[extropy-chat] Re: Famous author self destructs in public! Film at eleven.

[John-C-Wright at sff.net]

Mr. Smigrodzki asks a proper and difficult question: "There are acts of
commision and acts of commision with grave impact on the future child, should
one be born, many years later. Given the duty of caring for children, which I
hold to be self-evident, is it incumbent on *every* man and woman to act in
accordance with this duty? No, of course not - those who do not intend to have
children do not need to avoid genotoxic influences, and hepatitis B. The duty of
caring pertains only towards actual children, not might-have-beens, not towards
the children a nun or a priest might have had, had they chosen a different
vocation. I hope you will agree with me on this point."

I respectfully decline to agree. Once the child exists, obviously, the duty is
immediate rather than theoretical: before conception, the child is
theoretical—he may or may not ever be conceived.  Even if you and I were to
decide that theoretical duties do not yet attach, it would have no necessary
bearing on whether or not the duties exist once they attach.

The question here is twofold: first, whether a man has duties linking him to his
children even before they are conceived (pre-prenatal, I suppose we can call
it), and second, what degree of attention and care need be paid to those duties?

I submit to your judgment that the answer to the second question depends on the
answer to the first. Do you agree that the negligence of a man who takes no
provision for the future is less the more unlikely is that future?

For example, in my judgment, I would say that it shows a reckless disregard of
human life to fire a loaded weapon into a house that may or may not be empty; It
is negligent not to wear a helmet before mounting a motorcycle; it is careless,
but not negligent not to wear a helmet before mounting a bicycle; it is not
careless for a Virginian to walk abroad without his elephant gun. This is
because that a house might contain persons is likely, and the damage from
gunfire severe; motorcycle accidents are likely and the damage is severe;
bicycle spills are likely, but the damage far less severe; elephant attacks in
Virginia are unheard-of. So we have a rough spectrum of recklessness to
negligence, to carelessness.  

If a young woman with no prospect of marriage elects not to smoke because she
fears for the health of children she has not yet conceived, this strikes me a
careful, though I would not say a maiden has a duty to avoid cigarettes just
based on that likelihood. A pregnant woman runs a greater risk of harm to the
child if she smokes: I would call it negligent of her not to foreswear her habit
for nine months. A pregnant woman who does not give up her crack habit for nine
months, and runs the risk of birthing an addicted baby, shows a recklessness
toward the young life in her care. 

Applying this same line of reasoning, I would conclude that it would be careful
and prudent to avoid those things likely to cause harm even to generations not
yet conceived. I would say it only becomes a matter of duty when the
carelessness is so great, or the danger so large, to make it negligence. 

I will also point out that most moral systems make some provision for the claims
of generations yet to come, and say we should make reasonable provision for
them. Anyone who contributes to a museum or to a sober conservationist movement,
anyone who wishes to grant our great-grandchildren the benefit of life under his
nation’s laws and institutions, is acting from a similar consideration.

“Now, back to the situation you have considered: I would claim that there is no
material difference between the above issue, pre-conception duties, and the
issue you discuss, post-conception, pre-natal duties.”

This depends on what we mean by ‘material’. In the first case the child exists
and in the second it does not. The difference is between theoretical and actual. 

A man who joins the priesthood is not imprudent if he makes no provision in his
will for his heirs, because, in the normal course of events, he will have none.
A man whose child is in the womb of his trollop is dishonorable if he does not
marry her. What is unlikely in one case is actual in the other. Somewhere along
the spectrum of possible to probable to likely to inevitable there is a material
difference in the degree of care required to attend to our duties. 

Let me put it to you this way: is there a ‘material’ difference between prenatal
and postnatal duties of care? If you say yes, I will ask you why it is
acceptable to ignore my baby’s needs five minutes before he emerges from the
womb, and unacceptable to ignore them five minutes after? If you say no, I will
ask you whether this means both prenatal and postnatal babies must be cared-for,
or whether his means both prenatal and postnatal babies may be neglected? 

“While some may disagree, asserting ensoulment at the time of sperm's
penetration through the zona pellucida (or maybe at formation of the pre-nuclei,
or maybe their fusion.... proponents of this idea tend to be quite sketchy
here), I will take the liberty of simply ignoring them, since I don't believe in
the existence of souls, and differences of a spiritual nature are of no interest
to me.”

It would certainly be a more intuitively obvious vocabulary, if we all agreed
that the creatures which has “personhood” (that is, rights properly defended at
law), had “souls” and those that did not, did not. Then we could suppose that
souls were manifested by brain-activity, and argue that abortion and euthanasia
were allowable either before or after brain-activity is detected, and capital
punishment allowed when the actions of the convict showed his brain activity
malign, and thus his soul corrupt beyond hope of human penance. However, these
metaphysical speculations are beyond the scope of my present argument. I am not
arguing that children have souls when they are blastocysts and therefore must be
protected: I am arguing that destroying the blastocyst, or exposing it to
disease or any agency that might result in a birth defect, is incompatible with
a duty of prenatal care. 

“So, the situation does not materially change once two cells fuse to form a
zygote - the child is still a thing of the future.”

Again, I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘child.’ The organism we are
discussing has the genetic compliment of both parents. It is either one sex or
the other, XX or XY. It is clearly homo sapiens. When compaction starts, he is
already differentiating from totipotency into specialized functions, i.e.
therefore it is an organism. So, to recap: it has parents, it is either a ‘he’
or a ‘she’, and it is a member of the kingdom, class, phylum, order and genus of
its parents. It has various other real properties such as mass, duration and
extension. You can take a photograph of him or her.

It also is either healthy or unhealthy: in other words, qualitative statements
which can only be made of living things can be made about it. If there is such
as thing as healthy and unhealthy, then normative statements can be made:
certain things can literally be said to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for it. 

In what possible sense of the word can you call this “still a thing of the future”? 

Do you mean to say that that human organism, which is the child of its parents
exists in a physical and normative sense, having both mass and duration, and
having relationships of healthy and unhealthy, good and bad, lacks that some
immaterial and metaphysical essence known as “child-ness”? That sounds like you
are saying the organism is a child only in the biological and material sense,
not in the spiritual sense: in other words, you are claiming it is not a child
until he gets a soul. This seems to be against the spirit of your earlier sentence. 

“A duty to care exists for consequential reasons, so as to eliminate unwished-for
experiences in actual humans - we need to care for children only because without
care they would suffer and die prematurely, something most humans intensely
dislike.”

You will excuse me if I cannot agree. We care for our children because we love
them. We have a duty to care for them because some people do not love them, or
their passions are in some sense disordered from nature.  I would care for my
child even if he were dying of an incurable disease, and certain to suffer pain
that smothering him now with a pillow would prevent. Regarding only the
consequences of actions is not a proper basis for moral reasoning, as it leads
to absurd results. The ends do not justify the means. 

“But without the capacity to suffer and anticipate death, a zygote cannot be by
itself the focus of duties so defined.”

I cannot agree with the standard. Are sensitive people granted a higher duty of
care than insensitive people? I will remind all loyal readers of science
fiction, that our hero Buck Rogers fell into suspended animation sometime in the
late 1920’s while spelunking in a cave, and will not wake until the Twenty-Fifth
century. He is utterly insensate. While in suspended animation, he suffers
neither pain nor has he any current capacity to anticipate death. It is
permissible to kill him at any point before he wakes? What about just break his
leg or put out his eye? Your standard says yes. 

Besides, you neglect the main thrust of my argument. Nothing in my argument says
the child’s humanity, awareness or personhood has any bearing on our duties of
prenatal care. Do you agree that mothers have a duty of prenatal care? If so,
you should regard it as negligent for a pregnant woman to expose herself to
known toxins or agents that cause birth defects or miscarriage. If negligent
aborticide is a breech of prenatal duties, ergo, a fortiori, deliberate
aborticide is also. That is the argument you must address. 

Loyal science fiction readers might recall the epsilons of BRAVE NEW WORLD, who
are injected while still in the womb with chemical agents to see to it that they
are born severely retarded. If the retardation is sufficient, then the child
will never be aware of the intelligence that was stolen from him. By the
standard you have announced, this would be a morally neutral, or even acceptable
act. 

“Therefore, in general a parent may be held responsible for failing to fulfill
his (pre-, per- or post-conception) duties only if the child is actually formed.”

This depends on what we mean by ‘actually formed.’ You are pointing to an
identifiable and individual living organism which neither sprang into being out
of nothing, nor has it the capacity, if it develops, to develop into anything
save a mature homo sapiens. Therefore it is an immature homo sapiens. I admit it
is not manifesting its potential development at an early stage of development,
but I would say that about a teenager also. 

“Should the new organism die naturally before birth, as happens with about 85%
of conceptuses, no duties have been breached by the parent, no woman may be
prosecuted for having hepatitis B.”

Should anyone die naturally, there is no discussion at all. The discussion is
about deaths caused by negligence or caused deliberately. The argument I put
forth is that one cannot simultaneously condemn negligent miscarriage while
excusing deliberate miscarriage of the same duty. 

“Should the embryo be destroyed by an intentional action, again, no duties have
been breached, since the victimized person never existed at all.”

This is a non-sequitur. You are conflating intentional and unintentional
actions. Should my house be picked up by a twister and dropped on the Wicked
Witch of the East, I am in nowise responsible for the death. Should I falsely
accuse my neighbor Tabitha to the Witch-finder, so that she is burned at the
stake, I am complicit in her death. 

I welcome you comments, which seem refreshingly well mannered, considering the
delicate nature of the subject matter. 

John C. Wright