Rivka Weinberg

Rivka Weinberg is an American philosopher. She is a Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College. She specializes in bioethics, the ethics of procreation, and the metaphysics of birth, death, and existence.

Rivka Weinberg
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Career

Weinberg attended Brooklyn College, where she earned a BA degree.[1] She then graduated with a PhD from the University of Michigan.[1]

In 2016, Weinberg published the book The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible. In The risk of a lifetime, Weinberg studies the ethics of human procreation, focusing not on common ethical topics in procreation such as abortion rights but rather on the problem of when it can be justified to create a human being.[2] The book is therefore motivated by the question of how to judge the value of being a person against the value of never existing at all.[3] Weinberg takes as a starting point a perspective that has been called pessimistic: the notion that life is inherently bad, with many attendant risks, and that the decision to procreate must be weighed against these risks.[4] Building on a Rawlsian theory of justice and responding to the nonidentity problem of philosophers like Derek Parfit, Weinberg argues that procreation can only be justified under two conditions: a person who chooses to procreate must have the intention to nurture and care for their child once it is born, and they must believe that the risk they impose on their future child by creating it would be rational for them to accept as a pre-condition of their own birth in exchange for the opportunity to then procreate.[5] This latter constraint is drawn from the contractualism of John Rawls and the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[6] Weinberg makes an analogy between these requirements and the risk-management requirements that are placed on people who handle hazardous materials like uranium; in the case of procreation ethics, the hazardous materials that can plausibly bring harm to others are human gametes.[7]

Several implications of the theory of procreation ethics that Weinberg developed in The risk of a lifetime have been explored in journal articles or the popular media. For example, since Weinberg's theory of procreation ethics explicitly weighs the risks that are imposed on children by creating them, it implies that people who are in a situation that would likely expose their offspring to greater risks therefore are less likely to have a rational case for procreation; this includes people with heritable diseases and those living in severe poverty.[8] It also suggests that the risks imposed by global warming should have some bearing on peoples' procreation decisions.[9][10] Another implication of Weinberg's theory that she notes in The risk of a lifetime is that sperm donors and egg donors have responsibility as parents for the children that their gametes are used to create; she has further explored this implication in academic journals.[11]

Weinberg has also written news media articles about the culpability that individuals have in morally compromising situations, including individual complicity in evil deeds that are encouraged by powerful people; her writing on this topic was subsequently discussed in The Washington Post,[12] Fast Company,[13] and Business Insider.[14]

References
  1. "Rivka Weinberg profile". Scripps College. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  2. Simkulet, W. (May 2016). "Review The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53 (9).
  3. Roberts, Melinda A. (January 2017). "Review The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". Ethics. 127 (2): 512–517. doi:10.1086/688767.
  4. Rainbolt, George W. (9 October 2016). "Review The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 95 (4): 833–834. doi:10.1080/00048402.2016.1238952.
  5. Conly, Sarah (18 December 2018). "Review The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". Journal of Moral Philosophy. 15 (6): 787–790. doi:10.1163/17455243-01506007.
  6. Aleksandrova-Yankulovska, Silviya (24 October 2018). "Review The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. 40: 67–73.
  7. Woollard, Fiona (October 2017). "Review The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People; The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible". Analysis. 77 (4): 865–869.
  8. Goldhill, Olivia (13 March 2019). "Are the students in the admissions scandal morally culpable?". Quartz. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  9. Timsit, Annabelle (14 April 2019). "These millennials are going on "birth strike" because of climate change". Quartz. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  10. Wienberg, Rivka (14 July 2017). "Is it unethical to have kids in the era of climate change? A philosophy professor explains". Quartz. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  11. Weinberg, Rivka (1 February 2008). "The moral complexity of sperm donation". Bioethics. 22 (3). doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00624.x.
  12. Rubin, Jennifer (24 January 2020). "'If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost' — and we are". The Washington Post. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  13. Cohen, Arianne (22 January 2020). "Heroism not necessary: a philosopher outlines 4 steps to combatting racism and anti-Semitism". Fast Company. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  14. Spielberger, Daniel (January 2020). "How the Auschwitz Memorial's Twitter account became the internet's Holocaust fact-checker". Business Insider. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
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