Title: Re: [lit-ideas] Re: Does This Have Wings? Friday, July 13, 2012, 8:26:44 AM, Donal wrote:
From: Ed Farrell <ewf@xxxxxxxxxxx> >It's also clear in the arguments of Paul and Donal how utilitarian "ethics," constructed as it typically is upon hypotheticals, is less about human beings and more about statistical constructs.> Whatever I posted is compatible with a rights-based and non-utilitarian view, one "about human beings" and not mere "statistical constructs": a so-called 'right to have children' may have to be curtailed when having too many children undermines other rights (like to survive without some conflict to the death between the living). Starvation or drought being faced through over-population is hardly merely hypothetical or a 'statistical construct': and no morality says anything worthwhile if what it says is irrespective of any 'hypotheticals' in the sense of a practical problem-situation that is partly determined by 'facts'. |
From what I have read elsewhere, the evidence tends to support Chris Bruce's suggestion: that when sufficiently empowered and free from poverty women will not have more children than is sustainable. But say that empowerment does not occur so as to stave off a potentially disastrous expansion of population (which may make issues of poverty even more intractable, and lead to social instability and even war): it seems to me the 'right to have children' does not clearly trump any other rights and that legal restrictions on such a right may be justified in terms of the importance of other rights. What matters here is the moral problem-situation which is partly constituted by the 'facts'. On my view, there are conceivable circumstances when certain restrictions would be justified: and I can even conceive of circumstances where forcible abortion might be the lesser of two evils - say, if nothing short of such a policy would curtail an expansion of population such that mass starvation and social breakdown would occur. This is not necessarily only a utilitarian view but one that might be based on the view that there is something morally much more wrong in many starving to death than in some foetuses being forcibly aborted (as part of a policy needed to keep population within sustainable limits). If it comes down to it, I am inclined to think that there is something morally much more wrong in many starving to death than in some foetuses being forcibly aborted, but of course any genuine moral problem of this sort will rarely present in such a straighforward or clear-cut way. Nevertheless, what I am inclined to think here is very much "about human beings", and the reality of their suffering, and not "about statistical constructs". |
| As it happens, I do not regard myself as utilitarian though I think there are many cases where some of the considerations that would weigh in certain utilitarian thinking have moral force (though that force need not be based on 'utility' but on a sense of right and wrong; and so acknowledging their force need not make one utilitarian). The suspicion is that over-population is not here offered as an issue raising genuine and difficult moral problems - problems we should try to foresee; and plan so as lessen the suffering that over-population might cause - but in an ideologically driven way to flush out liberals as crypto-fascists [or even just fascists] by perhaps showing them up as child murderers if they would ever countenance forcible abortion (as indeed I plainly would: though this is not a pressing problem for me as there are many ways short of forcible abortion by which we might better tackle issues of over-population). The attempt to use a morally serious issue in this way is itself morally questionable. The attempt to identify my position, with one that prefers statistical constructs to human beings, is false. |
On a side-note that is perhaps important: I also share the Darwinian view that, despite all the humbug in our culture that hides this, the drive to have children is more of a selfish drive than an altrusitic one; and we should be wary of such drives especially when they come with a plentiful capacity for deception as to their moral character [large families in poor countries may be motivated by parents wanting a plentiful supply of children to look after the parents in old-age: that may be why removal of poverty lessens the drive for large families]. It is the kind of self-deception we have around children, and the emotional response we easily can feel, that allows examples such as over-population and abortion to be used as convenient tools in ideological warfare. But from a Darwinian and global perspective on the possible future, and not current circumstances in the well-off West, even forcible abortion might be a lesser evil if we do not act to stave off unsustainable population growth with its potentially catastrophic consequences. Donal London |
