...with Generations and the Ethical Choice to Have Children

Is dividing people up by their generation (Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, etc.) unhelpful and even harmful? Is it a form of ageism, along the same lines as racism or sexism? What is the coming crisis of our time, and have we already arrived? And is it ethically justified to have children in this world in flux?

Ben is in Kingston for a fascinating conversation about all this and more with philosopher Christine Overall of Queen's University.

About the Guest

Christine Overall's teaching, supervision, research, and publications are in the areas of feminist philosophy, applied ethics (including bioethics), philosophy of religion, and philosophy of education. She is the editor of four books and the author of six. Her book, Aging, Death, and Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry (University of California Press, 2003), won both the Canadian Philosophical Association’s Book Prize and the Royal Society of Canada’s Abbyann Lynch Medal in Bioethics. Her book, Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate,  was published by MIT Press in 2012.  She also recently edited Dying in Public: Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer, by Sue Hendler (Michael Grass House, 2012). Dr. Overall was a weekly columnist for the Kingston Whig-Standard from 1993 to 2006, and also wrote a column for University Affairs/Affaires universitaires from 2008 to 2011.

Mentioned in this Episode

• A quick guide from CareerPlanner.com about generations, by Michael T. Robinson
• The Pax Americana (Latin for 'American Peace', modeled after the Pax Romana during the Roman Empire), a term for the relative global peace and prosperity in the years following the Second World War
• The Greatest Generation, a 1998 book by US journalist Tom Brokaw about those who grew up during the Great Depression and went on to fight in the Second World War
• "Will turning your phone to greyscale really do wonders for your attention?", a 2017 article in The Guardian
• Samuel Beckett, 20th century Irish writer and author of the famous play, Waiting for Godot
• Sophocles, ancient Greek playwright and author of the Oedipus Rex
• The Ethics of Belief, a book by 19th century philosopher and mathematician William Clifford
• Cui bono, a Latin phrase meaning, 'who benefits?'
• "The Story of the WWI Christmas Truce", an article in the Smithsonian Magazine
• The Prisoner's Dilemma
• "The Case for Not Being Born", an article about philosopher David Benetar in The New Yorker, 2017
• Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar, 2006
• Philosopher's Index, an online philosophy database
• 'Turtles all the way down', an expression of the philosophical problem of infinite regress
• "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it", a quote often ascribed to Aristotle

The Quote of the Week

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." - William Clifford (1845-79), mathematician