Melinda A Roberts
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873338 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melinda A Roberts |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melinda A |
| FAMILY NAME | Roberts |
| SIGNATURE | ROBERTS M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | College of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6067-9287 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Two Dogmas of Population Ethics: MacAskill’s Existentially Unrestricted Form of Longtermism and the Value of Existence
This paper focuses on two arguments William MacAskill discusses with approval in What We Owe the Future. Both arguments support the existentially unrestricted form of longtermism that MacAskill favors, and both rely on moral principles that reflect a particular way of resolving the decades-old, Narveson-inspired, value of existence controversy. But it is questionable whether that way of resolving the controversy — i.e., against Narveson — has eve…
Population, existence and incommensurability
The Existence Puzzles: An Introduction to Population Ethics
This book introduces newcomers to population ethics, a relatively new branch of moral philosophy that asks how moral law addresses distinctions in how many people, and just who, will exist in the future. This book also proposes a new way of thinking about the hard cases that population ethics is so widely known for. An intuitive first pass at what moral law has to say about the choice to bring new people into existence to begin with comes from Na…
Population Ethics, the Mere Addition Paradox, and the Structure of Consequentialism
In this paper, I describe three structural issues population ethics raises for any form of consequentialism that embraces what we can call the basic maximizing idea, the idea that it makes things better, in a morally relevant sense, to make things better for people. What we say about those structural issues will in turn determine what we say about some of the most challenging problems of population ethics. I explore a handful of our options here,…
Nils Holtug, Persons, Interests, and Justice (Oxford: (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. x + 356
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Asymmetry: A Solution
The Asymmetry consists of two claims. (A) That a possible person's life would be abjectly miserable – less than worth living – counts against bringing that person into existence. But (B) that a distinct possible person's life would be worth living or even well worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. In recent years, the view that the two halves of the Asymmetry are jointly untenable has become increasingly en…
An Asymmetry in the Ethics of Procreation
According to the Asymmetry, it is wrong to bring a miserable child into existence but permissible not to bring a happy child into existence. When it comes to procreation, we don't have complete procreative liberty. But we do have some discretion. The Asymmetry seems highly intuitive. But a plausible account of the Asymmetry has been surprisingly difficult to provide, and it may well be that most moral philosophers - or at least most consequential…
Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem
Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem
The Non-identity Fallacy: Harm, Probability and Another Look at Parfit's Depletion Example
The non-identity problem is really a collection of problems having distinct logical features. For that reason, non-identity problems can be typed. This article focuses on just one type of non-identity problem, the ‘can't-expect-better’ problem, which includes Derek Parfit's depletion example and many others. The can't-expect-better problem uses an assessment about the low probability of any particular person's coming into existence to reason that…
The Study of Attic Black Gloss Sherds using Synchrotron X-ray Diffraction
The Study of Attic Black Gloss Sherds using Synchrotron X-ray Diffraction
The Non-identity Fallacy: Harm, Probability and Another Look at Parfit's Depletion Example
The non-identity problem is really a collection of problems having distinct logical features. For that reason, non-identity problems can be typed. This article focuses on just one type of non-identity problem, the ‘can't-expect-better’ problem, which includes Derek Parfit's depletion example and many others. The can't-expect-better problem uses an assessment about the low probability of any particular person's coming into existence to reason that…
An Asymmetry in the Ethics of Procreation
According to the Asymmetry, it is wrong to bring a miserable child into existence but permissible not to bring a happy child into existence. When it comes to procreation, we don't have complete procreative liberty. But we do have some discretion. The Asymmetry seems highly intuitive. But a plausible account of the Asymmetry has been surprisingly difficult to provide, and it may well be that most moral philosophers - or at least most consequential…
The Study of Attic Black Gloss Sherds using Synchrotron X-ray Diffraction
The Non-identity Fallacy: Harm, Probability and Another Look at Parfit's Depletion Example
The non-identity problem is really a collection of problems having distinct logical features. For that reason, non-identity problems can be typed. This article focuses on just one type of non-identity problem, the ‘can't-expect-better’ problem, which includes Derek Parfit's depletion example and many others. The can't-expect-better problem uses an assessment about the low probability of any particular person's coming into existence to reason that…
Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem
Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem
The Asymmetry: A Solution
The Asymmetry consists of two claims. (A) That a possible person's life would be abjectly miserable – less than worth living – counts against bringing that person into existence. But (B) that a distinct possible person's life would be worth living or even well worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. In recent years, the view that the two halves of the Asymmetry are jointly untenable has become increasingly en…
An Asymmetry in the Ethics of Procreation
According to the Asymmetry, it is wrong to bring a miserable child into existence but permissible not to bring a happy child into existence. When it comes to procreation, we don't have complete procreative liberty. But we do have some discretion. The Asymmetry seems highly intuitive. But a plausible account of the Asymmetry has been surprisingly difficult to provide, and it may well be that most moral philosophers - or at least most consequential…
Nils Holtug, Persons, Interests, and Justice (Oxford: (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. x + 356
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Population Ethics, the Mere Addition Paradox, and the Structure of Consequentialism
In this paper, I describe three structural issues population ethics raises for any form of consequentialism that embraces what we can call the basic maximizing idea, the idea that it makes things better, in a morally relevant sense, to make things better for people. What we say about those structural issues will in turn determine what we say about some of the most challenging problems of population ethics. I explore a handful of our options here,…
Population, existence and incommensurability
The Existence Puzzles: An Introduction to Population Ethics
This book introduces newcomers to population ethics, a relatively new branch of moral philosophy that asks how moral law addresses distinctions in how many people, and just who, will exist in the future. This book also proposes a new way of thinking about the hard cases that population ethics is so widely known for. An intuitive first pass at what moral law has to say about the choice to bring new people into existence to begin with comes from Na…
Two Dogmas of Population Ethics: MacAskill’s Existentially Unrestricted Form of Longtermism and the Value of Existence
This paper focuses on two arguments William MacAskill discusses with approval in What We Owe the Future. Both arguments support the existentially unrestricted form of longtermism that MacAskill favors, and both rely on moral principles that reflect a particular way of resolving the decades-old, Narveson-inspired, value of existence controversy. But it is questionable whether that way of resolving the controversy — i.e., against Narveson — has eve…
Epistemology (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Population (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Free Will and Agency (3 works) · Law and economics (3 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (3 works) · Physics (3 works)