An Intergenerational Dialogue with My Critics

Abstract

In this reply to critics, I begin by addressing concerns about the ability of future rights to justify current duties. I then move to the issue of whether a collectivist approach can help us facing the difficulties that we encounter when we want to hold some people responsible today for what their ancestors did. I then conclude the paper by considerations on the social discount rate, discussing both ideas about discounting for reasons of uncertainty and the implications of a Schefflerian approach for the practice of discounting.