. Even the children of immediate family reproduction don’t appear to not attain a decent life though, certainly, they don’t all have ‘excruciatingly painful and debilitating conditions’.
Most people nowadays are reluctant to express sexual disgust for relationships involving consenting adults, but as the elderly mother and non reproductive sex examples show, dysgenics is being used as an excuse to conceal their true reasons namely the ickiness.
With that being said it’s not clear to me that such moral intuitions are wrong, there are lots of hard cases in sexual ethics and the strict libertarian standard seems to imply lots of ugly things. I know you seemed to regard creating decent lives as being permissible, but what about the extreme hypothetical of people selecting for a child with a condition expected to cause extreme suffering, is the view that as long as they are free to end their lives it’s fine to create them?
'Two replies can be made to this. First, children might be entitled to a decent life which would stop the creation of severely disabled children via incest because they could not attain such a decent life...(which I agree should prohibit a few cases of incest as an important qualification to the last paragraph).'
I'd agree there should be a prohibition on the creation of such people.
I feel Chesterton's fence has not been examined. How did some cultures that are new to Britain get to this situation where cousin marriage or second cousin marriage is rather common, while other cultures that are new to Britain shun this arrangement which likely arises from parental pressure.
I accept the libertarian point that consenting adults should be allowed to do what ever consenting adults desire, but the consent is iffy, there would be a price to pay in health insurance, and social opprobium and discrimination would have to be allowed.
Do you ever feel you are somewhat contrarian by nature? lol Incest is clearly socially generally regarded as undesirable; also its genetic consequences can be disastrous (though perhaps not so much with first cousin marriages, though I was told once by someone who worked in the NHS that a large proportion of paediatric services are now taken up by the products of such marriages); I personally find the idea of incest unpleasant, not least because if first cousin relations are to be 'OK', then why stop there?). However, none of these are sufficient reasons to make such marriages illegal. I think they should just be the subject of strong social disapproval.
Yes: I would note however this has been in the news. I don't just write controversial articles for the sake of it; you haven't seen me discuss the Middle East on here at, for example. Totally against subsiding any of the birth defects, of course.
I didn't mean it in a particularly negative way. Just that you seem to go out of your way to take up positions, specially on ethical issues, that are strikingly contrary to generally accepted opinion. Actually this is probably a very good thing, as far too many people just accept 'groupthink' without hesitation. But it is likely to make you very unpopular, and I would be careful if I were you. Look what happened to Socrates, who did much the same thing! In fact it's rather brave to expose yourself to this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1TvU1srTo
. Even the children of immediate family reproduction don’t appear to not attain a decent life though, certainly, they don’t all have ‘excruciatingly painful and debilitating conditions’.
Rephrase
Good point. I've rephrased it.
Most people nowadays are reluctant to express sexual disgust for relationships involving consenting adults, but as the elderly mother and non reproductive sex examples show, dysgenics is being used as an excuse to conceal their true reasons namely the ickiness.
With that being said it’s not clear to me that such moral intuitions are wrong, there are lots of hard cases in sexual ethics and the strict libertarian standard seems to imply lots of ugly things. I know you seemed to regard creating decent lives as being permissible, but what about the extreme hypothetical of people selecting for a child with a condition expected to cause extreme suffering, is the view that as long as they are free to end their lives it’s fine to create them?
'Two replies can be made to this. First, children might be entitled to a decent life which would stop the creation of severely disabled children via incest because they could not attain such a decent life...(which I agree should prohibit a few cases of incest as an important qualification to the last paragraph).'
I'd agree there should be a prohibition on the creation of such people.
I feel Chesterton's fence has not been examined. How did some cultures that are new to Britain get to this situation where cousin marriage or second cousin marriage is rather common, while other cultures that are new to Britain shun this arrangement which likely arises from parental pressure.
I accept the libertarian point that consenting adults should be allowed to do what ever consenting adults desire, but the consent is iffy, there would be a price to pay in health insurance, and social opprobium and discrimination would have to be allowed.
Do you ever feel you are somewhat contrarian by nature? lol Incest is clearly socially generally regarded as undesirable; also its genetic consequences can be disastrous (though perhaps not so much with first cousin marriages, though I was told once by someone who worked in the NHS that a large proportion of paediatric services are now taken up by the products of such marriages); I personally find the idea of incest unpleasant, not least because if first cousin relations are to be 'OK', then why stop there?). However, none of these are sufficient reasons to make such marriages illegal. I think they should just be the subject of strong social disapproval.
Yes: I would note however this has been in the news. I don't just write controversial articles for the sake of it; you haven't seen me discuss the Middle East on here at, for example. Totally against subsiding any of the birth defects, of course.
I didn't mean it in a particularly negative way. Just that you seem to go out of your way to take up positions, specially on ethical issues, that are strikingly contrary to generally accepted opinion. Actually this is probably a very good thing, as far too many people just accept 'groupthink' without hesitation. But it is likely to make you very unpopular, and I would be careful if I were you. Look what happened to Socrates, who did much the same thing! In fact it's rather brave to expose yourself to this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1TvU1srTo