Philosopher awarded Royal Society medal on what we owe people in the future

What do we owe people in the future? This question has been the focus of Professor Tim Mulgan's distinguished research career.

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

A professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, Dr Mulgan is the 2022 recipient of the Humanities Aronui Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

He says thinking about how we can extend current ethical thinking, which focuses on what we owe to one another to cover the many new ways in which we can influence the lives of future people involves “fascinating philosophical puzzles” driven by the fact that the very existence and identity of future people depend on our present decisions.

“Can you harm someone by your actions if they would otherwise never have existed at all, for example? And there is also the pressing, practical question of how we should balance the interests of people in the present against the interests of those in the future.”

His research on cosmic purpose arose indirectly from a teaching experience at the University of Auckland. “In 2003 I was teaching a course on the existence of God in our first-year metaphysics course (PHIL 100). We worked our way through a series of arguments for and against the existence of God that have been central to Western philosophy for much of the last 2000 years.

“Looking at these arguments in quick succession, I was struck by the thought that, even if they succeed, most traditional theist arguments only enable us to conclude that there is a God of some kind, while these same arguments would also only prove there is not a God who cares about us.

“This leaves open a third alternative: that there is a God (or other source of cosmic purpose), but that we are irrelevant to that purpose. This thought eventually led to my 2015 book Purpose in the Universe.”

He says the connection between the two projects is that a particular challenge in the field of future ethics is motivation. “How can we motivate present people to make the sacrifices that we owe to future people? My tentative answer is that we need the human future to link our own lives in meaningful ways to the purpose of the universe.”

One strand of his research imagines possible futures – damaged by climate change or facing imminent extinction – and asks how philosophers living in those futures might respond to our current philosophy and behaviour.