Volume 29, Number 1
November 2024
ARTICLE

Navigating Nonidentity: Scanlonian Contractualism and Types of Persons

Volume 29, Number 1, November 2024, Pages 86–106
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v29i1.3436
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Abstract

Scanlonian contractualism has difficulties to account for our moral obligations to future generations due to the nonidentity problem. A prominent solution is to refer to the more general standpoints or types of future persons in moral deliberation. This paper critically examines the “types-of-persons approach” and identifies two alternative versions that have been conflated so far. The types-of-persons approach could claim that the relevant reasons for objection are either (1) the reasons of types of persons, or (2) type-based reasons of token persons. I explore these two options in more detail and argue that both are, in their own ways, incompatible with central features of Scanlonian contractualism. Consequently, the types-of-persons approach fails to offer a satisfactory solution to the nonidentity problem for Scanlonian contractualists.
Copyright © 2024 D. Valeska Martin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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