No. I’m not a “utilitarian”. Utilitarianism is the professed “morality” of states. I’m just a human being.
You better get used to it if you plan on sticking around here. Now you get a small taste of what passes for sanity and intellect at this place… yeah. I know.
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Forgive my confusion, you said earlier that your moral philosophy had something to do with harm, that sounded utilitarian to me.
Can you say more about what makes something moral or immoral? Is it just intuitive, “I know it when I see it” moral judgments? Nothing wrong with that as a personal morality, but how do you reconcile conflicting moral intuitions? Are moral debates just politics?
As I say, I’m just a human being. I have moral inclinations and inhibitions and I generally follow them. Sometimes, dilemmas arise. There’s not much I can do about dilemmas. There’s generally no right answer to dilemmas. There are just choices and the choices in dilemmas don’t produce any moral satisfaction at all. They may be acts of mitigation but they aren’t resolutions.
As far as harm goes, I try to do the least of it that I can. Of course, it’s not possible to live in this world and not do harm to other living beings. That seems to be the nature of existence. It doesn’t mean I just throw up my arms and do whatever I want. It means I’m slowly digging my moral grave. And I’m not in a hurry to dig it. So I abstain from doing harm as much as possible.
How do you view morality? How do you reconcile conflicting moral intuitions? Do you consider yourself a “utilitarian?”
How should people who disagree about morality resolve their disagreements? It seems like a system based on personal moral inclinations leaves only force (or implied threat of force) to resolve disputes.
Morality is ultimately an instinct to adopt certain beliefs and customs of ones group and enforce them on oneself and other members of the group. The instinct exists because it conveyed a fitness advantage by facilitating cooperation and coordination of the group, which benefits the individual members of the group.
I view morality by reference to that function.
Conflicts should be resolved by considering how different moral claims would affect the coordination and cooperation of the group. On some questions that will provide an objective answer. On others it provides an objective criteria against which arguments can be considered.
But it doesn’t resolve all moral conflicts, because on some moral questions it may only matter that people agree – the analogy is driving on the left vs. the right side of the road, there’s no objective reason to prefer one or the other but it’s important that everyone agrees. Because of our moral instinct, these questions are likely to feel like they have a correct answer, even if objectively they do not. In these cases, it comes down to coalition building, which is an implicit threat of force.
I do not, though I used to. Utilitarianism is a good heuristic, because our subjective experiences are also the result of selection: we feel positively about things that helped our ancestors survive, and negatively about things that would have prevented their survival. Often the net of individual feelings will also be what’s best for the group.
But feelings can be wrong, as when we get positive feelings from sugar and fat and heroin, or negative feelings from strangers or hard work. Mill tried to rescure utilitarianism by suggesting a distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ happinesses, but that’s an ad hoc fix to make utilitarianism conform to morality. So too are other versions of utilitarianism, e.g. preference utilitarianism, which hand-wavily replace happiness with preference or what have you.
Subjective experience is just the wrong metric. Better I say to look at what morality does, at why we have it at all, and evaluate moral claims against its function. That’s what I mean by “functional morality”.
And it’s why I think reproduction must be a moral good, or at least that a general antinatalism cannot be: whatever the function of morality, it must be compatible with the perpetuation of humanity.
What is “good” is very relative to context, in this case, what is morality.
Morality is generally defined as dealing with what is right or wrong within human actions.
nb: Personally, I define morality as the management of evil [to be defined] strategically and optimally.
If reproduction is a moral good, then [re Moral Objectivism] effectively it has to be a moral imperative, i.e. all humans has a duty to strive to reproduce as many children as possible presumably to increase the chances of preservation of the species by large numbers.
But this has its negativity, i.e. the overpopulation and its dangers which could threaten the preservation of the species.
Thus if morality is defined as good actions, it would appear “reproduction is moral good” is self-contradicting and self-defeating.
As such “reproduction is a moral good” is not tenable.
Nevertheless, the inherent potential of reproduction is critical and good if controlled optimally.
If reproduction is not to be considered within morality, it is still something that is critical and good for humanity within the following considerations:
- A Fundamental Human Right: Reproduction can be framed as a fundamental human right, essential for the continuation of the species and the fulfillment of personal desires.
- A Source of Joy and Fulfillment: Emphasize the personal and emotional benefits of having children, such as love, companionship, and a sense of purpose.
- A Contribution to Society: Highlight the positive impact that children can have on society, such as becoming productive members, innovators, and leaders.
- A Responsibility to Future Generations: Present reproduction as a responsibility to ensure the well-being of future generations and the continuation of human civilization.
- A Balance with Environmental and Social Concerns: Address the need for responsible reproduction practices that consider environmental sustainability and social justice.
If we do not maximize population growth within a moral good, the critical non-moral point is how do we ensure the human population do not fall below the critical minimum.
So there is a need to balance population growth with sustainability via:
- Encouraging family planning and access to reproductive healthcare to allow individuals to make informed choices about family size.
- Investing in education and economic opportunities, which often lead to lower birth rates naturally.
- Supporting research in areas like sustainable agriculture and resource management to ensure the planet can support a healthy human population.
The other consideration are:
- How can we bridge the gap between individual desires for family size and societal needs for population control?
- What role can government policies and technological advancements play in achieving sustainable population levels?
My point:
Reproduction need not be subsumed within the ambit of morality but it is still a very critical and good elements of human nature within humanity that need to be managed.
Prismatic aka Veritas Aequitas [PN]
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It doesn’t matter whether a trait furthers individual or group fitness. That is, what fitness is really about is the survival of “selfish” genes.
However that may be, of course genetic survival is (one of) the end(s) of morality when morality has been selected, i.e. furthers fitness!
Morality, then, is a means to genetic survival. But is this end itself good? And if so, for whom and/or what? Subjective experience is not a product of evolution…
So, let’s say this became the common moral attitude of a population - iow if you grew up in this society, then it is likely via parenting and what is conveyed directly and indirectly is social situations and media, this attitude is passed on.
Then we have someone who really doesn’t want to have children, but feels it is a kind of duty to the collective. So, they have kids, but they really didn’t want them and when they are with the children, even despite the affection they feel for them, they don’t like the role and they feel burdened (or some other negative feeling) in relation to their children. How might this make their children feel, consciously or otherwise?
Then on a more practical level? In a world with increasing population, why should any individual feel a pressure or consider it moral as an individual to have children? Why can’t it be like other things that are necessary for a significant portion of the population to do, but it need not be a rule. For example, we must have teachers, doctors, garbage collectors, but we don’t need everyone to do these things. But we must have a minimum number for society to function well. Can’t people note the increasing population and then combined with their own preferences choose not to have children and be moral. Perhaps if the population was decreasing, they might have a different reaction.
It would be terrible for society if everyone lived as a hermit. But can’t we allow those (even to the extent of not view them as immoral) who, in a society where most people are social, to live as they prefer?
And don’t we want people who feel an innate distaste, fear, inadequacy, incompetence or lack of interest to leave certain roles to people who want to do something and consider themselves (often incorrectly) competent for this role? We actually stop some people from doing things that are essential because they are not deemed competent. But here for some reason we want people who do not want to do something to consider themselves and be considered immoral if they don’t do something, even though the role is being taken on by people who do want to. Must we all have the same life?
Is there a sense that it is placing an unfair burden on ‘some’ people to have children? But that’s not how most people view parenting. They want to have children. This would be a confused view, I think, from the perspective of most parents.
Something like recycling, where it’s a bit annoying and takes work, those who don’t recycle are leaving a necessity (let’s say) to others. I can see those who recycle getting annoyed at those who don’t. But here with having children, I don’t see that as what is happening. They are not seeing themselves, generally, as doing their unpleasant or annoying duty of having children while others shirk this duty to the collective. And honestly, I’m glad I didn’t have parents who thought this way. I think that attitude around me from birth would have been quite damaging, seeping implicitly or openly stated.
And if everyone has children, they’ll be even greater need to recycle. ( 
)
Does this imply that we have a moral duty to be heterosexual, unless we can somehow demonstrate that in our case, it is genetic? Or if we are bisexual but fall in love with a same sex person, we are shirking our duty if we don’t abstain from this love and find an proacreatable-with partner?
If our partner turns out to be sterile should we leave them? (I realize other duties may offset this duty to have children, but I am looking at the effects of prioritizing this duty)
Should people who decide that there are enough children in the world already and decide to adopt being immoral?
So, I think there might be a fallacy of compostion in your position: the fallacy might be in assuming that because it would be bad if no one or many less people had children, it must therefore be a duty for everyone to have children.
Also, perhaps a false dilemma. Right now we have a critical mass number of willing and desiring parents. In this situation I can’t see why people who don’t feel that desire (enough) or a negative reaction to the idea must consider having children a duty to the collective. The FD comes in that they could potentially re-evauluate in that situation where a virus destroys most people’s ability to procreate or some other shift in the critical mass occurs.
Also, when we have a situation where the majority have a desire to do something, I think ideas of duty and the universalization the duty are inappropriate.
One key issue for me is the right to self-select out of parenthood, or perhaps the reasonableness of self-selecting out, if we want to leave out rights.
There can be all sorts of good reasons some people do not become parents. They don’t like kids, the are a recovered alcholic and think they might be driven back to drink, they would be controlling, they have anger management issues and dozens of other reasons. But note: one could merely have an intuitive sense that it’s not a great idea or something block’s the desire. If we look around we likely will see people who we wish had self-select out of parenthood. People may well have been drawn not to have children for good reasons, even if one cannot articulate this. I think this should be honored.
And, yes, some people feel these things and then turn out to be fine parents and when the child comes they change their minds. However, this does not rule out the strong possibility that many people correctly are drawn away from being in that role.
Further, it may well be good for civilization that there are people who do not have children, by choice, because this creates a different view on life, and even parenting and children. So, I will also take the position that a diversity of life patterns and alternate views are positive, though the postive effects of this may be hard to track.
Life is inherently valuable because ‘value’ only exists for living things. To be alive already means you have values and are yourself of value, at least to yourself. Value-capable beings or what we call living beings. Therefore creating more life would be a moral good from the perspective of life being valuable. Maybe the universe doesn’t care if more life exists, but the life that already exists does care. And by creating a new life you are also creating a new value-capable being that will value its own existence, hence determining its own morally good value to and for itself.
If all life ceased to exist there would be no values and no morality. Reproduction as understood as the process of both keeping life in existence and increasing over time the amount of life in existence, must therefore be a moral good at least in the minimal and necessary sense as regards the meaning of morality as ‘what is good for value-capable beings’.
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Just as eating, drinking are good, reproduction is also good but not necessary morally good. It is too messy to chuck too many variables into ‘morality’ which could hinder its development and progress. [Occam]
All humans are programmed with a VERY strong drive to F… and with maternal and paternal instincts, thus the chances of producing and nurturing for the next generation is high.
However, in principle and theory [not in practice] what is immoral is the intentional prevention of reproduction and birth [e.g. abortion]. This is to ensure the MVP is at least maintained.
Humanity has to be mindful to ensure there is no overpopulation that is self-defeating.
In practice we have to optimize the practical against the theory [ideal].
If reproduction need to be classified as a moral good, then we need to introduce the concept of continuum of moral good, where reproduction on the lower end of the ‘moral good’ end.
True, and well stated.
“Moral good” refers to an ideal state of a person’s beliefs and values that is considered most beneficial to society. Eating and drinking may be good, but here the moal good might be moderation. Reproductions moral good lies in its benefit to society, although moderation may also be appled here.
I’d go so far as to say…even individual abstensions.
Moral good is just about a tautology. Whatever is good, is good. We don’t need to know the how and why in order to know this. And knowing this doesn’t mean we are also able to know what specific good things are. That takes work to try and figure out.
At best we do our best to approximate moral goodness, which means we try to align our ideas of what morally good things are as best as we can with the truth of what is actually morally good. We may never know the full picture of what moral goods are or how and why they are, but we can at least try our best. And that ‘trying out best’ is also an aspect of moral goodness although certainly is not by itself sufficient to produce morally good results in all cases (but it’s certainly good in most cases to have that kind of attitude).
Reproduction can be good, specific to individual cases, in so far as it can lead to morally good results. Or reproduction can be seen as either a necessary aspect of bringing moral goods into the world or itself being an outcome of other moral goods having occurred (love or sex for instance, or a desire to care for others). Then there are the social factors, such as what is actually good for society in general. And finally we have my initial analysis that reproduction is generally speaking or as a whole morally good simply because ‘moral goodness’ only applies to living beings capable of having values, and at least as far as we know the only way for such beings to continue to exist, and hence for morality to continue to exist, is for reproduction to occur.
But then we get a deeper question: is it morally good to prevent moral goodness from disappearing from existence? What is all life vanished, or even just all human life? In the case of all humans disappearing a certain, indeed a very large amount of the moral goodness in existence would also disappear. But can moral goodness be seen intrinsically as good in and for itself? I’m not sure about that, because moral goodness always applies to value-capable beings for whom things can be good (or not). Rocks and hydrogen atoms don’t care about anything, living beings do care.
I believe it makes the most sense to claim that it is morally good to try and prevent moral goodness from disappearing from existence both for the sake of preserving moral goodness itself but also primarily because moral goodness is good for living beings. Again we get back to the truistic nature of good and bad, something a lot of philosophers don’t understand. If something is good then it is good, if something is bad then it is bad. For whom and why? Yes, exactly.
We should look at the other side of the issue too, so-called anti-natalism which is the idea that reproduction is morally bad because life is morally bad due to a propensity of suffering over non-suffering.That may certainly be true for some people but I can’t see an argument being reasonably made that it is the case for most people. It would also require parsing sufferings based on their severity, because some types of suffering end up being net positive. For example we might go through a difficult period in our lives for a short time, only to emerge out the otherside doing better with more perspective and growth. And to a degree, feeling good or having good results can sometimes be predicated upon feeling bad or having had previous bad results first. Like a cycle up and down where the contrasts between extreme polarizations is what produces at least some of the value experienced.
I understand why people have anti-natalist views but I would encourage them not to be hypocritical about it. If THEY think life is bad and reproduction is bad then why are they still alive? They value life at least enough to maintain it for themselves and to not be taking the lives of others around them. Why? Probably they would say because those things would cause more suffering. So… we have at least an argument for maintaining life that already exists in so far as to end it would cause more net suffering, although it’s hard to sustain that claim when we consider things like painless dying.
Anti-natalists can’t become the majority simply because if they did then that particular society or world would tend toward its own oblivion, and another form of life would replace it. Life can’t be undone simply by wishing it away, or even actively trying to get rid of it all. Imagine someone with near infinite power and wealth becomes an anti-natalist and decides to trigger planetary nuclear war, hundreds of nukes are all launched at the same time. Yes most surface life on the planet will die, but plenty of life will still survive. And life will grow and come back.
In any case it would be interesting to see a discussion here between an anti-natalist and those like me who claim that reproduction is (at least most of the time or in general) a moral good.
Do you assume that the idea that moral knowledge is immediate or intuitive, as in moral intuitionism?
I agree with you that the concept of “good” might be clear in the abstract, but applying it to particular situations involves empirical investigation, practical wisdom, and often, ethical deliberation.
I have recently been investigating the transcendentals, which are properties of being that transcend particular categories and apply universally. Traditionally, the primary transcendentals are truth, beauty, oneness and finally goodness. For Plato, the good was the highest form, and knowing the good was akin to knowing the truth. The Delphic emphasis on self-knowledge and moderation resonates with Platonic thought, where the good life involves understanding deeper truths about the human soul and its relationship to the ideal forms.
Moral goodness often involves harmony and integration within oneself and with others, suggesting a unification of desires, actions, and values. This I discover in many Eastern philosophies, and I think we do too little to consider these aspects of philosophy.
I don’t use terms like moral intuitionism or Platonic transcendentals, I find those academic jargony things are unhelpful at best, harmfully obfuscating at worst. I prefer to just talk about things directly without overly labeling them. But sure if you want to put things in those terms, go for it. Our process of relating to truths certainly involves aspects which we can call non-conscious or more automatic, occurring closer to the level of biological structure-as-such for example when information is encoded into our neural networks. That kind of thing may be described as or lead to outcomes describable as “intuitive” and indeed there is a lot of information encoded as structure, which doesn’t need to be experientially learned. I would be more interested in trying to figure out how much and which aspects of the truth-processes themselves occur at this level of pure structure vs not, and how those two domains interact with each other while running and processing their connectivity to truths as such.
I would say that certain aspects of moral goodness are innate, things we are born with. Or rather, we are born with certain attributes that incline us toward following moral goodness, but because these are more rote and automatic they require the added finesse of experiential learning and, most importantly, reason and understanding to subtlize our responses making them more closely align with the actual moral goodness of any given situation.
To what you said about harmony and moderation, yes these seem like pretty useful and morally good values or strategies, some of the time anyway.
Is this true of instrumental moral goods? It seems not, since it seems consistent to hold that something is an instrumental moral good in moderation but not in excess. I lean toward reproduction being an instrumental moral good, but I’m still uncertain about that.
Even if it’s an ultimate moral good, “as possible” can do a lot of work here. It depends on what counts as “reproduction”, something I haven’t discussed, (though I now realize this issue was implicit in some of @GaryChildress’s criticisms as well). If reproduction only counts if it produces people who are themselves capable of reproduction, that would put significant limits on how many children a person could have, since each new child competes for resources with the last and therefore decreases the likelihood that each child will live to reproduce themselves.
It would also address some of the other issues you and @greenfuse raise around overpopulation and environmental capacity, since creating new humans in numbers that threaten to collapse earth’s ecosystem would not be “reproduction”. That seems a bit convenient, but it fits with the motivating moral framework of functional morality, which is concerned with the integrity of the group.
This topic was motivated in part as a response to the moral arguments of antinatalism; how do we deal with a case where different sides of a question disagree with whether the question is moral vs. amoral, or instrumentally vs. ultimately moral?
Your policy questions about how to balance societies’ and individuals’ interests in reproduction are interesting and I’d be interested to discuss them more, but I think they’re beyond the scope of this topic.
I’m not sure I understand this distinction, possibly because I do see moral good as continuous. But in that case, we may only disagree as to where reproduction falls along the continuum; is it productive to rank moral goods?
We should be cautious with this kind of question, as it can be question begging with respect to the nature of morality.
My claim isn’t exactly that ‘means to genetic survival’ is what ‘good’ is, but I’ll use it to illustrate the point: if we define it that way, we can rephrase your question as, “Is a means to genetic survival itself a means to genetic survival?” I don’t think that’s the question you mean to ask, and I take from your final sentence that you think morality has something to do with subjective experience. So it seems question begging: there’s an implied premise that good isn’t means to genetic survival.
This is well said, and sums up a type of criticism that required a moderation of the position, i.e. that having children can’t be a duty, it’s just better all-else-being-equal. Individuals may choose to do different good; their choices should be considered on net. But in tallying the net of someone’s moral life, having children is in the positives column.
It can still be bad to be mean to your kids, and good to adopt. They’re just separate acts. A doctor who works in refugee camps is doing something good, and anyone who decides not to be a doctor to refugees forgoes a certain good act, but may choose other good acts in its place.
One response is what I said in my response to @Prismatic567 above: if increasing population will collapse the ecosystem, then there is a greater harm outweighing the moral good of reproduction.
But I’d also challenge the idea that overpopulation is a problem. Population is increasing, but the rate at which it is increasing is falling, and it is projected to level off this century at ~10 billion. That’s a lot more people, but it’s not a significant portion of the planet’s biomass.
And maybe you’re worried about pollution, but new humans aren’t the primary source of pollution, that’s driven by increasing wealth in the developing world. Fortunately, energy use per person in the developed world has been falling for half a century despite the digital boom, a trend driven by technological advancements that is likely to continue, so a 25% increase in population will be more than offset by increases in efficiency (even setting aside energy production is getting cleaner).
(most of those links are to charts; the only exception is the one about biomass, and there’s a good chart halfway down the page)
I agree with this as well, I said some things to that effect another thread, where I compare moral diversity to environmental diversity to argue that a society with different and competing moral systems is likely to be more resilient than one where everyone has the same moral system.
I think that’s consistent with a metaethics of functional morality. It’s less consistent with a claim that a particular act is a moral good in all moral systems, as I make here. But just as murder is wrong in almost all moral systems, it could be that reproduction is good in all consistent moral systems. That has an appealing symmetry.
“Moral good” is a little redundant, though it does distinguish the moral sense of the word from other senses, e.g. the sense in which delicious food or a well-executed painting or movie is ‘good’.
I think if I’d called this topic, “Reproduction is Good”, it would have gotten a very different response.
I agree with this. Functional morality just adds the observations that ‘mental attributes we are born with’ are also known as ‘instincts’, that instincts evolved because they helped our ancestors survive and reproduce, and so we can know morality by considering the function that the moral instinct played in helping our ancestors survive and reproduce.
But I didn’t say it was a problem. I said…
It could be, but I don’t see any reason to assume that. Murder is harming a present life. Not giving birth is not harming anyone, in a world of increasing population. My point about diversity was not so much diverse moral, but diverse lifestyles. Most want kids, enough to increase the population worldwide. Some don’t. Is it better if the population increases faster? Is it worse if it doesn’t?
If it is better that the population increases at the greater rate where those who don’t want kids but consider it a moral duty anyway have kinds, then it seems to me having one kid and stopping there would be immoral. Being bi and marrying (and being monogamous with a same sex partner. Not getting married young, or not procreating young - though this is complicated.
Going back to the diversity of lifestyles, those who do not have kids will have different perspectives on life, parenting, values and many other things. This adds to diversity in perspective and memes.
I see no gain in those people moving into parenting - nor in others, out of duty, continuing to create pregnancies they are not drawn to for selfish or relationship-based reasons.
Only if I meant, ‘is this end itself morally good’. But that’s not what I meant. I’d have been aware of the circularity otherwise.
Not morality, not moral goodness, but goodness in the sense you gave as an example to HumAnIze: “the sense in which delicious food or a well-executed painting or movie is ‘good’.”
“Moral good” is not tautologous, not redundant.
It isn’t question begging, though. If genetic survival is your (only) goal, then any means to that is good, yes—good with ultimate regard to your goal. But then, that goal must itself be heritable, otherwise your offspring might not have it and hence not (actively) pursue it. Yet for this very reason, it cannot be your ultimate goal, for then it would include the goal of having your offspring pursue the goal of having their offspring pursue the goal etc. etc. etc.!
“The world of moral man, the world which sees the human good in its subordination to the laws of nature or of God—the world Liberalism would abolish—is the world the Jew characterizes, when he says that ‘the reward for the fulfillment of the commandment is the commandment’.” (Harry V. Jaffa, Foreword to Harry Neumann’s book, Liberalism.)
“The instincts of his herd teaches every herd member that his chief concern is securing what is good for him. Insofar as he remains a pious herd member and not a questioning, Socratic herd member, he wholeheartedly accepts some form (there sometimes are opposing forms) of his regime’s regnant orthodoxy about what is good for him. Far more than modern ‘liberated’ Jews, Nietzsche knew that Judaism’s deepest stratum, its messianic longing, is for a regime in which Jews again can be pious herd members in that sense.” (Neumann, Liberalism, “The Case Against Liberalism”.)