The basic form of my question is: What attitude should parents have towards their children?
We have already discussed the immorality of parents viewing their children as possessions, as resources to help them in their old age, and as people whose futures they can determine as they please (duplicates of themselves, etc.). How, then, should parents view their children? I think that they should view them as separate, independent entities, just as they view other adults - they should simply recognise that children have certain needs that adults do not, and thus act as teachers, some type of caretakers, and (ideally) friends. The first two attitudes should only last as long as they need to; once the child attains a level of maturity whereat they are able to make fully conscious decisions (possibly indicated by legal adulthood; certainly no later) then their actions are no longer the parents' responsibility to regulate or guide. Hopefully, parents and adult children can still maintain friendships, but if their personalities are simply not compatible, or if one party or another has an old grievance against another which makes it impossible to keep up a healthy relationship, then neither party has an obligation to continue the friendship.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Q&A 7, First Answer
The basic form of my question is: Would it be ethical to create multiple clones of the same person and raise them in different environments?
I see no reason for it not to be ethical. Certainly people could use the idea unethically; for example (as Brandon brought up in one of his posts) parents could try to 'replace' a deceased child with a clone of that child, which would almost certainly result in some kind of psychological mistreatment of the clone child. However, if the people around the clones treat them as unique individuals, with no socially significant similarity to the other genetically identical clones, I do not think that there would be any problem. The only possible issue with this might be that, if most of humanity eventually became clones of just a few people, genetic variation would become almost nonexistent, probably resulting in problems with any non-cloned children that people might choose to have.
I see no reason for it not to be ethical. Certainly people could use the idea unethically; for example (as Brandon brought up in one of his posts) parents could try to 'replace' a deceased child with a clone of that child, which would almost certainly result in some kind of psychological mistreatment of the clone child. However, if the people around the clones treat them as unique individuals, with no socially significant similarity to the other genetically identical clones, I do not think that there would be any problem. The only possible issue with this might be that, if most of humanity eventually became clones of just a few people, genetic variation would become almost nonexistent, probably resulting in problems with any non-cloned children that people might choose to have.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Response: Disproportionate Effects
In response to Brandon's post "Levin: Genius of the Times" (April 14, 2012):
First, a disclaimer; this is not all that closely related to Brandon's post. I simply found a particular point in it interesting, and wished to elaborate upon it. This post also relates, slightly, to a previous post I made.
The idea that otherwise relatively insignificant actions can have large effects on people due to other, unknown circumstances is actually quite well-documented, although usually in positive rather than negative cases. For example, there have been some instances of people deciding against killing themselves because they heard a particular song on the radio. As such, it seems logical that similarly minor events can have equally major effects in the opposite direction. Also, even when a single negative action is not enough to harm a person to a major extent, the cumulative effect of many minor negative actions can easily add up to major consequences - in fact, many (perhaps even most) cases of non-chemical depression or suicide are due to a series of negative occurrences happening to one unfortunate person. While of course it is impossible to know a person's exact circumstances, and so in most cases one's attempting to be exceptionally nice will be essentially irrelevant, the sometimes disproportionate effects of minor actions may be enough to encourage one to increase one's positive behaviour and decrease negative behaviour.
First, a disclaimer; this is not all that closely related to Brandon's post. I simply found a particular point in it interesting, and wished to elaborate upon it. This post also relates, slightly, to a previous post I made.
The idea that otherwise relatively insignificant actions can have large effects on people due to other, unknown circumstances is actually quite well-documented, although usually in positive rather than negative cases. For example, there have been some instances of people deciding against killing themselves because they heard a particular song on the radio. As such, it seems logical that similarly minor events can have equally major effects in the opposite direction. Also, even when a single negative action is not enough to harm a person to a major extent, the cumulative effect of many minor negative actions can easily add up to major consequences - in fact, many (perhaps even most) cases of non-chemical depression or suicide are due to a series of negative occurrences happening to one unfortunate person. While of course it is impossible to know a person's exact circumstances, and so in most cases one's attempting to be exceptionally nice will be essentially irrelevant, the sometimes disproportionate effects of minor actions may be enough to encourage one to increase one's positive behaviour and decrease negative behaviour.
Subjectivity of Justice
If a legal system bans capital punishment, then it must not make exceptions, even for exceptional cases. No matter how heinous a crime someone commits, then they cannot legally be executed. The reason for this is that making even one exception to the law invalidates every case in which the law should apply; as there is no objective way to determine exceptions, breaking the law (and it would be breaking it) in order to fulfil a subjective ideal of justice is radically inappropriate. After all, if the legal system makes an exception once, why would they not do so again? It is easy to say that they will only make exceptions in cases where capital punishment is justified, but who exactly determines what constitutes justification? One could suggest a codified definition of exceptions, but in that case they would no longer be exceptions, they would simply be part of the law! As such, the law would not in fact be banning capital punishment, but merely making very specific circumstances in which it would apply.
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