1 - DanielCC
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Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
A couple of weeks ago, as part of an experiment I left a post on on an Anti-Natalist forum asking regulars there to give what they believed were the most common or most series positive arguments for reproduction (after all these people must know what it is they attack), with a promise that I would post it here in a few weeks. Well more than a few weeks, a broken internet connection and an old flat have passed since then but now at last I fulfill that promise. Below the line is the post I left there. If people here should care to chip with other views plus what they hold to be the best argument it would be much appreciated.
A personal note: as people have probably noticed I am unsympathetic to the Natural Law answers in this case. Amongst other things it risks reduces the valuing of another in a romantic partnership as an end to reproduction - if asked why this reproduction or 'the Family' is a good the only answer is that it follows from our nature; all other selves become an endless stream of means to be consumed (and for what end). For the Romantic side I am as one might expect more sympathetic to Von Hildebrandism and Theology of the Body though still find both these unsatisfactory with regards to reproductive ethics.
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In this thread I'd like people to take a step-back from the overt Pessimism, Anti-Natalism, Cosmic Indifferanitism stance for a moment and inquire as to what the good arguments for reproduction* actually are. Of course I wouldn't expect most people here to agree with them - though feel free to say so if you do - only to try to set them out in their strongest form. As an experiment I'm going to post what is basically the same question on a Theology forum in a few days too.
*By this I mean arguments to the effect that reproduction is a positive good, one that we ought to engage in, rather than just being morally neutral.
First consider some really 'positive' philosophical standpoint, say Neo-Platonism or Christian Universalism, one on which every existing person will eventually achieve union with the Godhead. Does this alone give us a positive reason for reproduction? Not as far as I can see. Surely the desire to reproduce is an aspect of our animal nature, an instinctive striving for a bogus 'immortality of the species' as Socrates' interlocutor in The Symposium puts it. This doesn't make it wrong to engage in but, on the other hand, it does not make it right either. Why bother? Why not love and commune with the persons that do exist?
Now here's an important point, one which doesn't require any of the metaphysically 'heavy' material above, that is on any 'optimistic' view might not one argue that to not reproduce is to deny one's potential children participation in happiness? The answer to this is almost certainly no and there's a good reason. It's hard to see how we could have duties to non-existent, merely possible people - it would open the door to fantastically counter-intuitive ethical conclusions (think of how many possible persons a single person has denied existence to in all the moments throughout his or her life with during which he or she did not engage in reproduction). There are ways for the ingenious try to neutralize some of these consequences but whatever it's going to be a hard bullet to bite.
Here's a range of options:
Virtue Ethics: A person who reproduces realises one of their own natural ends, that is engages in something conducive to self-perfection. I suspect this view is held implicitly by a surprisingly large number of people. I don't want to put too much of my own views forward here, but for me this sits badly with the Kantian maxim about treating people as ends not means.
Consequentialism: reproduction and the birth of children serves to help maximise happiness for existing humanity. This can be taken in a maximally broad sense to include anything from maternal satisfaction to the promise of our care in old age to material for organ farming. As one might imagine variantions on this view are disturbingly prevelent nowadays.
An alternative Aesthetic take: let's say that rather than maximizing human happiness we are called to maximize earthly beauty, taken in a qualitative as opposed to quantitative sense (taken in the former sense it might be hard to justify across the board reproduction given the amount of resources humanity uses up).
The sake of the State: we ought to reproduce so our State or Nation survives. A comment: this is a very odd view but one I've actually seen given on a number of occasions. What sort of entities are the States or Nations in question? One would normally say talk of such things is really just convenient short-hand for talk of relatively arbitrary collections or mereological sums, however on this view they seem to be something above that. Could a State be an abstract object, a universal all it's members instantiate in some way? Maybe but it's hard to see why even the lushest ontology needs such a plethora of gerrymandered entities. Maybe one could get round this by identifying them with Sets of the requisite Sets (e.g. Austria is the set of all sets made up of its inhabitants, the latter to be defined in a non-cyclical way) but even so why go to all that trouble?
For those who don't like the ponderous Analytical murmurings there's a simpler and more to the point objection - even if said entities did exist why on earth should we have any duties to them or care about their survival?
Golden Rule based/Categorical Imperative: we ought not to act in a way we would not want others to take up: thus if we do not reproduce others will not, and if this imperative is to be universal then, were it to have been followed, we ourselves would not have been born, something which we would consider bad. This is another option though Golden Rule accounts are subject to a plethora of problems of their own. In just this instance I think there is a confusion in the application of it to the case of one's own birth - what we will there is not the act of reproducing but the act of producing us which cannot be (re)done by another and thus cannot be proscribed.
These are the only options I can think of for the moment. I’ve simplified for the sake of keeping this post within reasonable length (and getting out of the flat before the estate agent arrives), so apologies if I’ve unintentionally misrepresented any position (I suspect my take on Golden Rule arguments is a straw-man). If you have any thoughts please do share them.
Last edited by DanielCC (10/14/2015 4:30 am)
- iwpoe
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
Can two people have *corporate* ends that aren't theirs individually? Is that an intelligible idea? I mean one way to try and stave off the idea of instrumentalizing someone to fulfil *your* telos is to claim that, no, it's *our* joint *telos* that arises in our communion.
The motive for that kind of interpretation is not merely this case, for me, since I think a strictly individualist understanding of ends and means accounts poorly for any number of group dynamics. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to speak as if the pitcher is *using* his teammates for his *personal* end of executing the right play and they all the same re him. Nor do I think it makes a lot of sense that in a large corporation it any one person has as his personal ends the various tele that the whole clearly has. In complex group activities and structures, I'm almost inclined to say that there is some sense to the idea that it is the group that uses the members.
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- iwpoe
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
It also occurs to me that you might be reproduction-positive in the sense that you merely think contraception a grave wrong. Things being such as they are, failure to contracept is a de facto, if not de jure strong support for reproduction.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
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- DanielCC
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
iwpoe wrote:
It also occurs to me that you might be reproduction-positive in the sense that you merely think contraception a grave wrong. Things being such as they are, failure to contracept is a de facto, if not de jure strong support for reproduction.
Yes, that's partly what I am afraid of on NL accounts - the child is merely a necessary evil to morally legitimise sexuality, a means to one's sexual pleasure. Think of it as a more metaphysical version of procuring: instead paying the madame a few hundred pounds one is obliged to pay Nature a human soul.
Of course were this the case one would be pushed to argue that sexuality in toto is wrong.
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Thread Starter- iwpoe
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
It also occurs to me that you might be reproduction-positive in the sense that you merely think contraception a grave wrong. Things being such as they are, failure to contracept is a de facto, if not de jure strong support for reproduction.
Yes, that's partly what I am afraid of on NL accounts - the child is merely a necessary evil to morally legitimise sexuality, a means to one's sexual pleasure. Think of it as a more metaphysical version of procuring: instead paying the madame a few hundred pounds one is obliged to pay Nature a human soul.
Of course were this the case one would be pushed to argue that sexuality in toto is wrong.
I'm not entirely sure that early Christianity (especially Paul and early Christian monasticism) doesn't think this. Paul's attitude seems to be "the world is ending and marriage (sex/children) are a distraction from the proper objects of life".
Last edited by iwpoe (10/14/2015 1:15 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- DanielCC
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
I don't agree with your criticism that NL is self-centered, because humans are social animals and our happiness (in the broad sense of fulfillment, not the limited sense of pleasure) is always going to be bound up with the happiness of others.
.. .But I doubt the medievals would have made sense of that, and Aquinas' idea of human flourishing is very much a social one, not at all focused on personal gain.
Yes, without going off on a tangent this is another aspect of NL I'm decidedly not onboard with, the idea of some Common Good (often poorly defined) or Sociality as a determiner of moral actions. I wouldn't deny that there are specifically social goods but these are built up out of personal self to other interactions - to do it the other way is to try to build the house from the roof down.
It is true that reproduction, on NL, serves to fulfill one's ends: but the child isn't a means to the fulfillment of reproduction - the child surely is the fulfillment of reproduction. This idea seems to be implicit in much of what is said by parents - a lot is said of happiness, but the child is not treated as merely instrumental to that happiness. Basically, your criticism of NL seems to rest on the view that one's own fulfillment cannot be something beyond oneself, which I take to be false.
Could elaborate on this? Surely the idea of reproducing for the child's sake falls to the problem of our being unable to will the good for non-existent persons e.g. I cannot will the good for the (de re) actual being that will be my son only any being that will fall under that description (de dicto). I agree something like what you say seems the most obviues answer but formulating it proves very difficult.
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Thread Starter- Greg
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
Do you think that the natural law approach is distinct from the virtue ethics approach, Daniel? While both are broad camps and they would tend to diverge (with some authors) on questions of obligations and moral absolutes, I don't know why they would be different.
You claim that the virtue ethics answer is intension with the Kantian maxim that people be treated as ends not means. But people can see reproduction as an act type as being perfective of themselves without understanding a common result of reproduction (a child) as means. In other words, the act of reproduction is seen as good and (consequently) pursued.
Perhaps the thought that this must involve using a child is linked to the thought that an act will not be an act of reproduction unless one has a child in mind. I don't think that is true. But also, that does not seem to be sufficient for using a child; one can see the good in an act that is charitable toward one's neighbor, and will it for that reason, but that does not seem to imply that one is using one's neighbor in an unacceptable way. Or: if that's how we're to understand Kant's maxim, then so much the worse for Kant's maxim.
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
There is something funny about Kantian dignity- particularly the wiggle room wherein Kant demands that no one be treated as a *mere* means. It's the third formulation of the Categorical Imperative and it goes:
Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.
I think that reproducing merely *because I would enjoy having a child* if this is meant as one means one enjoys regular hot baths, is probably the reduction of the child to mere means. I don't know if anyone means to morally defend any view of reproduction as consumer activity.I certainly won't, and it is depressing that parents like this are rather common in the first world.
But are their non-means only appraoches? I think that if my intention is to bring about new life because this is a good in itself, then I'm free of violating the Kantian maxim.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
I'm not sure if I can put them in proper argument form at the moment, but I can think of a few more points that can be made in favour of the goodness of reproduction. One Platonic argument is that of creation. Man is made in the image of God, and God is the creator. It is a central aspect of man's being to be creative. Now, there are many ways he can do this, but to create and raise children as part of a loving, sacred marital bond is surely one of the most important outlets for such creativity.
On the issue of the sake of the state, can we not say it is natural to wish to continue the bonds of community, knowledge, and continuity - the bonds of eternal society, as Burke put it. After all, this is how society and community is formed and continues (if the conservative, communitarian is correct at least).
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
Could elaborate on this? Surely the idea of reproducing for the child's sake falls to the problem of our being unable to will the good for non-existent persons e.g. I cannot will the good for the (de re) actual being that will be my son only any being that will fall under that description (de dicto). I agree something like what you say seems the most obviues answer but formulating it proves very difficult.
But, then, surely neither can you be using as an instrument someone who does not yet exist?
Going back to the idea of creation, and using a Platonic notion of the process of human craftsmanship and creativity (cf. Eric Gill and Ananda Coomaraswamy), might we be able to say that just as the craftsman starts with the Form of a work in his mind, which he then individuates (first in his mind when he plans in more detail the particular piece and then in the physical piece itself), it is the idea of a child that is aimed at until the individual child exists.