Sexual symmetry and asymmetry

I want to think a bit about conservative Christian views of sex and gender, but before that I want to offer two stories to motivate a crucial distinction.

Electrons and Positrons

Electrons and positrons (a positron is a positively charged anti-particle to the electron) are very different in one way but not so much in another. If you take some system of electrons and positrons, and swap in a positron for an electron, the system will behave very differently—it will be attracted to the things that the electron was repelled by and vice versa. But if you replace all the electrons by positrons and all the positrons by electrons, it won’t make a significant difference (technically, there may be some difference due to the weak force, but that’s dominated by electromagnetic interaction). Similarly, a cloud of electrons behaves pretty much like a cloud of positrons, but a mixed cloud of electrons and positrons will behave very differently (electrons and positrons will collide releasing energy).

Electrons and positrons are significantly pairwise non-interchangeable, but globally approximately interchangeable.

We might conclude: electrons and positrons significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically.

On the other hand, if you have a system made of photons and electrons, and you swap out a photon and replace it by an electron, it will make a significant difference, but likewise typically if you swap out all the photons and electrons, it will also make a significant difference (unless the system was in a rare symmetric configuration). Thus, photons and electrons are significantly pairwise and globally interchangeable, and hence significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

Heterothallic Isogamous Organisms

Isogamous sexually-reproducing organisms have equally sized gametes among their sexes, and hence cannot be labeled as “female” and “male” (biologists define “female” and “male” in terms of larger and smaller gametes, respectively). Instead these sexes get arbitrarily labeled as plus and minus (I will assume there are only two mating types for simplicity). In heterothallic organisms, the sexes are located in different individuals, so two are needed for reproduction. Humans are heterothallic but not isogamous. But there are many species (mostly unicellular, I believe) that are heterothallic and isogamous.

We can now suppose a heterothallic and isogamous species with pretty symmetric mating roles. In such a species, again, we have significant individual non-interchangeability in a system. If Alice is a plus and Bob is a minus, they can reproduce, but if you swap out Bob for a plus, you get a non-reproductive pair. But if the mating roles are sufficiently similar, you can have global approximate interchangeability: if in some system you put pluses for the minuses and minuses for the pluses, things could go on much as before. A group of pluses may behave very much like a group of minuses (namely, over time the population will decrease to zero), but a mixed group of pluses and minuses is apt to behave very differently. We thus have pairwise non-interchangeability but approximate global interchangeability.

We might similarly say: pluses and minuses in our heterothallic and isogamous species significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically. On the other hand, cats and dogs significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

The Distinction

We thus have a distinction between two kinds of differences, which we can label as relational and intrinsic. I am not happy with the labels, but when I use them, please think of my two examples: particles and isogamous organisms. These two kinds of differences can be thought of as denying different symmetries: intrinsic differences are opposed to global interchange of the types of all individuals; relational differences are opposed to pairwise interchange of the types of a pair of individuals.

Conservative Christian Views of Sex and Gender

Conservative Christians tend to think that there are significant differences between men and women. In addition to cultural traits, there are two main theological reasons for thinking this:

1. Marriage asymmetry: Men and women can marry, but men cannot marry men and women cannot marry women.

2. Liturgical asymmetry: Only men can serve in certain liturgical “clerical” roles.

Of these, the marriage asymmetry is probably a bit more widely accepted than the liturgical asymmetry. (Some also think there is an authority asymmetry in the family where husbands have a special authority over wives. This is even more controversial among conservative Christians than the liturgical asymmetry, so I won’t say more about it.)

We could suppose an arbitrary divine rule behind both asymmetries. But this is theologically problematic: a really plausible way of reading the difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of the Gospel is at that in the Law of the Gospel, we no longer have arbitrary rules whose primary benefit is obedience, such as the prohibition on eating pork.

If we are to avoid supposing an arbitrary divine rule, we need to suppose differences between men and women to explain the theologically grounded asymmetries. And this is apt to lead conservative Christians to philosophical and theological theorizing about normative differences such as women being called more to “receptivity” and men more to “givingness”, or searching through sociological, psychological and biological data for relevant differences between the behavior and abilities of men and women. The empirical differences tend to lie on continua with wide areas of overlap between the sexes, however, and the normative differences are either implausible or likewise involve continua with wide areas of overlap (men, too, are called to receptivity).

But I think we are now in a position to see that there is a logical shortcoming behind the focus of this search. For differences between men and women can be relational or intrinsic, and the search has tended to focus on the intrinsic.

However, I submit, purely relational differences are sufficient to explain both the marriage and liturgical asymmetries. One way to see this is to pretend that we are a heterothallic isogamous species (rather than heterothallic anisogamous species that we actually are), consisting of pluses and minuses rather than females and males.

Then, if marriage has an ordering to procreation, that would neatly explain why pluses and minuses can marry each other, but pluses can’t marry pluses and minuses can’t marry minuses. No intrinsic difference between pluses and minuses is needed to explain this. Thus, as soon as we accept that marriage has an ordering to procreation, we have a way to explain the marriage asymmetry without any supposition of intrinsic differences.

Likewise, if there is going to be an incarnation, and only one, and the incarnate God is going to be incarnate as a typical organism of our species, then this incarnation must happen as a plus or a minus. And if married love is a deep and passionate love that is a wonderful symbol for the love between God and God’s people, then if the incarnation is as an individual of one of the sexes, God’s Church would then symbolically have the opposite sex. And then those whose liturgical role it is to stand in for the incarnate God in the marriage-like relationship to the Church would most fittingly have the sex opposite to that of the Church. Thus, if the incarnate God is incarnate as a plus, the Church would be figured as a minus, one can explain why it is fitting that the clergy in the relevant liturgical roles would be pluses; if the incarnate God is incarnate as a minus, we have an explanation of why the clergy in these roles would be minuses as well. (Interestingly, on this story, it’s not that the clergy are directly supposed to be like the incarnate God in respect of sex, but that their sex is supposed to be the opposite to that of the Church, and given that in the species there are only two sexes, this forces them to have the same sex as the incarnate God: the clergy need to have a sex opposed to the sex opposed to that of the incarnate God.)

Now, we are not isogamous, and we have female and male, not plus and minus. But we can still give exactly the same explanations. Even though in an anisogamous species there are significant intrinsic biological differences between the sexes, we need not advert to any of them to explain either the marriage or the liturgical asymmetry. The marriage asymmetry is tied to the pairwise non-interchangeability of the sexes and explained by the procreative role of marriage. The liturgical asymemtry is tied to the marriage asymmetry together with the symmetry-breaking event of God becoming incarnate in one of the sexes.

As far as this story goes, there need not be any morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female to explain the marital and liturgical asymmetries. The relational difference, that you need male and female for a mating pair, is morally significant on this story, but in a way that is entirely symmetric between male and female. And then we have one symmetry-breaking event: God becomes incarnate as a male. We need not think that there is any special reason why God becomes incarnate as a male or a female—it could equally well have been as a female. The decision whether to become incarnate as a male or a female could be as arbitrary as the decision about the exact eye color of the incarnate God (though, of course, eye color does not ground either significant intrinsic or significant relational differences). But if it were an incarnation as a female, other changes would be fitting: the clergy who symbolize the nuptial role of the incarnate God would fitting be female, in the exodus story it would fitting be female lambs and goats that would be sacrificed, and it would be fitting that Sarah be asked to sacrifice her first-born daughter.

I am not saying that there are no morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female. There may be. We are, after all, not only heterothallic but also anisogamous, and so there could turn out to be such intrinsic differences. But we need not suppose any such to explain the two asymmetries, and it is safer to be agnostic on the existence of these intrinsic differences.

Nothing in this post is meant as an argument for either the marriage asymmetry and the liturgical asymmetry. I have argued for the marriage asymmetry elsewhere, but here I am just saying that it could be explained if we grant the procreative ordering of marriage. And my arguments for the liturgical asymmetry are based on fittingness. But fittingness considerations do not constrain God. While we can explain why the clergy are of the same sex as the incarnate God by the nuptial imagery story that I gave above, God could instead have chosen to make the clergy be of the opposite sex as the incarnate God, in order to nuptially signify the people with the clergy, or God could chosen to make the clergy be of both sexes, to emphasize the fact that salvation is tied to the humanity (see St. Athanasius on this) and not the sex of the incarnate God. But when many things are fitting, God can choose one, and we can then cite its fittingness as a non-deterministic explanation.

Though, I suppose, I have at least refuted this argument:

3. The only way to explain the marriage and liturgical asymmetries is by supposing morally significant intrinsic differences between female and male.

4. There are no such intrinsic differences.

5. So, probably, the asymmetries don’t exist either.

I have refuted it by showing that (3) is false.

Kantian antinatalism

Intuitively:

1. It is permissible to deliberately have children.

But there is a powerful Kantian antinatalist argument against (1). To decide rationally to have a child, one needs to have a purpose for the child’s existence. But to have a purpose for another person’s existence, no matter how good that purpose might be, is to treat that other person as a means rather than as an end. And that’s wrong.

Assuming the Kantian thesis that it is wrong to have an end for another person’s existence, the only way to block the argument against (1) is to find a way to rationally motivate having a child without having to have a purpose for the child’s existence. How can this be done?

So one needs a reason to have a child which is not grounded in having a purpose for the child. Such reasons can exist. For instance, if I promise you to make a scarf, my reason to make the scarf is grounded in my promise to make the scarf rather than in any purpose for the scarf itself.

This points to a way out of the Kantian antinatalist argument. A couple might have a duty, perfect or imperfect, to attempt to have a child. If so, they need not have a purpose for the child, but only a purpose to attempt having a child. Such a duty could come from a divine command or from some kind of natural law perspectives (both of which are compatible with the broadly Kantian opposition to treating others as mere means).

Few people, apart from Catholics, Orthodox Jews and optimistic utilitarians, think there is any duty to have children. But thinking that there is such a duty may be the best way to get out of Kantian antinatalism.

Conceiving people who will be mistreated

Alice and Bob are Elbonians, a despised genetic minority. It seems that unless the level of mistreatment that members of this minority suffer is extreme, it is permissible for Alice and Bob to have a child.

But now suppose that Carol and Dan are not Elbonian, but have a child through a procedure that ensures that the child is Elbonian. It seems that Alice and Bob's procreation is permissible, but Carol and Dan are doing something wrong. Yet in both cases they are producing a child that will be, we may suppose, the subject of the same mistreatment.

We understand, of course, Alice and Bob's intentions: they want to have a child, and as it happens their child will be Elbonian. But we have a harder time understanding what Carol and Dan are doing. Are they trying to make their child be the subject of discrimination? If so, then it's clear why they are acting wrongly. But we can suppose that both couples are motivated in the same way. Perhaps both couples really like the way that Elbonian eyes look, and that is why Alice and Bob do not seek out genetic treatment to root out the Elbonian genes while Carol and Dan seek treatment to impose these genes.

Thinking about this case makes me think that there is a significant difference between just letting nature take its course reproductively and deliberately modifying the course of reproduction. But there are a lot of hard questions here.

Some thoughts on the ethics of creating Artificial Intelligence

Suppose that it's possible for us to create genuinely intelligent computers. If we achieved genuine sapience in a computer, we would have the sorts of duties towards it that we have towards other persons. There are difficult questions about whether we would be likely to fulfill these duties. For instance, it would be wrong to permanently shut off such a computer for anything less than the sorts of very grave reasons to make it permissible to disconnect a human being from life support (I think here about the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means in the Catholic tradition). Since keeping such a computer running is not likely to typically involve such reasons, it seems that we would likely have to keep such a computer running indefinitely. But would we be likely to do so? So that's part of one set of questions: Can we expect to treat such a computer with the respect due to a person, and, if not, do we have the moral right to create it?

Here's another line of thought. If we were going to make a computer that is a person, we would do so by a gradual series of steps that produce a series of systems that are more and more person-like. Along with this gradual series of steps would come a gradation in moral duties towards the system. It seems likely that progress along the road to intelligence would involve many failures. So we have a second set of questions: Do we have the moral right to create systems that are nearly persons but that are likely to suffer from a multitude of failures, and are we likely to treat these systems in the morally appropriate way?

On the other hand, we (except the small number of anti-natalists) think it is permissible to bring human beings into existence even though we know that any human being brought into the world will be mistreated by others on many occasions in her life, and will suffer from disease and disability. I feel, however, that the cases are not parallel, but I am not clear on exactly what is going on here. I think humans have something like a basic permission to engage in procreation, with some reasonable limitations.

Marriage and the state

There is a presumption against the state imposing or enforcing restrictions on people's behavior. That's why, for instance, the state does not enforce private promises where money doesn't change hands. Now, marriage has two primary normative effects:

1. Make sexual union permissible;
2. Impose a rich tapestry of duties that the spouses owe to one another.

Most Western jurisdictions do not have a legal prohibition of fornication, however, which makes the first of the two primary normative effects moot with respect to the state (though of course marriage still is needed for sexual union to be morally permissible, as I argue in One Body). In those jurisdictions that do not legally prohibit fornication, the primary legal effect of marriage is entirely restrictive. Hence, in those jurisdictions, there is a presumption against the state's recognition of any marriages at all. (One might argue that the state needs to license marriages in order to render sex morally permissible; but marriage in the moral sense does not require state involvement.)

In those jurisdictions where fornication is not a crime, I think it is helpful to start debate about things like same-sex marriage or polygamy with a presumption against state involvement in any marriages whatsoever, and then ask in what cases, if any, that default negative judgment can be overcome.

(For the record, I do think the presumption can be overcome in opposite-sex cases, because of the connection with procreation. But I am not arguing for this here.)

A new solution to the non-identity problem?

Molly Gardner in a piece that just came out offers an interesting new solution to the non-identity problem, the problem of making sense of benefits and harms to people who wouldn't exist were it not for our actions of benefiting or harming. Gardner's suggestion is:

A state of affairs, A, is a benefit for an individual, S, just in case if it were true that both S existed and A did not obtain, then S would be worse off in some respect.

This is a clever solution: normally when evaluating whether an action benefits or harms someone, we simply ask how they would have done had we not done the action; but Gardner wants us further to keep fixed that the patient exists.

But clever as it is, it looks to me that it fails. First, suppose that a strong essentiality of origins thesis obtains. Then whenever we benefit or harm a future person, that person couldn't exist without our action. But that means that Gardner's conditional becomes a per impossibile conditional. And concepts of ethical importance should not be defined in terms of something as poorly understood and as controversial as counterpossible conditionals.

Suppose now that there is no strong essentiality of origins thesis. Then, plausibly, a person who was conceived through coitus could also have been conceived through IVF, at least if the same sperm and egg were involved. Now suppose that where the couple lives, IVF technology is highly experimental and works so poorly that children conceived through IVF end up having all sorts of nasty health problems. The couple is wicked and doesn't care about the health of their children, but they also haven't even heard of IVF, and so they conceive Sally the natural way. Now let's consider Gardner's conditional. What would have happened had the child existed and the couple not engaged in coitus? Well, the closest possible worlds where Sally exists and the couple did not have intercourse are worlds where the couple engaged in a poorly-functioning IVF treatment, and hence worlds where Sally has nasty health problems. So the couple benefited Sally by engaging in coitus.

The conclusion that the couple benefited Sally by coitus is, I think, true. For I believe it is always good to exist. But it is clear that Gardner doesn't want to suppose that existence is always a good. And if existence is not always a good, then we can suppose a scenario like this: Sally is going to have an on-balance bad life if she is conceived by coitus, and an on-balance worse life if she is conceived by IVF. By Gardner's criterion, the couple has benefited Sally through coitus, even though Sally's life is on-balance bad. This is surely mistaken. One might say that the couple benefited Sally by engaging in coitus rather than IVF. But since they never even considered IVF, one can't conclude that they benefited Sally simpliciter. (If Sam gives Jim a mild electric shock, he harms Jim simpliciter, but he benefits Jim by giving him a mild rather than severe shock.)

And even if we grant--as in the end we should--that existence is always good, Gardner's conditional gives us the wrong reason for thinking that the couple benefited Sally. For the benefit to Sally has nothing to do with the fact that Sally would have been worse off in the nearby worlds where she existed through IVF.

And even if essentiality of origins is true, the argument concerning Sally works. For it is still true that, per impossibile, had Sally existed but without her parents having intercourse, she would have existed through IVF and hence had very poor health.

The problem with Gardner's approach is this: the worlds that are relevant to the evaluation of her counterfactual may simply be irrelevant to the question of benefit or harm simpliciter.

Essentiality of origins and the non-identity problem

I assume that a strong essentiality of origins thesis holds, so that for any action we could take but did not take, had we taken the action, none of the individuals who will in fact come into existence would come into existence. For the causal history of every individual coming into being in our future (i.e., in our future light-cone) includes the (often extremely minor) gravitational and other influences coming from our actions. Thus, any benefit or harm we do to future individuals is a benefit or harm we do to individuals who wouldn't have existed had we not done them that benefit or harm. This means that the non-identity problem--the problem of benefits and harms to individuals who wouldn't exist had they not been thus benefited or harmed--is always there when we consider benefits and harms to individuals who do not yet exist. The non-identity problem isn't just a special problem that arises in cases where people's reproductive decisions are caused by our actions (say, as when a couple procreates because the parents of one of them have established a generous trust fund for all future grandchildren), but it arises in regard to future individuals in everything we do.

Procreation and love

Start with this consequence of the essentiality of origins:

1. The identity of an individual depends on the exact time of her coming-into-existence.

(It's very plausible that it depends on coarse-grained time of coming-into-existence: I couldn't have come into existence a hundred years earlier. But there is also a well-known argument from that for the claim that it depends on the exact time.) Now, it seems that no action people can take prior to the origination of an individual determines the exact time of her coming-into-existence. There isn't any true counterfactual of the form of the form: "If we were to do A, then an individual would come into existence exactly at t." In fact, for any action we can take, quantum indeterminism will ensure a cluster of infinitely (if time is continuous) many or at least very many close-together possible resulting conception times. Moreover, each exact time will have a very tiny, perhaps infinitesimal or zero, probability of being the actual time of origination. Hence it seems:

2. There is no true probabilistic counterfactual of the form: "If we were to do A, then an individual would be not unlikely to come into existence exactly at t."

(Molinists will, of course, disagree. But Molinism is false, I take it.) Thus:

3. People cannot procreate out of love for the particular individual who would likely come into existence from the procreation.

For there is no particular individual such that she would likely come into existence from the procreation.

Now, notice that God in creating an individual--either ex nihilo or in cooperating with the joining of an egg and sperm--is under no such constraints. Thus it is possible for God to act in such a way that were he to act so, an individual would come into existence at a precise time. And the same is true for other features of the origination of the individual besides the time of its occurrence. So God could create out of love for the particular individual who would come into existence from the creation.

This fact suggests a weakness in premise (2) of my above argument. It could be that God has already decided what individual would result if a couple chose to procreate, and has resolved in particular that sperm and egg would meet at a particular time, as long as the couple chooses the procreate. God, thus, is resolved to control all the quantum phenomena to ensure a particular circumstance of origination. Thus it's up to the couple whether someone comes into existence, but there is a particular someone who would exist if the couple procreated. It would not be surprising if this were to happen in special cases, and it would be possible for it to happen in all cases. I don't know if it does, though.

The upshot of the above argument, thus, is that unless special theological assumptions hold, it is not possible for a couple to decide whether to procreate out of love for the particular child that would result.

Relational gender essentialism

It might turn out to be like this: There is no significant difference between matter and antimatter, except insofar as they are related to one another. A proton is attracted to antiproton, while each is repelled by its own kind. Our universe, as a contingent matter of fact, has more matter than antimatter. But, perhaps, if one swapped the matter and antimatter, the resulting universe wouldn't be different in any significant way. If we this is true, we might say that there is a relational matter-antimatter essentialism. It is of great importance to matter and to antimatter that they are matter and antimatter, respectively, but it is important only because of the relation between the two, not because of intrinsic differences.

I don't know if it's like that with matter and antimatter, but I do know that it's like that with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The only important non-contingent differences are those constituted by the relationships between them. (There are also contingent extrinsic differences.)

Could it be like that with men and women? The special relation between men and women--say, that man is for woman and woman for man, or that one of each is needed for procreation--is essential and important to men and women. But there are no important non-contingent intrinsic differences on this theory.

There might, however, be important contingent theological differences due to some symmetry-breaking contingent event or events. Maybe, when the Logos became one human being, the Logos had to become either a man or a woman. If the relation between men and women is important, the decision whether to become a man or to become a woman, might have been a kind of symmetry-breaking, with other differences in salvation history following on it. In itself, that decision could have been unimportant. If the Logos had become a woman, we would have a salvation history that was very much alike, except now Sarah would have been asked to sacrifice a daughter, we would have had an all-female priesthood, and so on.

Or perhaps the symmetry-breaking came from the contingent structure of our sinfulness. Perhaps the contingent fact that men tended to oppress women more than the other way around made it appropriate for the Logos to become a man, so as to provide the more sorely needed example of a man becoming the servant of all and sacrificing himself for all, and in turn followed the other differences.

I don't know if relational gender essentialism is the right picture. But it's a picture worth thinking about.

Why is marriage sacred?

Many religions that disagree on many other things treat marriage as something sacred, not just a contract. Moreover, many non-religious people—though not all—have intuitions that point in that direction. Let's take all these intuitions at face value. Marriage is sacred.

Why?

Well, a paradigm of the uncontroversially sacred—something that we except to see connected to rituals across religions—is life. We are not surprised to see funerals or baptisms in a religion. Maybe at some deep level it is puzzling why human life is sacred (if materialism is true, this may be especially puzzling), but that human life is treated as sacred is not puzzling.

A student pointed out to me this morning that we can attempt to account for the sacredness of marriage by pointing to the sacredness of the new joint life of the couple. They become one flesh after all. Indeed, it is as if a new human life came into existence. And if the analogy is tight enough, that makes sense of its as being sacred.

But while I think this is all true, I suspect that the reason why marriage has been so widely treated as sacred may be a more literal connection to new life: it is a relationship tied to literal new human life, to procreation. Literal new human life is sacred. The sacred infects what is related to it. The message of a book is sacred, so the volume it's in is treated as a holy book. Marriage, on this picture, is tied to procreation.

But of course we and our ancestors know that not every marriage results in procreation and that procreation can happen outside of marriage. So the tie between marriage and procreation has to be carefully formulated. I don't think we want to say it's just a statistical tie. That would undermine the reason for taking marriage to be sacred. Rather, I suspect it's a normative tie. There is more than one way one could expand on this tie.

One option is to say that marriage is a relationship that normally results in children. One would expect a relationship that normally results in something sacred to have something sacred about it.

However, this option has the consequence that a marriage without children is lacking something normal to it, like a three-legged sheep lacks a leg. But is it right to say that a couple who got married in their 60s has a defective relationship? Well, the phrase "defective relationship" leads astray. It suggests that there is something wrong with what the people are doing. And in that sense, the couple who got married in their 60s don't have a defective relationship just because they don't have children. But if we think of it as a defect in the same way that a sheep having three legs is a defect, then that phrase may not be incorrect. A couple who gets married late in life may well have a quite appropriate sadness that they were unable share a larger portion of their life, and in particular a sadness that they were unable to share their fertility. So I don't think the case of elderly couples is a serious problem for the view that the tie between marriage and procreation is that children normally result from marriage. And the view explains why it can feel so tragic to be infertile.

Another option would be that marriage is a relationship that makes having children morally permissible. It is a relationship that licenses procreation. One shouldn't here have a picture of the state or the church giving one a license to procreate: marriage comes from an exchange of vows between the future spouses, and it is their giving themselves in marriage to one another—something that in principle can happen without a state or a church being involved—is what morally licenses the procreation on this view. It is only with the kind of commitment that is found in marriage that a couple could permissibly tie themselves to each other by having a child together. But it makes some sense that taking up the commitment which makes the production of human life permissible would be infected with the sacredness of human life. Still, in the end this doesn't seem quite to get the full story. For instance, if a married unemployed couple is so poor that they cannot adequately care for their children, then it could be morally impermissible for them to procreate. Getting a job could then render procreation morally permissible. But that doesn't make the job be a sacred thing, at least not in the way marriage is.

In the end, I suspect that all three stories—the story of the new joint life of the couple, of marriage normally resulting in children, and of marriage in principle morally permitting a couple to have children—are a part of the truth. And, as a colleague reminded me, there is the mirroring of the life of the Trinity.

Laurie Paul on deciding whether to have children

A colleague alerted me that Laurie Paul has a piece on deciding whether to have children (in a position where one does not have any yet). Paul addresses the model on which you rationally decide whether to have a child by reflecting on "what it will be like for you to have a child of your very own" and argues that this model cannot be used. The neat idea is that having a child is a transformative experience, and just as the person who has never seen color cannot have any idea what it's like to see red, so too cannot have any idea what it will be like to live after this transformative experience until one has undergone it. Therefore, she concludes, standard decision theory cannot be used to decide whether to have a child.

Now, I agree that one shouldn't decide on whether to have a child by reflecting on what that would be like for you. To decide to have a child on the basis of what it will be like for one is to treat the child's very existence as a means to one's ends. This is morally objectionable in the same way that it is morally objectionable to decide to rescue a drowning person on the basis of what it will be like for one to be a rescuer (though of course that certainly beats deciding not to rescue her).

But Paul's transformative-experience argument seems to me to fail in at least two places. First, it is false that one cannot make rational decisions on the basis of what it will be like for one after one has had a transformative experience. Paul herself gives the example of posttraumatic stress as a transformative experience. I have no idea what it would be like to have undergone that, but I certainly can know that it would be terrible to live with posttraumatic stress. I can decide to avoid situations generating posttraumatic stress in a perfectly rational way on the basis of what it would be like to live with posttraumatic stress--namely, on the basis of the fact that it will be nasty. I don't have to know in what way it would be nasty to know that it would be nasty. There are many very nasty things that are transformative, and one can rationally avoid them simply on the basis of common-sense knowledge (typically based on testimony) of their nastiness.

I think Paul will resist this line of thought on the following grounds. The decision whether to avoid posttraumatic stress or not is a no-brainer given what we know about it. Just about everybody who undergoes it agrees it's very nasty, I assume (I haven't checked opinion polls here). But parenthood is much more complex. Typically, it has both nasty and nice components. And one doesn't know how the nasty and the nice will balance out until one has undergone the transformative experience. But I think that once we've agreed that there is no in-principle difficulty in making decisions on the basis of how things will be after a transformative experience, then it can just be a matter of gathering the best information we have on the balance between the nasty and the nice for people of different sorts, and seeing what sort of a person we are.

Second, even if one could not make a decision on the basis of what-it-would-be-like considerations, decision theory could still be used. One could use non-egocentric decision theory, like utilitarian decision theory. But even within egocentric decision theory, one could make a decision on the basis of non-experiential values, like the objective value of being the intentional cause of the great goods of life and upbringing.

My own take on the reasons for having children is rather different however. There is some discussion here.

Children and God

This builds on a comment I made to yesterday's post, which was inspired by a remark of my wife's.

If God does not exist, then, in normal cases[note 1], the biological parents of a child are the persons directly and fully responsible for the child's existence. Thus, if God does not exist, then the parents, collectively, have the sort of role that, on traditional Christian views on which God directly creates the human being by creating the human being's soul, God has. But for the human parents to see themselves as having this God-like role distorts the parent-child relationship. There is thus moral reason for parents to believe in a deity who directly creates each human being.

If one thinks—as I think one should—that the fact that one has moral reason to believe p is itself evidence for p (it is much more likely that one have moral reason to believe a truth than to believe a falsehood), it follows that the above considerations not only give a moral reason for to believe in a deity, but they give an epistemic reason as well.

An argument against many cases of non-marital sex

Consider the traditional argument against non-marital sex: pregnancy. I submit that while this argument doesn't apply in all cases (e.g., when the woman is already pregnant, or when she's 70 years old), there is a lot to this argument in typical cases:

1. It is wrong to take on, without sufficient reason, a risk of being unable to fulfill one's responsibilities. (Premise)
2. Non-marital intercourse typically involves the risk of acquiring parental responsibilities that one is unable to fulfill. (Premise)
3. Therefore, it is at least typically wrong to engage, without sufficient reason, in non-marital intercourse.

Claim (2) is particularly clear in the case of the man, who in typical cases will be unable to fulfill his day-to-day relational parental responsibilities without being married to the mother of the child (cohabitations tend to break up). But it is also true in the case of the woman, both due to financial and time constraints and because one of one's parental responsibilities is to cooperate in the co-parent's fulfillment of parental responsibilities.

How restrictive the conclusions of the argument are will depend on one's weighing of the reasons. In (1), "sufficient" has to be measured relative to (a) the probability of the risk, and (b) the expected moral weight of the responsibilities one would be unable to fulfill. Now, the moral weight of parental responsibilities is very high. The probability of the risk depends on whether we are evaluating a single act by a person committed to that being the only act of non-marital intercourse (e.g., during a year) or a habit (or policy) of non-marital sexual activity. While the probability of conception from a single sexual act where the woman is using hormonal birth control[note 1] may be rather low, the probability of conception from a habit of non-marital sexual activity is far from negligible. The Alan Guttmacher Institute says typical use effectiveness for oral contraceptives is 92.5% and for the male condom is 86.3%, i.e., 7.5% of female users of oral contraception and 13.7% of women whose partner uses condoms will get pregnant each year. Perfect use effectiveness is higher (99.5-99.9% for oral contraceptives and 97% for the male condom), but it does not seem one can count on one's partner's perfect use. I suppose combining the male condom and oral contraception would result in yet higher effectiveness (and significant protection from disease), but still the effectiveness would fall short of 100%, to a degree such that significant numbers of women would be getting pregnant each year.

However exactly one evaluates which reasons are sufficient, I think it is plausible that when one considers the moral weight of parental responsibilities, pleasure is unlikely to constitute a sufficient reason. Moreover, relational reasons for pre-marital sex are not likely to carry that much weight in light of the fact that if one simply is patient and waits, one is likely (in a monogamous society with a roughly equal sex ratio) to find someone to marry, and then have all the relational goods that one would get from pre-marital sex (if there are any such) to an ampler degree.

This argument is not sufficient to show that all non-marital sex is wrong. But it does apply in many cases. I do actually think all non-marital sex is wrong, but that will have to be established by other arguments.