Abstracts Political Science

Chronopolitanism: political inclusion and the distant future

by Tyler M. John

An area of recent philosophical interest concerns longtermism. Longtermism is the view that we should be particularly concerned with (even distant) future generations. It is sometimes strengthened in the form of strong longtermism, the view that the primary determinant of the moral value of our actions today is their effect on the long-term future. The long-term future, here, refers to a period of time surprisingly far into the future, such as 1,000 years from now. Progenitors of longtermism have characteristically been most concerned, morally, with the aggregate welfare of the long-term future, and practically, with work to reduce the risk of human extinction. I aim to broaden the scope of longtermist reflection, morally, by providing an analysis of a set of non-welfarist and non-consequentialist intergenerational ideals, and practically, by providing an analysis of a set of interventions which may rival extinction risk reduction in the value of their long-term effects. In Chapter 1, I consider the prospects for extending the non-welfarist and (predominantly) nonconsequentialist ideals of political legitimacy to future generations, contrary to the tacit assumptions of political philosophers. I show that, among extant accounts of political legitimacy, the most promising accounts of the grounds of political legitimacy imply that States have duties of legitimacy to future generations as well as to present citizens. In Chapter 2, I analyse a set of interventions for improving the value of the far future through the amelioration of political short-termism, the excessive priority that political systems give to present net benefits at the cost of future ones. I show that one popular set of proposed interventions centred on youth empowerment is unlikely to significantly increase the time horizons of political systems, and propose a novel set of political institutions employing a novel system of retrospective accountability which shows much greater promise. In Chapter 3, I analyse a set of interventions for improving the value of the far future through a form of moral values change, specifically interventions which seek to improve the far future by shaping humanity’s moral attitudes towards nonhuman animals today. This set of interventions is initially promising, but its case hinges on highly controversial theory about consciousness, the persistence of changes to human values, and about the psychological relationship between our various moral attitudes.