In response to Brandon's post "You Have a Bias and I Do Not" (March 7, 2012):
One other point here is that children who have had good relationships with their parents may also be biased, in the opposite direction from those who had bad relationships. Because someone who views their parents as friends will quite naturally wish to treat them well, they may find it difficult to conceive of the idea that they could validly choose not to do so - they think that their wish is in fact an obligation. They may impose their own experience of parent/child relations on everyone else, and as such come to the conclusion that everyone (or most people) are obligated to treat their parents with above-average courtesy and care.
If we accept that this bias is possible, negative bias is also possible, and parental bias is possible, then should we conclude that the only people who can validly take part in the debate over parental obligation are those who have no children and had completely neutral relationships with their parents? I do not think so. Instead, those people who have potential bias (which, I think, means the vast majority of people) should be very careful to ensure that their views are not being influenced unduly by their personal experiences.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
General Obligations
I think there are some (rare) situations in which children may have an obligation to remain in contact with their parents even if they do not particularly wish to. However, this is not due to any sort of familial connection, and can apply in any relationship. Furthermore, the general principle can apply to any pairing of an action/gain nature. I've tried to set it out below in as straightforward a manner as possible.
C = cost to oneself G = the amount of good others gain from your action
In this setup, the minimum gap between C and G is +4.
1) A situation wherein a generally decent parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child finds this slightly inconvenient (the child does not hold any friend-like feelings toward the parent)
C = 1 G = 8 The result is +7, so the child is morally obliged to stay in contact, unless C increases or G decreases.
2) A situation wherein a rather bad parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child does not want to do so (their relationship with the parent is quite bad)
C = 5 G = 6 The result is +1, which is not enough. If the child chooses to stay in contact with the parent, they will be acting in a supererogatory manner.
3) A situation in which a good parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child shares that desire (they are friends)
C = -4 G = 8 The result is +12, so this is morally obligatory - however, the obligation is irrelevant, because the child wants to stay in contact with their parent anyway.
4) To illustrate that this does not only apply to parent/child relationships, or indeed any relationship at all, this example is slightly different. In it, a person enjoys the taste of meat, but realises that the production of meat comes at a cost to farm animals. Thus, the farm animals would gain from the person's becoming a vegetarian or vegan.
C = 7 G = 20 The result is +13, so this is morally obligatory.
This does not invalidate my earlier post about Dixon's confusion of sentiment with obligation. After a friendship ends, unless one or both sides retain lingering sentiment, choosing to help a former friend over a stranger provides no more good to the friend than one could give to the stranger - the G numbers are equal.
C = cost to oneself G = the amount of good others gain from your action
In this setup, the minimum gap between C and G is +4.
1) A situation wherein a generally decent parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child finds this slightly inconvenient (the child does not hold any friend-like feelings toward the parent)
C = 1 G = 8 The result is +7, so the child is morally obliged to stay in contact, unless C increases or G decreases.
2) A situation wherein a rather bad parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child does not want to do so (their relationship with the parent is quite bad)
C = 5 G = 6 The result is +1, which is not enough. If the child chooses to stay in contact with the parent, they will be acting in a supererogatory manner.
3) A situation in which a good parent wants their child to stay in contact with them, and the child shares that desire (they are friends)
C = -4 G = 8 The result is +12, so this is morally obligatory - however, the obligation is irrelevant, because the child wants to stay in contact with their parent anyway.
4) To illustrate that this does not only apply to parent/child relationships, or indeed any relationship at all, this example is slightly different. In it, a person enjoys the taste of meat, but realises that the production of meat comes at a cost to farm animals. Thus, the farm animals would gain from the person's becoming a vegetarian or vegan.
C = 7 G = 20 The result is +13, so this is morally obligatory.
This does not invalidate my earlier post about Dixon's confusion of sentiment with obligation. After a friendship ends, unless one or both sides retain lingering sentiment, choosing to help a former friend over a stranger provides no more good to the friend than one could give to the stranger - the G numbers are equal.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
What Parents Owe to Children
If one accepts, as I do, that children do not owe anything to their parents simply because of the parent/child relationship which exists between them, then it might occur to one to ask what, if anything, parents owe to their children. After all, if children's lack of filial obligation is due to their inability to choose their parents, then shouldn't parents (who cannot choose the sort of people their children will be) also base their actions towards their offspring purely on voluntary friendship?
I think that the answer is firmly in the negative, for a number of reasons. Firstly, while it is true that parents cannot choose the personality of their children, they do choose to have children. With that choice comes an unspoken agreement to provide certain services and resources for the children, regardless of what sort of people the children turn out to be. This applies even in cases where the children deviate hugely from the parents' expectations, such as when a child turns out to be autistic or a prodigy, gay or transgendered, a follower of a different religion or philosophy, and so on.
But why should such an agreement exist? That answer lies partly with society and partly with biology. Biologically, children are incapable of caring for themselves prior to reaching a certain age, so if their parents neglect them they will suffer large amounts of harm or even death. This harm is a direct result of their parents' decisions to create and then neglect them, and harming another human being without justification is morally wrong, so the parents are morally obligated to care for them in order to prevent harming them. Sociologically, children (or, in legal terms, minors) are subject to more legal restrictions than are adults; for example, they cannot work more than a certain number of hours in a given period of time. Thus, parents are morally obligated to provide them with what they cannot obtain due to society's restrictions, because to do otherwise would be creating a severely unequal society, which is again morally wrong. Once children become biological and legal adults, parents' obligations towards them dissolve, and any further services they provide must either be out of friendship or part of mutually agreed-upon deals.
The last issue we must address is that of love. Depriving children of parental love almost invariably causes lasting or even permanent psychological damage to those children. As such, agreeing to love one's children is one of the initial requirements in the decision to conceive or adopt children in the first place. However, love is not something which people can create artificially; it is an emotion, and must occur naturally. In most cases, parents do naturally love their children. However, in the extremely rare cases in which they do not, we cannot blame them for it - ought implies can, and if a parent cannot love their child then we cannot say they ought to. However, the parent has indeed committed an immoral act - not, as it might first appear, neglecting to love their child, but instead deciding to have a child in the first place when they would be incapable of loving that child. In such cases, the parent might be wise to attempt to locate a situation in which to place their child where the child could receive the sort of love necessary for healthy psychological development.
I think that the answer is firmly in the negative, for a number of reasons. Firstly, while it is true that parents cannot choose the personality of their children, they do choose to have children. With that choice comes an unspoken agreement to provide certain services and resources for the children, regardless of what sort of people the children turn out to be. This applies even in cases where the children deviate hugely from the parents' expectations, such as when a child turns out to be autistic or a prodigy, gay or transgendered, a follower of a different religion or philosophy, and so on.
But why should such an agreement exist? That answer lies partly with society and partly with biology. Biologically, children are incapable of caring for themselves prior to reaching a certain age, so if their parents neglect them they will suffer large amounts of harm or even death. This harm is a direct result of their parents' decisions to create and then neglect them, and harming another human being without justification is morally wrong, so the parents are morally obligated to care for them in order to prevent harming them. Sociologically, children (or, in legal terms, minors) are subject to more legal restrictions than are adults; for example, they cannot work more than a certain number of hours in a given period of time. Thus, parents are morally obligated to provide them with what they cannot obtain due to society's restrictions, because to do otherwise would be creating a severely unequal society, which is again morally wrong. Once children become biological and legal adults, parents' obligations towards them dissolve, and any further services they provide must either be out of friendship or part of mutually agreed-upon deals.
The last issue we must address is that of love. Depriving children of parental love almost invariably causes lasting or even permanent psychological damage to those children. As such, agreeing to love one's children is one of the initial requirements in the decision to conceive or adopt children in the first place. However, love is not something which people can create artificially; it is an emotion, and must occur naturally. In most cases, parents do naturally love their children. However, in the extremely rare cases in which they do not, we cannot blame them for it - ought implies can, and if a parent cannot love their child then we cannot say they ought to. However, the parent has indeed committed an immoral act - not, as it might first appear, neglecting to love their child, but instead deciding to have a child in the first place when they would be incapable of loving that child. In such cases, the parent might be wise to attempt to locate a situation in which to place their child where the child could receive the sort of love necessary for healthy psychological development.
Duties of Friendship?
I think that Dixon confuses moral obligation with emotional inclination. By suggesting that people have duties to their friends, he misses the point of friendship, which is that it is defined by the actions people take towards one another based on mutual emotional connections. He claims that if one has a friend, one must as a result perform occasional favours for that friend, and if one fails to do so one is acting immorally. I disagree with this claim, and instead offer the idea that if one fails to perform occasional favours for a friend (without extenuating circumstances, obviously) then one is simply not being a friend. The friendship dissolves, and none of this is immoral, because friendship is necessarily voluntary, and terminating a friendship is not in and of itself immoral.
Dixon contends that one still has 'duties' to former friends even after the friendship has terminated, but again, I think he is confusing duty with inclination. If a stranger and one's former close friend were both in need of a blood transfusion, it is true that one would likely choose to give blood to the former friend, and it is also true that if one chose to give blood to the stranger one's friends and acquaintances might condemn one, but none of that is due to morality. One's preference for helping the former friend is due to lingering sentiment, perhaps so small an amount of it that one does not realise it is there. One's current friends might condemn one for not helping the former friend because they presume that if sentiment does not exist, then the former friendship was not really sincere, and insincere friendships are in many cases immoral. The same theory of lingering sentiment applies with parents; in most cases, no matter how estranged a child is from their parents, they retain some tiny scrap of sentiment which would lead them to help a parent over a stranger. If this sentiment is not present, then any emotional inclination dissolves - exactly as Dixon's 'duties' dissolve if a child never had a friendship with their parents, or if they had good reason to terminate their friendship.
Due to the reasons above, I do not agree with Dixon's idea of 'duties of friendship.' Instead, I concur wholeheartedly with Jane English's views on the topic.
Dixon contends that one still has 'duties' to former friends even after the friendship has terminated, but again, I think he is confusing duty with inclination. If a stranger and one's former close friend were both in need of a blood transfusion, it is true that one would likely choose to give blood to the former friend, and it is also true that if one chose to give blood to the stranger one's friends and acquaintances might condemn one, but none of that is due to morality. One's preference for helping the former friend is due to lingering sentiment, perhaps so small an amount of it that one does not realise it is there. One's current friends might condemn one for not helping the former friend because they presume that if sentiment does not exist, then the former friendship was not really sincere, and insincere friendships are in many cases immoral. The same theory of lingering sentiment applies with parents; in most cases, no matter how estranged a child is from their parents, they retain some tiny scrap of sentiment which would lead them to help a parent over a stranger. If this sentiment is not present, then any emotional inclination dissolves - exactly as Dixon's 'duties' dissolve if a child never had a friendship with their parents, or if they had good reason to terminate their friendship.
Due to the reasons above, I do not agree with Dixon's idea of 'duties of friendship.' Instead, I concur wholeheartedly with Jane English's views on the topic.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Reactions to Removing Restrictions
During class on the 28th, we very briefly mentioned how, when certain countries removed or relaxed formerly strict drug regulations or bans, drug use temporarily increased before dropping back to or below what it had been before the countries removed the restrictions. I was thinking about the motivation for that, and compared it to the high rate of alcoholism and drug use amongst college students relative to the general population.
I think that much of the motivation is likely a belief that, if something is forbidden, there must be something really brilliant about it in order for the 'enemy' (whether that enemy is the law, parental pressures, or societal norms) to decide to forbid it. After time, people realise that the thing which was forbidden to them previously is, in reality, not particularly special. The novelty and the thrill of doing something edgy wears off, and most (though not, of course, all) people cease doing that thing and settle down into relatively normal lives.
This can apply to things apart from drug use and alcohol consumption, of course. Many young adults take part in protest movements or other forms of rebellion against societal norms. Some of these people do so because of actual, genuine belief in a cause, but many seem to do it primarily because they want to rebel against something, or because it gives them some sense of power, which prior to becoming legal adults they did not possess much of. This is unfortunate, because it leads to genuine supporters of a cause becoming minimised in the eyes of the public; brushed off, so to speak, as hormonally-charged young rebels who will in time 'come around' to conventional views. However, it seems unlikely that this will change, as it appears to be human nature to take advantage of removed restrictions to an extent rather greater than is completely rational.
I think that much of the motivation is likely a belief that, if something is forbidden, there must be something really brilliant about it in order for the 'enemy' (whether that enemy is the law, parental pressures, or societal norms) to decide to forbid it. After time, people realise that the thing which was forbidden to them previously is, in reality, not particularly special. The novelty and the thrill of doing something edgy wears off, and most (though not, of course, all) people cease doing that thing and settle down into relatively normal lives.
This can apply to things apart from drug use and alcohol consumption, of course. Many young adults take part in protest movements or other forms of rebellion against societal norms. Some of these people do so because of actual, genuine belief in a cause, but many seem to do it primarily because they want to rebel against something, or because it gives them some sense of power, which prior to becoming legal adults they did not possess much of. This is unfortunate, because it leads to genuine supporters of a cause becoming minimised in the eyes of the public; brushed off, so to speak, as hormonally-charged young rebels who will in time 'come around' to conventional views. However, it seems unlikely that this will change, as it appears to be human nature to take advantage of removed restrictions to an extent rather greater than is completely rational.
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