André Santos Campos

New University of Lisbon, IFILNOVA

Rights of Future Persons and the Non-Identity Problem

9 March 2018, 15:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: This talk aims at identifying the challenges posed by the non-identity problem to the idea of rights of future persons. Firstly, I will present a survey of the different responses to the non-identity problem that support some version of the rights of future persons. Secondly, I will connect those responses to the non-identity problem’s underlying metaphysics of time and modality, as well as to the language of rights it employs, and I will demonstrate that none of them is able to support the existence of rights of future persons in the light of the nature of correlativity between duties and rights. Thirdly, I will offer an alternative reading of the deontic relations between members of non-necessarily-overlapping generations, either by derogating the language of rights (in a present-future kind of temporal order) or by restricting it to temporally-overlapping persons (in a semi-future conception of the present).