Our Obligations to Future Generations:
1. Golding- "the reach of the moral community"- Golding believes that, as time goes by, we owe less to future generations. We owe the most to the now, and our children, but we owe practically nothing to generations thousands of years from now. This is because we have no connection to them- things will change so much that we will have nothing in common- we will be in different "moral communities." We only feel obligated to protect communities that believe the same things/live in the same environment as what our world provides today [which is a strange way of wording this ideology- it doesn't mean that americans shouldn't feel obligated to africans because we live so differently. We all live in the same world. Thousands of years from now, the world will not be the same.]
2. Parfit- "The identity problem"- The "necessity of origins" is the idea that something can only be produced from what they are made of. It sounds obvious. A wood table is not a wood table if it is not made from wood. It cannot be a wood table made from metal. The necessity of origins implies that a person could not have been conceived at a different time or by different people then they actually were. In order for me to be me, I had to be made from that ONE sperm and that ONE egg. It couldn't have been any different, or it wouldn't have been me. Might be close, but not quite me. Makes sense. Parfit says that any social policies that we make will change who is being conceived. Policies affect where people are, what they do, and when they do it. So, if we did a Back to the Future kind of timewarp thing- we could see two different routes- one if we enforced a certain policy and one if we didn't. In theory, the people produced would be entirely different people. Parfit says that this means that we owe nothing to a certain group. If our future generations were to complain, we have the defense that, had we not done what we did, they would not exist. So we can use up as many natural resources as we need and future generations have to be grateful that they, as individuals, are alive. Kinda. Parfit then redeems himself (because he sounds pretty awful at that point) by saying that the only way that humans can do bad is if the future they bring is worse off than what could have happened. (So this means, no using all the natural resources- we have to give the future generations the best place we can.)
3. Hardin- "what to do"- Hardin says that if we are going to take our future obligations seriously, we must appoint an elite group of people to put away resources. This means, instead of us using all natural resources now because we feel like we need them, save them so that they may be used more efficiently in the future (think something along the lines of edible seeds- we could eat them now or save them and plant them for future generations.) Putting away resources can be at the cost of our current generation, according to Harding. We need the elite group to stay away from corruption- nobody will put away food if they, themselves, need food. This elite group would have whatever they needed so that they were not tempted by what they were storing.
Taxonomy:
1. Wilson's Biological Species Concept- A species is a closed gene pool. Organisms belong in the same species if they can mate with each other and produce fertile offspring. (House cats are the same species, but a house cat and a tiger are not.) [I believe that this is the most accepted way of classifying organisms, but there is some lenience.]
2. Dupre's Morphological Species Concept- Questions why classification has to be based on sex. Dupre suggests classifying organisms by things they have in common, like color or number of leaves, etc.
3. The Phylogenetic Species Concept- This is a more recent concept. It suggests that organisms should correspond to evolutionary branching- that is, things be broken down like a family tree, where you can see what evolved from what. This is not widely accepted, however, because birds came from reptiles and birdwatchers don't want it to seem like birds are inferior- right now birds and reptiles seem to be on the same level. o_O
**4. The status of other taxa- my notes say: "no condition that makes things be in different taxa- artificial." I don't know what this means.
5. Dupre's pluralism and monism in classification- as I mentioned before, these different concepts are mixed. We use different species concepts for different situations. It's weird, but we can't figure out a perfect way to classify.
Okay. This is all for now. Must go watch Tila Tequila.
dwendus Community Member 
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