's bodily autonomy? I mean, how much weight do you think it has or would have ethically in regards to abortion?

42:12 Jeff McMahan: Uh, I would attribute less weight to that than, uh, just on its own than many philosophers do. I think that if a fetus had the same, if a fetus were, for example, had the same moral status that you and I have. Um, I think that there would be a strong moral presumption against killing it. Now I don't, I mean, for it to have the same moral status that you and I have, it would have to be self-conscious and rational and autonomous or whatever. And, but, uh, what I'm saying is that if you imagine the, uh, pregnant person's bodily autonomy rights and so on as overriding. Um, Even on the assumption that the fetus has a high moral status, I think that that's Uh, not plausible because what we have to imagine is you imagine the fetus being a kind of self-conscious, rational, autonomous individual who happens to find itself through no fault of its own and no responsibility of its own inside somebody else's body, um. And in most cases, uh, you know, the only person who, who, who, the only two people who've had any choice about the existence of this, uh, person are the, are the pregnant person and her partner. Um, SO, uh, I just, I, I can't see that these arguments on their own are sufficient to show that abortion is permissible. They Work together with the arguments that I have given about personal identity, strength of interest, and moral status, I think to overdetermine the permissibility of abortion in almost all cases. But by themselves. I don't think that they are sufficient to justify abortion.

44:22 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, um, I mean, we talked about anti-natalism a few minutes ago. There are anti-Nalists, not all of them, and we're going to touch on that point, there, but there are anti-atalists who are also extinctionists. So, um, I mean, first of all, how do you approach extinctionism from An ethical perspective. What do you think are the questions that we should consider here when evaluating or determining whether human beings going extinct would be good or bad, and I mean it would be good or bad for I mean, whatever I don't know, for the world, for other species, for the universe, I, we also have to determine for whom it would be good or bad, right? But I mean, how do you approach that?

45:24 Jeff McMahan: OK, um, well, You're using the term extinctionism and you've implicitly defined it. I think it's the view that human extinction would, other things being equal, be a good thing. I do think that that claim is implied by anti-natalism, that it would be a good thing. Uh, OTHER things being equal. Now, even anti-natalists can recognize that there are reasons why human extinction would be bad. Um, Samuel Scheffler has a couple of books, uh, that Explore in great detail the ways in which extinction would be bad for existing people, the people who existed at the time and possibly even for people who existed in the past. I mean, he points out, for example, that much of what we do and much of what gives meaning to our lives. Depends on our sense that what we are doing is contributing to some ongoing project that will continue after we have ceased to exist. Philosophers, for example, and scientists and others think about what they're doing in this way. Um, I'm never gonna solve. CONCLUSIVELY any problem in moral or political philosophy, but I'm contributing to a a a continuing effort to uh uh uh achieve greater understanding of these matters. And so it's important to me and what I do to have the belief that people are going to come after me and continue what I'm working to try to achieve. Sam Scheffler also points out that we expect future generations to be continuous of our values, our culture, all these things that matter to us. So if human extinction were going to occur, that would be, that would frustrate strong interests that almost everybody existing at the time has, and maybe it would frustrate interests of people in the past if there can be posthumous interest, because people in the past are like us and in in that much of the meaning in their lives was derived from the sense that What mattered to them was going to continue after they ceased to exist. Um, SO we can all agree that these are reasons why extinction, uh, would be bad, um. There are also people, they are also interests that people have in having children. Um, THIS is something that we are evolutionarily determined, most of us, to have at least some pre predisposition to desire. We, we desire to have children, we find parenting very rewarding, and Uh, Human extinction might, you know, uh, prevent that if, if extinction were to occur quite suddenly, it would involve the premature deaths of everyone alive, and that would be quite terrible. So there are all these reasons, but I think what, um, what the anti-natalists, uh, I think is that extinction would be good if it came about voluntarily. If we could bring it about voluntarily, um, A long time ago in a book published in 1977, Jonathan Glover had a hypothetical example, a thought experiment in which he said, suppose there were a pill that we could take, and this pill would enable us to live for much longer than we live, you know, maybe I'm just making this up, but let's say we could live for 3, each of us could live for 300 years, we could have lives without disease. Um, WITHOUT mental illness of any kind, um, and without a physical degeneration through aging, we would, we would remain young and vigorous physically and so on and so forth. And we would be very happy. This pill would make us all incredibly happy. So it would be in every person's interest to take this pill. And that would, uh, eventually, but, but the, but the side effect of the pill is that it causes, um, uh, uh, sterility and inability to To, uh, uh, produce children and put aside the science that might enable us to cause human beings to exist without sexual relations among between people let's put that possibility aside. So if everybody took this pill, extinction would occur. That would be the ideal kind of, um, case for the anti-natalist. Um, Glover presented this thought experiment. To try to show that even if extinction would be good for every existing person, our intuition is still that it would be a terribly bad thing. Um, AND what one could say here is that it would be bad impersonally. Um, THAT'S what some people say. So notably, for example, Johann Frick argues that human extinction would involve the disappearance of collectives that are impersonally valuable, cultures, civilizations, even the human species as a whole, this is something that is in itself impersonally valuable. And uh, he thinks that's one moral reason why extinction would be, would be bad. And um, I agree with that to a certain extent, but I think in my view, the reason why extinction would be bad is that it would prevent An indefinitely large number of people from having what would be good for them. In the same way, it would be really terrible if a huge number of people came into existence whose lives were full of suffering and utterly miserable, that would be bad for them. We have reason to prevent that. But by parity of reasoning. Having a life that's worth living is good for that person, and we have reasons to do what would benefit people in this way, giving them lives that are good for them. Um, SO I think when we have children who go on to have lives that are worth living, we have done something, uh, that we had moral reason to do. We have brought into the world. A being for whom existence is good, a being with a certain kind of status, a being that matters for its own sake or his or her own sake or whatever, and so I, I do think that Anti-extinctionism. Has to be closely connected with pro-natalism. And I have over the course of my philosophical career, become a kind of weak pro-natalist. For that reason, there's reasons of consistency.

52:51 Ricardo Lopes: 00, OK, OK, OK. Perhaps we will have time to explore that aspect of your philosophy more in more detail later, but, um, what do you make of when people argue against extinctionism, but for, from a more cosmic perspective, let's say, and they say that. It it would be bad not only for humans themselves but but even for the universe itself, for their, uh, if there were no humans, er. If no humans existed because the universe, because there wouldn't even be, I mean, unless of course there are other intelligent species out there somewhere which we don't know of, but I mean assuming just for the sake of the argument that we are the only. Uh, INTELLIGENT, human-like species, uh, in the universe. I mean, that if we didn't exist, uh, there would be no, I don't know, no, uh, they use different kinds of examples, no art, no poetry, no science, no knowledge at all, no culture, no civilization. Um, NO, uh, higher forms of, um, I don't know, uh, pleasure, pleasurable experiences and so on in the universe, and so that would be bad, uh, because the, the universe wouldn't contain those kinds of beings. I, I mean, what do you make of, uh, an argument, uh. Proposed on an argument like that.

54:43 Jeff McMahan: I, I, I find that, uh, completely persuasive. It's roughly what I had in mind when I said that, um, The extinction of the human species would, uh, result in the loss of things that are valuable impersonally, not because they're good or bad for anyone, but just because the existence of these things is good or valuable in itself. Um, BUT I, but I think it's There's a distinction between What's good impersonally, not good or bad for anybody, but just good. Um, AND what's good for individuals. And I think it's much more cogent to me to say that the reason to prevent extinction is that we would be enabling There to be in the world much that is good for the individuals who exist in that world. We're doing it for. We're doing what's good for individuals and not just what's good impersonally, but I do think that the impersonal, uh, claims are themselves plausible. They're not mutually exclusive. They, they, they, to some extent are extensionally equivalent, um, they're just different ways of understanding in what way it's good. So when Johann Frick says, The human species is itself something of great value or the the cult, a particular culture or civilization is something of great value. He's saying that these, these are valuable, not because they're instrumental to something else, but they are just good in themselves, impersonally good. And I, I, I find that plausible, but I would rather articulate my own view in terms of what's good for individuals.

56:44 Ricardo Lopes: Right. OK, but what do you make of the fact, I mean, I, I'm, I'm curious whether this, I guess we can call it a fact. I mean, I'm going to explore it further, but, uh, I, I'm curious as to whether something like this, uh, makes you pause for a bit when it comes to Uh, looking at the future and our prospects as a species, because, I mean, isn't it. Just inevitable that somewhere in the future it doesn't matter if it's in, I don't know, 100 years because of climate catastrophe or in thousands of years or even in billions of years or trillions of years if we just be if we're just able to survive until the point where the universe. At least according to physicists' predictions, is no longer able to sustain life. I mean, isn't it just inevitable or even from a biological perspective that eventually Homo sapiens will evolve into other species? And of course we can discuss whether those species would still be humans or Not or that we could consider them the same or attribute to them the same kind of value that we attribute to our species, but I mean, isn't it inevitable that somewhere in the future, it doesn't matter how long it takes, we will just go extinct, and I mean, I mean, keeping that in mind. I, I mean, does it, uh, affect in any way the way you think about, uh, the possibility of our extinction and what would be lost from us going extinct?

58:53 Jeff McMahan: Um, Not really, um, two points, uh, occurred to me. The first is the analogy with an individual life. Um, YEAH, I'm gonna die at some point. Um, I'd rather it be 30 years from now than later this afternoon. Um, THAT'S gonna be better. There'll be a lot more what's good for me if I can continue to live for a certain period of time. Same thing is true of human beings as, as a whole. Uh, THE, the longer there can be conscious beings who have well-being and whose lives are good for them, um, the better. Um Second point, there's nothing sacrosanct in my understanding about the human species. If human beings go on to evolve, uh, into something higher, if we, you know, uh, we are superior now, I think, um, in various ways, uh, to our remotest ancestors in, in, in evolution. And that's good. And if we evolve in ways that give us a higher capacity for well-being, um, make us morally better, uh, beings than we are now, and we, and those people want those individuals, persons, whatever they would be, supra persons or whatever. Um, JUDGED that they constituted a different species, which is, these, these are just ways of classifying things anyway. It wouldn't make any difference at all. Um, I, I myself agree with uh the people who think that, um, Genetic enhancement of human beings would be a good thing. Um, IF we could, uh, somehow transcend. The Really cruel and barbaric nature that um it lies within most of us and emerge and is emerging in places like Ukraine and Gaza and Iran with all the wars and unspeakable cruelty that people and and unutterable stupidity. Of the leaders who are bringing this about. If we could evolve beyond that, or through genetic enhancement, make our progeny morally and, and, uh, spiritually superior to the way we are now, that would be really good. And if we could also have a, you know, have a higher capacity for well-being. Um, YOU and I have a higher capacity for well-being than a squirrel does. There are all kinds of dimensions of well-being that are accessible to us that are inaccessible to a squirrel, and it's entirely possible, though we can't really imagine what it would be like, uh, entirely possible that our progeny, our successors could Have higher psychological capacities and a higher capacity for well-being than we have, so they could have lives that would be much better for them than our lives are for us. And if we could bring that about through some kind of genetic uh uh uh uh. Engineering, that would be a good, good thing.

1:02:32 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, OK, so I think that makes for a great segue into our next topic because I wanted to ask you also about the ethics of gene editing and embryo selection. I mean, in recent times with the rise of technology that allows for people to do that, I mean in terms of gene editing. Uh, IT'S still very incipient, let's say, I, I don't know to what extent or if we are already able to use gene editing in many meaningful ways, at least in humans, but um, how do you approach these two topics, gene editing and embryo selection, ethically?

1:03:22 Jeff McMahan: Um, At present. Most people who are working on these possibilities think of them primarily as ways of Avoiding bad conditions. So, embryo selection is usually done to enable potential parents to have a child who will not have some inherited genetic condition that uh constitutes an impairment or a disadvantage. Um. Gene editing is, is thought of as having pretty much the same use, trying to eliminate genes that would be harmful. Um, As I said a moment ago, I, uh, I think that these technologies could also be used for the enhancement of uh our progeny, making our progeny better off than than we are. Um, THE one important difference between Or well, at present, two important differences between, uh, gene editing and embryo selection. One is that gene editing is typically better for the person who develops from the edited embryo. That is, it's, unless the editing is so radical that it changes the identity of the person who it makes it the case that a different person comes to exist from the one who would have existed had the editing not been done. If that's not the case, then the choices between one and the same person having, for example, some uh disadvantageous condition and that very same person not having that disadvantageous condition. So the gene editing is actually better for somebody. And some of us think that that matters morally. Um, THAT'S why, for example, I think saving somebody's life is better than causing somebody with a, with a happy life to exist. If I, if I, if I bring a happy person into existence, I'm doing what's good for somebody, but not what's better for that person. Because I, as I said earlier, the alternative is that they never exist. But um, If we, if we engage in gene editing, we're doing what's actually better for somebody. And As I said, if, if my reason to save somebody's life is stronger than my reason to cause somebody to exist, I think that's because the reason to do what's better for somebody is stronger than the reason to do what's merely good but not better for someone. That's a kind of complicated point, but it is a, it is a feature of, uh, gene editing that is absent from embryo selection. So if we select one embryo rather than another, we're simply bringing one person into existence rather than a completely different person. And the person we bring into existence is not better off. For our, for anything that we've done, it's just that this person exists rather than never exists. Um, AND these, you know, these are different types of moral reason to do what's better for somebody and to do what's merely good for somebody, or to do what's only impersonally good, there are these three types of reasons. Um, AND my view is that reasons to do what's better for individuals and not to do what's worse for individuals. Those reasons tend to be stronger than, for example, impersonal reasons or reasons to do what's merely good or reasons perhaps not to do what's merely bad. Do you think that, sorry, sorry, Ricardo, there was one, I said two things, 22 important differences between embryo selection and gene editing. The other one is that at present at least, uh, uh, uh, gene editing is riskier than embryo selection, because gene editing involves the risk of causing, uh, some undetected bad mutation, um, and actually ending up doing what's worse for someone. And so that's, that's a reason to prefer embryo selection, and you might think it's a reason to prefer gene selection that if it succeeds, it's actually there's somebody for whom what one has done is better.

1:07:55 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. No, no, yeah, that's definitely true. I know this because I've had conversations on the show with scientists, with, for example, neuroscientists and behavioral geneticists who told me that even, for example, the idea of editing. A few genes to potentially increase the future IQ of the individual by, I don't know, 12345 points. I mean that's at this point unrealistic for different reasons. I mean one of them being that Uh, at least as far as you, as we know, there are thousands of different genes that contribute to intelligence, to IQ, uh, and so I mean to increase IQ in any meaningful way, you would have to, uh, tweak many different genes, and the second reason being, being that because, uh, the same genes can participate in different processes. There's a very. High risk that by um editing some of those genes that are associated with intelligence, you could increase the risk of the person developing a neurological disease or something like that. So I mean there are different scientific, scientifically based reasons for it being risky, very risky at this point in time at least, but I mean related to that, I would like to ask you, do you think that Or to what extent do you think we should worry about people using embryo selection or gene editing for eugenicist purposes, because, I mean, it's a very unfortunate thing, but we have to take that into account because unfortunately there are some people out there who are eugenicists or who defend a eugenicist like. Agenda when it comes to genetics and to these kinds of technologies. So to what extent do you think we should worry about these technologies being misused for eugenicist purposes?

1:10:18 Jeff McMahan: Uh Well, obviously. There's always. That worry, um, a lot depends on what the eugenicist aims are and what the Uh, political means of trying to achieve them are, and part of the reason that eugenics has such a bad name now is that in the past, It was used to try to modify to to try to achieve. Characteristics in a population that were actually not in any way valuable, and to do this by coercive or violent means. And so, you know, the history of eugenics is quite awful. Um, IN particular when it is sort of politically mandated, but that's quite different from Uh, making certain, uh, gene editing options available to individuals for voluntary acceptance. So, Uh, we might offer potential parents, uh, the possibility of some kind of genetic modification that would enable their child to have a higher level, a better life in some way or other. And if it was genuinely a better life objectively, um, why not? Uh. Um, I think, um, that, uh, I, I, I'm gonna start over again. Uh, I find appealing the idea, uh, uh, that is advocated by Ingmar Prison and Julian Savulescu in a book called Unfit for Humanity or something like that, um, that Some forms of genetic moral enhancement would be really highly desirable if, if we could, uh, somehow or through genetic, uh, gene editing or genetic modification. Begin to produce human beings who had Higher, a higher capacity for empathy. That would be desirable. Now. Would I want that to be coercively enforced by the government? No, but it should be, I don't see any objection to, uh, enabling potential parents to have uh, a genetic modification that would raise the probability that their child would be more empathetic or more altruistic. Or whatever, and similarly with whatever is the basis in our psychological capacities for our capacity for well-being. If we could produce people who would have a higher capacity for well-being, and as I said earlier, in the way that we have a higher capacity for well-being than a squirrel does, if we could enhance our capacity for well-being in some way, that would be desirable. Now would that be eugenics? I don't, you know, I don't know, in some technical sense, probably yes, but I don't think it would be pernicious eugenics.

1:13:36 Ricardo Lopes: OK, but when you say that, uh, certain, I don't know, um, approaches or gene editing, uh, I, I mean, if there's somewhere in the future the possibility of editing a few genes to for the purposes of moral enhancement or enhancing well-being, something like that, I mean, the aspect of accessibility, don't you think that that's particularly important? Even more so, even more so if we live as we do now in unequal societies, because it could possibly make it more accessible for people with more resources and less accessible, accessible or not accessible at all for people with less resources and, and thus it could potentially even further increase inequality.

1:14:35 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, I accept that completely, that uh for this kind of genetic modification or whatever to be morally acceptable, it would have to be uh available on some kind of egalitarian basis, uh, definitely. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the potential for Um, exacerbation of inequality there is, is very great. I mean, not necessarily with, let's say a um, A form of genetic modification that would enhance empathy. Um, IF only the rich got that, what that would mean maybe is that, uh, rich people's children would become more egalitarian than they are now. Uh,

1:15:23 Ricardo Lopes: THEY would be willing to pay higher taxes,

1:15:26 Jeff McMahan: something like that, or they would have greater sympathy for those who are less well off than they are. Um. Yeah, if only, if only we could have slipped this uh genetic modification into the, the, um, gamuttes of, uh, uh, you know, Donald Trump and all of his billionaire pals, and they could have had children who were better human beings than they are. Um, THAT would have been a good thing.

1:15:57 Ricardo Lopes: Yes. So, uh, to get into the last topic of our conversation, of course, you've already touched on it, uh, at least a few times during our conversation, but what kinds of questions interest you when it comes to population ethics specifically?

1:16:16 Jeff McMahan: Well, uh, There There are theoretical problems here, um, they have, they have names, I've mentioned what uh, what I called the asymmetry, what Johann Frick calls the procreation asymmetry, um, That's common sense, but I don't believe ultimately it's defensible, so, uh, I've been trying to develop arguments for what I call a weak asymmetry, um, which says that there are reasons to cause people to exist, just because those people would be well off or have lives that would be well worth living. But those reasons are weaker than reasons not to cause people to exist whose lives would be miserable. So there's a kind of asymmetry between harm and benefit here, and that has to be defended in some way or other. There's also what Derek Parfitt calls the non-identity problem, which is a huge problem in practical ethics, but is, is one of the central problems of population ethics, which is that sometimes when we act in a way that brings about a bad effect, Um, That act is also a necessary condition for the existence of the person in whose life the bad effect occurs, so that overall, our doing this act would not be worse for this person or even bad for this person. But we've brought about a bad effect because we could have caused a different person to exist, whose life would not have contained the bad effect. And a lot of people think that in order to get beyond this problem we have to accept a kind of impersonal ethics, some sort of impersonal consequentialism or whatever. But there are lots of possibilities here, but, um, these, these are really difficult issues of moral theory that have been around ever since uh Parfit published Reasons and Persons, and we're still struggling with them. Population ethics is, I think the most intractable and A difficult area in The, the, the. AREA in which practical ethics and theoretical ethics overlap. Um, So I'm interested in those issues and then their implications for all kinds of Issues in, in, in reproductive ethics.

1:18:45 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, I mean this sort of links to some of the questions we've already explored here, but do you think that there are any instances where there would be a moral duty for people to reproduce?

1:19:05 Jeff McMahan: Uh, YES, because I have the, uh, Anti-extinctionism view that I have mentioned earlier, I, I don't use that label, but uh because I believe that it is really, really important to avoid human extinction. Uh, IF there were circumstances in which there were a serious threat of human extinction, extinction, then I think that many people would have a moral duty to, to try to keep the human population, uh, uh, uh, in existence by having children. Um. There's also this, uh, just. I don't know what to think of this, but here, suppose that it's, suppose that uh the the brand of weak pro-natalism that I have been Uh, pushed by my own thinking into accepting, which I didn't accept earlier, but it just seems the arguments are dragging me in this way. I think there is a moral reason to cause a person to exist just because that person would have a life that would be good for that person. It's because I would be doing something that would be conferring a benefit on this person. In the same way that if I cause a miserable person to exist, I would be causing, I would be inflicting a harm on that person. Um, IF that's true, then in, if there really is always this moral reason. To cause a person to exist if the person's life would be a really good one. Um, THEN the question arises, wouldn't that reason rise to the level of a duty if there were no moral or prudential reasons not to do it? So one could bring a child into existence who would have a wonderful life. It wouldn't be bad for oneself in any way to have this child. There was no moral reason not to have it. Would it then become a moral duty? I tend to think so. I tend to think that if there is a reason that is moral in nature and completely unopposed by any other good reason. Then that reason becomes one that one ought to act on, and that's a way of saying it's a duty. Now there are people who disagree with this, there are people who think that, um, there are moral reasons, that are positive moral reasons, but they remain only permissions, they don't become duties. Um, THERE are a number of people who believe that. I just don't see the coherence of that. I think if there's a moral reason, Then there's a presumption that one should do it, and that presumption has to be overridden or defeated to make it permissible not to act on that reason, if it's a genuinely moral reason. And I could easily be wrong about that, but that's What I think at the moment.

1:22:07 Ricardo Lopes: 00, OK, but, but then let me ask you this just to clarify this point specifically because I think that uh it's plausible for us to say that there are instances where for people to, um, how should I put it, I, I have to be careful with the wording here, but I mean, When it comes to people reproducing, we talk a lot about people's autonomy, that is for people to decide whether or not they want to reproduce. Do you think that a moral duty, at least in certain extents, uh, instances, could override, uh, people's autonomy, that morally speaking, uh, it would be. Uh, THE, um, uh, the, the moral duty to reproduce would be higher or could be higher than people's autonomy and they're deciding not to reproduce just based on their own autonomous choice.

1:23:16 Jeff McMahan: Well, if The reason to reproduce rises to the level of a moral duty. Then autonomy becomes irrelevant. Um, MY being autonomous doesn't give me a permission. Not to do what I ought to do morally. OK. Autonomy functions in areas in which I don't have any moral requirements.

1:23:50 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm.

1:23:51 Jeff McMahan: So, yeah, I'm just saying individual autonomy doesn't, never overrides morality.

1:23:58 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, OK, but, um, OK, then let me ask you another question. Do you think that there are any instances where If moral duty overrides, and I mean we're assuming here, of course, if we call it a moral duty, as you said, it overrides autonomy, but um I mean in those instances, do you think that there would be any justification to coerce people into reproducing if necessary or not?

1:24:38 Jeff McMahan: Only in extreme circumstances. Um, AS I mentioned, suppose that, uh, We were genuinely threatened with human extinction, and it is very important that the remaining people. You know, this could be after some sort of nuclear holocaust or something of that sort, um. The probability of extinction is quite high and the only chance of avoiding human extinction is for those people who remain to, um, reproduce as vigorously, as vigorously as they possibly can. In those circumstances, yes, I think that it would, you know, however this is going to be done, I don't know how you coerce people to have sex, but, um, uh, it, it does seem to me that coercion would be permissible. In a lot of other cases though, what we think is that most, most There are, there are, there are very many duties that people have that we don't think. They should be coerced to fulfill. Certainly not by the state and perhaps not even by people close to them. Um.

1:25:53 Ricardo Lopes: No, I, I, I, I mean

1:25:55 Jeff McMahan: reproduction, if it, if it is ever a duty, very likely one of those. Again, because the coercion would be so intrusive.

1:26:06 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. No, I, I, um, I also, I mean, that came to my mind also because You know, we hear from many women, and I think this is very unfortunate, at least in my view, many women, and this is brought to the table, um, particularly by feminists that I mean, they felt coerced by society, at least to a certain extent, coerced in terms of being feeling socially pressured into reproducing by, I don't know, their family, their friends, society more broadly, and then some of them, this has been studied, regret. Having children, regret reproducing, uh, I mean, uh, do, do you, would you consider those kinds of, um, social phenomena like Um actually society trying to Even if, even if we don't use the verb force here for forcing women to reproduce, but trying to push them as much as possible into reproducing, uh, do you look at that as a form of coercion or not? Well,

1:27:33 Jeff McMahan: whatever it is, pressuring women to have children seems to me to be wrong, um. And that is because even if there is a moral reason, To cause a person to exist if that person's life would be worth living. As I said earlier, that reason may well be overridden by prudential reasons as well as by moral reasons. There may be a moral reason why a person shouldn't reproduce, but there are also prudential reasons that uh weigh against whatever moral reason there is. And uh It seems to me that in general these prudential reasons are going to be decisive, at least in the world as it is now, um, maybe not after a nuclear holocaust or something of that sort or an asteroid hits the earth, but, um, Yeah, I, I, I do think that prudential reasons can defeat whatever the moral reason is, and Social efforts to pressure women into having children are, are pernicious and wrong. And of course they do, they, they, they still occur in many societies where women have this very subordinate position, um.

1:28:58 Ricardo Lopes: And I, and I guess that I don't know if you agree with me, but that social pressure also manifests. I mean, in this particular case, it is actually political pressure, but it also manifests politically when, for example, in the United States Roe v. Wade was overturned and now Um, in most states, if I, if, if I'm correct about that, uh, abortion is considered illegal and so women no longer have at least legal access to abortion and there's also different ways that the Trump administration is trying to. I mean, make it more difficult for women to access contraception, for people to have access to sexual education and other things like that. I mean that that would also be, or you would also consider that a form of coercion in this case, political or not,

1:30:02 Jeff McMahan: yeah, yeah. Everything that the Trump administration is doing in the United States is detestable and appalling, and uh this court that he has stacked with Uh, these conservative justices, uh, In overturning Roe versus Wade has done something again really appalling. Now it does that, what that does is it removes the constitutional protection and the right to have an abortion at the federal level. It's still possible for states to make abortion permissible, but what that judgment did was to make it possible for states to impose all kinds of restrictions on access to abortion, and that is, uh, badly harming all sorts of women, particularly those who can't uh afford to travel to a state in which they could get uh an abortion. So yes, this is Uh, you know, the most awful violation of the rights and autonomy of women and others in the, in the United States. Yeah.

1:31:16 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so I have one last question then, which is, uh, I, I, I think it's actually the opposite of my previous question when I asked you about uh potential moral duty for people to reproduce. I, in cases where there might be overpopulation, and I think that there's a good case to be made scientifically that We actually have, uh, overpopulation, uh, uh, uh, yeah, and I mean, the, the world pop uh, the global population is still increasing and it will reach potentially 9, 10 billion people at least. So, do you think that, uh, particularly when there are So many people out there that that can have a negative impact on the environment, on resources, and even with climate change on the future of our species, that there should be a moral duty to not reproduce.

1:32:27 Jeff McMahan: I can certainly imagine circumstances in which there would be a moral duty not to have children or to limit one's children to perhaps one, something of that sort. Uh, But we'd need to, we'd need to have a criterion for determining what counts as overpopulation. And you've, you've offered some. On the other hand, There are, there are ways of Overcoming the problems that we attribute to overpopulation, that wouldn't necessarily involve limiting the number of people on the planet, we could have done So much to avoid climate change, and we still could, though every day it gets more and more. Uh, UNAVOIDABLE. But then we have, you know, these people like the people who support Trump, who believe the lie that climate change is a hoax or a fraud or, you know, whatever ridiculous terms that Trump and his Billionaire pals, uh, use, um. You know In many ways it's not the number of people, it's those who Control things through their great wealth who are making the problems so, so terrible. Um, AND we could do the same thing with agriculture, you know, we could have agriculture that, uh, was much more sustainable if more people were vegetarian or vegan than they are now, we could have, uh, we could feed more people, people could be healthier, and so on. All this could be done. Um, THROUGH other means. I,

1:34:29 Ricardo Lopes: I mean, actually, if we think about it, just the enormous amount of food we waste each year would probably be enough to feed everyone in the world.

1:34:40 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, I, I forget what the figure I saw, but Americans, Americans throw out something like 50% of the food that they buy that goes in there, goes in the bin.

1:34:50 Ricardo Lopes: No, that, that's, that's ridiculous. It's, it's absurd.

1:34:55 Jeff McMahan: Yeah, I, I, yeah, sorry, I, I think every, every sensitive person is feeling this, but you know, the world just seems to be crashing into barbarism in, in every way, it just, uh, you know, everybody I know just wakes up depressed in the morning to see what's happening, you know, what these, what these leaders. Who in some cases are elected like Trump and Netanyahu are doing to the world, it's just unspeakable.

1:35:27 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, sorry for going off on a tangent, but going back to overpopulation then. Uh, SO, uh, do you think, uh, which kinds of circumstances then do you think, uh, would entail, uh, a duty to not reproduce?

1:35:45 Jeff McMahan: Uh, uh, WELL, as you mentioned, you know, climate catastrophe, radical shortage of resources, so when people are starving, and there's no other way to try to prevent this from continuing to happen in the future except through reducing the size of the global population, then I think individuals have, would have a duty, uh, to limit reproduction, um, but I also think they would have an even more important duty to Uh, limit their use of resources, to use resources in the, in the, in, in an acceptable way to do whatever they could in their very tiny way to avoid contributing to these problems. So I think, um, limiting uh uh reproduction is a kind of last resort. It would be better to solve these problems in other ways. Restricting procreation is terrible for people who would really like to have children or more than one child. It's a, that is a genuine deprivation for people. Much easier for people to, you know, to, to, to use resources more efficiently or Uh, whatever. Mhm. So it's, I think of it as a kind of last resort for addressing the problems that we, we put under the label of overpopulation.

1:37:15 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah, I think that's a fair point. So Jeff, I would love to be here for another 3 hours with you because there are always more topics that I would like to discuss with you, and your work is really fascinating, but we've already done almost 1 hour and 40 minutes, so people will Also get a bit tighter with us. So, um, let's wrap up our conversation here. And as always, thank you very much for coming on the show and I will be looking forward to our future next conversation, which I imagine will, will happen. So thank you so much. Doing this. Thank you for your work and it's always a big pleasure to everyone.

1:38:02 Jeff McMahan: Well, thank you, Ricardo. Again, as I said at the beginning, it just amazes me, given the breadth of your understanding and the incredible diversity of the people you interview that you are able to understand. Issues that I spend my whole life, you know, this tiny little set of issues that I spent all my time thinking about, and you seem to be able to grasp all of this, understand it well, and pose challenging questions on it. I, I'm just, uh, in, in awe of your abilities, so it's an honor to be on your show. Thank you.

1:38:36 Ricardo Lopes: Well, thank you, thank you for the kind words. Hi guys, thank you for watching this interview until the end. If you liked it, please share it, leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by Enlights Learning and Development done differently. Check their website at enlights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or PayPal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and PayPal supporters, Perergo Larsson, Jerry Muller, Frederick Sundo, Bernard Seyaz Olaf, Alex, Adam Cassel, Matthew Whittingbird, Arnaud Wolf, Tim Hollis, Eric Elena, John Connors, Philip Forrest Connolly. Then Dmitri Robert Windegerru Inai Zu Mark Nevs, Colin Holbrookfield, Governor, Michel Stormir, Samuel Andrea, Francis Forti Agnun, Svergoo, and Hal Herzognon, Michel Jonathan Labrarith, John Yardston, and Samuel Curric Hines, Mark Smith, John Ware, Tom Hammel, Sardusran, David Sloan Wilson, Yasilla Dezaraujo Romain Roach, Diego Londono Correa. Yannik Punter DaRosmani, Charlotte Blis Nicole Barbaro, Adam Hunt, Pavlostazevski, Alec Baka Madison, Gary G. Alman, Semov, Zal Adrian Yei Poltonin, John Barboza, Julian Price, Edward Hall, Edin Bronner, Douglas Fry, Franco Bartolatti, Gabriel P Scortez or Suliliski, Scott Zachary Fish, Tim Duffy, Sanny Smith, and Wisman. Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Georg Jarno, Luke Lovai, Georgios Theophanous, Chris Williamson, Peter Wolozin, David Williams, Di Acosta, Anton Ericsson, Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralli Chevalier, Bangalore atheists, Larry D. Lee Junior. Old Eringbon. Esterri, Michael Bailey, then Spurber, Robert Grassy, Zigoren, Jeff McMahon, Jake Zul, Barnabas Raddix, Mark Kempel, Thomas Dovner, Luke Neeson, Chris Story, Kimberly Johnson, Benjamin Galbert, Jessica Nowicki, Linda Brendan, Nicholas Carlson, Ismael Bensleyman. George Ekoriati, Valentine Steinmann, Per Crawley, Kate Van Goler, Alexander Ebert, Liam Dunaway, BR, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, Perpendicular, Jannes Hetner, Ursula Guinov, Gregory Hastings, David Pinsov, Sean Nelson, Mike Levin, and Jos Necht. A special thanks to my producers Iar Webb, Jim Frank Lucas Stinnik, Tom Vanneden, Bernardine Curtis Dixon, Benedict Mueller, Thomas Trumbull, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carlo Montenegro, Al Nick Cortiz, and Nick Golden, and to my executive producers, Matthew Lavender, Sergio Quadrian, Bogdan Kanis, and Rosie. Thank you for all.