How is that a false assumption? It's exceedingly obvious both as a matter of logic as well as general language use that only something that does exist can be affected. If you want to argue otherwise, the burden to establish that logic is on you. — Echarmion
By a Kantian ethics I mean one in which it is the nature of the act - as opposed to its actual consequences or the character of the agent who performs it - that is the focus, and additionally where consent plays a central role in determining the ethical quality of that act. — Bartricks
Er, the person you will have created exists at the time you create them - and can thus be affected by the act of creation. — Bartricks
Again, assume you know that any person you create will live a life of immediate and unending agony. If you create that person the first moment of pain negatively affects them, yes? — Bartricks
Imagine Jane knows that if she ingests a certain drug prior to conception, then any person that results will be deaf and blind and mentally retarded. She takes the drug. Has she negatively affected the person she creates? (Yes, obviously). — Bartricks
Presumably you would agree that killing someone affects them - yes? So if taking someone out of existence can affect them, then so too can bringing someone into existence. — Bartricks
But really this is beside the point. I mean, just imagine that those who procreate are not creating new persons but rather bringing into this realm persons who already exist in another. After all, that's possibly true. Well now even you would surely agree that procreative acts significantly affect someone without their consent, yes? — Bartricks
Now we do not know whether acts of procreation genuinely create a person who did not already exist or whether they force someone who already exists to live a life here. But it seems implausible to think that the morality of procreation hangs on which one of those possibilities is actual. — Bartricks
↪boethius I do not understand your point. Yes, there are consequentialist arguments against procreation. But there are also deontological ones. The one I have presented here is squarely deontological. — Bartricks
Labels ultimately do not matter. But 'Kantian ethics' and 'Kant's ethics' are not the same, the former being far broader than the latter and not held hostage to the letter of what Kant's writings. — Bartricks
At what point have I said that Kantian ethics and deontological ethics are one and the same? — Bartricks
I should also say that you seem fundamentally to misunderstand Kant's ethics - so, you say that Kant places supreme value on one's own value and that it somehow follows from this that therefore Kant would be in favour of promoting the existence of more people. — Bartricks
So, the fact you think that, having established that X is valuable, Kant would then proceed to promote that value shows that you don't understand Kant's view, or a Kantian view. — Bartricks
act that affects another — Bartricks
There is no other person that the people procreating are doing anything to. — Terrapin Station
This is not about what Kant did or did not say. This is about whether procreation is wrong due to the fact that it is an act that affects another in a very substantial way without their prior consent. — Bartricks
the focus is on the nature of the act, not its real-world consequences — Bartricks
if an act affects someone else in a significant way then it is default wrong if the affected person has not consented to be affected in that way. — Bartricks
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