I agree that kids learn by example, but choice in the child’s name is merely one form of the parents’ self-expression.
Agreed—but is the message supposed to be “don’t conform if you don’t want to”, or “don’t conform unless not conforming is scary”?
You have yet to address my comparison with selecting the race of children. If I wind up with a black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever spouse, my kids will be sorta brownish. This will inevitably embroil them in “culture wars”; it’s a privilege of whites and whites alone to avoid that mess (in the United States).
On the contrary, I did address this comparison when I said “Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love, in raising their children to share their religion and diet, and in choosing their children’s clothes and TV time. These concerns justify increasing the risk of their children getting teased, while the parents’ mere self-expression does not.”
You have not fully addressed this point at all! I can select the race of my spouse and therefore the race of my children without having to give up the chance to marry someone I love (given that I am not presently in love with anyone) simply by limiting my dating pool. It’s pretty easy to tell by looking whether or not the potential children of me and some random guy would look white or not. I could simply not approach, or reject approaches from, anyone for whom the answer is “not”. This might slow me down, but I’m pretty confident I will eventually find a spouse whether I do this or not. Kindly say whether or not you think, given that I eventually want children that are biologically mine and a future spouse’s, and given that I will select the spouse from a dating pool I can restrict as I see fit based on any criteria I choose, that I should restrict said dating pool on the basis of race so my children will not be minorities.
While we are on the subject of uncomfortable comparisons, the fact that I want biological children that are mine and a spouse’s limits my dating pool to men and transsexual women who had the foresight to visit a sperm bank. I have a transwoman ex-girlfriend who has expressed an interest in getting back together with me after we are out of school and more geographically convenient to each other; should I nix that idea because I can probably find a cisgendered male and if I do, my kids won’t have two mommies?
Btw, is there any (first) name for a child that you would think is morally questionable for parents to stick on a child, or at least inadvisable? For instance, would you see a problem with parents naming a boy GayWussyPoopooBaby? If so, why?
Yes, there are some such first names. The one you propose is among them. This isn’t because some kid named GayWussyPoopooBaby would be teased so much as because it indicates a flagrantly disrespectful attitude on the part of the parents towards their own child. If I thought that Vanyel’s parents were homophobes and meant the name as a subtle dig at their offspring, I would object. By the same token, if “GayWussyPoopooBaby” meant something complimentary in a foreign language and that was genuinely the reasoning behind the name, I’d probably advise the parents to transliterate it differently (“Geiwusipoupoubebbi”?), and make sure they were informed of its significance in English nonetheless, but after that point I think it would be their choice.
You have not fully addressed this point at all! I can select the race of my spouse and therefore the race of my children without having to give up the chance to marry someone I love (given that I am not presently in love with anyone) simply by limiting my dating pool.
I think I have, if you read that quote of mine again. I said “Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love,” not “Parents have valid interests in marrying a person they love.” I do not consider potential spouses to be completely interchangeable. Consequently, parents can have a valid interest in marrying the particular person they are in love in with, even if that person is of a demographic that would lead their child to have a harder time with teasing.
Kindly say whether or not you think, given that I eventually want children that are biologically mine and a future spouse’s, and given that I will select the spouse from a dating pool I can restrict as I see fit based on any criteria I choose, that I should restrict said dating pool on the basis of race so my children will not be minorities.
No, because you have a valid interest in dating from an unrestricted pool, and not having your dating slowed down by excluding partners based on qualities that are arbitrary to your compatibility. Same principle with having kids with your ex-girlfriend: if she really is your optimal partner choice in your view, then you have a valid interest in having kids with her, even though kids with other partners would have safer childhoods.
Do you really think that a parent’s choice of names for their child carries the same importance as the parent’s unrestricted partner choice? I don’t, and I would be surprised if you do. In my view, a parent’s choice of a particular partner they consider optimal enough to have kids with, and a child’s interest in not being put at extra risk of bullying, are both on a higher level of importance than a parent’s choice of a creative name for the child.
By the same token, if “GayWussyPoopooBaby” meant something complimentary in a foreign language and that was genuinely the reasoning behind the name, I’d probably advise the parents to transliterate it differently (“Geiwusipoupoubebbi”?), and make sure they were informed of its significance in English nonetheless, but after that point I think it would be their choice.
I think it would be their choice, too. My question for you is whether there are names that you would have a moral problem with, or that you would think are inadvisable. If parents from a foreign country named their boy Geiwusipoupoubebbi (love your transliteration, btw!), fully knowing how it sounds in English, would you really have no problem with that, considering that the name alone is enough to make the kid’s life hell at school from bullying, possibly causing social trauma and depression? Would you have advised against giving that name to the kid if the parents asked your opinion when considering names?
This isn’t because some kid named GayWussyPoopooBaby would be teased so much as because it indicates a flagrantly disrespectful attitude on the part of the parents towards their own child.
But you wouldn’t consider the resulting teasing to lead to moral problems in giving that name? Why not?
I’m still trying to make sense of your justification of subjecting children to unnecessary abuse to satisfy the whims of the parents because the direct agents of the abuse are acting immorally (though predictably). If I’m mischaracterizing your justification, then please clarify what it is.
As far as I can tell, either you think that predictably subjecting a child to abuse at the hands of an immorally-acting agent is:
Not wrong, because all the injustice is due to the bullying agent.
Wrong, but outweighed by the parent’s interests in choosing a name they like for their children, flouting convention, etc...
Or you have some other position that is either unarticulated or non-obvious to me. Which is it?
I think I have, if you read that quote of mine again. I said “Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love,” not “Parents have valid interests in marrying a person they love.” I do not consider potential spouses to be completely interchangeable. Consequently, parents can have a valid interest in marrying the particular person they are in love in with, even if that person is of a demographic that would lead their child to have a harder time with teasing… No, because you have a valid interest in dating from an unrestricted pool, and not having your dating slowed down by excluding partners based on qualities that are arbitrary to your compatibility. Same principle with having kids with your ex-girlfriend: if she really is your optimal partner choice in your view, then you have a valid interest in having kids with her, even though kids with other partners would have safer childhoods.
You’re still evading the question. In order to find out whether any given prospective partner is someone I want to marry, I have to invest a lot of time in them. I can spend my twenties finding and investing time in, say, half a dozen people who meet my minimum initial standards whether or not those standards include “white male”, and I don’t have such a discerning nose for mate quality that I think excluding that criterion would let me be pickier about something important and have better odds of finding a really optimal spouse. Are you trying to say that you believe in soulmates or something equally freaky, such that restricting my dating pool one iota more than strikes my selfish whim might cost me my One True Love™? It certainly sounds like it—if you think that my investing time in the pursuit of Sorta Brownish Person A over White Person B is that important that you’ll give me a green light to do so, and marry A if all goes well, even though I’ll wind up with a Sorta Brownish Kid who might be the target of racism throughout his or her life, surely it must be profoundly important on the order of soulmate-hood for A. If that’s the case, then you’re outright rejecting my premise that I could find a satisfactory spouse given certain dating pool restrictions (e.g. if I restricted the pool to men or whites or both). I think I have an awfully high chance of winding up with a white male even if I don’t narrow my dating pool at all, just because non-whites are called “minorities” for a reason and the same is true of lesbian/bisexual transwomen. It doesn’t seem to me that I’d be giving up anything except my commitment to various non-consequentialist principles I care about by deliberately upping that chance to a near-certainty. Since “various non-consequentialist principles I care about” is exactly why I’d like to defend Vanyel’s parents and the other parents of kids with unusual names, I want you to distinguish the two situations without resorting to the apparently magical words “valid interest in”.
If parents from a foreign country named their boy Geiwusipoupoubebbi (love your transliteration, btw!), fully knowing how it sounds in English, would you really have no problem with that, considering that the name alone is enough to make the kid’s life hell at school from bullying, possibly causing social trauma and depression? Would you have advised against giving that name to the kid if the parents asked your opinion when considering names?
I’d probably advise against it on aesthetic grounds, since I don’t think it sounds very nice, but not on the grounds you suggest. I’d probably call the child Wu (or a translation of whatever complimentary thing “Geiwusipoupoubebbi” means) for short and hope it stuck. I might advise homeschooling a little more enthusiastically with those parents than with others.
But you wouldn’t consider the resulting teasing to lead to moral problems in giving that name? Why not?
Because I’m not a consequentialist? The basics of my (unfinished, don’t ask for too many details) ethical account are that something is wrong if it a) violates a right of a person or b) destroys something without an adequate reason. Naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi, without using that name to signify an attitude of disrespect, does not seem to me to violate a right (although it may increase the odds of Wu being a victim of rights violations later) and it does not appear to destroy anything, with or without an adequate reason.
I’m still trying to make sense of your justification of subjecting children to unnecessary abuse to satisfy the whims of the parents because the direct agents of the abuse are acting immorally (though predictably).
The abuse is not certain. The abuse isn’t even genuinely evitable by the parents, just scalable on a limited basis. Wu and his imaginary alternate universe version Ted could both be teased exactly the same amount, if, say, Wu benefits from the expectations others have of people named Wu and is therefore better at math than Ted and can tutor a sixth-grader and obtain the sixth-grader’s protection. Or if his closer connection to his parents’ cultural heritage lets him give a really cool presentation at the third grade international festival. Or if having a wacky name gives him a convenient icebreaker throughout his life and he can win friends and influence people. Could Wu also hate his name and suffer for it? Sure. I acknowledge the possibility. But it’s not an unbroken causal connection the way you seem to think it is.
You’re still evading the question. In order to find out whether any given prospective partner is someone I want to marry, I have to invest a lot of time in them.
Yes, but surely not all your prospective partners always look equally promising. If the most promising person around happens to non-white, then go ahead and date them. Who knows how long it might take to find someone as equally promising?
Are you trying to say that you believe in soulmates or something equally freaky, such that restricting my dating pool one iota more than strikes my selfish whim might cost me my One True Love™? It certainly sounds like it—if you think that my investing time in the pursuit of Sorta Brownish Person A over White Person B is that important that you’ll give me a green light to do so, and marry A if all goes well, even though I’ll wind up with a Sorta Brownish Kid who might be the target of racism throughout his or her life, surely it must be profoundly important on the order of soulmate-hood for A.
Yes, if you think Person A is potentially a good match, then I will give you a green light to date him (or her). This green light does not entail a belief in soul-mate-hood, only a belief that Person A is more promising match, and an acknowledgment that a non-white person might end up being a better match than any eligible white partners you might meet in a convenient time window. Even if you didn’t know either very well, I consider it rather unlikely that you would feel exactly the same way about both of them, if you were meeting them at the same time. All else being equal, potential parents probably should choose potential partners with traits that are more likely to result in positive outcomes for the children, and less likely to result in negative outcomes. Yet all is is rarely equal.
If that’s the case, then you’re outright rejecting my premise that I could find a satisfactory spouse given certain dating pool restrictions (e.g. if I restricted the pool to men or whites or both).
I am not rejecting your premise that you could find a “satisfactory” spouse given certain dating pool restrictions. But surely you want a spouse that is more than merely satisfactory. While perhaps not likely, it is plausible that out of the potential satisfactory mates that you might meet during your lifetime, some of the best matches for you might be non-white. Even if you are surrounded by eligible white bachelors, you still could fall in love with a non-white person or meet a non-white person who seems like a better dating prospect, unless you plan on self-segregating yourself. Even if you know that you could eventually find a highly satisfactory partner of any race, people do not have infinite time and energy.
Since you cannot rule out the possibility that, out of the potential partners you can possibly explore in your life time, a non-white person might be head-and-shoulders a better match, you should not categorically avoid partners of a particular minority group in my view. Am I really such a romantic?
Since “various non-consequentialist principles I care about” is exactly why I’d like to defend Vanyel’s parents and the other parents of kids with unusual names, I want you to distinguish the two situations without resorting to the apparently magical words “valid interest in”.
What distinguishes choosing a minority partner from choosing an exotic name for a child is that the former is much more influential in a parent’s psychological health and happiness over the long term.
A child’s name is a large factor in how he or she is treated that can influence the children’s psychological health and happiness over a long period of time
A parent’s partner choice (and time spent searching for a partner) is also a large factor in the parent’s psychological health and happiness over a long period of time (and that of the child)
A parent’s choice of an exotic name for a child is not a large factor in the parent’s psychological health or happiness over a long period of time
One of these things is not like the others.
Anyway, I think the whole discussion of partner choice is an unnecessary tangent in this discussion. If you agree that parents have a responsibility to protect children who are already born from unnecessary risks, then I think we can move on.
I’d probably advise against it on aesthetic grounds, since I don’t think it sounds very nice, but not on the grounds you suggest. I’d probably call the child Wu (or a translation of whatever complimentary thing “Geiwusipoupoubebbi” means) for short and hope it stuck.
Calling the child “Wu” would be changing the example.
I might advise homeschooling a little more enthusiastically with those parents than with others.
Why? You don’t have a problem with the parents giving the child a name that would almost certainly make him a target of bullying. If you wouldn’t advise giving a less-risky name, why would you advise sending the child to a less-risky school environment?
Because I’m not a consequentialist? The basics of my (unfinished, don’t ask for too many details) ethical account are that something is wrong if it a) violates a right of a person or b) destroys something without an adequate reason.
Sounds good to me, so far...
Naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi, without using that name to signify an attitude of disrespect, does not seem to me to violate a right (although it may increase the odds of Wu being a victim of rights violations later)
… and you’re fine with that? You don’t have a problem with knowingly setting someone up for the possibility of future rights violations, when this is easily avoidable?
and it does not appear to destroy anything, with or without an adequate reason.
… except poor Geiwusipoupoubebbi’s self-esteem and mental health?
The abuse is not certain.
No guesses about the future are certain. Do they have to be, for us to entertain concern?
Wu and his imaginary alternate universe version Ted could both be teased exactly the same amount, if, say, Wu benefits from the expectations others have of people named Wu and is therefore better at math than Ted and can tutor a sixth-grader and obtain the sixth-grader’s protection.
This is wishful thinking, even if we were in the scenario where the kid gets his name shortened, which we are not.
Or if his closer connection to his parents’ cultural heritage lets him give a really cool presentation at the third grade international festival. Or if having a wacky name gives him a convenient icebreaker throughout his life and he can win friends and influence people.
Wishful thinking...
Could Wu also hate his name and suffer for it? Sure. I acknowledge the possibility. But it’s not an unbroken causal connection the way you seem to think it is.
I don’t think that parents naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi creates an “unbroken causal connection” to being bullied. Above, I do acknowledge uncertainty when I talked about the teasing his name “may” inspire, and when I likened parents giving a name like that to playing Russian Roulette with their kids (a game of chance). All I argue is that the bullying is highly probable, and that if it happens, it can get really, really bad.
(I will argue that the event where the kid hates his exotic name and gets bullied is much, much worse that the benefits to the kid and the parents if the kid likes his name and doesn’t get bullied. Cool name vs. social rejection and trauma? That’s not a contest. Furthermore, if the kid decides that his mundane name is boring, he can always adopt a spicier nickname. On the other hand, if Geiwusipoupoubebbi wants to switch to a name that doesn’t paint a target on him, the damage has already been done. If a kid starts out with a normal name, then he has a choice about how exciting he wants his name and decide how much bullying he wants to risk. If he starts out with an exotic name, then he cannot choose how much he sticks out because his parents have taken that choice from him.)
Surely you don’t believe that knowingly putting someone in harm’s way is only wrong if the harm is “certain.” That’s a very black-and-white way to think about probability. Tying someone to the train tracks doesn’t doom someone to “certain” harm, since someone might find them before the train comes. Giving a friend’s address to an escaped convict doesn’t have an “unbroken causal connection” with harm to your friend, either, since maybe the convict will try to hide out somewhere else.
One needn’t be a consequentialist to have problems with behaviors that predictably stick other people into harm’s way, even if the chance of that harm is less than 1.0. I think your moral philosophy is going to need to handle these scenarios, and I see no reason why it couldn’t. What do you think of this scenario:
Instead of picking their child up from school, two parents knowingly leave their child to walk home through a dangerous neighborhood. If the reason that the parents do so is because they have to work to be able to feed the child, then perhaps that risk is justified. But is it justified if the reason that the parents don’t picking up their child is because they are taking yoga lessons? The kid might be grateful for the exercise.
Yes, but surely not all your prospective partners always look equally promising. If the most promising person around happens to non-white, then go ahead and date them. Who knows how long it might take to find someone as equally promising?
In the time since we last picked up this thread of conversation, I have started dating a half-Armenian guy. I don’t know whether he counts as precisely non-white or not. At any rate, I wasn’t restricting my pool on this basis at the time. (It does make constructing hypotheticals rather more awkward, though.)
If you agree that parents have a responsibility to protect children who are already born from unnecessary risks, then I think we can move on.
I do so agree for most commonsense values of “unnecessary”. But then there’s also this.
Calling the child “Wu” would be changing the example.
I don’t see how. It’s a nickname that drops fairly easily out of the full name, and people do this all the time. I know a lot of people named Matthew and they all go by Matt—if I were contemplating “Matthew” as a name would I be “changing the name” to take this into account?
You don’t have a problem with the parents giving the child a name that would almost certainly make him a target of bullying. If you wouldn’t advise giving a less-risky name, why would you advise sending the child to a less-risky school environment?
I already have many and strong reasons to support homeschooling. Most of them have to do with school being a miserable goddamn place. Wu would—I concede readily—probably find school to be a more miserable goddamn place, and so those reasons are stronger for him.
Surely you don’t believe that knowingly putting someone in harm’s way is only wrong if the harm is “certain.”
Indeed I do not. But I do hold people responsible for intentions and culpable ignorance, not what their behavior in fact causes.
Instead of picking their child up from school, two parents knowingly leave their child to walk home through a dangerous neighborhood… because they are taking yoga lessons
I could imagine tweaking this scenario enough to make it okay with me, but taking it at face value, yeah, that’s not okay.
I think there may be some level of disconnect between my understanding of my attachment to my preferred pretty names and your estimate of how attached the average potential parents are to their preferred pretty names. I’m using my own feelings on the matter as a prior, which perhaps I shouldn’t do, but people who don’t feel so strongly about it have less reason to stick to their names anyway.
Agreed—but is the message supposed to be “don’t conform if you don’t want to”, or “don’t conform unless not conforming is scary”?
You have not fully addressed this point at all! I can select the race of my spouse and therefore the race of my children without having to give up the chance to marry someone I love (given that I am not presently in love with anyone) simply by limiting my dating pool. It’s pretty easy to tell by looking whether or not the potential children of me and some random guy would look white or not. I could simply not approach, or reject approaches from, anyone for whom the answer is “not”. This might slow me down, but I’m pretty confident I will eventually find a spouse whether I do this or not. Kindly say whether or not you think, given that I eventually want children that are biologically mine and a future spouse’s, and given that I will select the spouse from a dating pool I can restrict as I see fit based on any criteria I choose, that I should restrict said dating pool on the basis of race so my children will not be minorities.
While we are on the subject of uncomfortable comparisons, the fact that I want biological children that are mine and a spouse’s limits my dating pool to men and transsexual women who had the foresight to visit a sperm bank. I have a transwoman ex-girlfriend who has expressed an interest in getting back together with me after we are out of school and more geographically convenient to each other; should I nix that idea because I can probably find a cisgendered male and if I do, my kids won’t have two mommies?
Yes, there are some such first names. The one you propose is among them. This isn’t because some kid named GayWussyPoopooBaby would be teased so much as because it indicates a flagrantly disrespectful attitude on the part of the parents towards their own child. If I thought that Vanyel’s parents were homophobes and meant the name as a subtle dig at their offspring, I would object. By the same token, if “GayWussyPoopooBaby” meant something complimentary in a foreign language and that was genuinely the reasoning behind the name, I’d probably advise the parents to transliterate it differently (“Geiwusipoupoubebbi”?), and make sure they were informed of its significance in English nonetheless, but after that point I think it would be their choice.
I think I have, if you read that quote of mine again. I said “Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love,” not “Parents have valid interests in marrying a person they love.” I do not consider potential spouses to be completely interchangeable. Consequently, parents can have a valid interest in marrying the particular person they are in love in with, even if that person is of a demographic that would lead their child to have a harder time with teasing.
No, because you have a valid interest in dating from an unrestricted pool, and not having your dating slowed down by excluding partners based on qualities that are arbitrary to your compatibility. Same principle with having kids with your ex-girlfriend: if she really is your optimal partner choice in your view, then you have a valid interest in having kids with her, even though kids with other partners would have safer childhoods.
Do you really think that a parent’s choice of names for their child carries the same importance as the parent’s unrestricted partner choice? I don’t, and I would be surprised if you do. In my view, a parent’s choice of a particular partner they consider optimal enough to have kids with, and a child’s interest in not being put at extra risk of bullying, are both on a higher level of importance than a parent’s choice of a creative name for the child.
I think it would be their choice, too. My question for you is whether there are names that you would have a moral problem with, or that you would think are inadvisable. If parents from a foreign country named their boy Geiwusipoupoubebbi (love your transliteration, btw!), fully knowing how it sounds in English, would you really have no problem with that, considering that the name alone is enough to make the kid’s life hell at school from bullying, possibly causing social trauma and depression? Would you have advised against giving that name to the kid if the parents asked your opinion when considering names?
But you wouldn’t consider the resulting teasing to lead to moral problems in giving that name? Why not?
I’m still trying to make sense of your justification of subjecting children to unnecessary abuse to satisfy the whims of the parents because the direct agents of the abuse are acting immorally (though predictably). If I’m mischaracterizing your justification, then please clarify what it is.
As far as I can tell, either you think that predictably subjecting a child to abuse at the hands of an immorally-acting agent is:
Not wrong, because all the injustice is due to the bullying agent.
Wrong, but outweighed by the parent’s interests in choosing a name they like for their children, flouting convention, etc...
Or you have some other position that is either unarticulated or non-obvious to me. Which is it?
You’re still evading the question. In order to find out whether any given prospective partner is someone I want to marry, I have to invest a lot of time in them. I can spend my twenties finding and investing time in, say, half a dozen people who meet my minimum initial standards whether or not those standards include “white male”, and I don’t have such a discerning nose for mate quality that I think excluding that criterion would let me be pickier about something important and have better odds of finding a really optimal spouse. Are you trying to say that you believe in soulmates or something equally freaky, such that restricting my dating pool one iota more than strikes my selfish whim might cost me my One True Love™? It certainly sounds like it—if you think that my investing time in the pursuit of Sorta Brownish Person A over White Person B is that important that you’ll give me a green light to do so, and marry A if all goes well, even though I’ll wind up with a Sorta Brownish Kid who might be the target of racism throughout his or her life, surely it must be profoundly important on the order of soulmate-hood for A. If that’s the case, then you’re outright rejecting my premise that I could find a satisfactory spouse given certain dating pool restrictions (e.g. if I restricted the pool to men or whites or both). I think I have an awfully high chance of winding up with a white male even if I don’t narrow my dating pool at all, just because non-whites are called “minorities” for a reason and the same is true of lesbian/bisexual transwomen. It doesn’t seem to me that I’d be giving up anything except my commitment to various non-consequentialist principles I care about by deliberately upping that chance to a near-certainty. Since “various non-consequentialist principles I care about” is exactly why I’d like to defend Vanyel’s parents and the other parents of kids with unusual names, I want you to distinguish the two situations without resorting to the apparently magical words “valid interest in”.
I’d probably advise against it on aesthetic grounds, since I don’t think it sounds very nice, but not on the grounds you suggest. I’d probably call the child Wu (or a translation of whatever complimentary thing “Geiwusipoupoubebbi” means) for short and hope it stuck. I might advise homeschooling a little more enthusiastically with those parents than with others.
Because I’m not a consequentialist? The basics of my (unfinished, don’t ask for too many details) ethical account are that something is wrong if it a) violates a right of a person or b) destroys something without an adequate reason. Naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi, without using that name to signify an attitude of disrespect, does not seem to me to violate a right (although it may increase the odds of Wu being a victim of rights violations later) and it does not appear to destroy anything, with or without an adequate reason.
The abuse is not certain. The abuse isn’t even genuinely evitable by the parents, just scalable on a limited basis. Wu and his imaginary alternate universe version Ted could both be teased exactly the same amount, if, say, Wu benefits from the expectations others have of people named Wu and is therefore better at math than Ted and can tutor a sixth-grader and obtain the sixth-grader’s protection. Or if his closer connection to his parents’ cultural heritage lets him give a really cool presentation at the third grade international festival. Or if having a wacky name gives him a convenient icebreaker throughout his life and he can win friends and influence people. Could Wu also hate his name and suffer for it? Sure. I acknowledge the possibility. But it’s not an unbroken causal connection the way you seem to think it is.
Alicorn said:
Yes, but surely not all your prospective partners always look equally promising. If the most promising person around happens to non-white, then go ahead and date them. Who knows how long it might take to find someone as equally promising?
Yes, if you think Person A is potentially a good match, then I will give you a green light to date him (or her). This green light does not entail a belief in soul-mate-hood, only a belief that Person A is more promising match, and an acknowledgment that a non-white person might end up being a better match than any eligible white partners you might meet in a convenient time window. Even if you didn’t know either very well, I consider it rather unlikely that you would feel exactly the same way about both of them, if you were meeting them at the same time. All else being equal, potential parents probably should choose potential partners with traits that are more likely to result in positive outcomes for the children, and less likely to result in negative outcomes. Yet all is is rarely equal.
I am not rejecting your premise that you could find a “satisfactory” spouse given certain dating pool restrictions. But surely you want a spouse that is more than merely satisfactory. While perhaps not likely, it is plausible that out of the potential satisfactory mates that you might meet during your lifetime, some of the best matches for you might be non-white. Even if you are surrounded by eligible white bachelors, you still could fall in love with a non-white person or meet a non-white person who seems like a better dating prospect, unless you plan on self-segregating yourself. Even if you know that you could eventually find a highly satisfactory partner of any race, people do not have infinite time and energy.
Since you cannot rule out the possibility that, out of the potential partners you can possibly explore in your life time, a non-white person might be head-and-shoulders a better match, you should not categorically avoid partners of a particular minority group in my view. Am I really such a romantic?
What distinguishes choosing a minority partner from choosing an exotic name for a child is that the former is much more influential in a parent’s psychological health and happiness over the long term.
A child’s name is a large factor in how he or she is treated that can influence the children’s psychological health and happiness over a long period of time
A parent’s partner choice (and time spent searching for a partner) is also a large factor in the parent’s psychological health and happiness over a long period of time (and that of the child)
A parent’s choice of an exotic name for a child is not a large factor in the parent’s psychological health or happiness over a long period of time
One of these things is not like the others.
Anyway, I think the whole discussion of partner choice is an unnecessary tangent in this discussion. If you agree that parents have a responsibility to protect children who are already born from unnecessary risks, then I think we can move on.
Calling the child “Wu” would be changing the example.
Why? You don’t have a problem with the parents giving the child a name that would almost certainly make him a target of bullying. If you wouldn’t advise giving a less-risky name, why would you advise sending the child to a less-risky school environment?
Sounds good to me, so far...
… and you’re fine with that? You don’t have a problem with knowingly setting someone up for the possibility of future rights violations, when this is easily avoidable?
… except poor Geiwusipoupoubebbi’s self-esteem and mental health?
No guesses about the future are certain. Do they have to be, for us to entertain concern?
This is wishful thinking, even if we were in the scenario where the kid gets his name shortened, which we are not.
Wishful thinking...
I don’t think that parents naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi creates an “unbroken causal connection” to being bullied. Above, I do acknowledge uncertainty when I talked about the teasing his name “may” inspire, and when I likened parents giving a name like that to playing Russian Roulette with their kids (a game of chance). All I argue is that the bullying is highly probable, and that if it happens, it can get really, really bad.
(I will argue that the event where the kid hates his exotic name and gets bullied is much, much worse that the benefits to the kid and the parents if the kid likes his name and doesn’t get bullied. Cool name vs. social rejection and trauma? That’s not a contest. Furthermore, if the kid decides that his mundane name is boring, he can always adopt a spicier nickname. On the other hand, if Geiwusipoupoubebbi wants to switch to a name that doesn’t paint a target on him, the damage has already been done. If a kid starts out with a normal name, then he has a choice about how exciting he wants his name and decide how much bullying he wants to risk. If he starts out with an exotic name, then he cannot choose how much he sticks out because his parents have taken that choice from him.)
Surely you don’t believe that knowingly putting someone in harm’s way is only wrong if the harm is “certain.” That’s a very black-and-white way to think about probability. Tying someone to the train tracks doesn’t doom someone to “certain” harm, since someone might find them before the train comes. Giving a friend’s address to an escaped convict doesn’t have an “unbroken causal connection” with harm to your friend, either, since maybe the convict will try to hide out somewhere else.
One needn’t be a consequentialist to have problems with behaviors that predictably stick other people into harm’s way, even if the chance of that harm is less than 1.0. I think your moral philosophy is going to need to handle these scenarios, and I see no reason why it couldn’t. What do you think of this scenario:
Instead of picking their child up from school, two parents knowingly leave their child to walk home through a dangerous neighborhood. If the reason that the parents do so is because they have to work to be able to feed the child, then perhaps that risk is justified. But is it justified if the reason that the parents don’t picking up their child is because they are taking yoga lessons? The kid might be grateful for the exercise.
In the time since we last picked up this thread of conversation, I have started dating a half-Armenian guy. I don’t know whether he counts as precisely non-white or not. At any rate, I wasn’t restricting my pool on this basis at the time. (It does make constructing hypotheticals rather more awkward, though.)
I do so agree for most commonsense values of “unnecessary”. But then there’s also this.
I don’t see how. It’s a nickname that drops fairly easily out of the full name, and people do this all the time. I know a lot of people named Matthew and they all go by Matt—if I were contemplating “Matthew” as a name would I be “changing the name” to take this into account?
I already have many and strong reasons to support homeschooling. Most of them have to do with school being a miserable goddamn place. Wu would—I concede readily—probably find school to be a more miserable goddamn place, and so those reasons are stronger for him.
Indeed I do not. But I do hold people responsible for intentions and culpable ignorance, not what their behavior in fact causes.
I could imagine tweaking this scenario enough to make it okay with me, but taking it at face value, yeah, that’s not okay.
I think there may be some level of disconnect between my understanding of my attachment to my preferred pretty names and your estimate of how attached the average potential parents are to their preferred pretty names. I’m using my own feelings on the matter as a prior, which perhaps I shouldn’t do, but people who don’t feel so strongly about it have less reason to stick to their names anyway.