The only consideration here that would violate what would be the child's dignity is putting anything above harm, as there is nothing to "ameliorate" for the child. — schopenhauer1
I do. If the lifeguard can prevent all harm for a future person — schopenhauer1
Does the individual count that you are harming? — schopenhauer1
I am saying, while the aggregate could matter due to the constraints of being alive with interests, no such thing is the case for considering a future child who is not born. — schopenhauer1
This is just bizarre to me. Who cares if the child doesn't have interests? The lifeguard didn't have an interest in saving anyone either (because he was sleeping). But you didn't care. Once he woke up, he probably would, but that's not an argument for the same reason that "Once the child is born he probably would like life" is not an argument.
But for some reason, the child not existing makes his interests "special" and impositions on him worse than on anyone else. — khaled
Before I was born, did I have a right not to be born? — Srap Tasmaner
It's not about your intentions, but about consequences. — Srap Tasmaner
That's not purely about your intentions or purely about the consequences of your actions, so there's some middle ground available, and where I'd figure a lot of us land. — Srap Tasmaner
However, recruiting someone into the game with suffering so that I can help the people already in the game is a no go. — schopenhauer1
You have somehow narrowed a lot of arguments I've made into a lifeguard that is woken up. — schopenhauer1
You have somehow narrowed a lot of arguments I've made into a lifeguard that is woken up. A clever trick, but it's like summing up someone's whole life story in a one liner joke. — schopenhauer1
I think those sorts of judgments might even be pretty common: that wonderful couple is having a child, hurray; that awful couple is having a child, I feel sorry for that kid; and so on. — Srap Tasmaner
is about a mother discovering that her fetus is suffering from a grave genetic disease or disability. Should she abort or proceed with the pregnancy? — Olivier5
Similarly, in India many female fetuses get aborted because having a son is seen as leading to better consequences for the child and the family. Is abortion based on the sex of the fetus a moral course of action? I don't think so — Olivier5
don't mind it. If abortion is considered not harmful then why you do it shouldn't matter. — khaled
Because I needed to keep reestablishing that you find it fine to harm people for the sake of other people in the game, to show that you need an extra premise to take having children off the spectrum. That premise being, that for some reason they get special value in the calculation because they aren't born yet. — khaled
I guess my problem with that (and other forms of eugenism) is that I disagree with the view that the 'desirability' of a human life should be assessed purely based on its likely market or social worth, or any other material consideration of future consequences. — Olivier5
Take just an average couple, let's say decent people, and with the resources to raise a child; as far as they're concerned, and the people that know them, there is nothing in their circumstances that would make having a child wrong. No guarantees -- maybe both parents will die in a car crash and the children will be miserably orphaned. Since that's not the sort of thing anyone can foresee, no one would blame them for having children even if that's what lies in the future. That's very far out on the rim from callous indifference, and way past "you should have known". No one knows the future.
I mean, if people are going to say, "We shouldn't have kids" or "They shouldn't have kids", they're going to want something specific, something concrete to support such a claim. Poverty, illness, civil war, "you're a whore and your husband's a drunk" -- something specific.
So what do you have in a typical case like this? What do you know that they don't? — Srap Tasmaner
Rather, the people already born do have interests of to ameliorate and reduce harm for each other. — schopenhauer1
Among those interests figures the desire to perpetuate and transmit something, a culture, a way of life, a heritage, to leave something behind, rather than fade quietly into the night. — Olivier5
I don't think so. This has a lot to do with the heuristic we are using to analyze the moral case. You are using a purely aggregate heuristic and I am using a dignity violation one. — schopenhauer1
To press that button would, in aggregate prevent the most harm — schopenhauer1
It would never escape the fact that this person would thus be used, because there was no interests beforehand for which there needed any amelioration to take place for this person. — schopenhauer1
It is purely for a reason outside of the person in question where people already born are a balance between all parties. — schopenhauer1
Not the way I see it. You admitted that waking up the lifeguard is a violation of dignity right? Yet you are fine with doing so.
You seem to be using an aggregate heuristic for people that exist, and a "violation of dignity" heuristic for people that don't. As in, once you exist, it's fine for your dignity to be violated left and right if it is to prevent sufficiently greater suffering. But before you exist, the initial violation is for some reason a tier above the others and is completely taboo. — khaled
Once born, there is an inevitable utilitarian element because there are already interests of people that will be violated. There is already someone who has an interest not to die. This utilitarian element takes the form of balancing harms with each other to look out for each other's interests.
So with this in mind, the drowning boy has an interest to not die. The lifeguard has an interest to keep sleeping. So "dignity" in this case is not just purely surveying harm above anything else. In the world of already born, the interests of the people involved are a complex, relation of balancing. To protect people's interests we have certain duties to each other. — schopenhauer1
Indeed, anything beyond this would be violating this for some other consideration, like preventing aggregate harm. It would never escape the fact that this person would thus be used, because there was no interests beforehand for which there needed any amelioration to take place for this person. It is purely for a reason outside of the person in question where people already born are a balance between all parties. — schopenhauer1
Not in the way I define it. Harming someone is simply doing to them something they don't want done to them. Most people don't want to die. — khaled
Yet you refuse to apply the same logic in the case of birth. The "unborn person" (you know what I mean) has no interests, but when I say "But I don't care because there are people in the room" you bring up that the child is not born yet, which is supposed to matter for some reason. — khaled
Indeed, anything beyond this would be violating this for some other consideration, like preventing aggregate harm. It would never escape the fact that this person would thus be used, because there was no interests beforehand for which there needed any amelioration to take place for this person. It is purely for a reason outside of the person in question where people already born are a balance between all parties. — schopenhauer1
False. There was no balancing between parties for the lifeguard. You favored one party (the drowning boy) completely over the other (the lifeguard). You used the lifeguard for a reason purely outside of himself. There is no getting around that. — khaled
But you refuse to apply the same logic for having children. Which I think is fine, but you need to make it explicit that you consider the initial violation for some reason much more grave than all the others. Because that is a premise you require for your argument. You need it to matter whether or not the person whose dignity is being violated exists yet. Because that is the only difference between the lifeguard situation and birth. Unless you can show some other difference. — khaled
Indeed, anything beyond this would be violating this for some other consideration, like preventing aggregate harm. It would never escape the fact that this person would thus be used, because there was no interests beforehand for which there needed any amelioration to take place for this person. It is purely for a reason outside of the person in question where people already born are a balance between all parties. — schopenhauer1
Well, I think I disagree with you on most things, but as far as arguments like khaled that use aggregated harm as a basis, this indeed does become the case. People are "used" for their market value, purely, and without any reason as there is no person prior to their existence to have mitigating harms to reduce. Rather, the people already born do have interests of to ameliorate and reduce harm for each other. One is a case of being completely used, one is a case of relative use once already born for each other's mutual interests that the people born presumably have by being humans surviving in the world. — schopenhauer1
False. I balanced the harm done to the lifeguard against the harm done to the child — schopenhauer1
Because the child isn’t born yet? I don’t see that as an important difference. — khaled
Your problem is with using someone that doesn’t exist yet for a purpose outside themselves. But again, I don’t care if the person to be used is here now or not. — khaled
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