These are the values of an alien god, and we’re allowed to reject them.
Yes, we are—but we’re not required to! Reversed Stupidity is not intelligence. The fact that an alien god cared a lot about transferring semen is neither evidence for nor evidence against the moral proposition that we should care about genetic inheritance. If, upon rational reflection, we freely decide that we would like children who share our genes—not because of an instinct to rut and to punish adulterers, but because we know what genes are and we think it’d be pretty cool if our kids had some of ours—then that makes genetic inheritance a human value, and not just a value of evolution. The fact that evolution valued genetic transfer doesn’t mean humans aren’t allowed to value genetic transfer.
I’m describing a worldview that will still make sense when parents start giving their children genes they themselves do not have
I agree with you that in the future there will be more choices about gene-design, but the choice “create a child using a biologically-determined mix of my genes and my lover’s genes” is just a special case of the choice “create a child using genes that conform to my preferences.” Either way, there is still the issue of choice. If part of what bonds me to my child is that I feel I have had some say in what genes the child will have, and then I suddenly find out that my wishes about gene-design were not honored, it would be legitimate for me to feel correspondingly less attached to my kid.
It is not good to bring new life into this world if it is going to be miserable. Therefore one shouldn’t have a child unless one is willing and able to care for it.
I didn’t, on this account. As I understand the dilemma, (1) I told my wife something like “I encourage you to become pregnant with our child, on the condition that it will have genetic material from both of us,” and (2) I attempted to get my wife pregnant with our child but failed. Neither activity counts as “bringing new life into this world.” The encouragement doesn’t count as causing the creation of life, because the condition wasn’t met. Likewise, the attempt doesn’t count as causing the creation of life, because the attempt failed. In failing to achieve my preferences, I also fail to achieve responsibility for the child’s creation. It’s not just that I’m really annoyed at not getting what I want and so now I’m going to sulk—I really, truly haven’t committed any of the acts that would lead to moral responsibility for another’s well-being.
This is a moral anti-realist account of what is commonly thought of as a (legitimate) father’s “responsibility” for his child.
Again, reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Just because my “intuition” screams at me to say that I should want children who share my genes doesn’t mean that I can’t rationally decide that I value gene-sharing. Going a step further, just because people’s intuitions may not point directly at some deeper moral truth doesn’t mean that there is no moral truth, still less that the one and only moral truth is consequentialism.
Now if you fiddle with the parameters enough, you’ll break the consequentialist argument:
Look, I already conceded that given enough time, I would become attached even to a kid that didn’t share my genes. My point is just that that would be unpleasant, and I prefer to avoid that outcome. I’m not trying to choose a convenient example, I’m trying to explain why I think genetic inheritance matters. I’m not claiming that genetic inheritance is the only thing that matters. You, by contrast, do seem to be claiming that genetic inheritance can never matter, and so you really need to deal with the counter-arguments at your argument’s weakest point—a time very near birth.
I agree with most of that. There is nothing irrational about wanting to pass on your genes, or valuing the welfare of people whose genes you partially chose. There is nothing irrational about not wanting that stuff, either.
just because people’s intuitions may not point directly at some deeper moral truth doesn’t mean that there is no moral truth, still less that the one and only moral truth is consequentialism.
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. I’ve already explained why my values make sense to me. Do they make sense to you?
I think we both agree that a personal father-child relationship is a sufficient basis for filial love. I also think that for you, having a say in a child’s genome is also enough to make you feel filial love. It is not so for me.
Out of curiosity: Suppose you marry someone and want to wait a few years before having a baby; and then your spouse covertly acquires a copy of your genome, recombines it with their own, and makes a baby. Would that child be yours?
Suppose you and your spouse agree on a genome for your child, and then your spouse covertly makes a few adjustments. Would you have less filial love for that child?
Suppose a random person finds a file named “MyIdealChild’sGenome.dna” on your computer and uses it to make a child. Would that child be yours?
Suppose you have a baby the old-fashioned way, but it turns out you’d been previously infected with a genetically-engineered virus that replaced the DNA in your germ line cells, so that your child doesn’t actually have any of your DNA. Would that child be yours?
In these cases, my feelings for the child would not depend on the child’s genome, and I am okay with that. I’m guessing your feelings work differently.
As for the moral arguments: In case it wasn’t clear, I’m not arguing that you need to keep a week-old baby that isn’t genetically related to you. Indeed, when you have a baby, you are making a tacit commitment of the form “I will care for this child, conditional on the child being my biological progeny.” You think it’s okay to reject an illegitimate baby, because it’s not “yours”; I think it’s okay to reject it, because it’s not covered by your precommitment.
We also agree that it’s not okay to reject a three-year-old illegitimate child — you, because you’d be “attached” to them; and me, because we’ve formed a personal bond that makes the child emotionally dependent on me.
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!
We also agree that it’s not okay to reject a three-year-old illegitimate child — you, because you’d be “attached” to them; and me, because we’ve formed a personal bond that makes the child emotionally dependent on me.
I’m pretty sure I’d have no problem rejecting such a child, at least in the specific situation where I was misled into thinking it was mine. This discussion started by talking about a couple who had agreed to be monogamous, and where the wife had cheated on the husband and gotten pregnant by another man. You don’t seem to be considering the effect of the deceit and lies perpetuated by the mother in this scenario. It’s very different than, say, adoption, or genetic engineering, or if the couple had agreed to have a non-monogamous relationship.
I suspect most of the rejection and negative feelings toward the illegitimate child wouldn’t be because of genetics, but because of the deception involved.
Ah, interesting. The negative feelings you would get from the mother’s deception would lead you to reject the child. This would diminish the child’s welfare more than it would increase your own (by my judgment); but perhaps that does not bother you because you would feel justified in regarding the child as being morally distant from you, as distant as a stranger’s child, and so the child’s welfare would not be as important to you as your own. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I, on the other hand, would still regard the child as being morally close to me, and would value their welfare more than my own, and so I would consider the act of abandoning them to be morally wrong. Continuing to care for the child would be easy for me because I would still have filial love for child. See, the mother’s deceit has no effect on the moral question (in my moral-consequentialist framework) and it has no effect on my filial love (which is independent of the mother’s fidelity).
you would feel justified in regarding the child as being morally distant from you, as distant as a stranger’s child, and so the child’s welfare would not be as important to you as your own. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s right. Also, regarding the child as my own would encourage other people to lie about paternity, which would ultimately reduce welfare by a great deal more. Compare the policy of not negotiating with terrorists: if negotiating frees hostages, but creates more incentives for taking hostages later, it may reduce welfare to negotiate, even if you save the lives of the hostages by doing so.
See, the mother’s deceit has no effect on the moral question (in my moral-consequentialist framework) and it has no effect on my filial love (which is independent of the mother’s fidelity).
Precommitting to this sets you up to be deceived, whereas precommitting to the other position makes it less likely that you’ll be deceived.
This is mostly relevant for fathers who are still emotionally attached to the child.
If a man detaches when he finds that a child isn’t his descendant, then access is a burden, not a benefit.
One more possibility: A man hears that a child isn’t his, detaches—and then it turns out that there was an error at the DNA lab, and the child is his. How retrievable is the relationship?
… I’m sorry, that’s an important issue, but it’s tangential. What do you want me to say? The state’s current policy is an inconsistent hodge-podge of common law that doesn’t fairly address the rights and needs of families and individuals. There’s no way to translate “Ideally, a father ought to love their child this much” into “The court rules that Mr. So-And-So will pay Ms. So-And-So this much every year”.
So how would you translate your belief that paternity is irrelevant into a social or legal policy, then? I don’t see how you can argue paternity is irrelevant, and then say that cases where men have to pay support for other people’s children are tangential.
Yes, we are—but we’re not required to! Reversed Stupidity is not intelligence. The fact that an alien god cared a lot about transferring semen is neither evidence for nor evidence against the moral proposition that we should care about genetic inheritance. If, upon rational reflection, we freely decide that we would like children who share our genes—not because of an instinct to rut and to punish adulterers, but because we know what genes are and we think it’d be pretty cool if our kids had some of ours—then that makes genetic inheritance a human value, and not just a value of evolution. The fact that evolution valued genetic transfer doesn’t mean humans aren’t allowed to value genetic transfer.
I agree with you that in the future there will be more choices about gene-design, but the choice “create a child using a biologically-determined mix of my genes and my lover’s genes” is just a special case of the choice “create a child using genes that conform to my preferences.” Either way, there is still the issue of choice. If part of what bonds me to my child is that I feel I have had some say in what genes the child will have, and then I suddenly find out that my wishes about gene-design were not honored, it would be legitimate for me to feel correspondingly less attached to my kid.
I didn’t, on this account. As I understand the dilemma, (1) I told my wife something like “I encourage you to become pregnant with our child, on the condition that it will have genetic material from both of us,” and (2) I attempted to get my wife pregnant with our child but failed. Neither activity counts as “bringing new life into this world.” The encouragement doesn’t count as causing the creation of life, because the condition wasn’t met. Likewise, the attempt doesn’t count as causing the creation of life, because the attempt failed. In failing to achieve my preferences, I also fail to achieve responsibility for the child’s creation. It’s not just that I’m really annoyed at not getting what I want and so now I’m going to sulk—I really, truly haven’t committed any of the acts that would lead to moral responsibility for another’s well-being.
Again, reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Just because my “intuition” screams at me to say that I should want children who share my genes doesn’t mean that I can’t rationally decide that I value gene-sharing. Going a step further, just because people’s intuitions may not point directly at some deeper moral truth doesn’t mean that there is no moral truth, still less that the one and only moral truth is consequentialism.
Look, I already conceded that given enough time, I would become attached even to a kid that didn’t share my genes. My point is just that that would be unpleasant, and I prefer to avoid that outcome. I’m not trying to choose a convenient example, I’m trying to explain why I think genetic inheritance matters. I’m not claiming that genetic inheritance is the only thing that matters. You, by contrast, do seem to be claiming that genetic inheritance can never matter, and so you really need to deal with the counter-arguments at your argument’s weakest point—a time very near birth.
I agree with most of that. There is nothing irrational about wanting to pass on your genes, or valuing the welfare of people whose genes you partially chose. There is nothing irrational about not wanting that stuff, either.
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. I’ve already explained why my values make sense to me. Do they make sense to you?
I think we both agree that a personal father-child relationship is a sufficient basis for filial love. I also think that for you, having a say in a child’s genome is also enough to make you feel filial love. It is not so for me.
Out of curiosity: Suppose you marry someone and want to wait a few years before having a baby; and then your spouse covertly acquires a copy of your genome, recombines it with their own, and makes a baby. Would that child be yours?
Suppose you and your spouse agree on a genome for your child, and then your spouse covertly makes a few adjustments. Would you have less filial love for that child?
Suppose a random person finds a file named “MyIdealChild’sGenome.dna” on your computer and uses it to make a child. Would that child be yours?
Suppose you have a baby the old-fashioned way, but it turns out you’d been previously infected with a genetically-engineered virus that replaced the DNA in your germ line cells, so that your child doesn’t actually have any of your DNA. Would that child be yours?
In these cases, my feelings for the child would not depend on the child’s genome, and I am okay with that. I’m guessing your feelings work differently.
As for the moral arguments: In case it wasn’t clear, I’m not arguing that you need to keep a week-old baby that isn’t genetically related to you. Indeed, when you have a baby, you are making a tacit commitment of the form “I will care for this child, conditional on the child being my biological progeny.” You think it’s okay to reject an illegitimate baby, because it’s not “yours”; I think it’s okay to reject it, because it’s not covered by your precommitment.
We also agree that it’s not okay to reject a three-year-old illegitimate child — you, because you’d be “attached” to them; and me, because we’ve formed a personal bond that makes the child emotionally dependent on me.
Edit: formatting.
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!
I’m pretty sure I’d have no problem rejecting such a child, at least in the specific situation where I was misled into thinking it was mine. This discussion started by talking about a couple who had agreed to be monogamous, and where the wife had cheated on the husband and gotten pregnant by another man. You don’t seem to be considering the effect of the deceit and lies perpetuated by the mother in this scenario. It’s very different than, say, adoption, or genetic engineering, or if the couple had agreed to have a non-monogamous relationship.
I suspect most of the rejection and negative feelings toward the illegitimate child wouldn’t be because of genetics, but because of the deception involved.
Ah, interesting. The negative feelings you would get from the mother’s deception would lead you to reject the child. This would diminish the child’s welfare more than it would increase your own (by my judgment); but perhaps that does not bother you because you would feel justified in regarding the child as being morally distant from you, as distant as a stranger’s child, and so the child’s welfare would not be as important to you as your own. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I, on the other hand, would still regard the child as being morally close to me, and would value their welfare more than my own, and so I would consider the act of abandoning them to be morally wrong. Continuing to care for the child would be easy for me because I would still have filial love for child. See, the mother’s deceit has no effect on the moral question (in my moral-consequentialist framework) and it has no effect on my filial love (which is independent of the mother’s fidelity).
That’s right. Also, regarding the child as my own would encourage other people to lie about paternity, which would ultimately reduce welfare by a great deal more. Compare the policy of not negotiating with terrorists: if negotiating frees hostages, but creates more incentives for taking hostages later, it may reduce welfare to negotiate, even if you save the lives of the hostages by doing so.
Precommitting to this sets you up to be deceived, whereas precommitting to the other position makes it less likely that you’ll be deceived.
If the mother married the biological father and restricted your access to the child but still required you to pay child support how would you feel?
This is mostly relevant for fathers who are still emotionally attached to the child.
If a man detaches when he finds that a child isn’t his descendant, then access is a burden, not a benefit.
One more possibility: A man hears that a child isn’t his, detaches—and then it turns out that there was an error at the DNA lab, and the child is his. How retrievable is the relationship?
… I’m sorry, that’s an important issue, but it’s tangential. What do you want me to say? The state’s current policy is an inconsistent hodge-podge of common law that doesn’t fairly address the rights and needs of families and individuals. There’s no way to translate “Ideally, a father ought to love their child this much” into “The court rules that Mr. So-And-So will pay Ms. So-And-So this much every year”.
So how would you translate your belief that paternity is irrelevant into a social or legal policy, then? I don’t see how you can argue paternity is irrelevant, and then say that cases where men have to pay support for other people’s children are tangential.