You mean "gives a shit"? Or understands.....what? — Janus

It's sort of a little joke. @Terrapin Station loves the Grateful Dead. He named his three kids Jerry, Bob, and Phil. And Phil is a girl!

Having children was never something I particularly wanted to do, being an exclusively gay guy of the not-marrying and not-having children kind. Whether deciding to have children is ethical or not depends on circumstances.

For those who have a choice in the matter: if one is not married; if one is a chronic drug/alcohol user; if one is poor; if one is mentally unstable; if one thinks that they can, singly, be a completely adequate parent; and so on, I would judge it as at least inadvisable to have children, and it might be unethical.

Lots of people are poor and manage to be good parents, but deciding to be a poor single parent is stupid. Alcoholics and chronic drug users should not be in charge of children. Period. Raising healthy children requires a fair number of challenges; deciding to have children (alone or with a partner) and knowing that one is mentally ill seems inadvisable. Children benefit greatly from having two parents who both participate in the rearing of the child. It is a question of both role models, sufficient time, attention, and income.

Over population is a major concern to me, and I don't think we can succeed in avoiding catastrophic global warming without restricting, reducing population.

People who decide to have children, especially many children, for doctrinal reasons are being unethical. They are demanding a greater share of the world's diminishing resources in the service of some god or religious obsession. [I am the youngest of a large family; I have 2 brothers and 4 sisters, two died in infancy. Effective and convenient birth control was not available until the 1960s, by which time I was in college. My parents didn't want to have 7 children, they just did.]

There are no ethical grounds for considering methods for quickly reducing the population. Fortunately for us, we don't have to think of methods: Nature can and will reduce our population if we run out of resources.

The excessively large human population is not growing as fast as it was growing, but it is still growing --it is not shrinking. IF we want to avoid being subject to nature's harsh culling methods, we would do well to have fewer children. Nor trying to reduce the population by having fewer children is also unethical.

I reject anti-natalism. People are not quite as good a thing as flowers that bloom in the spring; we are frequently less appealing that birds on the wing; but we aren't a curse on the world, either (most of the time, anyway).

You can reject antinatalism until the cows come home, that won't make it false.

On what rational basis do you reject my arguments? Do you deny that the world is dangerous or do you think it is fine to force innocent people to live in it?
Should prisoners be able to have kids in prison and rear them there - if not, why not?

Well if - if - it is wrong-making to do things that will accelerate global warming then having kids is obviously an activity that has that wrong-making feature. You don't make the planet cooler by having kids.

You can reject antinatalism until the cows come home, that won't make it false. — Bartricks

Anti-natalism isn't true or false. It isn't even right or wrong or good or bad. It is the argument as normally presented that is disgusting. It's the hatred for humankind that is implicit that sickens me.

It's sort of a little joke. Terrapin Station loves the Grateful Dead. He named his three kids Jerry, Bob, and Phil. And Phil is a girl! — T Clark

Ah, so he's one behind his hero in the procreation stakes. I've warmed to the Grateful Dead a little as I've gotten older. Back in the 60s I didn't like them at all, but did like their "sister" band: Jefferson Airplane.

I still much prefer JA and don't think that highly of GD's fairly waffly, insipid music. But that's off-topic, so I'll STFU now...

The thread asks 'is it ethical to have children' not 'is it ethical to have children due exclusively to concerns about global warming'.

Yes, but if you read the OP you would find the question is unequivocally placed in the context of global warming.

Ah, so he's one behind his hero in the procreation stakes. I've warmed to the Grateful Dead a little as I've gotten older. Back in the 60s I didn't like them at all, but did like their "sister" band: Jefferson Airplane. — Janus

Just to be clear, I have no idea whether TS has children or what their names are. I make up most of the stuff I write on this forum.

May we hear from daughter Phil what she thought? And what did you name the fourth one? Were Bob and Phil resentful about not getting ice cream named after them? (I don't like Cherry Garcia --too much amaretto flavor. Not that any one, including me, cares much one way or the other.).

If you want to be loved unconditionally, that's bad. You shouldn't want to be loved unconditionally.

Furthermore, if you had a pill that would make someone love you unconditionally, you'd be acting very badly indeed if you gave it to someone.

Many of those who procreate do so because they want to be loved unconditionally. That's a vice. And they create people who will almost invariably love them unconditionally. A child doesn't really have any choice in the matter - it is biologically programmed-in, as most parents know only too well.

So, by procreating most parents exhibit terrible vices - they are behaving in ways that, in other contexts, we all recognise to be seriously wrong.

I make up most of the stuff I write on this forum. — T Clark

Are not we all?

Just engage with the arguments and stop being so pedantic. Tell you what, I'll put some commas and apostrophes in the wrong places and then you can tell me about that and that'll make you happy.

Jesus, you made that shit up!!! You did give birth to something odious then...

You were off-topic, just man (or woman) up and admit it. I've been of-topic too for several posts now, but at least they were leaning towards fun, not towards misery.

You don't get to determine what is and is not 'off topic'. My comments - all of them - are on topic. Now calm down, pull your trousers up, and start addressing the arguments rather than getting off lecturing others.

If you want to be loved unconditionally, that's bad. You shouldn't want to be loved unconditionally. — Bartricks

Why in the name of Bullwinkle J. Moose would it be wrong to want to be loved unconditionally? It is the greatest gift any person can give another. I don't expect or even want my children to love me unconditionally. You see, I love them unconditionally. That's another gift - to get the chance to love someone that way.

I get the feeling you probably don't love your parents unconditionally.

It's the hatred for humankind that is implicit that sickens me. — T Clark

It has nothing to do with that necessarily. It's just a desire to protect someone from unnecessary harm.

It's what megalomaniacs want. They want to be loved regardless of their character - regardless of what they do, regardless of what kinds of qualities they have. Someone like that is mad and bad.

And loving someone else unconditionally is also bad - it is a sickness.

You think you love your children, but you'd have loved any child you created. So your love is not personal at all. It is a sick, demented kind of love that mature, reasonable people want no part of. Needless to say, the world is in short supply of the latter (they don't tend to procreate for one thing!)

Let's think about love - love of the good, healthy kind - for a mo. Love of the healthy kind is based on another person's character, deeds and shared history. It may become unconditional over time, but it is only if it had its origins in the other person's character, deeds and shared history that it will be healthy. Consider my example of the love-pill. The pill will make whomever you give it to love you unconditionally. Now, that's a very dangerous pill and you are a reckless, irresponsible and bad person if you just pop it in the drink of the next person you meet. Indeed, I think you're probably all of those things if you pop it in anyone's drink at anytime. But you're certainly, unequivocally all of those things if you just put it in the next stranger you meet's drink (and without telling them too).

Now, if you have a child you know that the child you create will almost certainly come to love you unconditionally. It is biologically programmed in. You KNOW this. The child is not going to carefully assess you as a person and see if you're a good match. No, they're just going to love you - it's a chemical thing, not a rational thing. And that's not good - yes, I know most of you think it is. But guess what - that too is what you're programmed to think! It is not a good thing - it means that newly minted kids have an in-built love pill. You create a kid, and you know it'll unconditionally love you, due to the love-pill nature instilled in its brain.

That love is bad, unhealthy, crazy. We don't admire it in other contexts. We don't admire people who love other people who beat them, who treat them with disrespect, who hold objectionable views and so on. We think those people are mad - mad to love the people they do, and mad not to be responsible to their character. We think they're not really in love with the other person at all, for their love does not have the person's character as its object, so unresponsive is it to it.

Parents knowingly create that kind of love. They make another person - an innocent party -love them unconditionally. And furthermore, they're proud of thesmelves for having done so and think the love they've created is something worthy of admiration. They're so wrong it hurts! Parents are analogous to those suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy - people who deliberately make others ill so that they can then tend to them.

There's nothing noble, healthy or wholesome about procreation. It is mainly the preserve of pathetic megalomaniacs.

Good people don't want to be dictators - they don't want to have to control the lives of another. It is undignified to live under someone else's control and by someone else's rules, as virtually all people of moral sensibility recognise.

So a good person doesn't create a needy person, doesn't create a person who'll have to suffer the indignity of living by someone else's rules, so incapable are they of looking after themselves. A good person doesn't create a situation in which they are going to have to be that dictator. Yet parents do all these things. No half-way intelligent parent can seriously claim not to have realized that the child they create will be pathetically needy for at least 16 years (and then some) and won't have a clue how to navigate the world or survive in it by itself. So when they procreate they knowingly force another to live in indignity. Furthermore, they know fully well that they will have to assume the role of law-giver and controller (and often relish this).

What sort of a person behaves like that? What sort of a person knowingly creates a needy, pathetic creature who'll have to live in indignity for years and years? What sort of a person relishes the idea of exercising that control over another? What sort of a person thinks their life will lack meaning unless they can assume that role?

Good people don't want to be dictators - they don't want to have to control the lives of another. It is undignified to live under someone else's control and by someone else's rules, as virtually all people of moral sensibility recognise. — Bartricks

Look at what has been firmly etched in stone:

Quran. An-Nisa 34. Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.

This clause is obviously non-negotiable in its entirety, and it is also never negotiated, because it will never, ever be put up for negotiation on any negotiation table.

This verse is obviously much more popular with men than your belief, but actually even more so with women because it gives them a right to be supported in exchange for their obedience. That is an arrangement that will always suit quite a lot of women fine.

Since people whom you cannot convince of your opposite belief, will multiply and thrive, while the ones that you can convince, will die out, your belief is some kind of punishment of God, which mostly exists to weed out lineages that are not meant to continue in future generations.

As I have argued previously, if a particular belief leads to you fail to reproduce, it will most likely die with you.

Yes, that's why most people think procreation is ethically fine. That doesn't show that it is, though. It just shows that the intuition is dodgy.

When it comes to ethics, our source of insight is our reason, not the Quran.

When it comes to ethics, our source of insight is our reason, not the Quran. — Bartricks

Yes, but as Aristotle famously wrote, "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Reason is about deriving statements that necessarily follow from other statements; however, without such chain degenerating into infinite regress. So, that means that you can only work your way back until you reach the basic starting-point statements.

You will need to feed "something" to the inference engine. Kurt Gödel really liked to feed the starting points of number theory to his virtual machine, but you can actually pick anything.

So, what is your set of basic starting-point statements, i.e. in Kant's lingo, categorical imperatives, to produce rulings in morality?

Plus, if there is a god - and I'm convinced there is - then I think it is the ones who procreate that the god punishes. First, you'll be punished with another life sentence for every child you knowingly force to live here (only fair, after all). Second, you'll be punished with misery. Your relationship with your partner will suffer. You'll have sex far less often. Your time will be consumed with tending to the useless, pathetic creature you both created and you'll now have to work to support it yet your income will be less than it was before you procreated. You'll have no free time to socialise. You will lose friends. You will become boring because your only topic of conversation will be your child, a person no-one else finds at all interesting. Your relationship with your partner will become increasingly business-like. Yet though you will probably fall out of love with your partner, you'll nevertheless stay in your increasingly miserable relationship for far too long 'for the sake of the children'.

The god is wise.

Why would I address off-topic arguments, when that would just lead to derailing the thread further?

I don't disagree with Aristotle about that. But what Aristotle said there is a self-evident truth of reason.

There are lots of self-evident truths of reason. That this argument is valid, for instance:

1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q

is a self-evident truth of reason. I do not merely assume that it is valid. It seems to be valid - that is, my reason represents it to be. And I know that the reason of virtually everyone else does too. Which is excellent evidence - the best there could ever be - that it 'is' valid.

And you cannot understand any of the contents of the Quran or any other religious text until one applies one's reason to it.

So reason is the boss of bosses - the ultimate and only true answerer of questions.

Now, it is a self-evident truth of reason, is it not, that one should not make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, other things being equal?

Why is it wrong, for instance, to drug another person's drink without asking? Well, because that'd be to impose something significant - the effects of the drug - on the other person without their prior consent. We may be able to dream up extreme scenarios where such behaviour is overall justifiable (the drug is the only antidote to a poison they've just taken and there isn't time to explain this to them, for instance). But that's why there's an 'other things being equal' clause in there. The default is that it is wrong to do things that impose on others if their consent has not been gained.

Now, clearly you cannot consent to be born. Thus, other things being equal it is wrong to procreate.

Here, using an argument form that Aristotle liked:

1. If an act will make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, then it is wrong other things being equal.
2. Procreative acts make significant impositions on another without their prior consent
3. Therefore, procreative acts are wrong other things being equal

That's question begging. I am not off topic. And the reason you don't want to engage with my arguments is that you'd lose.

No, the reason I don't want to engage with your arguments in this thread is that the topic is whether the obviously desirable goal of slowing/ halting global warming gives us any reason to think that having children would be unethical.

I am not intimidated by the quality of your general anti-natalist arguments, because I have heard all those tired old arguments before ad nauseum, and I know they are based on tendentious assessments of the degree of suffering that life necessarily must involve.

I have never wanted to have children. If I was young now I believe I would make the same choice (which was actually for mostly selfish reasons) and I also think that same choice would be all the more likely because I don't think the world needs any extra people. Although I don't think life per se necessarily involves so much suffering that it would be unethical to have children, I can see why someone who thinks it does involves that much suffering would think it unethical to have children, so I am not totally unsympathetic to anti-natalist arguments. For me the point against them is that the assessment of the degree of suffering that life necessarily involves is entirely subjective.

To repeat, though, apart from the fact that each person contributes significantly to global warming, an ever stronger reason I would have for not wishing to procreate now is that I do think anyone born now will most probably suffer greatly from the effects of global warming.