When a criminal commits a crime, his parents, heredity, and societal influences are fully to blame...and so is he.
It isn't either/.or. — Michael Ossipoff

I think the difference between someones responsibility for a crime and someones responsibility for creating a child is that the parent creates an existence. A crime happens after an existence occurs.

I think how we come into existence as conscious entities is puzzling. Some people do argue we choose our parents. However I think choosing our parents from some other spiritual realm doesn't make sense unless one can prove that we forced our parents to reproduce.

My main concern is for a rational discourse that attribute causality accurately. It is not about blame so much.

To me a failure to accurately attribute responsibility is nihilistic and a recipe for chaos and to me it explains things like Nazism and Communism and religion because rather than hold individuals responsible for creating a life it makes a society responsible and one can just join the masses in conformity and shifting blame around to authorities and outside groups or spiritual forces, gods, determinism, biology and so on.

I really feel a futility to life and philosophy if it is not grounded in an accurate representation of what is happening[ (which is the creation of individual sentience by parents). As an individual you have to fight against society for personal justice and integrity.

Should homemaking and parenting be taught at schools?

Thoughts? — Posty McPostface

We weren't taught parenting in school. But you could become a parent when you hit puberty.

We were taught about contraceptives though.

I am not sure what school was supposed to before but I got the impression it was to prepare you to become a worker bee. This was in the late 80's.

I optionally took home economics.

Yes all problems come from being born in the first place- including whether to commit suicide. — schopenhauer1

I get the impression people do not want to accept this, so there is less burden on those choosing to have children because they can distance them selves from the process.

In a way therapy is where a lot of people are trying to deal with the ramifications of reproduction and the existence it creates.

Philosophers and scientists are trying to understand the reality they were thrust into. Inventors and Engineers are trying to improve the quality of existence.

I feel it is irrational and unethical to not explore the real impacts of reproducing and treat it like a valueless inevitability. It is like someone crashing her car into a group of people then driving off into the sunset ,unconcerned feeling a lack of responsibility and not being held accountable.

We need a new narrative. But maybe rationality will just lead us to abandon reproducing.

I think holding the right people accountable for things is possibly the most important part of rationality.

If you consider accurate causal attributions as essential to rationality.

I think parents are causally responsible for a lot of things but are not held responsible for these things or their causal role is ignored in the setting up of ideologies and belief systems.

I don't think a magical moment happens when someone becomes responsible for their own existence and the parents can then breathe a sigh of relief and wash their hands of the child they produced once they become an adult.

People will argue, no doubt, that we can't control reproduction or hold parents accountable for everything practically. However I think causal responsibility holds nevertheless even without blame or accountability.

For example imagine X kills Y and X is never caught for the killing. He is still responsible for the killing. So I think especially in that case, people will not just abandon claims of responsibility because of the lack of being able to hold X properly accountable. With a violent crime it is easy for people to ask for X to be held accountable but it is inconsistent then to deny other causal relations.

I think it is possible to completely refute a claim someone makes.

For example if someone says:

"All men are Mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is immortal"

You can see the latter doesn't follow. I think the same method may apply when we are analysing peoples meaning claims.

So what are these new traits humans have?

If any one wants to read a thorough refutation of everything Rand said in her facile and risible essay "The Objectivist Ethics"

You can find one here:

http://www.owl232.net/papers/rand5.htm

I do not think evolution is an entity that can make decisions rather it is posited to be a process of change. I think the idea that evolution weeds out the weak is very pernicious. There is no intent supposed to be involved in evolution.
.
Anything that fails to survive and reproduce is weak regardless of physical abilities

I think there are some serious tautologies at work in some evolutionary paradigms. Fitness defined by survival is banal and vice versa unfitness. Also we are part of nature so anything we do is tautologously a part of nature. there are no natural laws for human behaviour that we have to follow humans are massively flexible and creative.

I am by no means suggesting philosophers or intelligent people per se are superior.

Rather I am asking whether it is a difficult subject making it inaccessible to some people. I have met intelligent people (couldn't say exactly how intelligent) that struggled with philosophical concepts. Including including syllogisms and understanding the "Cogito ergo sum"

I feel like syllogisms are basic to philosophy and basic reasoning so you can work out what does and doesn't follow from a set of claims.

General interest in philosophy is low, but it has always been so — Pattern-chaser

Is that because it is hard?

When I started the thread I was just thinking to myself how it is a bit absurd to engage in some of these abstract arguments and to be reading random internet resources with obscure references.

Then I thought maybe this is what intelligent people do. Obscure analysis, obscure arguments, obscure facts. Their brain taking them down strange paths.

It seems problematic if people can't engage with sophisticated arguments and instead rely on pop philosophers spoon-feeding them diluted versions of ideas and conflating a lifestyle philosophy over the hard graft of rigorous thought.

The love of wealth is the veil of self loathing. — Marcus de Brun

If Ayn didn't love wealth why did she characterise people as looters and parasites if they tried to redistribute wealth from the wealthy?
She associates people having control over their wealth with person integrity.

Here is more from "The virtue of Selfishness"

"If a man who is passionately in love with his wife, spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a "sacrifice" for her sake, not his, and that it makes no difference to him personally whether she lives or dies."

"But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money saving the lives of ten other women, none of who meant anything to him-as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice."

There is lots that could be said about this and her pathology and chronic lack of empathy. But what is interesting is her absurd concern with the man spending his money exactly how he wants, even to the point of letting ten women die over one woman. In reality he could pay for cancer research that would aid his wife and others as opposed to the strawmen Rand likes to present.

She also claims later in this passage that the man is only keeping his wife alive because of his desire for her which is suggesting she has no intrinsic value and that she is at his mercy, if he fell out of love with her he could let her die. So essentially the mans ego and wealth is more important the objective suffering of anyone else. Frightening stuff.

Only a psychopath would think it a sacrifice to take excess money off a wealthy person to save many lives. She has gone from opposing the idea of dying for someone else ( a true sacrifice) to considering any loss of personal wealth as a sacrifice.

So-called leading philosophers have turned out to be apologists for tyranny, like Heidegger, Russell, and Sartre. So much for the claim that studying philosophy seriously makes one immune to adopting idiotic claims. It most definitely does not accomplish any such thing — LD Saunders

What conclusion a person draws from philosophy is problematic. Some peoples philosophising leads them to dark conclusions. I don't know if the most famous philosophers are necessarily representative of philosophy although they may reflect its major paradigms.

How would philosophy "cause" independent thinking? — Bitter Crank

Because that is its fundamental methodology.

I don't see how philosophy can develop from parroting other peoples ideas and indeed that is responsible for the stagnation of philosophy.

Adhering mindlessly or subserviently to someone else's philosophy is not being a philosopher. You have to critically examine ideas for their substance and validity.

Rand's genius is that she creates the uncompromising alternative of a celebration of the self, as a counter argument to the success that is associated with material wealth. — Marcus de Brun

Where is your evidence of this? The pursuit of wealth is based on self love.

Your are just giving propaganda for her over what she actually says and not quoting her or any of her own arguments.
Self worship is isolating when you have to live in societies and cooperate and rely on others and be concerned about their ethical treatment as well as your own. Caring about yourself and others is not mutually exclusive.

I see no natural reason for self love or justification for any teleological account of nature in which nature can guide our values or is benevolent towards us. She fails to justify going from "is to ought" coherently and just makes brief statements about it that we are just supposed to accept.

The fundamental feature of life is reproduction which is not selfish in terms of caring about oneself alone. You have to expend energy to create a new generation and rear young or you will just be the last human standing making life go extinct and lose any value. You have to be willing to endanger yourself for your vulnerable offspring or risk them dying prematurely.
Even if a parent has a child as a self indulgence (which maybe the majority case) they don't know what will happen and what they might have to sacrifice for the child to survive.
Self centeredness and excess self love is the anathema to healthy parenting.

As with most philosophical assertions this is one that you actually agree with yourself. — Marcus de Brun

How? I would prefer to have a sad life but see poverty end in my lifetime. I don't value my own happiness above all other moral concerns by any other stretch of the imagination.

I don't see the value you of happiness with no source or justification that could be induced by medication or recreational drugs.

I value equality as more moral than individual happiness. There is nothing wrong with individual happiness but I don't see it as a coherent measure for ethics.

In fact I think collective happiness is more mark of the moral.

The problem with sentience is suffering

To engage seriously with philosophy one needs to have the capacity for independent thinking — Marcus de Brun

Why doesn't philosophy cause independent thinking?

Thanks for those links.

Take into consideration that Ayn said, "The achievements of his own happiness is mans highest moral purpose."

So not helping others, being nice,caring for the sick, dying and needy or caring for ones own children then.

She was wrong about pleasure equaling right course of action and you have failed to refute my criticism of her nor attempted to do so.

If pleasure equalled right course of actions that would validate any action as long as any pleasure was involved.

See Laughing at Auschwitz for pictures of happy Nazis. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/laughing-at-auschwitz-1942/

What is it that you measure the 'rightness' of an action by? — Pseudonym

I have a non moral concern about harm. I don't think you can prove something is right or wrong.

If someone gives a moral argument for having children then I can critique that. I don't think any of the standard moral positions can defend having children.

If you believe it is wrong to harm other and that consent is fundamental then that morality would be undermined. I don't see how virtue ethics would defend reproduction based on the previous issues.

I would critique societies current values and misrepresentation of the dynamics of creating new people. Societies are run on false beliefs and false premises. Society is not consensual when people are forced into existence. I think if Persons A and B create Person C they are responsible for Person C and not Person C themself. However I Person C creates Person D they are responsible for person D along with Person A & B.

What is important is that a childless person has no responsibilities or obligations. Having children endorses and props up society but childless people need not support or endorse any product of society. When a childless person collaborates with society it will be so as to survive and avoid further harm. But some childless people endorse people having children so I think they then bear some responsibility for the system.

I describe people as being forced into existence and when you have a horrible life and or reject life you are like a hostage having society and life and the world imposed on you.

The only seeming escape route is self murder which is a brutal solution or to fight against the unjust dynamics of society. There maybe things that could make life for someone in this circumstance more bearable.
I think asking why we were created is THE biggest question in philosophy because our parents reproductive actions are the only reason we exist. It is a fundamental existential question. And one along with all other philosophical dilemmas my nonexistent offspring won't have to ponder.

So, there is no hope of remission for the depressive or anxious type? — Posty McPostface

I don't know. I am on medication for persistent anxiety and depression. I think a lot of people with mental illnesses are on medication.

Reason might be able to support or collaborate with these interventions.

The point I make is that there might be valid reasons for anxiety like job loss, death, an assault or bullying and so on. Reason might work on some irrational emotions.

In the case of prejudice I don't know whether or not being intelligent makes you less prejudice. You would think it would but there is some counter evidence.

I find it hard to justify making children. The original post was asking why people feel justified in making children.
I was hoping someone would try and persuade me why it is ethical, desirable or a right to have child.

I think if people are going to have children we need a rational evaluation of the process and it's ramifications and extend the rights of the child.

analysis of the method by which to interpret 'findings' about one's self. — Posty McPostface

I don't think you can come to a resolution about oneself, but rather can remain in a state of flux constantly reevaluating.

Is Russell suggesting reason will diminish feelings of anxiety and hate? It seems to me that anxiety could be an appropriate response to an evaluation likewise other negative emotions such as resentment and anger.

And it seems that emotions rather than reason will resolve prejudice where you may have prejudicial views but then the emotions guide you away, such as a feeling of compassion.

I think contact with others can diminish some prejudice because when you see the other as the same or as exhibiting feelings then it may undermine negative values you had formed.

On the other hand negative encounters may reinforce prejudice.

I wonder if he applied this process to himself.
I think to much reason may lead to a numbness. Things becoming meaningless abstractions. Endless ruminations and calculations.

I think exploring the unconscious might be a route to understanding emotional responses including prejudices and biases. I am not sure what reason would tell us about our values other than leading us to value nihilism.

Handel and Schubert may have been childless, but J. S. Bach fathered and supported 20 children plus turning out a massive amount of music (and he was Lutheran, not Catholic). — Bitter Crank

Half his children died in childhood. His own musical contribution was greater than his genetic contribution and he hasn't left behind many descendants.

I think parents are more like to make a negative contribution overall rather than birthing the next Einstein. I think the narrative around parenthood is to self aggrandising around parents making it an esteem boosting endeavour..

If the government does not take your child away (or prevent you from having them) then it seems a reasonable presumption that you've met the thresholds society thinks are appropriate to bring a child into the world. — Pseudonym

The government threshold for acceptable parenting is not the same as each individual's is. I don't personally support anyone having children. I don't think the government has legitimised people having children. I used it as an example of how we can intervene in the parent child relationship and enforce this intervention.

But if I did legislate on reproduction I would make the process of considering having a child much more profound and the consequences more serious.
I would increase parental accountability
and I think we would need a whole new philosophy that reflects the real dynamics of creating another person and its causal and ethical ramifications.

You sound a bit unhinged when you make statements like "marriage is for children and serial killers". A free rhetorical tip: don't go off the deep end too often. — Bitter Crank

I was referring to the common claim that marriage is for rearing children made by conservatives opposed to gay marriage. The absurdity being that killers could get married and all sorts of other bizarre marriage unions happened that were not campaigned against by those opposing gay marriage.

It is all propaganda to justify norms.

I didn't just ask for the considerations, I asked specifically for the thresholds.(..). So how do you know people haven't already considered these issues and decided they meet said threshold? — Pseudonym

That is what I want to know.
When people actively decide to have children they must, I suppose, have decided they passed some threshold that made reproducing acceptable.

So I want to know
Why thought it, necessary, morally acceptable, why they thought this was a good world to bring a child into and so on.

At the moment in most countries children can be taken way from their parents for a range of reasons such as physical and emotional neglect types of abuse, inability to parent. There are already some thresholds upon which governments or societies deem people to be unfit to have access to children.

Spiritual abuse is new category in UK law. So it is already possible and enforceable to take control of peoples children, the reluctance is to take earlier measures or suggest people should not have children.

You keep alluding to, but never quite describing, exactly what considerations you think people should be taking into account (outweighing their spontaneous desire to have children) and what threshold they should meet before concluding that they are morally right to do so. — Pseudonym

I said earlier "Huge numbers of children have starved to death and still do and do not have gardens to play in with some kind of Snow white mother figure."

This is one of many considerations to be taken into account. I could give a large list but here are a few.

1) The risk of exposing children to serious harm (Famine/War/Disease/Pollution/Crime)
2) Compromising a child's own wishes (a child may have completely different values to a parent)
3) Exposing them to inevitable life harms of varying degrees, from mental illness, their own eventual death and work hardship.)
4) Issues around Imposing religion and false beliefs and values on them.
5) Your own financial stability and mental stability and parenting abilities.
6) The general state and fairness of the world you are bringing them into (war, pollution, exploitation and inequality etc)
7) Meaning of life, morality and purpose issues (Other philosophical issues)

If a parent has explored all these issues properly/factually/reaonsably I would be surprised if they didn't act as a constraint or restraint.

You can't just restrict a naturally unrestricted right in abstract. — Pseudonym

I don't know what you mean. Homosexuality is natural but it has been heavily restricted and forced underground and punished with prison and death.

I don't agree with your definition of a right. If someone has a right to do something the government will not intervene in not them practising that right.The government can intervene to enforce a right but in general a right means someone is allowed to do X unrestricted.

I am looking for an explanation of why people feel and act entitled to have a child. You don't need legal rights for someone to exhibit a sense of entitlement.

I don't feel entitled to have a child regardless of what the law says.

On the contrary, I think sending children to school very often actually constitutes child abuse. — Pseudonym

Children are given an a education to improve their welfare. But we are not discussing that. We are discussing the extent to which the government intervenes in parenting. It is quite possible to home school your child. I think it is the parents fault if a child is abused in school because they create a child within this system of schooling and are naive about it. Another issue is bullying by other peoples children in school and having other peoples out of control children inflicted on you.

People are reliant on schools and other social provisions to help rear and protect their children.
Th futures of schools doesn't mean children shouldn't have an education. How do suggest we allow all children a reasonable education?

It seems problematic to me to have a morality that can be overturned by action.

Does action decide what is acceptable? If action is not evidence of acceptability then it seems morality must transcend action.

This way I think we can make value judgements beyond what is the case to ideal principles , I suppose.

I don't understand what you're saying here. What sort of intervention in the free ability of prospective parents to have children are you imagining? — Pseudonym

I am discussing whether people have a right to have a child and if so why?

I am not discussing possible modes of intervention. Even if preventing childbirth was unachievable that does not mean people have a moral right to have a child or did the right thing by doing so

.

In Germany children are forceably taken away from their parents for 6 hours a day to be raised entirely in a manner the state sees fit. What greater application of government to the rearing of children could you possibly be asking for? — Pseudonym

I went to school 5 days a week but I also went to church up to five times a week, my parents were bad parents and authoritarians who didn't show me affection etc. Sending me to school resulted in serious bullying in school.
The school does not act like parents or baby sitters or replace the authority and affection of parents. Sending someone to school does not prevent child abuse in general

The first way of intervening is to change the whole narrative around having children. Lots of people choose not to have children and are happy to do so. I am one of 6 siblings and only one has children.

Most families in the west restrict the number of children they have now they have the option and are better educated. You are taking an unwarranted fatalistic attitude.

It is in you and your children's interest to monitor how other people reproduce. Even if you do everything in your power to give your child a decent quality of life they have to deal with the people around them and other peoples children. (I say this as someone who was bullied by other peoples children in school 20+)

I think humans have wide capacities and it is not impossible to care for your own child and care for the welfare of other children. Indeed some women have had their own children and then gone onto foster and adopt dozens more.

It is ironic what people say about a collective responsibility for children but then they don't want any intervention in their own child rearing.

Thus having a child would allow the new person to experience their potential for happiness. — schopenhauer1

This the most common and vague reason now given for having children. Happiness is elusive in terms of what causes it and why it should be perpetuated. I always point out that there are pictures of happy Nazis working at Auschwitz.

But apparently happiness, familial bonds and so on have this mysterious power to outweigh any other consideration even reasonable intervention in the reproduction and parenting process.

I feel one really needs to elaborate a substantial reason for having children to avoid a nihilistic free for all.

It is ironic that serial killers in America were allowed to marry in prison whilst gay people were not allowed to marry at all.

I think this reflects on the warped values in this area. Marriage is for children and serial killers

I think someones that has a child is asserting that they have a right to have child.

So I am asking why people feel they have a right to have a child and with no restrictions

Religion and unquestioned social norms ( — schopenhauer1

It would help if people would question the social norms.

I think the way children are brought into the world undermines a lot of social norms, ethical claims and so on.

There should be consequences from having children including rights for the child and proper apportioning of responsibility and causality.
But instead no one has to be responsible for anything because of this fatalistic attitude towards having children as though it is inevitable.

No. I was expressing my concern that the excessive practice of rights-talk and reasoning about rights — John Doe

We don't need to invoke rights if we say people don't have a right to have children.

Saying people have a right to have children is invoking rights.

I think the belief that someone has a divine right to do something leads to a more irresponsible exploitative attitude than skepticism about rights which can lead to cautious actions and claims.

Being granted a right can lead to a lack of justification for that right because one just acts entitled.
The initial justification for the right gets lost in entitlement. Rights can reflect past disenfranchisement and don't usually just endorse the status quo.

No. I openly expressed a concern about the possibility that getting too excessive with rights-talk and the potentially resulting legal mandates will diminish the goods which parents and children can receive in a loving household — John Doe

Why should having children be the only area in life not constrained by rights and legislation?

I find it worrying that you would think that to preserve some notion of a transcendent family quasi spirituality or something like that,that then all children should not be protected by rights and in a legal framework.

This is the problem I am alluding to. The complete lack of reason and restraint in this area.

Anyway it is rather like saying Handel should not have had a rigorous musical education because that would interfere with the transcendence of his music... but in reality reason, boundaries and discipline are part of creativity.

Personally I think the rights of child and child welfare are the first and most primary area that should be legislated for. Trying to improve society after a reproduction free-for-all is shutting the gate after the horse has run off.

I feel passionately about child welfare and children's rights and there is nothing legalistic in my approach to that.

It also disturbs me that I could have a child if I wanted to despite no one knowing me or my capacities or dysfunctions. It is one of the few things I could do without scrutiny or finance or contract or education.

Once there's a child, then there's a community responsibility. — tim wood

So the childless are to be forced to take care of other peoples children that they didn't endorse and had no role in the creation of?
Why impose the burden on everyone else after self indulging in creating a child? My concern with child welfare starts before they are created not as that of a baby sitter for recalcitrant parents. I would take care of a child for his or her on sake not out of mistaken sense of duty to other peoples decisions.

Finally, what responsibilities do you think parents have? — tim wood

What responsibilities don't they have?

Creating new people is the foundation of society and the route which suffering and inequality are possible. If I were to have child everything that happened to them or they caused would be my responsibility at the very least my causal responsibility.

But of course you can foist this onto the collective conscience. In reality your child would not have suffered if you had not created them.