Sunday, August 12, 2012

More Cain, Cain, and Abel

Not ready to jump into the more complicated scenarios (spoiler that everyone already guessed: they'll feature both Cains and Abel on the island simultaneously), but the discussion in comments has prompted me to add one hypothetical before we even get to that point.
Scenario 3: Imagine instead of an environmentally conscious vegetarian pair of Cains, the human population of the island is a pair, let's call them Mr and Mrs Raton, who are even more rapacious and consuming than Abel is. However, unlike Abel, they do plan to bear children and perpetuate their lineage. They are completely unconcerned for the sustainability of their lifestyle, and all the food sources they live off will be depleted before any of their children possibly reach adulthood.
(The pair's name is a nod to the way ships' rats, in the days of European sea exploration, would come ashore onto islands with populations evolved to meet local/specialized pressures and wipe them out completely. These populations of rats would grow exponentially as long as the prey was easy; but as it was soon obliterated, the rats themselves died off when what they could eat was no longer available.)

So we naturally ask ourselves, is this behavior by the Ratons moral? Do they have the right to pass on a blighted and arid landscape to their own offspring?

I contend that their behavior is immoral, and moreover that they do not have such a right. To have full responsibility for and (some measure of) full control over a person's life and well-being (as parents do over their children) includes the obligation to not willfully deprive that person of the means of life. Additionally, it makes no difference whether these children are only as-yet-hypothetical or whether already alive: I'm viewing their whole planned path as a unit, one where (in this case) the order certain pieces occur in is irrelevant to the general cruelty and depraved indifference of the whole.

Naturally, the difference between Scenarios 2 and 3 is not a binary, on-off matter. I've written Scenario 2 so that the Cains' offspring will enjoy all the resources they do, but I don't mean to argue that all usage of nonrenewable resources is immoral. Leaving the world to the next generation in as good condition as you found it is, of course, exemplary, but the welfare of the future generations is not the only criterion on which morality is to be judged. (That way lies infinite regress, as well as any number of paradoxes involving nonconvergent integrals.) However, ones own wanted and freely chosen children have a claim upon one's labor so long as they are too young to take care of themselves -- this is a principle I have never heard a libertarian argue against -- and as a corollary one wrongs one's children if one depletes the resources they will need to survive and thrive.

In the context of the actual modern world, this principle is what justifies removing children from abusive parents: saying that parents have no right to abuse their children is equivalent, under the definition I'm working under, to saying that it is not wrong for others (in this case, the state) to prevent a parent from abusing a child.

17 comments:

  1. No argument from me. If one has the right to produce offspring then one has the responsibility to send them out into the world well educated and acting morally. Also, one must consider the impact that procreation has on the environment. In this case that impact is obvious and imminent. I would possibly disagree on the last sentence. While you may have a moral obligation to remove a child from it's parent under certain circumstances and you may see that obligation in a collective sense, I would submit that you do have no right to do so. Among the rights of children is the right to be with their parents and parents have a right to raise there children. Every effort must be made to that end if intervention is to be undertaken. There is no government to hide behind in the ballad of Cain, Cain, Abel, Raton and Raton, at least not yet. Be careful about what constitutes abuse and what passes for salvation in the eyes of a child who loves his mother. Oh crap!! I said no argument and then I made one. I also note that I am speaking of the more difficult case of the rights of children when the whole point of this debate is to determine the nature of rights. It seems you are muddying the waters before we even get started but I will play along for now.

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  2. I changed my mind. I am going to object at this point. I would highly recommend we change this to the ballad of Cain and Abel until we have discovered a definition of rights that we can work with. After that we can add Eve and Raton into the mix either separately or together perhaps. At the rate you are going we might as well call the island Earth and populate it with 6 billion people. Remember that the purpose of the last person on Earth scenario was to unmuddle things.

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  4. I corrected a couple minor spelling errors and reposted the following (probably still containing errors)

    It occurred to me that you might say that my previous post in this thread points to a problem with the last man on earth scenario in that I need to have more than one person to discuss rights, or something along those lines. To be clear, I believe the Ratons are acting immorally but they have a right to deplete resources in the manner you described unless and until they actually have a child. Until that point they are not usurping the rights of others (their children) because they do not exist. As a side note, you have taken an interesting stance for someone who is pro-choice; Namely that the Ratons are acting immorally toward their, as of yet not even conceived children. I find it hard to believe you would give the little buggers rights or curtail the rights of their parents. As we discussed with Abel, there seems to be a distinct difference in the morality or ethos of one's actions and there right to undertake such actions. The main difference thus far seems to be it's effect on others and since there are no others in any of the given scenarios, all of the agents actions thus far are within their rights. I agree that rights are only useful in the presence of others, but too many others may spoil the soup.

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  5. I don't think I'm muddying the waters at all: the whole point of the thought-experiment I'm putting together is to illustrate how putting just a couple of people together turns things completely upside-down. In each of the scenarios I've sketched so far, whether there's one literal person or two, you don't have any competition between any of the (as yet living) persons, no disagreement on goals or methods; what I'll be arguing is that what makes a question of rights difficult is frequently a situation of irreducible competing claims or goals or values: the only such competing claims here are the (as-yet-unborn) children's versus those of their parents.

    In any case, I don't plan to re-use the Ratons; it just jumped out at me in the other thread that this scenario was simpler than the ones I still have to write up. But for the purposes of the scenario, the Ratons and the Cains are each one set of interests, a black box if you will.

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    1. So let me see if we are on the same page before we proceed. The following is a list of what I believe we have agreed upon thus far or at least what I need you to agree upon before continuing.

      1) Our moral agents have values that may or may not compete with each other.
      2) Our agents have the right to choose that which they value and that which they do not value as well as the relative ranking of those values.
      3) Those choices may be the right choices or the wrong choices as perceived by other moral agents (and us).
      4) Agents have a right to make the wrong choice.
      5) Any claim of rights for future agents is actually a claim of the value of future agents and not an actual right of future agents.
      6) Rights only exist for agents that actually exist.

      Did I leave out anything important or add anything that we have not yet agreed upon? Would it be useful to point out some of the things that our agents value?

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    2. 1) Clearly true.
      2) If this means what I think it means, I agree. (It's a tad ambiguous, but the reading that makes the most sense is that our agents get to set their own values, yes? Not that whatever someone might value, they have the right to choose that thing or action: no matter how much one values the flavor of barbecued baby, one does not have the right to the thing itself, but one definitely has the right to value it.)
      3) Clearly true.
      4) One can have the right to make the wrong choice, but need not.
      5) I'm not sure what this means. We agreed to only consider rights of the form "X has the right to do action A"; clearly a future or hypothetical agent cannot do anything in the present, so there is nothing they could conceivably have the right to. However, there is a different type of claim that I have made, which is that it is possible to harm hypothetical or future persons; and if the very existence of those persons is also entirely within an agent's power, then I don't see any moral difference between an action which will definitely harm an already-existing person sometime in the future, and an action which will definitely harm a person who will definitely exist sometime in the future.
      6) See the first sentence of 5).

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    3. My answer to your 5 is that the Raton's immoral choice concerning other's (their offspring) is in choosing to actually have them. At present, they have made value judgements that tell them they value having children and they value raping the environment so much as to make it impossible for those children to live. Their values are at odds and they are making poor choices in light of those values but their current actions are well within their rights. They are being truly immoral if they actually follow through on having children. This is something they can always decide not to do. The same could be said of people through out history who have found themselves in seemingly intractable situations of gloom and despair. The big difference is that the gloom and despair for the Raton offspring is that it is of the making of the Ratons. One could argue that they have given up their right to having children (tough sell given human nature in the area of procreation) but not their right to rape and pillage. Remember that in our discussion of rights X has the right to do action A. So the Ratons have the right to rape and pillage and the Ratons have the right to value having offspring. Doing both of these things is well within their rights. I think it would be perverse for them to actually have children under the circumstances but they probably have a right to do that as well given history and human nature as a guide.

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    4. So, would it be fair to say that under your view, intentions are irrelevant to the morality of an action?

      If the Ratons are actively trying to get pregnant, does that change the moral calculus at all? If Ms Raton becomes pregnant tomorrow, do their destructive actions suddenly become immoral by virtue of that fact?

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    5. Generally speaking, yes intentions are irrelevant to the morality of an action. Results are what really matters. As to the second question, the actions of the Raton's immoral before Mrs. Raton becomes pregnant as it is in conflict with thier values. This does not mean they do not have the right. For example, I have the right to not work. Having the right does not make my action moral or ethical.

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  6. Are you one of those who think that humans do not have a nature? If you are, I would assume you would have a problem with basing human rights on a human nature that you believe does not exist. If you do believe in human nature you still may object to rights being based somehow on it. In either case, if you have any objections to human rights having some basis in human nature we should necessarily worry about that before proceeding.

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    1. I don't think I have any precise idea what "human nature" should mean in this context, no.

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  7. For example, the Cains wish to procreate where no mention of such is made about Abel. Presumably this is because Abel is not able to procreate in the absence of a Mrs. Abel. None the less, procreation is a natural desire of humans and as such it should inform us of what sort of rights the Cains should have regarding the implementation of their desires to procreate and how to weigh this right against the rights of Abel. If the Cains desires are not based in human nature and under the scenario that is (hopefully) coming Abel does not harm the Cains in any other meaningful way (in other words Abel is pacing his consumption so as not to hurt the Cains directly but the creation of baby Cains who can follow in their parent's footsteps remains impossible) then these desires have the same weight as any other desire. The desire to procreate and the value we place on it comes directly from our nature as human beings. I suspect that is, at least in part why we have a scenario with a Mr. and Mrs. Cain juxtaposed against a scenario with the singular male Abel.

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  8. By human nature I mean the sum of the behavior and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from genetic rather than environmental factors. I use the word typical in the same sense that ethologists do when they speak of "species-typical behavior" (for example, pair-bonding is typical of robins and catbirds but not of gorillas and orangutans). Due to the intimate connection that exists between human nature, values, and politics, I believe it would be folly to have a discussion of human rights that is not based in some way on human nature. If we were arguing about the rights of dogs it might be logical to say that dogs, by nature like to run around freely so they should have the right to do so. To say that dogs should have the right to climb trees would be a far less compelling statement because it is not within the nature of a dog to climb a tree even though they may have the desire when chasing squirrels.

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  9. I think that the question of what's possible for a person or group of people to choose to do is relevant, of course, as your example with the dog climbing the tree illustrates. I'm much less convinced that asking what's "typical", ie a descriptive question, is all that relevant.

    I mean, murder is entirely species-typical, especially murder of those outside one's family/clan/nation/imagined community... doesn't stop me from arguing that it's immoral.

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    1. I am not suggesting that what we ought to do as humans is whatever is in our human nature to do. I am suggesting that it is a starting point and what we ought to do is probably (definitely) dependent on some other stuff as well. I would assume that we would need to talk about human ends and human emotions possibly among other things to derive rights. So for now at least do you agree that human nature exists and can be sufficiently quantified as to be possibly useful for a discussion of human rights but that something more is needed and that human nature alone is not sufficient for the definition of these rights?

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  10. I see you have not made additional comments for some time and yet we are no closer to a solution. I think the problem is one or both of us have already answered the first question which is "where do rights come from?" and your answer is that they are completely man-made while mine is that they come from human nature. Are we at an impasse or can one of us possibly convince the other that their idea has some merit?

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