Third, those presently alive can affect the very existence of future people (whether or not future people will exist), the number of future people (how many future people will exist), and the identity of future people (who will exist).
It also privileges one particular way of doing business over alternative forms that currently exist or, more importantly, may exist in the future.
An excerpt (from "The Alphabet"): "early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought; / seclusion and angels exist; / widows and elk exist; every / detail exists; memory, memory's light / afterglow exists; oaks, elms / junipers, sameness, loneliness exist; / eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar / exist, and the future, the future".
These practices which existed in the past will not exist in the future.
After all, if we allow ourselves, even fictionally, to exist in the future, then we can be reminded of why we must exist in the now.
As noted above, Aristotle provided a metaphysical justification of teleological language in biology by introducing the notion of final causality, in which reference to what will exist in the future is used to explain what exists or is occurring now.
In this way, users can create images of people who have never existed in the past— and may never exist in the future.
Just because a technology does not exist today does not mean it won't exist in the future.
"Historically, it's not something that's ever existed and neither is it something that will ever exist in the future," Ayoade says.
Parfit is very struck by how little time humans have existed on the earth compared with how long they may exist in the future.
