This framework uncovers principles of intergenerational justice through the lens of decision-making behind a veil of ignorance, suggesting new insights into ethical choices.
Ideal Contractualism views principles of justice as corresponding to what rational, mutually disinterested persons would collectively choose behind a veil of ignorance. It is well-known that Ideal Contractualism faces profound challenges in accounting for justice between generations. We present a unified solution to these problems that involves rejecting the assumption that the parties conceive of their choices as causally efficacious and assumes instead that the parties choose in light of the news value of their decision. And we explore what concrete principles would be chosen by the parties as governing intergenerational justice against the backdrop of this assumption.
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Gustafsson et al. (2025) studied this question.
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