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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38250 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.

Self ownership isn't self evident, but appealing to it can bolster your argument because many people place value on it, otherwise, all morality comes down to opinion anyway. But saying that not all people share this framework is a reason not to structure morality by it seems to be a bit contradictory because it resembles an argument for self ownership where different people have different preferences and it is not fair for society to force people who want to live in a certain way to live by the demands of the dominant culture.

This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.

If a society places an expectation on its members to have kids and contribute to perpetuating their people, then the question must be asked why some people are defecting from this expectation. Maybe its because they lived a miserable life and don't want their kids to have a similar experience, maybe they don't think its fair to bring kids into the world and then shackle them to all the expectations demanded by their society, maybe they prefer doing other things than caring for children, and spending money on things that are not their children. I think perpetuating society is not an end in itself, what matters more is what the society that your perpetuating is like, and whether it is worth perpetuating, and this is why its important to acknowledge the differences in people and allowing them to live in a way which fulfills their desires the most. Your climate change example isn't exactly comparable because climate change is the cause of negative externalities going uncompensated for.

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