Most potential parents I speak to – even generally wonky and nerdy ones – don’t think much about the morals concerns surrounding creating new people.
My wife and I struggled with this for years.
If you read what others have thought there are clear anti-natalist who believe it is always wrong. They have much to offer. Schopenhauer was in part responsible for my Pessimistic Awakening. Everyone should read Benatar even if you come away still thinking its lunacy.
On the other hand there are an almost endless list of pro-natalists. Being an economist I was attracted to the externality arguments of Simon – more people make a better world. And, the utility maximizing arguments of Bryan Caplan – children make your lives better.
However, I had a hard time finding pro-natalist who grappled deeply with whether or not having children was morally right for the child. There seemed to be a dearth of answers to the problem of “wrongful life” – the notion that brining people into existence is a crime against that person.
Even more puzzling the space seemed to be fairly empty of persons who gravitated towards my final view which I can summarize in parts
- Bringing people into existence is a morally ambiguous exercise that depends in large part on your estimation of how much the person will suffer vs. enjoy life. Though this seems like an arrogant “god-like” judgment, you cannot avoid making it because you do in fact have the power to create life and all of the moral responsibilities that go along with it.
- Having created life you do have a special responsibility to that life. From a purely utilitarian perspective once a child is born his or her suffering is no less important than the suffering of millions of children around the world. However, your imposition of life creates a special moral obligation. Imposition is the word I think most appropriate. I can talk more about that later because I know it confuses some folks.
- If your reasons for creating life were selfish – and mine certainly were – then you need to acknowledge that every day. The fiction that you somehow did your child a favor for which they owe you is vicious and cruel.
- Suffering comes first. This I believe generally but I will restate for children. You might have all sorts of hopes and dreams for your child but the alleviation of suffering comes first. I won’t go so far as to say you should never impose suffering on a child because you think its for their own good later. However, you should be extremely wary of such arguments and whether or not you are really willing to make this trade because your own dreams about your child’s future are more important to you than your child’s first person experience.
There are so many other philosophical issues that children bring up: Does my son have human rights. If so are they different than mine. And, if I think his rights are some how curtailed by his mental development does that mean that the rights of adults vary with their mental faculties? Am I sure that anyone has human rights?
At what point does he “wake up.” I have watched him intently determined to see if I could tell when the light came on. I have lots of thoughts on this but they should go in a separate post.
However, to close this out I will say that the morality of creating life is a big deal that we need to struggle with more. It is perhaps the most pressing moral question of the 21st Century.
In the past we could be resigned to the fact that our biology was going to drive us to do this no matter what. However, we are facing an era where we may be able to create sentient life synthetically. Either through artificial intelligence or by growing individuals en masse outside the womb.
The excuse – my biological clock made me do it – will no longer cut it and we may be talking about trillions of lives here. If we get this wrong it will be the greatest moral crime ever committed.
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Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 8:10 am
Nick D
A very interesting post this morning Karl. Again congrats on the wee one!
I find your arguments here compelling in the regard that as a people we should be encouraging the morality discussion of children.
In the end, not having read as much as you on the topic, I would believe that morality seldom comes into play with children. But can we deny the chance for future humans to be better than us, have a better life, and be morally acceptable?
Good morning conversation!
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 9:12 am
Arlen
I have also wondered about morality and natalism. I read _Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids_ with great interest, though I was a little disappointed how-in the end-the logic was a little like Descartes–generally unconvincing unless you already wanted to believe it.
In this post, I find it interesting that you manage to make a pretty Buddhist argument here. Personally I don’t think it is quite as simple as alleviating suffering (not that I would subscribe to a Confucian-type argument either). If you took away suffering, though, how would your child achieve anything? Of course the Buddha had no suffering as a child, but I am more reminded of Siddhartha’s son. He could not give his son the peace and freedom from suffering, and when he tried, his son only resented it.
I was once a child. I either followed my parent’s wishes or rejected them, and here I am today. Your child(ren) will be the same. All children are the same. You will not reach a useful moral conclusion about them if you assume that it was intentional to bring them about, only if you treat each and every one as an accident.
After all, you did not choose your child…you may have chosen a child, but not the one you got. The one you got was just chance, and you have to make do.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 10:18 am
Rick Russell
Most of the anti-natalism crowd (and I say that having only read summaries & web sites, not entire books) seems obsessed with the idea that The Human Condition Is Suffering. Since suffering is inevitable, they argue, and we are in a world in which the proportion of misery constantly grows, then the moral choice is to not add to that suffering. If I’ve set up a straw man, I apologize, that was based on a detailed review of the Benatar book.
I just can’t help but think that the anti-natalism crowd has looked at their *own* personal lives, and decided that they would be better off never having been born. They then assume that suffering is universal, and come up with reasons to justify that position.
But the fundamental assertion seems to be wrong. Each generation suffers less than the one before. Infant death is less likely, education is more available, technology is more impressive, medical conditions are less onerous, food is more abundant, life is longer. Even in developing nations, where life is brutal by 1st world standards, these numbers improve every generation. You can’t guarantee a life free of suffering, but you can be fairly assured that your child is statistically likely to have a life with less suffering than you.
You can never know, of course. Your own child, through the vagaries of genetics and statistical chance, may suffer tremendously. I have a mentally disabled child and I think about that every day, and if I could go back in time and advise myself 10 years ago to do something different, I probably would want to know what was coming to make an informed choice. But, that’s impossible, and that thinking is poisonous. I can at least say that, in a world of high technology and rich medical services, being mentally disabled will result in far less suffering than it would have 50 or 100 years ago.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 10:35 am
Sister Y
The problem is that “better” doesn’t mean “acceptable.” One of the big, big problems is the need to figure out what would make for an acceptable life – do we “wait and see” and let the child decide (that is, deny all responsibility)? Do we take a conservative approach and try hard to prevent lives that have a small chance of going very badly? Are the risks posed by an ordinary human life acceptable to impose on a stranger?
I don’t think we have a good account of this. I think it’s relevant that despite the fact that people say they’re glad to be alive, they often fail to act that way. It seems people value their own lives less than we might think, demonstrated by their willingness to accept unfair gambles (taking uncompensated risks with their lives). We have used the term “revealed acceptability” to mean that we have to look at behavior, not just self-report, to see the degree to which lives are acceptable to the people who live them. There are many ways besides outright suicide in which lives are revealed to be unacceptable.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Rick Russell
> I don’t think we have a good account of this.
The question is, what precisely are you trying to measure? That’s why I confined myself to easily measurable things: lifespan, infant morality, medical improvements, etc.
We’ll never know someone else’s inner mind. Pending huge advancements in neuroscience, I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to measure “suffering” versus “joy” or figure out what is an acceptable suffering:joy ratio. And many of the contributors to suffering and joy are difficult to predict, so simply looking at the genetic factors might tell you very little about your child’s future suffering:joy ratio, unless they reveal a specific syndrome or disease known to cause suffering.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Sister Y
The uncertainty seems to weigh AGAINST taking an action like having a child, rather than in favor, no? If I have no clue as to the contents of a suitcase, I shouldn’t bring it on a plane…even though it might be full of chocolate. <3
Thursday ~ October 27th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Rick Russell
> The uncertainty seems to weigh AGAINST
What is quite certain is that children born today will, on average, have less hunger, greater physical health, more access to technology, etc. than their parents. This trend has never been reversed since the start of industrialization.
You seem to think that, because we cannot guarantee a surcease of suffering for all, that we should never have children. That’s an extremist position that I don’t understand.
Friday ~ October 28th, 2011 at 1:00 am
Sister Y
My (admittedly extremist) position is that, in any individual case, no parent can reliably guarantee that his child will have a decent life, to the degree of certainty that would be required for a decision with such serious consequences as creating a child.
Monday ~ October 31st, 2011 at 2:39 am
Just another human
Technology … to what extent? It has its place, and is even necessary for providing a certain standard of living, but I think it can have a lot of damaging effects, too. Personally (and this is only my experience), I am totally overwhelmed and annoyed by cars. Cars (at least the current excess of them) drastically lowered my quality of life: the noise, the ugliness, the stress … And having used computers for ~10 years now, my ability for reading real literature is gone. I actually cannot read big, serious books anymore without much trouble; let alone my (solipsistic) idea of the lonesome writer who is cut off from the world has been shattered because of the internet, where thousands of like-minded people exist. This has disillusioned me and drastically increased my depression.
I also think that being well off materially is not enough for a satisfying life. The “spiritual” side is equally as important, if not more so; many crave for a (higher) meaning to all of this, but I am afraid that at least for some people, this universe and the modern world especially cannot satisfy this craving.
Forgive the quotes, but they reflect my views quite accurately:
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” — Steven Weinberg
“We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists.” — Stephen Jay Gould
Monday ~ October 31st, 2011 at 11:45 am
rickrusselltx
Human, I can’t speak to questions of “spirituality” (whatever that is) or “satisfaction”. These are not measurable in a direct way, and I would hesitate to extend my own preferences to others.
We can make fairly firm statements about medical health, access to material resources, etc. We can’t really determine what makes people happy, or what will make them happy in the future.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 11:12 am
tomfid
There’s no certainty that suffering will continue its monotonic decline, because it’s not clear that technology will outrun resource and environmental overshoot.
As a practical matter, I’m puzzled that a large number of people who have children don’t seem to want them. They avoid intelligent interaction with them like the plague, and jump at every chance to dump the kids in activities that free the parents for some really important activity, like shopping. This deprivation of belonging is the origin of most of the suffering that I see, at least here in the developed world. Its origin is not a failure to consider deeper philosophical implications of childbearing, but a failure to even think through the most selfish aspects of the scenario to their logical conclusion.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Joshua Probert
Thinking “you have the power to create life” is a modern conceit. On the one hand, no birth control method is 100% effective (even abortions and vasectomies, in rare cases). On the other hand, what couple decides just to “create a child”? The language is usually, “try”, or “try to conceive.” Even if you’re young and it’s relatively easy, how many months might it be before you succeed? And IVF usually uses multiple zygotes in an attempt to increase those odds because there are no guarantees.
How many families struggle immensely with Miscarriage?
My point is, this more than most other behaviors, all you can do is throw the dice, either in creating a child or preventing their birth.
What is between our will and conception? Is it a lack of understanding of the science of fertility? The difficulty in getting research subjects during pregnancy clouds our knowledge?
Or is this limitation of our control a feature of a universe in which we are not masters of the creation of our own children just as we are not masters of our own death.
Wednesday ~ October 26th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Becky Hargrove
Women of low income: it is often said they ‘should not have children’. People might be surprised to know the degree to which some low income women actually take that into account: Not society’s judgement, but the measure of their ability to bring children into the world in a way they can actually prosper.
Thursday ~ October 27th, 2011 at 11:11 am
Sskizo / Nora. I'm famous for my intolerance.
[...] faire des enfants ? “the morality of creating people”. Sskizo / Nora.© Tous droits réservés Thought Mechanics (bidouillé par moi) [...]
Thursday ~ October 27th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
DDRitter
Just adopt. Try to remove some of the suffering in the world without struggling with the morality of bringing new life to this planet.
Thursday ~ October 27th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
Some non-answers on population ethics « Modeled Behavior
[...] raises some interesting questions about the morality of bringing someone into existence. These are tough questions, but one group [...]
Friday ~ October 28th, 2011 at 4:15 am
Tel
There’s a very simple answer to this. You can choose never to have children, and that’s entirely your choice. If you do choose never to have children then in one generation your choice will be irrelevant and the world will be populated by people who’s parents made the other choice.
Saturday ~ October 29th, 2011 at 4:49 am
Tim Cooijmans
I think you missed the word “morality” in the title. This post is about how it is not necessarily “entirely your choice” to have kids.
Tuesday ~ November 8th, 2011 at 12:02 am
Links for 2011-10-26 « Random Ramblings of Rude Reality
[...] The Morality of Creating People on Modeled [...]