ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the third and final criterion for a successful account of scope. This requirement concerns the way in which future people are to be included in an account of scope, holding that future people must be included for their own sake and never because of their derivative importance to us. This limits the ways in which our obligations to future people may be justified. This chapter argues that unless an account of scope is justified by future people’s equal entitlements to the conditions of autonomy and includes future people as ends in themselves it will sanction using future people as mere means and allow for unjust future worlds. As an alternative scenario, this chapter considers Samuel Scheffler’s interpretation of our relationship to the future, which he suggests is one of dependence: he argues that we need to be confident that future people will exist in order to retain our ability to value things in the present. This chapter argues that relying on our dependence on future people as a justification for including them in the scope of justice would have morally unacceptable consequences. Adopting the proposed criterion guards against this possibility.
