Why are "refugees" still having children?

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yes.

Even though you claimed to have been paying attention to the thread you read, you got the op author's name wrong several times. You also never seem to have noticed that B20's points were invalid or that they were answered and those answers were not refuted. In fact, those topics: values and risk assessments are also not refuted by you because you refuse to address them.

It starts with a question, a why question and contains a lot of judgment, not very well organized into a point. Many posters here have responded in answer to the why question. Others have legitimately answered the hateful judgments which are quite common for the op author.

The question seems rethorical to me, or at most asking for a moral justification, or for attempts at a moral justification; it's not a question about causes, in my view.

That's your opinion which you are free to have.

It's in the title only; the OP is about morally condemning some people for having children in a certain dangerous environment.

The op is about what it states in its text. Some of that is a moral condemnation for pregnancy, some of that is pointing the finger at perceived Islamists, some of it is in between.

As for dismal's behavior, I wasn't commenting on that, and I'd rather not comment on that.

Is that because you know Bomb#20 was wrong as I pointed out?

Btw, it was angelo, not dismal whom I quoted.

Let's review:

Brilliant idea. Have a baby even though the future is uncertain.

You've almost over-simplified the arguments as much as angelo because you refuse to discuss risk assessments and values.

The future is always uncertain. There is always risk. Risk comes in different degrees but remains a prediction.

Sure, but that's not relevant to the comments I made. Sure, angelo made a bad argument, but that's not relevant to my point.
I was commenting one of Bomb#20's argument, and I would rather not engage all of the other arguments you're bringing about, both because it takes a lot of time, and because I don't think it would be good for me to do it (too much hostility in the thread, as usual).

...but Bomb#20 was addressing me indirectly if you go far back enough in the thread.

How accurate do you suppose predictions are? What does the risk have to be to say yes or no? I'd think that there is a lot of risk to have a child in Israel as compared to the US because the probability of being bombed might be higher. It's probably worse in the Gaza strip because in addition to army attacks, there's also poorer economic conditions and no recognition of a nation which blocks certain other benefits from certain other countries. Worse still is probably the conditions described by the op. And on-par with that, the Great Depression.

* Note that here I am defining risk as it is typically defined in risk assessment: probability * severity of outcome. And I am considering infant mortality. Risk doesn't have to be defined specifically and/or only considering infant mortality but it is useful to consider.

I don't think introducing a definition of "risk" is useful, because other people are using it coloquially (i.e., in the usual sense of the words), and there is the risk that people end up talking past each other.

Actually, we're only talking past one another because you are using risk in the colloquial sense where it can mean more than one distinct thing, i.e. can mean probability or it can mean a combination of probability and severity.

It's immoral to behave in a way that likely will result in pregnancy in some circumstances, and it's not immoral in other circumstances.
It's immoral to behave in a way that not likely but still might (i.e., not remote chances) result in pregnancy in some circumstances, and it's not immoral in other circumstances.
Relevant questions here are when that is so. And clearly there is a moral disagreement.

Why is that a standard, who standardized it? Is that really the context of this thread or is it specifically to point to "refugees" and ask "why?"

That's a puzzling question, but I guess it would be laughing dog if someone standardized it, since he said it was a standard, and actually that is his wording.

I think your guess is wrong.

As I said in my reply to laughing dog, Bomb#20 said "There's a widespread feeling it's unethical to do things that make you temporarily happy but that impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party." The question (a question, but key in this context) is whether that widespread belief is true (though B20 didn't specifically endorse it), and it's relevant to the matters under discussion because that's the basis for the criticism of the parents' actions leveled by several posters.

I'm not going to endorse that either.

It's still puzzling that you ask me that, but let's tabboo the word "standard" (after all, that's irrelevant to the point I was making).
The question still is whether it's true that it's unethical to do things that make you temporarily happy but that impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party, and moreover, how much risk counts as "substantial" in which situations.

No, that's not the question. That's a beat your wife type question because it assumes incorrectly that the mother wants to have kids for short-term happiness.

Why "to term" as opposed to earlier, as in "...that pregnancy should only be carried to X in the case where..."? Is it because setting a specific threshold as to what X is, is problematic? If so, welcome to the thread. If not, then why?

I don't know. That's laughing dog's choice of words.

No, it's yours to answer. I'll try rewording it for you. Why would a woman have an abortion up to the day before a pregnancy because of substantial risk to have an unhappy life? Wouldn't the value of the life at pregnancy minus one day outweigh substantial risk to have unhappiness?

One person living in one location and time will define "properly" differently than some other person in some other location and time. Who gets to define "properly" and why? Is "properly" really binary or does it involve different levels of risk and cost-benefit?

I would suggest you raise that point to laughing dog, not to me. I was only replying to his point.
But my position is that they disagree about what's proper, but that does not mean that they mean different things.

Since you haven't answered, I will. Properly does indeed come in degrees and people will indeed evaluate decisions differently because they will have different values so they will evaluate the outcomes differently. For example, Derec doesn't want more Syrian children in the world, but the mother in the op wanted her Syrian child to be born because she placed various values upon that outcome.

For example, in a zombie apocalypse, if one values the human species, the creation of babies is very important.

It depends on the zombie apocalypse, but if you're talking about Glenn and Maggie, of course that was immoral, because:

No, it was moral.

1. If they manage to bring a child into that horrific world, that's wrong, even if that's to minuscully contribute to the continuation of the human species.

If everyone thought like that then there would be no human species left in the zombie apocalypse.

That is an unacceptable outcome.

2. If Maggie miscarries after some basic brain function develops, she will die in a horrific manner, with a walker/crawler trying to eat her from the inside. For that reason alone, Glenn should never have tried.

Actually, you are totally guessing. Regular animals do not get the zombie disease. For all we know, a miscarried baby will act in a manner consistent with other animals and just die.

3. Who made the walkers in the first place?

It's complete fiction and the answer could be anything.

Surely, they did not evolve.

We don't actually know.

They have a very complex physiology that came out of nowhere (yes, their world works differently, else there wouldn't be walkers. But evolution still happens, apparently).

Their physiology is not complex. They are essentially human with something "immortal" in the lizard part of the brain until it is destroyed.

They are a biological weapon (or else, they should reckon they are).

You don't actually know this, it's a guess.

If it was a rogue AI going Skynet on humanity (but using bioweapons instead of nukes), it's over. It will finish everyone off when it chooses to (unless it chooses not to, but that seems improbable given its attack).
If it was aliens, it's over (unless they choose not to kill humans off in the end, but that seems improbable given their attack).

Total guesses.

If some humans managed to make the weapon, they probably are inoculated against it, they're living elsewhere and they have working infrastructure and advanced tech, so humanity is not doomed, regardless of babies in the low-tech community.
So, how can they even think of continuing the human species by making babies?

Another total guess, but how about for sake of genetic diversity which would mitigate risk of the human species crumbling, or to pass on genes of people with "good" traits like Glenn and Maggie. Negan shouldn't produce way more offspring or human society would be pretty fucked up.

If it's AI or aliens, that's very probably not going to work (and in any case, there is a serious risk of new horrors in the future, so that's another good reason not to have a baby), and if it's humans, then humanity will continue.

More guesswork.

4. There are more reasons. But it's just wrong (which doesn't change the fact that Glenn and Maggie are better people than the vast majority of people in that world, it seems). It's probably more wrong for males, though, given the risk they are imposing on their partners (females impose that risk on themselves), in addition to the risk for future people.

If no one at all has children then in some 45 years or so into a zombie apocalypse, the human species will have no hope of growth and will die out after some more years. Women aren't going to produce offspring after menopause. So, no, there should be SOME people trying to have children. Passing good genes and genetic diversity on to the new generation would also be good. Likewise, good people passing along their traits would be good.

Do you value the human species? Do people have other variants of the same value, such as valuing their own offspring or valuing relatives or valuing like people (ingroup)? or even valuing rational people?

Have you read the post you're replying to?
I was explaining that B20 already refuted an argument, but his refutation wasn't understood, and you haven't understood my explanation, either, unless you have, but instead of asking questions that are relevant to it, you ask me a lot of other questions? Please clarify what you're getting at.

Bomb#20 has been responding indirectly to my original point which was not refuted, instead the whole issue of values and risk assessment has been ignored. So I'll ask you to answer the questions again.

Should people value their own existence to care or ought they value the human species more, which would exist regardless of whether rape has? same for families? same for human genes?

Whether they should value their own existence has nothing to do with caring about past rape, but this is not relevant to any of my points. I'd rather not engage in that.

Your rape scenario was not relevant to the central issue. Instead, you're dodging questions left and right.

The highest country happiness measure is 7.526. and the lowest happiness measure is 2.905.

I don't find happiness estimates very useful, and I definitely wouldn't rely on them to make an assessment. There are too many variables not taken into account.

Would you say that generally speaking people in Burundi should not have children because they "impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party?"

That's not what I wanted to talk about, and not related to my point. Why are you asking me that?
I'm not very familiar with the conditions in Burundi to tell for sure, but I think very probably not. But it would also depend on the person; for some people, it would be immoral, and for some, it wouldn't be.

That's sufficiently vague as to be functionally equivalent to not contributing to the discussion.

On the other hand, people in The Walking Dead definitely should not have children - well, not deliberately (e.g., if a woman is raped, obviously it's not her fault).

No, they should when safe provided that they mitigate risk not just of unhappiness but also deaths.

Where would be the line for you where most of such citizens of said country should not have children, but the country just above in the happiness index can mostly have children because on average they do not pose a substantial risk to an unhappy life?

That's not what I wanted to talk about, and not related to my point. Why are you asking me that?
I wouldn't rely on the happiness index, and in any case, I don't know where to draw the line - and it's probably fuzzy anyway.

Life is way more complicated and people might not be able to put in any kind of quantifiable evaluation into the mix in practice. What's left are some simple rules sometimes, like have babies when safe and possible and do your damnedest to survive and help them to survive. Maybe.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

No it would not.

Morality is a question of choices and consequences, not a matter of statistics. What you do, how you do it, and why you do it all factor into this equation.

Thus it would be immoral to ALLOW your children to be captured and used as livestock. Normal human behavior would see the overwhelming majority of parents doing everything they can to prevent that from happening. Some will succeed, some will not. But a moral action does not cease to be a moral action just because the action fails to produce its intended result. It is for this very reason we do not consider gun makers, car manufacturers and politicians to be inherently immoral even though we know, statistically speaking, their actions will cause some people, somewhere, to suffer.


And the answer is "none." The parents could be considered to be acting immorally if they deliberately withhold from their children things that will make their lives better and happier.

Creating them in the first place cannot rationally be considered an immoral act unless they created them with the intention of causing them suffering in the future. No sane parent does this, and I don't think the refugees did either.

Finally, here are some pictures from Derec's linked article of children who clearly are not permanently unhappy:

That's not the issue. If the adults had good reasons to reckon there is a 1/100 chances (for example) that children will grow to burn in Hell for eternity, they should not have children...

Bullshit. The mother of a future murder victim isn't morally accountable for her child's suffering, only the murderer is. EVERY PERSON ALIVE has a nonzero chance of dying in an act of horrible violence, but our parents created us anyway despite this. The moral thing to do is to do what you can to prevent this from happening and work for the maximum amount of happiness for your children; not having children AT ALL isn't morally beneficent in that calculus since a non-existent person cannot achieve any amount of happiness whatsoever.

You act as if your reply addressed my points. It doesn't, for the most part - and it does it wrongly when it does.

Of course the mother of a murder victim is not accountable unless, say 1/2 children are going to be murdered after horrific torture and she knows it - but in any case, that does not affect the culpability of the murderer/torturer. My point about Hell remains true, as are my other points.

When we discussed "substantial" before, you wrote it was fuzzy, but now you're giving 50% as an example? 20% could conceivably be considered "substantial," too. Also, a child being murdered doesn't mean they have an unhappy life. Their existence ended, perhaps horrifically and perhaps not. Part of the reason this is a bad thing is because we value human life and the potential for good things to come out of it. So the extinguishing of such human life is tragic. That's a different variable than the happiness variable and includes values.

My replies to Crazy Eddie are not my replies to you, since his position is quite different from yours.
My replies to Crazy Eddie debunk Crazy Eddie's points, not yours.
And I added the specification that they were murdered after horrific torture because that was in line with the example Crazy Eddie was replying to (about Hell), and he just removed it, so I realized he might want to focus on the murder only, which wouldn't serve the purpose of my example.
Also, what was fuzzy was the line (i.e., when it's immoral and when it's not), not the chances of unhappiness. That might be fuzzy too, but it's not what I was talking about.
Still, for that matter, in my reply to Crazy Eddie, I might as well replace 50% for "somewhere over 90%", and the argument goes through (again, that's my reply to Crazy Eddie, not to you).

Who cares who you are talking to? You came into the thread replying to other people...

Also, who cares about the distinctions about when you want to apply a fuzziness problem. It's up to other people to call you on whether you are perhaps being inconsistent. You should still address it.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Even though you claimed to have been paying attention to the thread you read, you got the op author's name wrong several times. You also never seem to have noticed that B20's points were invalid or that they were answered and those answers were not refuted. In fact, those topics: values and risk assessments are also not refuted by you because you refuse to address them.

I'm not infallible, and yes, I got the name mixed up at first (not later, so not "several times"), but not the content.

That aside, Bomb#20 has been destroying the arguments of his opponent in this thread since the beginning, even though you don't realize it.
His points aren't invalid (a point is not the kind of thing that can be invalid), and he only seems to have missed one of angelo's posts, but that doesn't affect any of the important parts of his arguments.

That's your opinion which you are free to have.

It's also very probably true.

The op is about what it states in its text. Some of that is a moral condemnation for pregnancy, some of that is pointing the finger at perceived Islamists, some of it is in between.

Where are the perceived Islamists?

Is that because you know Bomb#20 was wrong as I pointed out?

Btw, it was angelo, not dismal whom I quoted.

First, it was about Derec, not angelo. You quoted angelo, but my reply was to your claim that "Others have legitimately answered the hateful judgments which are quite common for the op author.", so it was about the OP author.

Second, no, the reason I don't want to answer is...well, let's say I don't. It's not worth the stress of more attacks from the left.

You've almost over-simplified the arguments as much as angelo because you refuse to discuss risk assessments and values.

That's false and offensive. But I addressed much more than I wanted to, due to pressure from you, and still got attacked and misrepresented by you and two other posters from the left. Whatever.

...but Bomb#20 was addressing me indirectly if you go far back enough in the thread.

But I was commenting one of Bomb#20's argument, and I would rather not engage all of the other arguments you're bringing about, both because it takes a lot of time, and because I don't think it would be good for me to do it (too much hostility in the thread, as usual). Still, I've already addressed a lot more than I originally intended to.

Actually, we're only talking past one another because you are using risk in the colloquial sense where it can mean more than one distinct thing, i.e. can mean probability or it can mean a combination of probability and severity.

But if others are using the word "risk" colloquially and you use it in a different sense, the misunderstanding results from your actions.

I think your guess is wrong.

No.

I'm not going to endorse that either.

Which is irrelevant to the point you're replying to, as was your demand that I explained why it's a standard, etc., out of place.

It's still puzzling that you ask me that, but let's tabboo the word "standard" (after all, that's irrelevant to the point I was making).
The question still is whether it's true that it's unethical to do things that make you temporarily happy but that impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party, and moreover, how much risk counts as "substantial" in which situations.

No, that's not the question. That's a beat your wife type question because it assumes incorrectly that the mother wants to have kids for short-term happiness.

First, yes, that is the question in the context of the assessment Bomb#20 mentioned. As he said, "There's a widespread feeling it's unethical to do things that make you temporarily happy but that impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party."
Second, the "temporarily happy" part does not have to be the goal, but in this case, it was, because it wasn't the goal of having children, but the goal of having sex. Or do you think that those people who have children in refugee camps are having sex always in order to have children? Bomb#20 was talking about risking having a kid.
Third, if you want do discuss other reasons for sex (and refugees who deliberately have children) and you want to defend that, please feel free to take it up with Derec.

No, it's yours to answer. I'll try rewording it for you. Why would a woman have an abortion up to the day before a pregnancy because of substantial risk to have an unhappy life? Wouldn't the value of the life at pregnancy minus one day outweigh substantial risk to have unhappiness?

No, it's not mine to answer. Not remotely. I was responding to laughing dog's claim, not endorsing any moral claim.

Why would a woman have an abortion up to the day before a pregnancy because of substantial risk to have an unhappy life?

How could they possibly have an abortion before the pregnancy?
I don't know what you're talking about, but I made no claims or suggestions about abortions.

Wouldn't the value of the life at pregnancy minus one day outweigh substantial risk to have unhappiness?

I don't understand the question, but in any case, I made no claims about abortions, etc., or about what refugees should do.

Since you haven't answered, I will. Properly does indeed come in degrees and people will indeed evaluate decisions differently because they will have different values so they will evaluate the outcomes differently.

Sure, some things are more improper than others. And people value different things. But that's not what I was replying to (and I did reply, you just didn't understand it).

For example, Derec doesn't want more Syrian children in the world, but the mother in the op wanted her Syrian child to be born because she placed various values upon that outcome.

First, please provide evidence that Derec doesn't want more Syrian children in the world.
Second, obviously, different people value things differently. Which is not relevant to anything I was discussing.

No, it was moral.

That's ambiguous, as it might mean "morally permissible" or "morally praiseworthy" (or "morally obligatory", but that's not likely). Either way, it's false.

If everyone thought like that then there would be no human species left in the zombie apocalypse.

First, you are mistaken. Adults would still be there.
Second, even if everyone thought like that, some might reproduce, of course - people who don't care much about right or wrong, and people raped by those.
Third, we don't know whether the attacker was a bunch of humans. If it was, humanity will almost certainly go on. If it wasn't, then either humanity is doomed to extinction, or probably something worse.

That is an unacceptable outcome.

What is unacceptable is the behavior of having children deliberately.

Actually, you are totally guessing. Regular animals do not get the zombie disease. For all we know, a miscarried baby will act in a manner consistent with other animals and just die.

But we're talking about a human fetus, not a fetus of a different species. My assessment is very probable given the available info. It may not be certain, but the high risk is enough for Glenn not to try.

It's complete fiction and the answer could be anything.

When we talk about the morality of the actions of fictional characters, we consider the info available to them. Obviously, they don't know it's fiction, and in fact, from the perspective of the characters in the fictional world, it is not.

We don't actually know.

The characters know or should know, based on the info available to them.

Their physiology is not complex. They are essentially human with something "immortal" in the lizard part of the brain until it is destroyed.

Not remotely. They're very complex.
They have an anaerobic physiology, they can digest living organisms and make protein and obtain energy from that (which is why they weaken and eventually starve without food), but they do that without breathing and without any sort of circulatory system, it appears.
They can kill with a bite, which is a kind of poison it seems, or a high concentration of unknown bacteria.

You don't actually know this, it's a guess.

The characters should reckon it is, based on the evidence available to them (including as "weapon" the actions of potential Matrix overlords).

Total guesses.

Options that, taken together, should be deemed very probable by the characters, at least those with enough knowledge (not much is needed). I'm not saying a single one of them is extremely probable, which is why I'm considering options.

Another total guess, but how about for sake of genetic diversity which would mitigate risk of the human species crumbling, or to pass on genes of people with "good" traits like Glenn and Maggie. Negan shouldn't produce way more offspring or human society would be pretty fucked up.

Again, because of the horrible reality they would bring the baby into.
Also, it's not clear that Negan's evilness is genetic.
In any event, probably humanity is screwed anyway, unless it was humans - but if it was humans, they almost certainly have advanced tech, and Negan is screwed.

More guesswork.

Again, it's very probable that it's one of the options I mentioned (from an in-world perspective; I have no idea where the writers will go with that).

If no one at all has children then in some 45 years or so into a zombie apocalypse, the human species will have no hope of growth and will die out after some more years. Women aren't going to produce offspring after menopause. So, no, there should be SOME people trying to have children. Passing good genes and genetic diversity on to the new generation would also be good. Likewise, good people passing along their traits would be good.

Again, if humans did it, then humanity will almost certainly go on.
If it was something not human, it's wrong to try to continue bringing humans into the world, given the options.

Bomb#20 has been responding indirectly to my original point which was not refuted, instead the whole issue of values and risk assessment has been ignored. So I'll ask you to answer the questions again.

Your claim about B20 is false, and I already answered more than I planned to. I'm going to refute some more stuff (when I feel annoyed enough), and then go.

Your rape scenario was not relevant to the central issue. Instead, you're dodging questions left and right.

No, it was relevant to the matter I was addressing. And your accusation is immoral, because it suggests I'm doing something wrong ("dodging"), while I addressed many questions I had no obligation to answer, and you keep asking questions that were completely out of place - and you keep at it, and will keep at it.

That's sufficiently vague as to be functionally equivalent to not contributing to the discussion.

Not contributing to the discussion where you ask me questions that are not related to my points, and I still address them?!
It's so offensive.

First, you misrepresent my replies to Crazy Eddie by suggesting that somehow I'm changing what I said to you. You ought to stop misrepresenting my posts (which you never will because you never will realize you're misrepresenting them, and you will continue to believe that you are winning against me and/or against B20, but you have no idea how annoying it is when one is in the receiving end).
Second, that I come to this thread and address one point does not mean I have an obligation to reply to everything you feel like. -

Also, who cares about the distinctions about when you want to apply a fuzziness problem. It's up to other people to call you on whether you are perhaps being inconsistent. You should still address it.

No, you're misrepresenting my replies, and then claiming I'm being inconsistency. No, it's not remotely the case that I should address it. You should stop demanding that (and especially you should realize you're misrepresenting and stop doing it).

 

[laughing dog]

On the contrary, it's not. And people of course were talking about moral matters.

Wrong on both counts.

That's not what the word "should" means.

Wrong again. "used for talking about what is right, sensible, or correct" (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/should

Not only is that not an obvious sense, but it's obvious that it's not a sense of policy efficacy at all.
In other words, you weren't even criticizing a proposed policy with that comment.
What is obvious is that it's unrealistic to expect that most people in refugee camps will act that way. But I challenge you to show that your opponents in this thread who suggested otherwise.

Wrong again on all counts. If a policy is unrealistic that it cannot be possibly be efficacious.

From post 68 in this thread:

Refugees shouldn't be having kids.

They can still have sex, but no entry in the front door please.

Why? Because you're a fucking refugee. You never know when you might have to suddenly move, fast. Either on foot or in a boat. Not the best time to be dragging along an infant or being 9 months preggers.

You have poor food, poor healthcare, poor prospects. The last thing you need is another mouth to feed and to put yourself in a position where you will eventually NEED medical attention.

Doesn't matter if it's 9 months or 5 years. Short-sightedness is short-sightedness.

That is not a moral statement but a recommendation about behavior based on the efficacy of raising a child.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

And further the reason he put "refugees" in quotes was because in his view many of the people are NOT refugees but are there to spread Islamism further into Europe.

Actually, it's probably because he thinks most of them aren't refugees but economic migrants.

Derec has not discussed "economic migrants," but instead Islamists/terrorists. You wrote that you read the thread so you should have observed this.

Right-wing propaganda and extreme claims by Macedonian politicians is that they're mostly terrorists. Here is what Derec wrote in post#16:

Because only some of those on the Idomeni camping trip are actual refugees.

"only some...are actual refugees."

In other words, his quote is more compatible with most of the people in the camp being Islamists because according to him only some are actual refugees.

Here is Derec further on the subject in post#25:

Zombie apocalypse resulted in a depopulation of the world so more children are definitely needed.

In other words, Derec places value on the human species. So in a zombie apocalypse children are "needed."

He contrasts that with Syrian/refugee children as follows:

There are still many millions of Syrians around and we have a world population of over 7 billion.

In other words, he is looking at the outcomes of actions and how he values them to determine whether or not he supports the decisions: i.e., since the population of the world is so large the outcome of Syrian refugees not having babies does not conflict with his value of the existence of the human species. Risks are quite negligible to the human species' existence if such refugees had no children.

Here Derec implicitly measures another outcome by understood values:

Second, they [Glenn and Maggie] do not already have four children.

So Derec recognizes another variable at play in deciding the outcome, i.e., Glenn and Maggie want to have a child because they haven't had one--they see value in spreading their genes into the gene pool. That's a difference Derec is noting because for the Syrian woman in question she has 4 children so there is a diminishing return on whatever it is they value from the outcome of having children.

As a side note that is relevant to other discussions, Derec is recognizing that values examined in outcomes are subjective.

I wrote to Derec more on this topic of outcomes and how they are valued. Here is his response in post#46:

I already said what the difference is. Having 5+ children in a overcrowded situation is very different than having any children when most of humanity has been wiped out.

Make no mistake about it, Islamists want to make Europe islamic. Having Europe import millions of Muslims, who then have 5 children per woman or so, is a way to islamicize Europe. And the fifth columnists are not just letting it happen, they are helping speed it up!

Derec was appealing to my values of civil society and liberalism and what risks at the camp may pose to them by potentially introducing more Islamists into Europe.

The op is about what it states in its text. Some of that is a moral condemnation for pregnancy, some of that is pointing the finger at perceived Islamists, some of it is in between.

Where are the perceived Islamists?

You wrote that you read the thread. So why are you asking this question?

 

[Bomb#20]

Wrong again.

Good argument.

The prevalence of discrimination everywhere we look means that the argument that people shouldn't discriminate is an argument against observed human nature. And yet you argue against discrimination.

Wrong again. Your conclusion is based on a false premise (the prevalence of discrimination everywhere we look).

I guess we've looked on Mars and there's no discrimination there. In what place that has humans do we see no discrimination ?

Most people when they find themselves in an unwanted hole, stop digging. You are an exception to that common sense observation.

You presume a hole not in evidence.

 

[Bomb#20]

...its successes tend to outnumber its failures.

What's your basis for that inference?

The fact that human beings were able to produce and support viable offspring for 500,000 years before the invention of electricity, indoor plumbing, synthetic clothing, prenatal vitamins or antibiotics. We exist as a species because slightly more of our distant ancestors survived infancy than were killed by predators and/or exposure to the elements.

All of our distant ancestors survived infancy. But your choice not to count all their contemporaries who were killed by predators and/or exposure to the elements and did not live long enough to become modern people's ancestors as failures is not a good reason to think those people aren't failures of the strategy in question.

In more contemporary times, the population growth rates of poorer countries has almost always exceeded that of wealthier ones. There are a lot of reasons for this, most obviously the lack of availability of sex education and birth control, but the elephant in the room is that for a country with a higher infant mortality rate and a shorter life expectancy, it is simply more important to replace children/family members who die of accidents or natural causes than it is in countries with better outcomes and longevity.

More important to whom? More important for what purpose? You seem to be simply defining evolutionary success as mankind's proper goal and defining happiness, pain, care, fairness, justice and so forth as moral irrelevances.

In both situations, the solution serves the same purpose: If the odds of survival are lower, then you can beat the odds by having more babies. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is precisely the reason why some species (rabbits, for example) breed as fast as they do: because LOTS of things are trying to eat them and they can't keep their numbers up otherwise. From a sociological standpoint, it's much the same: your family needs the manpower and is more likely to experience losses, so you make some new family members to keep your numbers up.

I.e., you're using children as a mere means to an end, as though they were your property, instead of treating them as ends in themselves. In Kantian ethics that's pretty much the criterion for immorality.

According the the OP link, Sulaf has five children. If people applying her "survival strategy" average 2.4 children growing up to reproductive age and 2.6 dying in childhood, that will be enough to make it a choice that history will show being common enough to cause the cultures that embrace it to grow and spread and win in the evolutionary struggle for survival among cultures. But its failures will still tend to outnumber its successes.

Well, no, in this case "one of the babies died" doesn't count as a failure.

It doesn't count from your point of view; but it counts as a failure from the baby's point of view. Why is your point of view more relevant to what's moral than the baby's?

Quite the opposite in fact; suppose you live in a place that has a 90% infant mortality rate (say, the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse or on a planet infested with xenomorphs). You give birth to ten children; nine of them are eaten by zombies and/or aliens. The one that survives is one more child than you would have had otherwise: success. If, on the other hand, you wait for the zombie apocalypse to end or you wait until you're sure you can gaurantee more reliable shelter for the next 2 years, your chances of conceiving a child while still fertile (or for that matter, still ALIVE) are much smaller, as are your chances of beating the statistically high mortality rate.

IOW: "good planning" isn't actually a reliable strategy for producing children in a chaotic environment. In a calm and stable environment you can afford to take your time and call your shots; when things get chaotic and unpredictable, it's "spray and pray." It sucks to think about the fact that each failed attempt is a human life ended prematurely, but on the balance of things this means a poor person is more likely to maintain his or her family by out-breeding whatever it is that's killing them.

Why is maintaining one's family weightier in the moral balance than not causing eighteen people to be eaten by zombies? What's so godawful precious about preserving DNA that makes letting go of it suck worse than all those premature ends to human lives suck?

This doesn't need to be a sci-fi fantasy. We already live in a place that has a 75% horrible premature death rate. There really is a monster out there eating people, and some of us know it and throw our children to the monster anyway. It's the Huntington's disease gene. If you have the gene you're going to die early and die badly; and if you have a kid then you have a 50% chance of passing the gene to him, and if your partner has the gene too then she has a 50% chance of passing it on too, which means if you both have the gene and you have a kid then the kid has only a 25% chance of not feeding the monster. According to the "maintain your family by out-breeding whatever it is that's killing you" standard, the right thing for a couple with Huntington's disease to do is to have eight children, so that they can maintain their family by having two survivors, at the cost of six horrible deaths. I (and I think on this point I can speak for credoconsolans and the others you're arguing with here) disagree. The right thing for a Huntington's disease couple to do is choose childlessness and let their DNA lose the evolutionary struggle. This is probably a base level disagreement about moral principles we'll never see eye to eye on. To you the end justifies the means. To you the six victims of your strategy don't count. To us, they do count.

 

[laughing dog]

never mind

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It's a hypothetical scenario.

Are your hypothetical parents a couple of psychics with perfect foresight and/or a dizzyingly accurate grasp of psychohistory? If not, then the statistics are irrelevant.

Let me add details if you insist

The details are irrelevant. The parents decision to CREATE children is a separate circumstances from someone else's decision to destroy them.

Based on that, a proper probabilistic assessment is that it's very probable (almost 99/100) that if they have a child, the child will be tortured and killed in that fashion.
Obviously, it would be immoral to have children...

No. It would be immoral for the alien invaders to torture and kill them. And it would (arguably) be immoral for the parents to refuse to intervene or at least attempt to intervene to prevent this.

The parents have no culpability in a decision they have no party in making. They create a child with the intention that their child NOT be tortured and killed. That someone else overrides their decision doesn't change theirs.

Of course it does. Particularly for the one parent in one hundred who has no intention of lighting their child on fire. OTOH, it's likely that the PARENTS are not the ones making that decision and the burnings are taking place against the parents' wishes. In that case, none of the parents have done anything immoral; it's the assholes with the gasoline you need to look at.

The parents and the assholes with the gasoline are guilty of different behaviors

They're behaving differently, but only those who actually commit harm to the children are guilty of an immoral act. Causing a child to exist doesn't actually cause any harm to them; the one that causes them to catch fire is the one to blame.

Even if you have strong reason to believe someone else is going to make an immoral decision in the future, YOU have zero culpability for decisions that someone else has made.

No, i'm calling you on your bullshit.

No, it's not bullshit.

Yes, it is absolute bullshit. You are attempting to reduce moral culpability to a matter of statistical outcomes. Morality isn't defined by what MIGHT happen or what will PROBABLY happen; morality is a matter of the INTENDED outcomes and the choices you make in order to secure those outcomes. Even in your most absurd thought experiment, every parent who has a child INTENDS for their child to be the one out of a hundred who doesn't get tortured and killed. They are only culpable if they are given an opportunity to ensure that outcome and knowingly decline to take it.

They're both acting immorally

No they are not. Again, the parents chose to have children and actively seek the best possible outcome for their child. That an external entity seeks a different outcome has no bearing on THEIR morality. They are responsible for their own choices, not for the probability of someone else's.

The monster is guilty for its own actions (unless it's not a moral agent), regardless of the guilt of the parents, and the parents are guilty for their own actions regardless of what the monster in the end does.

Yes, the parents may be guilty of immoral behavior any number of actions that cause the suffering of their children. They may decide not to get them vaccinated and leave them exposed to mums and rubella. They may place a lower priority on their children's needs and become abusive or neglectful. They may refuse to allow their children to eat cupcakes after 9:00pm (those bastards!).

Morally, however, they are not responsible for the suffering they MIGHT endure, only for the extent to which they eventually contribute to it. By the same token, parents are not to be lauded for the amount of happiness their children experience, only the extent to which they contributed to that happiness in the first place. The opposite case is that we do not celebrate abusive and neglectful parents when their children grow up to be happy and well-adjusted people in spite of their behavior; we recognize that abusive behavior is immoral even if the victim of abuse manages to achieve a positive outcome through other means.

That is an important consideration here: the decision to create life is mutually exclusive from what HAPPENS to that life after it is born. Subsequent outcomes are all the result of subsequent decisions that are evaluated separately within their own context. A supportive parent no more deserves the "blame" for a miserable child than an abusive parent deserves to be lauded for a happy one.

Of course they're not responsible for the actions that OTHER PEOPLE take. Whether the monster actually sends their child to Hell is irrelevant to the matter of their blameworthiness.

Exactly. The question is whether or not THEY contributed to their children getting sent to hell. That and ONLY that is the question of whether or not they are to blame for that outcome.

They are blameworthy for their own action of bringing a child given those odds.

No they're not, because THEY'RE not the ones who gave the child those odds. They are only blameworthy to the extent that their choices do or do not contribute to their child successfully BEATING the odds.

To expand on your own already ridiculously convoluted thought experiment: God is selecting the one in a hundred children by holding an all-school footrace every year and only sparing the kid who wins first place. In that case, the parents' moral obligation (aside from seeking out the Winchesters in order to assassinate God) is to make every possible effort to teach their child how to run extra fast so that he will be more likely to win the race. If they choose not to teach their child to run, or if they become neglectful or indifferent to their child's sprint training, THEN they share some (a very small portion) of the blame for not giving their offspring the best chances of survival.

As I again repeat: morality is about choices, not probabilities. The most you can say is that it is the moral obligation of normal people to make choices that reduce the probability of harm for themselves and their offspring. But the harm caused by the choices of an external moral agent is no failure of the parent or, for that matter, the victim.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

...its successes tend to outnumber its failures.

What's your basis for that inference?

The fact that human beings were able to produce and support viable offspring for 500,000 years before the invention of electricity, indoor plumbing, synthetic clothing, prenatal vitamins or antibiotics. We exist as a species because slightly more of our distant ancestors survived infancy than were killed by predators and/or exposure to the elements.

All of our distant ancestors survived infancy. But your choice not to count all their contemporaries who were killed by predators and/or exposure to the elements and did not live long enough to become modern people's ancestors as failures is not a good reason to think those people aren't failures of the strategy in question.

A dead PERSON is not a failure of that strategy, primarily because the objective of the strategy is not to save individuals, but to ensure the viability of the GROUP. The continued existence and growing prosperity of the GROUP (the family, the nation, the human race, or all of the above) demonstrates its effectiveness.

The strategy for maximizing the survival rate of individuals is quite different and involves things like prenatal care, early childhood education, vaccination, access to clean water and nutritious food, etc. We enact those strategies because we as a society are interested in reducing suffering on an individual level, and so we collectively make those resources available to people who need them.

It is the application of THAT strategy to these particular refugees that Derec and Credo are disputing. Their stated belief is that these refugees do not deserve to be given those resources and should simply be left to their fate, individual outcomes of their children notwithstanding. This is not a position consistent with what we would consider conventional morality, but it seems to be a relatively popular one.

More important to whom? More important for what purpose?

For the group community as a whole, and for the purpose of ensuring a larger workforce to contribute to the group's survival. Strength in numbers.

You seem to be simply defining evolutionary success as mankind's proper goal and defining happiness, pain, care, fairness, justice and so forth as moral irrelevances.

No, only recognizing that there are different considerations depending on the context. A judgement that applies to the individual may not apply to the community as a whole, and vice versa. In a situation where resources are plentiful and the community can afford to spend a little more to ensure better individual outcomes, individual needs are more important. In a situation of scarcity, individual success is far less important than that of the group.

In the simplest example: when you have a family of ten children living in a two-bedroom house, the privacy and comfort of individual children is far less important than the family's overall living arrangements. If you use up all the available space giving everyone their privacy, you no longer have room to cook, eat, do your homework, organize your bills or properly store your possessions. Everyone is forced to sacrifice their individual happiness to avoid suffering in a larger scale.

Yet again we come to the point that we live in a society with abundant resources and do not have a huge problem with scarcity. I cannot, therefore, think of a good reason to expect these particular refugees should have to sacrifice in order to spare credo the indignity of having to pay his taxes (to the Greek military, for some reason???) in order to maximize their survival rates. It's clear the refugees do not expect to be getting much help and don't even seem to be asking for it; my question is why OFFERING that help is so offensive to some of the posters here.

Why is maintaining one's family weightier in the moral balance than not causing eighteen people to be eaten by zombies?

That depends on whether or not preventing the extinction of your family and/or species is a preferable outcome. If you don't care whether you go extinct or not, then acting to prevent that outcome makes very little sense.

 

[Bomb#20]

Because it hasn't been refuted. Human beings have been reproducing under unstable circumstances for hundreds of thousands of years. The continued existence of black people in America is proof enough that the ever-present threat of having ones children sold away, or of being murdered on a master's whim, or of being tortured, abused or accidentally killed by neglect, were not enough to stop slaves from marrying and attempting to raise families.

You're not addressing the argument; you're just saying what happened. That something happened doesn't make it right. Recall what we're arguing about: I said "There's a widespread feeling that it's unethical to do things that make you temporarily happy but that impose a substantial risk of a permanently unhappy life on a non-volunteering third party." and you said "If that were a valid concern half my ancestors would never have been born." Incorrect inference. If that hadn't happened then half your ancestors would never have been born; but having it happen even though it's a valid concern would not have stopped your ancestors from being born. You're committing a non sequitur fallacy. You cannot logically reason from the premise that it happened and it got your ancestors born to the conclusion that it's not a valid concern. The counterexample of rape proves this: if rape hadn't happened then my ancestors would not have been born, and yours neither, but can we both agree that rape remains a valid concern? People ought not to rape one another.

The circumstance that a person has benefited from a wrongdoing, or even only exists in the first place because of the wrongdoing, does not retroactively cause the wrongdoing to have been right.

Implying that having children in unstable circumstances actually counts as "wrongdoing" because of the immense risk of those children suffering pain or deprivation or even death. That's a very puzzling implication, considering what billby and LD have elegantly pointed out: NO parent in history has EVER been able guarantee a life of total health and comfort for children who have not yet even been born. Most of us couldn't even guarantee their happiness AFTER they were born. Parents do the best they can with the resources they have and obtain the best outcome they can manage.

You do not wait for conditions to be perfect before having a child, because for the majority of the human race, conditions will NEVER be perfect.

You're offering a false dilemma. This isn't about guarantees or perfect conditions. There's a huge range of conditions intermediate between perfection and immense risk of those children suffering deprivation or even death. The fact that it's unreasonable to draw the line at one extreme edge of the range is not a good argument for drawing the line at the opposite extreme edge. Moderation in all things. Why not draw the line at a point where there's a reasonable expectation that the children will probably not suffer severe deprivation and early death?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You're not addressing the argument; you're just saying what happened. That something happened doesn't make it right.

The intended outcome of that behavior -- e.g. reproduction under unstable circumstances -- was to create and maintain families. The plan worked.

If you reduce the question far enough, you eventually run into the question of "Why have children AT ALL?" The perpetuation of the family and individual legacy is every bit as self-interested as the expansion of the group's (family/community/nation) strength in numbers. To the extent that procreation can be considered morally acceptable AT ALL, then maximizing the odds of successful offspring can be accomplished either by heaping benefits on the individuals or by simply producing enough offspring to beat the odds.

Either one will accomplish that same goal... so now it's just a question of whether or not that goal makes any sense in the first place.

I, for one, am happy to have been born, so from my point of view the decisions of my ancestors was a net benefit to me. If they had not made those decisions I would not have been born, which is an outcome I would not have preferred. Your mileage may vary.

You're offering a false dilemma. This isn't about perfection. There's a huge range of conditions intermediate between perfection and immense risk of those children suffering deprivation or even death.

See my response to Angra. Moral responsibility is about choices, not probability and risk. The parents' moral obligation is satisfied by taking whatever actions are possible to promote their child's happiness and prevent that child's suffering. Not having the child AT ALL is a morally neutral position; a child who doesn't exist cannot experience pleasure OR suffering.

The refugees can do a million different things to keep their children from suffering and a million other things to make them happy. They can also do a million things to make their lives miserable and a million things that will harm them. The question of morality is which of those things they choose to do after their children are born.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The standard is "that pregnancy should only be carried to term in the case where the parents know they will be to properly care for child".
Whether we call it a standard or something else, it's a statement. It's either true or false. Moreover, it's a moral statement, unless that "should" is not a moral "should", in which case it's even less connected to the points other people were making (and to the OP) than i thought.

On the contrary, it's not. And people of course were talking about moral matters.

Wrong on both counts.

Okay, keep at it, and your persistence in irrationality will probably get the last word.

But either way (i.e., regardless of whether it's a moral "should" or a means-to-ends "should"), it's either true or false.

No, that is untrue. If it is "should", as in "it is good idea" then it is may simply be a guide to action.

That's not what the word "should" means.

Wrong again. "used for talking about what is right, sensible, or correct" (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/u...merican/should

That obviously fails to affect my point, as it does not assert that "should" means "it is a good idea".
Moreover, even if it meant that, it's either true or false, because in that case, the so-called standard would be a statement.
In fact, the statement "pregnancy should only be carried to term in the case where the parents know they will be to properly care for child" would mean (which it does not) "It is a good idea that pregnancy only be carried to term in the case where the parents know they will be to properly care for child". But that's either true or false.

Not only is that not an obvious sense, but it's obvious that it's not a sense of policy efficacy at all.
In other words, you weren't even criticizing a proposed policy with that comment.
What is obvious is that it's unrealistic to expect that most people in refugee camps will act that way. But I challenge you to show that your opponents in this thread who suggested otherwise.

Wrong again on all counts. If a policy is unrealistic that it cannot be possibly be efficacious.

Gross misrepresentation of what you reply to. It's not a policy, it's a statement. It's true or false.
Again, I challenge you to explain what policy have your opponents proposed that is unrealistic, and how that relates to the statement you called a "standard" (and to stop misrepresenting irrationally my words, and to stop believing that your replies do anything to refute my points, etc.)

From post 68 in this thread:

Refugees shouldn't be having kids.

They can still have sex, but no entry in the front door please.

Why? Because you're a fucking refugee. You never know when you might have to suddenly move, fast. Either on foot or in a boat. Not the best time to be dragging along an infant or being 9 months preggers.

You have poor food, poor healthcare, poor prospects. The last thing you need is another mouth to feed and to put yourself in a position where you will eventually NEED medical attention.

Doesn't matter if it's 9 months or 5 years. Short-sightedness is short-sightedness.

That is not a moral statement but a recommendation about behavior based on the efficacy of raising a child.

First of all, that probably is a moral statement, followed by reasons given in support of it.
credoconsolans is saying that Refugees shouldn't be having kids..
As a moral "should", it means that refugees have a moral obligation not to have kids.
That's in line with his comment (in the same post) "Sad to say, I have to side with Derec.", and " Some men of some cultures consider any idea that they should modify or restrict to their sex acts is unthinkable. Their women seldom have a choice in the matter." (he's even accusing some of them of rape).
The reasons given in support of the moral statement also indicate criticism on rationality grounds - i.e., apparently in his assesment one of the main reasons they're being immoral is that they're being irrational (see "People are stupid").
So, in short, very likely he's morally condemning their behavior, and also saying that they're being irrational (indeed, he's saying the behavior is immoral because it's irrational and causes problems for others. Well, that and the rape).

Second, if that is not a moral "should", it's a "should" of means-ends rationality. It's still not a proposed policy (not for any government, etc.).
In other words, if "Refugees shouldn't be having kids." does not mean "Refugees have a moral obligation not to have kids.", then it means "It's irrational of refugees not to have kids". That is not a recommendation of what policies to apply, either, and certainly not at all any suggestion of any unrealistic expectations on credoconsolans' part.
Rather, he is criticizing the behavior of the refugees, on rationality grounds alone.

Third, even if it's only criticism on rationality (not morality + rationality), it remains the case that there is no expectation on his part that they would change their behavior, so there is no unrealistic policy proposed by him.

Moreover, when you told him

Again, in the real world, we deal with how people actually behave, not how we'd like them to behave.

His reply was:

Yep, we have to deal with stupid people making stupid decisions who then ask for help with the results of their stupid actions.

It's like dealing with children who don't know any better, except they're adults and should.

So they should expect a lot of negative attitudes toward them and their idiocies.

So:
Fourth, it is apparent that there is no unrealistic expectation on his part. He does not expect them to change. He says "yep", that's how they behave. And he condemns them for that.
Fifth, he even says they should expect a lot of negative attitudes toward them and their idiocies.
It's very, very obvious that he considers at least some of those "negative attitudes" (i.e., morally based rejection) to be justified.
In other words, he's condemning them on moral grounds, because of their irrationality.

In fact, even you realized that, because you replied:

So they should expect a lot of negative attitudes toward them and their idiocies.

Only from the short-sighted, the hard-hearted and moralizing hypocrites.

He keeps saying they're being irrational:

No, people who have unprotected sex while fleeing for their lives from violent wars are stupid.

And he keeps morally condemning them:

So they should expect a lot of negative attitudes toward them and their idiocies.

Only from the short-sighted, the hard-hearted and moralizing hypocrites.

Or from soft-headed idiots who support anyone no matter how stupid their decision. Some of us expect people to take responsibility for their own actions and when they don't, why should we like it?

He said "Some of us expect people to take responsibility for their own actions and when they don't, why should we like it?".
That is obviously a moral condemnation (well, obviously to a rational reader).

And moreover, when his exchange with you continued, he made it clear he wasn't proposing policy, but condemning them:

No one has to like anything. It is irrelevant to the issue of what to do. Allowing refugees to enter a country is supporting their decision to leave a violent, unsafe place.

I didn't say otherwise. I just said they're morons and they can expect to be treated like the morons they are.

It is apparent he wasn't proposing policy, but condemning them as both irrational morons and immoral for being irrational morons.

Have you even read his exchange with you?

There is more:

I didn't say otherwise. I just said they're morons and they can expect to be treated like the morons they are.

Exactly how does one treat refugees trying to live somewhere safe who are "morons"?

Not 'refugees'. Refugees who decide irresponsibly to have children. So you treat those with contempt. As you would to any irresponsible adult whose actions were selfish and self-serving and inconsiderate.

So, he says you treat them with contempt, because their actions were selfish and self-serving and inconsiderate.
Do you fail to see that this is moral condemnation through and through? (yes, there is also a criticism on rationality grounds, but those are actually the reasons given for the moral condemnation!).

Only then did he said he proposed a policy, namely to treat them with contempt, but even then, he didn't expect them to change, given the actions of left wingers.

By treating refugees who have children irresponsibily with the contempt such selfish stupidity deserves. Maybe they'll learn a lesson. Or probably not as so many bleeding hearts will feel sorry for their idiocies.

He even makes it clear that he does not expect success, and says "Sneering is the most I can do, isn't it?"
He knows he can't stop them or the leftists, so he sneers those refugees who decide irresponsibly to have children - in other words, he morally condemns them, and displays his moral disdain.
How can you not see that?
It's morality through and through.

And further:

Yes, people like me don't like to give up our hard-earned money to people who - while in extremely bad situations - make their situations worse by being selfish and bringing a helpless child into the dangerous situation.

I can't think of anything more selfish.

You apparently think it's not selfish at all to endanger a child and then demand a host pay for the medical care and food for this child you brought into the danger. Wow, that says a lot about YOU.

If that's not obvious to you, let me translate: credoconsolans is morally condemning them for the behavior he describes as selfish, and he's morally condemning you for what he says you apparently think.

And moreover, back then you did seem to realize that, when you reply:

My point is that is irrelevant as to whether it is selfish or not - the refugees (adults and children) are there and they need to be dealt with in a manner that is humane and consistent with European values and law. From what I can tell, your point is to engage in selfish and pointless moralizing.

Well, obviously he disagrees that his behavior is selfish, and moralizing need not be a means to an end (it's the end itself often), but you did realize he passing moral condemnation.

Still, he later said he was proposing some behavior as policy:

No, my point is to try to culturally and publicly shame idiots. You don't have a right to be ignorant when other people have to foot the bill for your idiocies. Be as stupid as you want, but expect to pay for your mistakes, not expect others to do so.

Did he expect the refugees to change their behavior?
Perhaps, but I see no evidence of that. Instead, I think he's more likely to be trying to affect the behavior of people in host countries (see the part about "expect to pay for your mistakes, not expect others to do so").

But then you even said

Thank you for confirming your point is to engage in selfish and pointless moralizing.

So, back then, you knew perfectly well he was passing moral condemnation on them, and you even claimed he was not proposing policy.

But then, you made the following false claim:

The opinion that refugees who have babies in transit are stupid and selfish and deserve to be treated with respect is based on one's view of morality. As such it cannot be "correct" since there is no established standard of morality. I realize that it makes one feel to better about one's nasty, ignorant, selfish and hypocritical views if one thinks they are "correct", but that does not change the nastiness, the ignorance, the selfishness and hypocrisy contained in the opinion.

You're saying that a moral view cannot be correct (and you even use scare quotes), since "there is no established standard of morality", and you fail to realize you've been passing moral condemnations on your opponents all through the thread and others, including your reply to credoconsolans.

His reply is also confused:

Who said anything about morality? It's about the lack of commonsense, lack of rational thinking, the lack of self-restraint and selfishness.

THAT's certainly cause to feel contempt toward ANYone with those traits, let alone people seeking assistance.

credoconsolans continues to pass moral condemnation on them "THAT's certainly cause to feel contempt toward ANYone with those traits", because of their alleged "lack of commonsense, lack of rational thinking, the lack of self-restraint and selfishness.", and fails to realize he is doing that.

But you did catch that, when you replied:

You are making moral judgments when you claim the refugees who have babies in transit lack commonsense, or rational thinking or self-restraint or that they are selfish.

Well, more precisely, the directly moral part was the "THAT's certainly cause to feel contempt toward ANYone with those traits", but the "selfish" part and the other words you mentioned, in context were meant to introduce a moral judgment.
Anyway, he was moralizing of course. And you know what? He was doing that from starters, when he said "Refugees shouldn't be having kids.."

He replied to you:

You are making moral judgments when you claim the refugees who have babies in transit lack commonsense, or rational thinking or self-restraint or that they are selfish.

Since when is that a moral judgment? I see it as a logical observation of stupid actions.

But it's an introduction to the obvious moral judgment "THAT's certainly cause to feel contempt toward ANYone with those traits, let alone people seeking assistance."
That means that feelings of contempt are morally appropriate, so they are blameworthy, etc.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Let me add details if you insist: by the age of 3, 99/100 children are covered in gasoline and then burned alive. That has been so for decades, and adults know it. There is no reason to suspect any force will change that. Let's say advanced aliens invaded the Earth and are doing it, and they promise to keep doing it for a thousand years or until humans become extinct, whatever happens first. After 1000 years, they will exterminate humans if they're still around. So far, all of their promises have been monstrous, and all of them true in the cases the deadlines have already passed.
Based on that, a proper probabilistic assessment is that it's very probable (almost 99/100) that if they have a child, the child will be tortured and killed in that fashion.
Obviously, it would be immoral to have children, for the reasons people usually have children.

No. It would be immoral for the alien invaders to torture and kill them. And it would (arguably) be immoral for the parents to refuse to intervene or at least attempt to intervene to prevent this.

The parents have no culpability in a decision they have no party in making. They create a child with the intention that their child NOT be tortured and killed. That someone else overrides their decision doesn't change theirs.

Of course the parents have no culpability in a decision they have no party in making, that is, they have no culpability in the decision of the alien invaders to torture them. But the parents are fully culpable for their own decision to make children in such conditions, regardless of whether the aliens then decide to torture them or not.
As for the aliens, they might or might not be moral agents, so they might or might not be guilty. But that is irrelevant to the guilt of the parents.

Of course it does. Particularly for the one parent in one hundred who has no intention of lighting their child on fire. OTOH, it's likely that the PARENTS are not the ones making that decision and the burnings are taking place against the parents' wishes. In that case, none of the parents have done anything immoral; it's the assholes with the gasoline you need to look at.

The parents and the assholes with the gasoline are guilty of different behaviors; the former are guilty of having children given those odds, and the latter of the burning. Well, if they're moral agents in the first place.

They're behaving differently, but only those who actually commit harm to the children are guilty of an immoral act. Causing a child to exist doesn't actually cause any harm to them; the one that causes them to catch fire is the one to blame.

Even if you have strong reason to believe someone else is going to make an immoral decision in the future, YOU have zero culpability for decisions that someone else has made.

You keep misrepresenting my view. Of course, the parents have zero culpability for decision some other people made. The parents are culpable for the decision to make a child in those conditions.
Whether the assholes later burn the child or not does not affect the parents' culpability.

Yes, it is absolute bullshit. You are attempting to reduce moral culpability to a matter of statistical outcomes.

That's an irrational and gross misrepresentation of my words.

Morality isn't defined by what MIGHT happen or what will PROBABLY happen; morality is a matter of the INTENDED outcomes and the choices you make in order to secure those outcomes.

There are many factors involved. If Bob engages in celebratory gunfire in a town but does not intend to hurt anyone, he is morally guilty regardless of whether he hurts someone, because he reckons or should reckon that there is a probability of hurting people that is too high to justify just for the sake of celebrating.

How about: If the adults have good reasons (i.e., it's a proper probabilistic assessment) that if they have children, there is a 999999/1000000 chance that they will burn forever in Hell (or "just" for 1000 years, after leading a normal happy life), they ought not to have children.

Still no.

They ought not worship the fucking asshole god that created such obscene conditions, and they ought to look up Sam and Dean Winchester to figure out how to dispose of said god at the earliest possible opportunity.

Of course they're guilty.

The monster is guilty for its own actions (unless it's not a moral agent), regardless of the guilt of the parents, and the parents are guilty for their own actions, regardless of what the monster in the end does.

Yes, the parents may be guilty of immoral behavior any number of actions that cause the suffering of their children. They may decide not to get them vaccinated and leave them exposed to mums and rubella. They may place a lower priority on their children's needs and become abusive or neglectful. They may refuse to allow their children to eat cupcakes after 9:00pm (those bastards!).

They're guilty for their own choice to have a child in that situation.

Of course they're not responsible for the actions that OTHER PEOPLE take. Whether the monster actually sends their child to Hell is irrelevant to the matter of their blameworthiness.

Exactly. The question is whether or not THEY contributed to their children getting sent to hell. That and ONLY that is the question of whether or not they are to blame for that outcome.

They're not to blame for the outcome. They're to blame for deciding to have a child in that situation, regardless of the outcome, and even if they end up failing to even have a child. They're guilty for trying.

No they're not, because THEY'RE not the ones who gave the child those odds. They are only blameworthy to the extent that their choices do or do not contribute to their child successfully BEATING the odds.

No, they're guilty, for sure.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But the parents are fully culpable for their own decision to make children in such conditions, regardless of whether the aliens then decide to torture them or not.

Culpable for what? Creating children is not immoral. Harming them is.

The creation of the child is a separate action from that which causes them harm.

The parents are culpable for the decision to make a child in those conditions...

Creating children is not immoral. Harming children is immoral.

The creation of the child is a separate action from that which causes them harm.

They're guilty for their own choice to have a child in that situation.

Having a child is not immoral. Creating a situation that is dangerous to children is immoral. Again, the parents are not responsible for conditions created by others, only for for conditions THEY created.

In the absence of the external agent -- the malevolent god, for example -- the child would not be harmed at all. Thus it is this agent, and ONLY that agent, that is acting immorally.

They're not to blame for the outcome. They're to blame for deciding to have a child in that situation...

There's no guilt in that decision unless the situation is one of their own making. If it is not, guilt is EXCLUSIVELY the province of the creator of that situation.

No, they're guilty, for sure.

No they're not, for sure.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And further the reason he put "refugees" in quotes was because in his view many of the people are NOT refugees but are there to spread Islamism further into Europe.

Actually, it's probably because he thinks most of them aren't refugees but economic migrants.

Derec has not discussed "economic migrants," but instead Islamists/terrorists. You wrote that you read the thread so you should have observed this.

First, have you read the tread?
Derec did talk about economic migrants, even if he didn't use the same words I used.
Second, I read the thread. Derec said he put refugees in quotation marks "Because only some of those on the Idomeni camping trip are actual refugees."
He never said they were there in order to "spread Islamism further into Europe".
He did say that "And the danger of islamization of Europe is real as well.", but that's not remotely the same thing.
Again, he probably thinks most of them aren't refugees but economic migrants.
In fact, he said:

Some are. Others are from places like Pakistan and just want more economic prosperity.

That's economic migrants.

And furthermore, he said:

I think refugees should be protected. That doesn't mean that they all should be allowed to immigrate into EU regardless of their numbers, EU's immigration needs or the migrants' willingness to respect and adopt the host countries laws and values (unlike those Muslim boys who refused to shake their teacher's hand).
In the end, countries in Syria's region should take on bulk of the refugees. But most of them want to go to Germany because Germany is more prosperous. At that point, when they leave a safe country and go elsewhere, they are no longer really refugees.

You see, his take is that "most of them want to go to Germany because Germany is more prosperous.", and "when they leave a safe country and go elsewhere, they are no longer really refugees.".

In other words, he believes most of them are economic migrants, as I said. If you read the thread, you should have known this.

Right-wing propaganda and extreme claims by Macedonian politicians is that they're mostly terrorists.

Even if that's true (I haven't read it, so I don't know either way), that's not Derec. You shouldn't accuse him with no basis. And you have no basis.

Here is what Derec wrote in post#16:

"only some...are actual refugees."

In other words, his quote is more compatible with most of the people in the camp being Islamists because according to him only some are actual refugees.

You're taking his words out of context.
Again (bold mine now)

I think refugees should be protected. That doesn't mean that they all should be allowed to immigrate into EU regardless of their numbers, EU's immigration needs or the migrants' willingness to respect and adopt the host countries laws and values (unlike those Muslim boys who refused to shake their teacher's hand).
In the end, countries in Syria's region should take on bulk of the refugees. But most of them want to go to Germany because Germany is more prosperous. At that point, when they leave a safe country and go elsewhere, they are no longer really refugees.

So, he believes that most of the migrants from Syria are economic migrants. Add to that the economic migrants from Pakistan.

Second, they [Glenn and Maggie] do not already have four children.

So Derec recognizes another variable at play in deciding the outcome, i.e., Glenn and Maggie want to have a child because they haven't had one--they see value in spreading their genes into the gene pool. That's a difference Derec is noting because for the Syrian woman in question she has 4 children so there is a diminishing return on whatever it is they value from the outcome of having children.

Yes, he said that, but that has zero to do with the false and unjustified claim that he believes they're traveling to spread Islamism (he believes most are economic migrants), or with anything else I was talking about.

I wrote to Derec more on this topic of outcomes and how they are valued. Here is his response in post#46:

I already said what the difference is. Having 5+ children in a overcrowded situation is very different than having any children when most of humanity has been wiped out.

Make no mistake about it, Islamists want to make Europe islamic. Having Europe import millions of Muslims, who then have 5 children per woman or so, is a way to islamicize Europe. And the fifth columnists are not just letting it happen, they are helping speed it up!

Derec was appealing to my values of civil society and liberalism and what risks at the camp may pose to them by potentially introducing more Islamists into Europe.

Derec blames Islamists for promoting migration into Europe, and using that to make Europe Islamic. He is not saying the Migrants themselves are all or most Islamists who are trying to make Europe Islamic. In fact, he's talking about millions of Muslims (not of Islamists) who have 5 children for women.

The op is about what it states in its text. Some of that is a moral condemnation for pregnancy, some of that is pointing the finger at perceived Islamists, some of it is in between.

Where are the perceived Islamists?

You wrote that you read the thread. So why are you asking this question?

I read the thread. Have you?

Again, let's look at the OP. You claim that the OP is partly pointing the finger at perceived Islamists. It is not. He points the finger in another post, much later, and for a different behavior (i.e., not for behaviors described in the OP).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Let me add details if you insist: by the age of 3, 99/100 children are covered in gasoline and then burned alive. That has been so for decades, and adults know it. There is no reason to suspect any force will change that. Let's say advanced aliens invaded the Earth and are doing it, and they promise to keep doing it for a thousand years or until humans become extinct, whatever happens first. After 1000 years, they will exterminate humans if they're still around. So far, all of their promises have been monstrous, and all of them true in the cases the deadlines have already passed.
Based on that, a proper probabilistic assessment is that it's very probable (almost 99/100) that if they have a child, the child will be tortured and killed in that fashion.
Obviously, it would be immoral to have children, for the reasons people usually have children.

No. It would be immoral for the alien invaders to torture and kill them. And it would (arguably) be immoral for the parents to refuse to intervene or at least attempt to intervene to prevent this.

The parents have no culpability in a decision they have no party in making. They create a child with the intention that their child NOT be tortured and killed. That someone else overrides their decision doesn't change theirs.

Of course the parents have no culpability in a decision they have no party in making, that is, they have no culpability in the decision of the alien invaders to torture them. But the parents are fully culpable for their own decision to make children in such conditions, regardless of whether the aliens then decide to torture them or not.
As for the aliens, they might or might not be moral agents, so they might or might not be guilty. But that is irrelevant to the guilt of the parents.

Culpable for what? Creating children is not immoral

Culpable for their own decision to make children in such conditions (for the usual reasons to have children).

Creating children is sometimes not immoral, and sometimes immoral, depending on the case. In the conditions I have stipulated, it is immoral.

The creation of the child is a separate action from that which causes them harm.

Yes, obviously.
The parents are only guilty for creating them under those conditions.
It's also immoral if both parents have Huntington's disease (B20's example), though I think less immoral because what I described is even worse, especially due to the 99/100 stipulation, and given the usual intensity of the suffering, even if the suffering lasts for a much shorter period - though I guess you could argue otherwise given the duration of suffering; either way, they're both immoral.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In the conditions I have stipulated, it is immoral.

No it is not, and I have already explained in exhaustive detail WHY it is not.

The decision to create a child CAN be immoral if the objective of that creation is to cause harm to someone. Forcibly impregnating a woman against her will, for example, would be immoral. Impregnating a prisoner or a kidnapping victim in order to control and/or humiliate her would be immoral. Forcing a woman to give birth who knows she will not survive childbirth is immoral. Impregnating a woman with the intention of kidnapping the child and selling him to slave labor would be immoral.

These actions are immoral because the people who take those actions are seeking to cause harm to the child. The final outcomes could easily be different if other factors intervene that prevent their intent from being carried out. But it is their intent, NOT the probability of harm, that makes these actions immoral.

I have THOROUGHLY refuted your claims not less than half a dozen times now, but I offer one last counter example:
Celebratory Gunfire Bob and his wife both happen to think that the flesh of 6-month-old children is better than veal, so they decide to have a baby or two and have a Christmas banquet every other year.

Bob and his wife are aware, on some level, that their plan has less than a one in fifty chance of succeeding, which is why they have various contingency and escape plans for the day when somebody finds out what they're up to. So the odds that harm will actually occur to the child is quite low; despite this, the fact that they are creating a baby with the explicit intention of harming it is what makes their actions immoral.

Example #2: Celebratory Gunfire Bob is a master psychiatrist who knows EXACTLY how to induce stockholm syndrome in captive females. He believes that he can convert his cute 14 year old neighbor into a willing sex slave by first kidnapping her, getting her pregnant, then using the baby as leverage to keep her from trying to escape (believe it or not, there are people in the world who have actually tried this). Because the baby only provides leverage while it is still ALIVE, and because a sick/unhealthy baby means more frequent doctor visits and a higher probability of his plan being discovered, there is a very low probability of the baby actually coming to physical harm; furthermore, because the plan itself is not likely to be sustained for any length of time, there's a pretty good chance he's going to get caught and the baby and his mother will be rescued in short order. None of which changes the fact that the MOTIVATION for his actions is fundamentally immoral; whether he is likely to get the chance to harm the baby or not is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not his actions are morally just.

You, on the other hand, would look at both examples and assert that because the probability of harm occurring is low, these actions are NOT immoral after all. This assumes a definition of "morality" that is entirely concerned with outcomes and denies the importance of motive, and is essentially the exact OPPOSITE of any conventional definition of morality.

The parents are only guilty for creating them under those conditions.

No, because the parents do not control those conditions, nor do their actions contribute to it. The only thing they can possibly be guilty of is declining an opportunity to change those conditions when said opportunity becomes available: THEN and ONLY then are the parents actions a contributing factor. For the record: Every responsible parent who has EVER produced a child has this basic intention built into the nature of parenting: it is assumed that opportunities to improve potential outcomes will present themselves, and the parents maintain the desire -- sometimes even detailed plans -- on how to seize those opportunities when they come about.

Unless the parents are complicit in those conditions and/or intend to cooperate with the ones who set those conditions, there's no blame to be had; the fact that they're never given an opportunity to kill god before he can send their children to hell is no fault of theirs, only their (hypothetical) lack of desire to do so.

Which brings us, finally, out of your absurd thought experiment and back to REALITY, in which we see refugees who CLEARLY intend to change the conditions of their children's lives for the better, which more than likely is why they became refugees in the first place.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

No it is not, and I have already explained in exhaustive detail WHY it is not.

It is, and I already explained why your explanations fail. Granted, as always, one also needs to make an intuitive moral assessment here, as I'm doing. But given the extent of the risk, it's very clear to me it's correct. Your assessment might be to different intuitions, but it appears it's contaminated by some erroneous reasoning.

The decision to create a child CAN be immoral if the objective of that creation is to cause harm to someone. Forcibly impregnating a woman against her will, for example, would be immoral. Impregnating a prisoner or a kidnapping victim in order to control and/or humiliate her would be immoral. Forcing a woman to give birth who knows she will not survive childbirth is immoral. Impregnating a woman with the intention of kidnapping the child and selling him to slave labor would be immoral.

These actions are immoral because the people who take those actions are seeking to cause harm to the child. The final outcomes could easily be different if other factors intervene that prevent their intent from being carried out. But it is their intent, NOT the probability of harm, that makes these actions immoral.

However, some actions are also immoral because of the probability of harm (in terms of the epistemic probabilistic assessment the agent should rationally make), even if the intent wasn't to bring about that harm.
One example of that is celebratory gunfire in a town. Another example is the attempt to have a child is also immoral in some cases; I have provided examples, and so has Bomb#20.

I have THOROUGHLY refuted your claims not less than half a dozen times now, but I offer one last counter example:

Not even once.

Celebratory Gunfire Bob and his wife both happen to think that the flesh of 6-month-old children is better than veal, so they decide to have a baby or two and have a Christmas banquet every other year.

Bob and his wife are aware, on some level, that their plan has less than a one in fifty chance of succeeding, which is why they have various contingency and escape plans for the day when somebody finds out what they're up to. So the odds that harm will actually occur to the child is quite low; despite this, the fact that they are creating a baby with the explicit intention of harming it is what makes their actions immoral.

Sure, but that doesn't do anything to refute any of my claims. I never suggested that intent never makes actions immoral. Obviously, sometimes it does. On the other hand, I pointed out that sometimes chances of harm make actions immoral ("chances" in terms of proper epistemic probabilistic assessment by the agent who performs the action).

Example #2: Celebratory Gunfire Bob is a master psychiatrist who knows EXACTLY how to induce stockholm syndrome in captive females. He believes that he can convert his cute 14 year old neighbor into a willing sex slave by first kidnapping her, getting her pregnant, then using the baby as leverage to keep her from trying to escape (believe it or not, there are people in the world who have actually tried this). Because the baby only provides leverage while it is still ALIVE, and because a sick/unhealthy baby means more frequent doctor visits and a higher probability of his plan being discovered, there is a very low probability of the baby actually coming to physical harm; furthermore, because the plan itself is not likely to be sustained for any length of time, there's a pretty good chance he's going to get caught and the baby and his mother will be rescued in short order. None of which changes the fact that the MOTIVATION for his actions is fundamentally immoral; whether he is likely to get the chance to harm the baby or not is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not his actions are morally just.

No idea what does have to do with celebratory gunfire, but surely that does nothing to refute my points.

In fact, I have already refuted your view that only intent makes actions immoral, by means of pointing to celebratory gunfire, and other actions made immoral by risk, not intent.

You, on the other hand, would look at both examples and assert that because the probability of harm occurring is low, these actions are NOT immoral after all.

No, of course I would not do that. You grossly misrepresent my view.

This assumes a definition of "morality" that is entirely concerned with outcomes and denies the importance of motive, and is essentially the exact OPPOSITE of any conventional definition of morality.

It is your assumption that I make that assumption. But of course - as I have made abundantly clear - I do not.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Crazy Eddie, let me give you more examples (which do happen in real life):

1. Imagine the parents choose not to vaccinate their daughter because they believe that will likely give her autism. That's a belief that they rationally ought not to have, but they have it, and so they fail to vaccinate her against any illness. Clearly, the parents behave immorally, even though their intent is not to harm their daughter, but to protect her. The behavior is immoral not due to intent, but because on a proper probabilistic assessment, they would have reckoned that the chances of suffering and death were much higher for her daughter without vaccines than with vaccines.

2. They are against transfusions for religious reasons, and so their son ends up dead because they don't take him to hospital after an accident, knowing he would receive a transfusion. Their intent is to save their son from Hell or whatever, but their behavior is immoral notwithstanding.

As I have shown, it's not the case that actions are immoral always because of intent. Intent is the reason and some cases, but not in all cases.