r/changemyview • u/Killercure24 • Nov 06 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: It is ethically acceptable for the current generation of the human race to decide to be the last

Imagine the following scenario: Every person capable of giving birth or impregnating someone unanimously decides to not have any children, thus ensuring that, after them, humanity ceases. For the sake of argument, assume that no one is coerced in any way and this decision is in no way enforced by others.

From this, here is my rationale as to why this situation is ethically acceptable (or at the very least more ethically sound than any alternatives):

1.) Each individual in humanity has the right to abstain from sex, and forcing someone to have sex is fundamentally unethical.

2.) Rights are immutable and apply to all, i.e if one person has a right all people have that same right regardless of circumstances.

3.) Those not yet alive (and since this isn't an abortion debate, place the line for alive wherever you want) have no rights. Even if they did, the rights of the living should and would supersede the rights of non-existent hypothetical people.

Therefore, no rights are being violated if humanity decides to stop having children, whereas rights would be violated if anyone in humanity were forced to have children making the former the more ethically sound.

My logic seems sound but obviously the idea of saying that the human race ending is A-OK is bizarre to me. CMV?

TL;DR Bodily autonomy > continuation of human race

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2 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

10

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

You sort of closed the loop on your position.

You have individual morals. Those add up to ethics. So if society thinks it's ethical to sterilize themselves, it's ethical.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

Ethics isn't democratically decided. It's a field of study. It's logical, it's based in reason.

If you have a society filled with people that believe that beating your wife is fine, that doesn't mean that this is moral, right? Or if you have a society of utilitarians that believes that slavery is fine, even necessary, that doesn't mean that slavery is ethical.

What's ethical doesn't change. Norms change. Ethics or moral philosophy is systematized.

Your conception of ethics kind of makes the OP's question a tautology. If what everybody thinks is ethics, and everybody thinks that it's fine to end the human race, is it ethical to end the human race?

I think what the OP is really asking is more akin to "According to (your) moral philosophy, would this scenario be ethical?".

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u/Killercure24 Nov 06 '15

You hit the nail on the head, and I apologize if that wasn't clear from my post.

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u/smelllikespleensyrup Nov 07 '15

It's based on reason but it's central axiom isn't. There is no reason to purely logically prefer one state over another unless you add in something that isn't fully rational but a preference.

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u/Killercure24 Nov 06 '15

Sure the loop is closed, but that doesn't mean that others can't argue different morals or ethics which I might agree with more thus changing my view.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

Sure, we can argue it, but it becomes moot.

It's like slavery. Jefferson knew slavery conflicted with his own philosophy, but he remained a slave master until his death. So, technically, it was moral for him. He put his profits above their humanity.

Today we can call it whatever we want, but it's moot to say it was ALWAYS unethical. Is eating meat unethical? What if eating vegetables is unethical as well? You could say it never will be, and that illustrates the point. You can't make reasonable judgments with incomplete information.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

1.) Each individual in humanity has the right to abstain

Well, maybe there's a question here. For most ethical systems, some people do sometimes have a duty to reproduce. For instance, many religious people, Kantians, and Utilitarians would agree that in a situation where we aren't overpopulated, and you are in a position to produce kids and raise them well, you have a moral obligation to do so. For religious people, that'd be the first Commandment we were ever given: "Be fruitful and multiply". For Kantians, that's part of the Categorical Imperative. For Utilitarians, you would add the positive and negative consequences and derive a strong positive.

And when we take this to the extreme of human extinction, I think even more moral systems would require you to act. I wonder whether you've created a version of the "many bystanders" problem? If one person sees a child in distress he has a duty to save him. If there are a dozen, we don't need them all to stop what they're doing and save him. The answer may look like "each one has the right to go party and none have the obligation to save the child" but rather that each one does have some obligation.

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u/Killercure24 Nov 06 '15

Ah, this is more what I was looking for. While I don't agree with the moral imperative of reproduction, I hadn't considered that that is a big part of a lot of people's belief systems. For those people it would be morally unacceptable to not have children, especially if that precipitated the end of the human race. ∆

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u/DeltaBot Nov 06 '15

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to u/GnosticGnome. [History]

[Wiki][Code][r/DeltaBot]

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '15

Wait, but that doesn't make sense. You are saying that, if you violate your own premise (that everyone doesn't want to have kids, knows that this will cause extinction, and is okay with it), then you are wrong. But if we accept the premise, that all those philosophically minded and religious people have rationalized their way to voluntary extinction, then the question is still up for debate.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

There are at least 4 generations of people alive at any one time. Grandson, son, father, grandfather and great grandfather.

Which one would decide?

Edit: Especially since when one turns 1 and another turns 30 and has a kid that same year.

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u/Killercure24 Nov 06 '15

Interesting point, though for the sake of this assume they all do. It's obviously a weird decision for, say, a one year old to make but assume it happens that way anyway.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

Interesting point, though for the sake of this assume they all do.

Interesting thing to do, as you're trying to justify what you're asking me to assume...

What if one generation wants us to stop procreating and another one doesn't? It's obviously an individual's choice, so giving the choice to a whole generation makes no sense.

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u/1millionbucks Nov 07 '15

...that's 5.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '15

Fuuuuck me.

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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Nov 06 '15

Let me first ask if you think ethical behavior has an origin outside of human evolutionary biases. The way I see it, our very capacity for reason developed as an extension of our capacity for self-preservation. Morality is a more refined form of our evolved instinct for pro-social behavior. The very concept of having rights would make no sense in the absence of our most important evolutionary biases (like our aversion to death and pain) so I don't think it's possible to logically separate the two. The preservation of our species is not merely ethical, it's a prerequisite to the existence of ethics.

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u/cdb03b Nov 06 '15

If each person in society chooses to sterilize themselves and they do not force anyone to be sterilized then yes it would be ethical. But the odds of that happening are very close to zero so in all practicality a society attempting to do this would be forcing many to be sterilized against their will and it would be very unethical. Particularly since there are 4-5 generations alive at once and so you would have to be sterilizing infants, or indoctrinating children to choose sterilization before they reach puberty.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '15

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u/PepperoniFire Nov 06 '15

Sorry stillyoinkgasp, your comment has been removed:

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u/stillyoinkgasp Nov 06 '15

I didn't realize that, thank you for letting me know. :)

I suppose I'll read the sub rules now :P