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Quality of Life Assessments, Cognitive Reliability, and Procreative Responsibility
Author(s) -
Marsh Jason
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/phpr.12114
Subject(s) - skepticism , happiness , worry , argument (complex analysis) , psychology , quality (philosophy) , epistemology , work (physics) , reliability (semiconductor) , social psychology , positive economics , environmental ethics , philosophy , economics , medicine , power (physics) , physics , quantum mechanics , psychiatry , anxiety , mechanical engineering , engineering
Recent work in the psychology of happiness has led some to conclude that we are unreliable assessors of our lives and that skepticism about whether we are happy is a genuine possibility worth taking very seriously. I argue that such claims, if true, have worrisome implications for procreation. In particular, they show that skepticism about whether many if not most people are well positioned to create persons is a genuine possibility worth taking very seriously. This skeptical worry should not be confused with a related but much stronger version of the argument, which says that all human lives are very bad and not worth starting. I criticize the latter stance, but take seriously the former stance and hope it can be answered in future work.