I want to use the language of moral anti-realism so that it’s clear that I can justify my values without saying that yours are wrong.
That’s thoughtful, but, from my point of view, unnecessary. I am an ontological moral realist but an epistemological moral skeptic; just because there is such a thing as “the right thing to do” doesn’t mean that you or I can know with certainty what that thing is. I can hear your justifications for your point of view without feeling threatened; I only want to believe that X is good if X is actually good.
I’ve already explained why my values make sense to me. Do they make sense to you?
Sorry, I must have missed your explanation of why they make sense. I heard you arguing against certain traditional conceptions of inheritance, but didn’t hear you actually advance any positive justifications for a near-zero moral value on genetic closeness. If you’d like to do so now, I’d be glad to hear them. Feel free to just copy and paste if you think you already gave good reasons.
Would that child be yours?
In one important sense, but not in others. My value for filial closeness is scalar, at best. It certainly isn’t binary.
In these cases, my feelings for the child would not depend on the child’s genome, and I am okay with that.
I mean, that’s fine. I don’t think you’re morally or psychiatrically required to let your feelings vary based on the child’s genome. I do think it’s strange, and so I’m curious to hear your explanation for this invariance, if any.
I’m not arguing that you need to keep a week-old baby that isn’t genetically related to you.
Ah cool, as I am a moral anti-realist and you are an epistemological moral skeptic, we’re both interested in thinking carefully about what kinds of moral arguments are convincing. Since we’re talking about terminal moral values at this point, the “arguments” I would employ would be of the form “this value is consistent with these other values, and leads to these sort of desirable outcomes, so it should be easy to imagine a human holding these values, even if you don’t hold them.”
I [...] didn’t hear you actually advance any positive justifications for a near-zero moral value on genetic closeness. If you’d like to do so now, I’d be glad to hear them.
Well, I don’t expect anyone to have positive justifications for not valuing something, but there is this:
Consider a more humanistic conception of personal identity: Your child is an individual [...] who has a special personal relationship with you.
Consider a more transhumanistic conception of personal identity: Your child is a mind [...]
So a nice interpretation of our feelings of filial love is that the parent-child relationship is a good thing and it’s ideally about the parent and child, viewed as individuals and as minds. As individuals and minds, they are capable of forging a relationship, and the history of this relationship serves as a basis for continuing the relationship. [That was a consistency argument.]
Furthermore, unconditional love is stronger than conditional love. It is good to have a parent that you know will love you “no matter what happens”. In reality, your parent will likely love you less if you turn into a homicidal jerk; but that is kinda easy to accept, because you would have to change drastically as an individual in order to become a homicidal jerk. But if you get an unsettling revelation about the circumstances of your conception, I believe that your personal identity will remain unchanged enough that you really wouldn’t want to lose your parent’s love in that case. [Here I’m arguing that my values have something to do with the way humans actually feel.]
So even if you’re sure that your child is your biological child, your relationship with your child is made more secure if it’s understood that the relationship is immune to a hypothetical paternity revelation. (You never need suffer from lingering doubts such as “Is the child really mine?” or “Is the parent really mine?”, because you already know that the answer is Yes.) [That was an outcomes argument.]
I still have no interest in reducing the importance I attach to genetic closeness to near-zero, because I believe that (my / my kids’) personal identity would shift somewhat in the event of an unsettling revelation, and so reduced love in proportion to the reduced harmony of identities would be appropriate and forgivable.
I will, however, attempt to gradually reduce the importance I attach to genetic closeness to “only somewhat important” so that I can more credibly promise to love my parents and children “very much” even if unsettling revelations of genetic distance rear their ugly head.
I still have no interest in reducing the importance I attach to genetic closeness to near-zero, because I believe that (my / my kids’) personal identity would shift somewhat in the event of an unsettling revelation, and so reduced love in proportion to the reduced harmony of identities would be appropriate and forgivable.
You make a good point about using scalar moral values!
That’s thoughtful, but, from my point of view, unnecessary. I am an ontological moral realist but an epistemological moral skeptic; just because there is such a thing as “the right thing to do” doesn’t mean that you or I can know with certainty what that thing is. I can hear your justifications for your point of view without feeling threatened; I only want to believe that X is good if X is actually good.
Sorry, I must have missed your explanation of why they make sense. I heard you arguing against certain traditional conceptions of inheritance, but didn’t hear you actually advance any positive justifications for a near-zero moral value on genetic closeness. If you’d like to do so now, I’d be glad to hear them. Feel free to just copy and paste if you think you already gave good reasons.
In one important sense, but not in others. My value for filial closeness is scalar, at best. It certainly isn’t binary.
I mean, that’s fine. I don’t think you’re morally or psychiatrically required to let your feelings vary based on the child’s genome. I do think it’s strange, and so I’m curious to hear your explanation for this invariance, if any.
Oh, OK, good. That wasn’t clear initially.
Ah cool, as I am a moral anti-realist and you are an epistemological moral skeptic, we’re both interested in thinking carefully about what kinds of moral arguments are convincing. Since we’re talking about terminal moral values at this point, the “arguments” I would employ would be of the form “this value is consistent with these other values, and leads to these sort of desirable outcomes, so it should be easy to imagine a human holding these values, even if you don’t hold them.”
Well, I don’t expect anyone to have positive justifications for not valuing something, but there is this:
So a nice interpretation of our feelings of filial love is that the parent-child relationship is a good thing and it’s ideally about the parent and child, viewed as individuals and as minds. As individuals and minds, they are capable of forging a relationship, and the history of this relationship serves as a basis for continuing the relationship. [That was a consistency argument.]
Furthermore, unconditional love is stronger than conditional love. It is good to have a parent that you know will love you “no matter what happens”. In reality, your parent will likely love you less if you turn into a homicidal jerk; but that is kinda easy to accept, because you would have to change drastically as an individual in order to become a homicidal jerk. But if you get an unsettling revelation about the circumstances of your conception, I believe that your personal identity will remain unchanged enough that you really wouldn’t want to lose your parent’s love in that case. [Here I’m arguing that my values have something to do with the way humans actually feel.]
So even if you’re sure that your child is your biological child, your relationship with your child is made more secure if it’s understood that the relationship is immune to a hypothetical paternity revelation. (You never need suffer from lingering doubts such as “Is the child really mine?” or “Is the parent really mine?”, because you already know that the answer is Yes.) [That was an outcomes argument.]
All right, that was moderately convincing.
I still have no interest in reducing the importance I attach to genetic closeness to near-zero, because I believe that (my / my kids’) personal identity would shift somewhat in the event of an unsettling revelation, and so reduced love in proportion to the reduced harmony of identities would be appropriate and forgivable.
I will, however, attempt to gradually reduce the importance I attach to genetic closeness to “only somewhat important” so that I can more credibly promise to love my parents and children “very much” even if unsettling revelations of genetic distance rear their ugly head.
Thanks for sharing!
You make a good point about using scalar moral values!