The moral imperative - adopt a maxim and if you can universalize this maxim -then it becomes a moral imperative. Something like that.
This was a thought I had over the weekend while admiring the architecture of Mies and Rem at IIT in Chicago.
procreation and the environment
basically the earth is suffering from a depletion of resources, perhaps we are procreating too much...
if i make it a moral imperative not to have children - i adopt it and everyone else will adopt it - then humanity will cease to exists.
So obviously this is not ethical according to Kant.
but if i have children, and so everyone has children- then we will have overpopulation - again bad .
Number. So we need to include numbers. it is not an either/or question but an amount question. How many children is it ethical for one person to have according to Kant's moral imperative.
Perhaps every person who wants can procreate 1 person - to keep population constant - or reduce it a bit.
This is one of the reasons we need to empower women in developing countries - educated women engage in family planning -
then we wont have to resort to Kant
Some links for the day:
http://www.killerstartups.com/
http://www.gurufocus.com/
http://www.thevalve.org/
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Hi there,
ReplyDeleteI'm writing a paper on this now, and just a heads up, kant would actually allow people to "act on a maxim" to have no kids. For kant it always comes down to reason and consistency. If everyone has 0 kids, then everyone can still continue to have 0 kids. The people who don't get born as a result obviously can't have 0 kids, but they don't exist so they are excluded anyway :)
consider the example of cutting in line. I can't act on a maxim to cut in line. Because if everyone cut in line, there would literally be no line to cut!
Thanks for the entry though, helped me flesh out my paper a bit :D
~Hadrian from Halifax
Doesn't Kant say the ends don't justify the means, and therefore would not put a limit on family size because on what the potential consequences would be?
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