The radical contingencies attending human reproduction indicate that attempts to improve the living conditions of future generations result in generations populated by different individuals than would otherwise have been born. This remarkable consequence challenges the widespread belief that the present generation has responsibilities to its remote successors. Partridge contends that while the radical genetic contingency and epistemological indeterminacy of future persons absolves us of obligations to act “in behalf of” them as individuals, this moral absolution does not entail a permission to disregard entirely the remote consequences of our policies. Second, he suggests that by applying an analogous argument within the lives of persons rather than to the long history of civilization, we arrive at the morally repugnant result of negating long-term obligations to contemporary persons. Conversely, obligations among contemporaries likewise entails moral responsibility for the life conditions of distant generations
