How Many Children?

28 April 2016

The world already has too many people. 7.3 billion. It’ll probably hit over 11 billion by the end of the century. Too many people, too few resources, too much damage to the environment. Disaster, Disaster, Disaster.

但这并没有回答问题。人们是否有权利生孩子?一般的权利和道德理论超出了我的职权范围。但我确定有些人没有权利生孩子。

In particular, I don’t think teenage boys have the right to make women pregnant. We don’t let kids drive until they are 16, vote until they are 18, or drink until they are 21. Children should not be allowed to create a situation where a girl or young woman has a nine-month pregnancy, which leads to a human being that may be around for 90 or 100 years. It’s a lot to expect a hormone driven teenage boy with a not fully developed brain to make such a consequential decision. Thoughtless act has huge direct consequences on two other human beings. Ridiculous to call that a right.

To implement this policy we’d need to develop sure-fire reversible vasectomies. Boys get one at puberty and can get it reversed at 21 or 25 --- or maybe 45 --- when they are old enough to make rational decisions.

As to girls, I don’t see that hormone crazy, boy crazy young girls have the right to foist an additional human being on the world, and existence on that human being, before they are old enough to take care of themselves.

Well how about a married, adult, reasonably rational couple. Do they have the right to have a child? Two children? As many as they want? I think if the world reached population equilibrium, couples should have the right to biologically produce 2 children, and to adopt as many more as they can care for.

China was faced faced with a non-equilibrium situation: a population bulge that would enlarge the world’s largest population, in a country with limited resources. So their one-child policy could be justified on utilitarian grounds. But not the way they implemented it, which I gather included forced abortions and such. I don’t think utilitarianism is the right moral theory, although it may be part of it. But I think utilitarian considerations are appropriate for social policies that effect the future of the whole world.

But, as I said, I try to be moral, but thinking about morality is above my philosophical level of competence. But does that mean I shouldn’t do it?

Comments(11)


Grogerso's picture

Grogerso

Thursday, April 28, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

The answer is clearly "no,

答案显然是“不,人们将没有生育孩子的道德权利”。道德是相对的,相对于特定时间的社会而言。我们可以看到所有曾经是“道德的”但现在已经不再是“道德的”的东西,我们可以看到这个世界的道德指南针正在慢慢向左偏移。为什么?因为作为“社会性动物”,在我们的心灵深处,埋藏着一种非常真实的感觉:随着世界变得越来越小,我们变得越来越亲密,我们的生存依赖于相互关怀、合作和个人对整体的责任。
It used to be that children and wives were considered property. It was almost unheard of to take children from their parents. Again we see a shift to the left.
这个14岁的男孩知道他还太小,不能成为一个合格的父亲吗?一般来说,我会说;是的,大多数14岁的男孩都知道这一点。所以,我们已经开始走向"不,这不是一种道德权利"
对于穷人和未受教育的人来说,“生育”的权利是非常、非常神圣的。这给了他们“希望”,希望他们的基因种子会茁壮成长,希望他们的孩子会克服困难,成为从贫民窟崛起的学者。也许我们能找到别的东西给这些人带来希望?

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Friday, April 29, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

I don't get it, John. Is the

I don't get it, John. Is the question about overpopulation, or promiscuity? Or maybe just your private fantasies about torturing teenage boys? Have you forgotten how horny you were at fifteen? I'd say strapping a man dying of thirst within inches of water would be less cruel! As for the other, the simple facts are that a combination of educating girls, socializing males to their rights, and a modicum of material security have proven themselves to be effective means of reducing the birthrate. Readily available birth-control methods help, but are not essential. Female freedom is. Where these measures are taken the problem becomes a low birthrate, and an economic system that can offer prosperity for all with a shrinking population, a serious problem we haven't even begun to address. The population explosion is the result of addressing infant and child mortality before the other issues. Otherwise, humans have an exquisite natural sense about how many children to have. And the crisis has arisen because of the contemptuous attitude of social planners.

MJA's picture

MJA

Friday, April 29, 2016 -- 5:00 PM



More simply: The only thing mankind is seriously lacking is self-control. We disguise this inadequacy by managing or controlling everything else on this planet, from water to forests, and even the wildlife which once managed is no longer wild anymore. We label plants evasive and to be eradicated while the eradicators continue to spread. We control the rivers with dams, our national forests with chainsaws and sadly kill the wildlife off for sport and for most nothing more. We shoot horses, don't we?
Wouldn't it be better to focus our management on ourselves first? And if ever our own self-control is achieved, with the effect of balancing ourselves with nature, then and only then would there be time left to manage other things?
You talk John about the management of our procreation, but what about the management of our own self-destruction. How many people do people kill everyday? And another question: How many people can the Earth sustain? None, a million, a billion?
我们得从头开始,一是你和我。
Thanks John for this thoughtful place,

=


Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Friday, April 29, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

There has been much

There has been much discussion lately about rights of many stripes. Some more; some less significant. Part of the discussion falls upon the responsibilities which often accompany the rights we so jealously covet.I think we can agree that having children is a right. But, may we also agree that responsible parenthood is an important part of the overall equation? Now, compulsory sterilization has been abused in the past and eugenics is now commonly regarded as an abomination. How to find a rational and humane solution to the problem of rampant reproduction is an issue difficult to grapple with. And I do not know of any acceptable solution, although it seems clear that one must be found. I have a son and daughter-in-law who have two young children (sons under the age of four (4)). A couple of months ago, she informed him that she is again pregnant. The pregnancy was ill-advised, considering all other aspects of their lives. I am pretty sure that her views concerning religious tenets and perhaps the idea of birth control/family planning itself had a lot to do with her becoming pregnant again. So, the question may well come down to whether or not we have the right to try to save people from themselves. Or, taken a step beyond, do we have the responsibility, or moreover, the obligation to do so? We may find that for the survival of humanity and its little blue planet, eugenics may not be so abominable after all. We have to decide, regardless of how unpleasant the decision may be.
Neuman.

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Saturday, April 30, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

An effort was made some years

几年前,人们曾努力说服年轻人在结婚前发誓禁欲。结果是:宣誓者的青少年怀孕率高于社区其他地区。在某些条件下,自由并不是自由。使趋势朝着正确的方向发展所需要的条件不是在个人身上,而是在一种社会秩序上,它否定了人们有充分理由去做合理的事情的条件。这对他们来说是合理的,对我们来说不是。通情达理的人在发现自己说三道四或对他人的自由设限时应该非常谨慎。

sageorge's picture

sageorge

Sunday, May 1, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

May I intrude on this

May I intrude on this discussion with an extraneous issue? Right now I don't know where else to go. I wanted to gain access to Philosophy Talk podcasts, and several weeks ago I did what the website said to do, e.g. unphilosophical things such as sending money, but I still can't access podcasts. I sent messages to the "Ask a question or report a problem" link on April 12 and again on April 19, and then to the link to what the website refers to as "Laura McGuire" - below I'll explain the quotes around the name - on April 27, all to no avail.
My hypothesis: Philosophy Talk is actually an artificial intelligence computer program at Stanford, running on its own with no human involvement other than a first-year compsci student who checks once in a while for any burnt out massively integrated circuit chips. Entities that participants have until now thought of as human beings such as "Laura McGuire" and "Ken Taylor" are actually pieces of computer code in subroutines within philtalk.exe.
This situation came about when the AI people at Stanford realized that philosophy is the perfect area of human activity for a computer simulation of human thinking and thus to be able to pass the so-called Turing Test. AI is reportedly plagued by inadequate knowledge bases, i.e. the web of ordinary knowledge human beings have that allows them to process language in areas involving factual information. These AI whizzes found out - not from taking a philosophy course or reading Plato, but in a random conversation with a philosophy undergrad while waiting in line for coffee at the Stanford Starbucks - that philosophy doesn't depend on complex facts and doesn't claim to provide final, definitive answers to the questions it raises. (Its practitioners even make a virtue of necessity and tout this as a positive feature of the discipline!) Therefore it's the ideal field to be simulated by computer.
Philtalk.exe produces intelligible text in response to ethereal questions such as "Why is there anything at all rather than nothing," but is totally unable to deal with mundane but factual issues such as "Why is there anything at all preventing Steve George from accessing Philosophy Talk podcasts?"
Here's the question again outside of quotes so the program hopefully will recognize it as coming from a human being rather than as just a text string: What is preventing me from accessing podcasts?
Maybe this will put philtalk.exe into an infinite loop or make it crash, so the compsci student running the show will see the question and provide the easy answer.
- Steve George

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, May 1, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

或者,也许只是期末考试。

或者,也许只是期末考试。

Lysander Paine's picture

Lysander Paine

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

I think it might be prudent

我想提醒大家,并不是所有的罪恶都是犯罪。是的,有些人会在经济不稳定的情况下做出错误的决定,生孩子,但通过社区和家庭,这些孩子通常仍然过着完整的生活。我觉得在这里,接受权威主义政策的道德性是完全理所当然的。加里•M•沃斯伯恩(Gary M Washburn)关于低出生率在我们从摇篮到坟墓的社会网络中存在的问题是完全正确的,因为更大的退休人口需要更大的劳动力来提供预期的福利。大多数西方国家的生育率是每个妇女在生育年龄生育1-2个孩子。这表明,经济发展(主要是城市化和较低的儿童死亡率)自然会导致较低的出生率。很少有人会生8个孩子,以补充家庭农场的劳动力,并防止一个或多个子女的死亡。老实说,我觉得这种讨论很可怕,还有点令人厌恶。

apek's picture

apek

Wednesday, May 25, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

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Zzalkind's picture

Zzalkind

Thursday, January 17, 2019 -- 10:37 PM

This has been up for my

This has been up for my partner night big time. We have two children and are extremely hesitant about a third. We fall under the category of people conscerned about the environment and other people in our actions. The problem is that us radical leftist are not having children. We are the only couple in our peer group who have had children. Many of them, our peers, say they don’t want to bring children into this world. I grew up in central Arizona surrounded by born-again Christians. I am also Jewish and my aunt who is ultra orthodox has 10 children because “God says that you should multiply like the stars in the sky. “. Where does it land us if the only people who are raising children are not concerned about environmental and social consequences of their actions. Wouldn’t it be better to populate the coming world with responsible conscientious people? So there are a lot of people out there having a lot of children and teaching them that the end times are coming and the environmental consequences of their actions don’t matter. Or simply having a lot of children right because why not, or out of your responsibility, we’re out of ignorance. Wouldn’t it be better if those of us who are concerned about the environment and conscientious our planet bring as many children into the world as possible?

Per Fagereng's picture

Per Fagereng

Thursday, January 17, 2019 -- 10:40 PM

Since rich people use up more

Since rich people use up more resources than poor people, maybe we should prevent or discourage the rich from procreating.