LEAP LAW, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY ERIC BLUMENSON HARRY BRIGHOUSE PAULA CASAL MICHAEL DA SILVA ANA DE MIGUEL LUARA FERRACIOLI ANCA GheAUS JESÚS MORA VALERIA OTTONELLI GINA SCHOUTEN SARAH STROUD AdAM SWIft VICTOR TADROS PIERRE-ÉTIENNE VANDAMME PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS ANDREW WILLIAMS LEAP 3 2015 Law, Ethics and Philosophy (LEAP) LEAP is a new peer-reviewed, open access international journal dedicated to work in ethics, legal theory, and social and political philosophy. It welcomes clear, rigorous and original submissions that address concrete issues of public concern as well as more abstract theoretical questions. It also has the distinctive aims of (a) fostering work drawing on a variety of disciplines within the social and natural sciences, including biology, economics, history, and psychology; and (b) promoting dialogue between the Anglophone and non-Anglophone worlds. We invite submissions of articles up to 10,000 words, discussion notes up to 5,000 words, and replies and exchanges not exceeding 3,000 words. All published submissions will have undergone blind review, and the journal will notify authors of submitted pieces about the progress of their submission within six weeks. Although LEAP accepts exclusively submissions in English, the journal strongly encourages submissions from authors who also write in languages other than English, and will always strive to ensure that their work is assessed on the basis of its content and not primarily its mode of expression. Where necessary the editorial process provides authors with guidance regarding matters of English style. The journal is published by Pompeu Fabra University and hosted by RACO, the Catalan repository of open access journals (http://raco.cat/index.php/leap) Enquiries regarding the journal may be directed to: [email protected]. Law, Ethics and Philosophy Vol. 3 2015 Law, Ethics LEAP and Philosophy Editorial Board Editors Paula Casal, ICREA & Pompeu Fabra University Hugo Seleme, National University of Córdoba, Iñigo González-Ricoy, University of Barcelona Argentina José Luis Martí, Pompeu Fabra University Andrew Williams, ICREA & Pompeu Fabra Serena Olsaretti, ICREA & Pompeu Fabra University University Associate Editors Ingvild Almås, Norwegian School of Economics Genoveva Martí, ICREA & University of Barcelona Samantha Besson, Fribourg University Lukas Meyer, University of Graz Jordi Ferrer, University of Girona José Juan Moreso, Pompeu Fabra University Ernesto Garzón Valdés, Johannes Gutenberg Félix Ovejero, University of Barcelona University, Mainz Zofia Stemplowska, University of Oxford Cristina Lafont, Northwestern University Editorial Board Aulis Aarnio, Tampere University Daniel Hausman, University of Wisconsin- Lucy Allais, University of the Witwatersrand Madison Elizabeth Anderson, University of Michigan János Kis, Central European University Richard Arneson, University of California, San Matthew Kramer, University of Cambridge Diego David Lefkowitz, University of Richmond Gustaf Arrhenius, Stockholm University Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Aarhus University Michael Baurmann, University of Düsseldorf Frank Lovett, Washington University in St. Louis Juan Carlos Bayón, Autonomous University, Stephen Macedo, Princeton University Madrid Jeff McMahan, Rutgers University Carmen Bevia, Autonomous University, Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University Barcelona Adèle Mercier, Queens University, Ontario Liam Murphy, New York University David Bilchitz, South African Institute for Ingmar Persson, University of Gothenburg Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Philip Pettit, Princeton University Rights, and International Law Thomas Pogge, Yale University Geoffrey Brennan, University of North Carolina Wlodek Rabinowicz, Lund University at Chapel Hill Joseph Raz, Columbia University Ian Carter, University of Pavia Debra Satz, Stanford University Joseph Chan, University of Hong Kong Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford Thomas Christiano, University of Arizona Seana Shiffrin, University of California, Los Bruno Celano, University of Palermo Angeles Antony Duff, University of Minnesota Anna Stilz, Princeton University John Ferejohn, New York University Victor Tadros, University of Warwick Víctor Ferreres, Pompeu Fabra University Larry Temkin, Rutgers University Roberto Gargarella, University of Buenos Aires Jeffrey Tulis, University of Texas at Austin Robert Goodin, Australian National University Philippe Van Parijs, University of Louvain Axel Gosseries, University of Louvain Georgia Warnke, University of California, Lori Gruen, Wesleyan University Riverside Riccardo Guastini, Genova University Ruth Zimmerling, Johannes Gutenberg Alon Harel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem University Mainz Pompeu Fabra University http://www.raco.cat/index.php/LEAP CONTENTS Law, Ethics and Philosophy (LEAP) Vol. 3, 2015 Page 1. Offsetting the Harms of Extinction .................................................. 8 MICHAEL DA SILVA 2. The Limits of Moral Argument: Reason and Conviction in Tadros’ Philosophy of Punishment .............................................. 30 ERIC BLUMENSON 3. Response to Blumenson ................................................................... 56 VICTOR TADROS SYmposIUM ON PHILIppe VAN ParIJS’ ‘FOUR PUZZles ON GENDer EQUalITY’ 4. Unjust Gender Inequalities .............................................................. 74 PAULA CASAL 5. Four Puzzles on Gender Equality ..................................................... 79 PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS 6. Distributive Justice and Female Longevity ...................................... 90 PAULA CASAL 7. Women’s Greater Educational Efforts as a Consequence of Inequality ........................................................ 107 JESÚS MORA 8. Do Women Enjoy a Political Advantage? Majority Position and Democratic Justice ....................................... 116 PIERRE-ÉTIENNE VANDAMME Page 9. A Blatant Case of Over-Accommodation .......................................... 125 VALERIA OTTONELLI 10. Are Unequal Incarceration Rates Unjust to Men? ........................... 136 GINA SCHOUTEN 11. The Rich also Cry .............................................................................. 151 ANA DE MIGUEL 12. Real Freedom for all Women (and Men): A Reply ............................ 161 PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS SYMPOSIUM ON HARRY BRIGHOUSE AND ADAM SWIFT’S FAMILY JUSTICE:THE ETHICS OF PARENT-CHILD RelatIONSHIPS 13. Family Values: An Introduction ........................................................ 178 ANDREW WILLIAms 14. Egalitarian Family Values? ............................................................... 180 SARAH STROUD 15. Is There a Right to Parent? ................................................................ 193 ANCA GHEAUS 16. Why the Family? ............................................................................... 205 LUARA FERRACIOLI 17. Advantage, Authority, Autonomy and Continuity: A Response to Ferracioli, Gheaus and Stroud .................................. 220 HARRY BRIGHOUSE & ADAM SWIFT Acknowledgments We wish to acknowledge the help of Marcos Picchio, Laura Sánchez de la Sierra and Hannah Weber in proofreading the papers of this volume, also to John French for typesetting. The symposium on Harry Brighouse’s and Adam Swift’s Family Values and The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships was funded by Serena Olsaretti’s ERC Consolidator Grant (648610) on Justice and the Family: An Analysis of the Normative Significance of Procreation and Parenthood in a Just Society. Funding was also provided by the Department of Law at Pompeu Fabra University. Offsetting the Harms of Extinction1 MIchael Da SILVA University of Toronto Abstract Many people assume that the extinction of humanity would be a bad thing. This article scrutinizes this apparent badness and demonstrates that on most plausible consequentialist frameworks, the extinction of humanity is not necessarily bad. The best accounts of the badness of the extinction of humanity focus on the loss of potential utility, but this loss can be offset if it is the result of sufficiently large gains by the present generation. Plausible means of calculating the goodness of outcomes accordingly suggest hastening extinction even in some circumstances where the alternative is a long period of human existence at a high level. Keywords Ethics, consequentialism, existential risk, harms, extinction INTRODUCTION Many fear the potential extinction of humanity due to the common intuition that extinction is bad and should be avoided.2 Yet what it means for extinction to be ‘bad’ is not obvious. This article scrutinizes the apparent badness of extinction. The most plausible candidate explanations for the badness of extinction do not rely on extinction itself being bad but on extinction pairing with other negative effects or forestalling other potential goods. Not all extinction scenarios have these implications. Extinction is not an impersonal bad and need not be personally bad even if we grant potential persons some moral personhood. Extinction is thus not necessarily bad. Even imminent extinction may be preferable to the continued existence of humanity for 1 Thank you to Derek Parfit and Jeff McMahan for comments on the earliest version of this article, which was drafted for their graduate seminar at Rutgers University. Thank you also to the other students in that course for thoughtful conversations on many issues and to the anonymous reviewers for feedback on more recent drafts. 2 As Larry Temkin notes, “anything…anyone…writes on this topic should be taken with a large grain