I sometimes hear the following view expressed:
There is no real moral value: all moral value is derivative of human valuers. So if humanity were to go extinct, this would not be ethically evaluable, since there would be no ethical perspective from which to evaluate it. So human extinction is neither good nor bad, it is simply unevaluable.
The idea as I understand it is that events that happen at a different time from the existence of valuers in a deep sense don’t matter, because there is no one around for these things to matter to. For things to matter, they have to temporally co-exist with valuing agents. This is an argument that we shouldn’t prioritize human extinction, or other things in the distant future that happen after humanity has gone extinct. It clashes with extinction risk reduction efforts and also with ordinary human concern about the end of the world.
I agree with the point that there is no real moral value beyond what valuers value. But I think human extinction would be terrible. I’m going to raise a few objections to this position and then offer my own view: human extinction matters because humans care about what happens in the future, after we die. Because no authority beyond us can tell us what it is valid to care about, we’re perfectly within our rights to care about what happens after we die and for this to motivate our action today. This is the source of the value of human extinction.
Concern #1: The shrinking stage of moral valuation
The view as I’ve expressed it is that things that happen at a different time from the existence of valuers don’t matter. So suppose humanity goes extinct. There might then still be some valuers around who aren’t humans. After all, the universe is enormous, and we don’t know what exists in its furthest reaches. (If the extinction is from AI takeover there may also be AIs that value things, but this is not a concern I take up here.) If there were another species of valuers, say, inhabiting Alpha Centauri after humanity’s extinction, would humanity’s extinction then matter? If so, then we can’t be so quick to deny the importance of human extinction. Even if other species don’t evolve until billions of years from now, in billions of years they will still exist contemporaneously with the end of humanity.
I think the intuition of my interlocutor will probably be that this doesn’t matter, because even if valuers exist at the same time, no one observes the badness of human extinction. No one is watching and valuing what is happening. So a stricter version of the view would say not that valuers must co-exist with events for them to have value, but also that they must observe them.
This stricter position comes with some seemingly surprising results and puzzles. If a forest burns down and kills many animals, but no human valuers notice, does this not matter? And what counts as observation? If we find in the fossil record that there were millions of years of evolution in which animals suffered and died does this matter, or did we have to be physically present observing the event? Can we observe something with scientific instruments like cameras and telescopes, or do we have to use our eyes? (What about the fact that our brains technically reconstruct everything we see, so we’re never really directly observing anything?) And how about statistical generalizations, such as learning that a large proportion of sea turtles die young and also learning that there are lots of sea turtles, and generalizing that many sea turtles die young?
Depending on the choice points taken here I think the view that a tree only matters if it makes a sound could lead to some pretty undesired places.
But further, given the motivation for this idea is that value ultimately comes from valuers, a further requirement is, presumably, not only that valuers must observe what happens but also make an evaluative judgment about it. For things to have value we need valuers to actually confer that value, not merely make an empirical observation.
So what if observation and valuation are detached? Suppose that as a young species we care greatly about a particular religion, or as a young person I care greatly about a particular career. Later in our life, we observe that that religion or that career has not panned out, but at that point we don’t care. Does our not caring about the event at the same time it happened strip away the value from that event? Or can things matter even if we only cared about them long ago?
I think this choice point is important. If, for something to matter, we have to care about it at the same time as it happens, then value shrinks enormously to the things that we notice and have some judgment on at the same precise moment that it happens — a class of things that might be empty, since it normally takes at least 50 milliseconds for the light to hit our eyes, to then process the event, and then form a judgment. But if, alternatively, we can care about things at different times from their occurrence, why can’t we care about things that happen in the future after we have died?
Concern #2: Throwing away information
A second concern is that if it is true that things only matter if, (1) we exist or (2) we observe those things, then there is a powerful moral reason to throw away information about bad things that happen. We should try as much as possible to avoid observing the suffering of wildlife, since in doing so we would make it matter. Or, at least, if something bad were to happen in the universe, we should try to make humanity go extinct before it occurs in order to strip away any of its disvalue.
Oddly, removing this kind of information could be the very most important thing to ethically prioritize. If, for example, we can avoid ever observing suffering of wildlife, that’s morally equivalent to eliminating the suffering of all wildlife, which is otherwise incredibly intractable. If avoiding observing things is hard, we could simply do a lot of meditation and a lot of therapy, and stop caring about those things, in order to strip away all of their value.
Perhaps there is an argument that given that we now care about these things, it doesn’t matter whether we care about them later, as we’ve already conferred value on them. But if so, by parity, we can confer value on things that happen after we die, and they still matter even if we’re not around to observe and value them.
Concern #3: Clash with our practice
Finally, to me it appears that we simply do care about what happens after we (individually or collectively) die. We honor the wishes of the dead and fulfill their wills because this mattered to them while they were alive. We are deeply concerned about natural impacts that could destroy the entire planet. And many of us are motivated to reduce risks of human extinction.
A core insight of existentialism is that there is no other evaluative perspective other than the one that human valuers bring to the table. No authority above or below us can tell us what we can care about, that’s totally up to us. So if we in fact seem to care about what happens after we die, no one can tell us that that’s wrong.
My solution: projectivism
Arguably the most consequential philosopher in history, and one of the earliest ethical antirealists, David Hume defended a philosophy of mind called “projectivism.” On projectivism, as human beings we spread our minds all over the world. Hume argued that causation isn’t something we can actually observe, but our minds make it real by projecting it onto the world around us such that, via mental habit, it is impossible for us not to think of the world in terms of causation. He also claimed as much of beauty and moral value: this isn’t something that is inherent in the world, but our minds paint it all over the place, conferring value on ordinary things through our intentions.
On my interpretation of this view, we can confer value on objects by valuing them. By caring about the long term future, we project value onto the future via our caring such that it has value when it happens. Yes, I will no longer be there when my granddaughter defends her PhD dissertation, but her success matters to me now, and when it happens it will matter from my then-past evaluative perspective. And it makes sense for me to act now to make it more likely that my granddaughter succeeds on that basis, even though I won’t be around to observe it.1 The future of humanity is the same way. No one will be around to observe it if we go extinct, but if we do that will matter from our present perspective, and it makes sense for us to take steps to avoid it. We can simply approve of the view that what we care about matters everywhere and at every time, and doing this makes it so.2 In light of our psychological concern for the future, we are then rightly motivated to act to increase the probability that our goals for the future will be achieved.
- You might think that a further implication is that we have to fulfil the wishes of our younger selves, but this doesn’t follow. It can simply be the case that you ought to do what you presently endorse, and you presently endorse making the world go better after you die. ↩︎
- For a technical essay defending this idea at greater length see Simon Blackburn’s “Errors and the Phenomenology of Value”. Thanks to Peli Grietzer for the pointer. ↩︎
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