A Conceivable Human Future: Time & Morality in the Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth thought 87 of 365: A conceivable human future is not one in which Earth’s diversity of life can recover from a mass extinction. The last recovery took tens of millions of years. All of recorded human history is just ten thousand years. Species, like the living beings of which they consist, have a history: they are born, [sic] they develop, and then one day they are no more. No doubt it’s hard for humans to imagine the end of the species they belong to, or to conceive that over 99.9 % of the species that ever lived on Earth are already extinct. (Courtillot, 2002, 4) Good afternoon. Thank you for coming today, and thanks to the Baker-Nord Center and Anne Helmreich for inviting me. I want to especially thank Maggie Kaminsky, for coordinating my visit, and Laura Hengehold for initially seeing if I’d be interested in talking. I want to start by being open. This talk is not what was advertised, neither the first advertisement which stated I would aim for a philosophical definition of the species, nor the second advertisement which said that I would explain why philosophy makes it hard to understand the mass extinction and which alluded to the opaque idea of identifying with the history of life. ϕ I want to thank Paul Pinet, Holmes Rolston III, Tim McKay, Breena Holland, and Kyle Burchett for helpful correspondence related to this talk, and Elaine Wolf for discussing the talk with me. Dave Keymer, who used to teach Social Studies in Olmstead Falls, suggested some editorial changes. Cyrus Taylor raised the interesting question of how genetic engineering might play a role in a conceivable human future. Comments welcome