How to Enhance the Motivation for Drug Detoxification: Consciousness Guidance and Behaviour Restriction of Family Intergenerational Ethics

Assisting substance users to recover from the behaviour of drug addiction and maintain long-term rehabilitation is a long and complicated process, in which the motivation to undergo drug rehabilitation plays a decisive role. So far, the cultural connotation of family and its mechanism of promoting behavioural change of substance users have not been fully explored. Through in-depth interviews with 15 drug rehabilitants, among which there were 7 women and 8 men, it is found that the motivation for drug rehabilitation is stimulated under the guidance and restriction of family ethics based on obligation and responsibility, which is mainly reflected in the longitudinal intergenerational responsibility. On the one hand, negative consequences such as intergenerational liability deficit and reputation damage lead substance users to reflect on ethical values. On the other hand, disciplines such as intergenerational responsibility and obligation and mutual assistance can correct the actual behaviour of substance users in ethical practice. In contrast to Western countries, which focus on external environmental factors such as family function, family relationships and family support, the motivation for drug rehabilitation in China places more emphasis on their identity and role as family members and corresponding responsibilities, which provides inspiration for developing social work services for substance users from family cultural norms.

Discounting and Intergenerational Ethics

The question of social discounting is central in intertemporal cost-benefit analysis that often shapes economists’ recommendations regarding climate policy. The practice of discounting has been the object of heated debates among economists and philosophers, revolving around the issue of intergenerational ethics. In this chapter, we review the different arguments for and against specific values of social discounting. We show that there are actually two different ethical issues at stake: 1) the question of impartiality (or equal treatment of all generations); 2) the question of priority to the worse-off (aversion to inequality in resources, capabilities or welfare). These questions have emerged in the utilitarian approach and can be neatly separated in that case. They also have very different consequences for climate policy. We then argue that the question of social discounting is not confined to the utilitarian framework as it more generally describes the social value of income (or capability or welfare) transfers to future generations. Lastly, we discuss the many limitations of social discounting as a tool for policy analysis.

Should We Deploy Nuclear Energy?

This chapter argues that the lens of intergenerational ethics could help flesh out the moral implications of nuclear energy production and waste management. Instead of using ethics as a yardstick to pass a dichotomous judgment on nuclear energy, a better understanding of the technological subtleties of different existing and future nuclear technologies is needed; different technological pathways could influence the interests of different future generations in different ways. A more detailed look at these technologies and at future generations could improve the appreciation of the subtle intergenerational dilemmas of nuclear technology and contribute to technologically and ethically informed policymaking about the future of nuclear energy. This will provide a solid step toward comparing a specific type of nuclear energy (and its associated short-term and long-term risks and benefits) with other energy technologies.

Political Institutions and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter reviews two prominent debates about institutions and intergenerational ethics, one held at the time of the founding of America and the other held today in the context of climate change. These two debates have more in common than may, at first, appear. On the face of it, the historical debate was about whether institutions, specifically the constitution, may bind future generations or whether the latter should be left maximally unencumbered. By contrast, proponents of climate change mitigation today would like institutions to be more inclusive of future generations’ interests. But, this chapter suggests, the new debate ought to be understood along the same lines as the old one, namely as being about avoiding disenfranchisement, that is, about preventing a situation in which previous generations determine too much of the context of future generations’ choices.

Species Conservation, Biotechnology, and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter evaluates biotechnological species conservation strategies, such as de-extinction, genetic rescue, conservation cloning, and gene drives, in light of the requirement that one has a responsibility to ensure environmental conditions that are conducive to future people having a reasonable chance at a decent life and access to a broad range of environmental goods and values. The chapter argues that the extent to which biotechnological conservation can meet responsibilities to future generations depends not only on the technologies developed and the biological materials that are banked but also on conserving sufficiently intact ecological systems. This is because many of the ways in which species are valuable are tied to social and ecological relationships. Therefore, biotechnological conservation should not be seen as a substitute for more traditional approaches to conservation. It is best understood as a complement to be used in certain types of cases, such as to increase genetic diversity within a target species that has been through a severe population bottleneck or to suppress anthropogenically introduced threats.

Well-being and Intergenerational Ethics

This chapter argues that alongside the individuals who are welfare subjects, certain “multigenerational entities” (MGEs) are so too. It also argues that MGE well-being makes differences to what people should do. More briefly, it argues that certain non-welfare features of certain MGEs make such differences too. These matters are intergenerational by concerning entities that are essentially multigenerational, rather than through the more-traveled paths of connection just among entities in different generations. Overall, this chapter aims to identify, for the philosophy of well-being and intergenerational ethics, some good reasons to engage positively with the planet and its future, beyond those that ambitiously individualistic approaches can generate.

Postericide and Intergenerational Ethics

In the Anthropocene, future people are dangerously vulnerable to the conduct of present people. The advances made by humanity since the Industrial Revolution give the current generation the ability to damage and degrade the environment in ways that could make humanity go extinct. What measures should be taken to protect future people from the dangers of extinction they face? This chapter outlines a new international crime of postericide as a morally required response to humanity’s changed circumstances. Postericide is committed when an agent intentionally or recklessly performs conduct fit to bring about the extinction of humanity. International criminal law contains no precedents for the prosecution of postericide. A proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it is, in this respect, incomplete. Drawing on political and legal theory, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence, this chapter defends postericide as a moral necessity in the Anthropocene, and shows how it is entailed by the ideals at the heart of international criminal law.

Consequentialism as an Intergenerational Ethic

Consequentialist morality is about making the world a better place—by promoting value and producing valuable outcomes. Consequentialist ethics competes with non-consequentialist alternatives where values are to be honored or instantiated rather than promoted and/or where morality is based on rules, virtues, or rights rather than values. Consequentialism’s main rivals in intergenerational ethics are contract-based theories. This chapter first argues that consequentialism has significant comparative advantages over its contract-based rivals, especially in relation to non-identity, the absence of reciprocity, and the need for flexibility and radical critique. These advantages outweigh the challenges facing any consequentialist intergenerational ethics—including cluelessness, counterintuitive demands, and puzzles of aggregation. The chapter then explores many varieties of contemporary consequentialism, arguing that the best consequentialist approach to intergenerational justice is agnostic, moderate, collective consequentialism. Different possible futures—including futures broken by climate change or transformed by new technologies—present new ethical challenges that consequentialism has the flexibility to address. Collective consequentialism can also resolve long-standing debates about the aggregation of well-being. The chapter ends by asking how consequentialist intergenerational ethics might evaluate threats of human extinction, incorporate the value of nonhuman nature, and motivate its potentially extreme demands.