So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs? And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead? This seems counterintuitive.
Yet I admit it seems also counterintuitive to me to respect the wishes of your past self if your present self changed their mind. It is almost as if you have more obligations toward the past wishes of now dead people (like your parents) than toward the wishes of your past selves.
I’m not the OP, but I bite that bullet all day long. My parents’ last wishes are only relevant in two ways that I can see:
Their values are congruent with my own. If my parents last wishes are morally repugnant to me I certainly feel no obligation to help execute those wishes. Thankfully, in real life my parents values and wishes are fairly congruent with my own, so their request is likely to be something I could evaluate as worthy on its own terms; no obligation needed.
I wish to uphold a norm of last wishes being fulfilled. This has to meet a minimum threshold of congruence on point 1) above, but if I expect to have important last wishes that I will be unable to fulfill in my lifetime, I may want to promote this norm of paying it forward. Except I’m not convinced doing so is actually very effective; surely it’s better for me to work towards my own goals rather than work towards others in the hope it upholds a norm that will get my goals carried out later. Or, if my goals are beyond my own ability to execute then surely I should be working to get those goals accepted by more people on their own terms, rather than as an obligation to me.
Your #2 motivation goes pretty far, so this is actually a much bigger exception to your bullet-bite than you might think. The idea of “respecting the will of past generations to boost the chances that future generations will respect your will” goes far beyond sentimental deathbed wishes and touches big parts of how cultural & financial influence is maintained beyond death. See my comment here.
So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs?
Yes, as I said in my last paragraph. Would you bite the other end of the bullet if the “conservationist” had been the ardent fan of cuteness and the descendants cared more for the environment as a whole?
And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead?
That would depend very much on what the last wishes were. If a parent’s dying wish were that their offspring grow up to be an accountant, would you think that imposed any obligation? Especially if they are already establishing themselves as a professional musician?
My parents are dead, btw. Their estates were disposed of according to their wills, by custom and law, and that was that. Cremated, no graves to visit. There were no informally expressed last wishes. I was not especially close to them anyway.
Wishes about cuteness and accountants: I admit that fulfilling some dead person’s wish can conflict with your own wishes. But this this seems to be just an instance of the usual moral problem of weighing conflicting preferences of different people. As a rough approximation: If the desire of the descendant that X should not be the case is lower than the desire of the deceased that X should be the case, it seems plausible that X should be realized by the descendant.
For illustration: Imagine yesterday some person A, who is not in town, wants you to do them a favor and mow the lawn of their old neighbor. You agree, because you like A and A did you a favor in the past as well. If you don’t do it, person A will never find out, but you respect their wish and fulfill it.
Now assume A unexpectedly dies tomorrow. Would this change anything versus A living another 40 years? Why would it be relevant that A is alive while you mow the lawn? As I said, you know that A wouldn’t find out either way. In neither case does A learn whether you have cut the lawn, in both cases you are just fulfilling their wish.
I’d suggest that if the obligation doesn’t involve an inheritance, you at most have the obligation if you’d have had that obligation if the person had still been alive. You have no obligation to obey a demand from your parents that you be an accountant even when they’re still alive.
So would you bite the bullet on the example in the first three paragraphs? And you don’t have any moral obligations toward fulfilling the last wish of, say, your parents, after they are dead? This seems counterintuitive.
Yet I admit it seems also counterintuitive to me to respect the wishes of your past self if your present self changed their mind. It is almost as if you have more obligations toward the past wishes of now dead people (like your parents) than toward the wishes of your past selves.
I’m not the OP, but I bite that bullet all day long. My parents’ last wishes are only relevant in two ways that I can see:
Their values are congruent with my own. If my parents last wishes are morally repugnant to me I certainly feel no obligation to help execute those wishes. Thankfully, in real life my parents values and wishes are fairly congruent with my own, so their request is likely to be something I could evaluate as worthy on its own terms; no obligation needed.
I wish to uphold a norm of last wishes being fulfilled. This has to meet a minimum threshold of congruence on point 1) above, but if I expect to have important last wishes that I will be unable to fulfill in my lifetime, I may want to promote this norm of paying it forward. Except I’m not convinced doing so is actually very effective; surely it’s better for me to work towards my own goals rather than work towards others in the hope it upholds a norm that will get my goals carried out later. Or, if my goals are beyond my own ability to execute then surely I should be working to get those goals accepted by more people on their own terms, rather than as an obligation to me.
Your #2 motivation goes pretty far, so this is actually a much bigger exception to your bullet-bite than you might think. The idea of “respecting the will of past generations to boost the chances that future generations will respect your will” goes far beyond sentimental deathbed wishes and touches big parts of how cultural & financial influence is maintained beyond death. See my comment here.
Yes, as I said in my last paragraph. Would you bite the other end of the bullet if the “conservationist” had been the ardent fan of cuteness and the descendants cared more for the environment as a whole?
That would depend very much on what the last wishes were. If a parent’s dying wish were that their offspring grow up to be an accountant, would you think that imposed any obligation? Especially if they are already establishing themselves as a professional musician?
My parents are dead, btw. Their estates were disposed of according to their wills, by custom and law, and that was that. Cremated, no graves to visit. There were no informally expressed last wishes. I was not especially close to them anyway.
The dead are gone. The living continue.
Wishes about cuteness and accountants: I admit that fulfilling some dead person’s wish can conflict with your own wishes. But this this seems to be just an instance of the usual moral problem of weighing conflicting preferences of different people. As a rough approximation: If the desire of the descendant that X should not be the case is lower than the desire of the deceased that X should be the case, it seems plausible that X should be realized by the descendant.
For illustration: Imagine yesterday some person A, who is not in town, wants you to do them a favor and mow the lawn of their old neighbor. You agree, because you like A and A did you a favor in the past as well. If you don’t do it, person A will never find out, but you respect their wish and fulfill it.
Now assume A unexpectedly dies tomorrow. Would this change anything versus A living another 40 years? Why would it be relevant that A is alive while you mow the lawn? As I said, you know that A wouldn’t find out either way. In neither case does A learn whether you have cut the lawn, in both cases you are just fulfilling their wish.
I’d suggest that if the obligation doesn’t involve an inheritance, you at most have the obligation if you’d have had that obligation if the person had still been alive. You have no obligation to obey a demand from your parents that you be an accountant even when they’re still alive.