Mind *and* Body

Ethics
1

In my previous topic, about having children, GreedyCapitalist made a very interesting and revealing comment for the Objectivism mindset, about how one shouldn’t care if one’s children share his genes.

I can’t seem to be able to get my head around this one. Maybe you can clear up some issues…

If we are both mind and body, a union in a single entity of the two, which is what I believe, then it is logical to presume that both elements are part of our self-image, part of the *actual* self.

In this case, I’d say that perpetuating your body, your genes, is as important as perpetuating your ideas, perhaps even more, since the drive to have children is deeply embedded into our somatic psychology, it’s one of the basic instinct, especially since few people are that cerebral to actually hold ideas of their own and value them as something to be transmitted.

I know that most objectivists don’t accept the notion of instict, fearing that it is a form of pre-cognition, or a way to introduce a god or another. What I’m talking about here is automated, instinctual, behaviour, a complex one, but a behaviour none the less, a behaviour without any ideological load.

The difference between the breeding instinct and others (breathing, defecating, etc) is that while other instincts foster survival, the breeding instinct survived because otherwise none of us would be here to ask that question. Breeding is what makes the mind possible.

Now, seeing that we have this behaviour baggage of desires and needs to procreate, I suggest we embrace it and apply reason to optimize it.

In a sense, what I’m saying is that if you really care about your children, then make sure not only to equip them with the best ideas, which they might eventually reject, but also with the best body, the best genes.

I suspect that, in a sense, Objectivism’s radical focus on reason, while being a great source of mental liberty and overall enhancer of civilization, sometimes leads to the rationalization of the non-intellectual in us, our instincts, our very nature.

One doesn’t have children because one wished to experience the joys of the process. One has children because it is in one’s nature to do so, and one will do it fiercelly even in the most troubling moments of child care.

Men and women have went to great lenghts to fullfil their nature and willingly accepted great suffering for it.

From an Oist perspective, if a parent isn’t receiving the pleasure he had expected from a child, we would be morally justified to abandon that child, or even killing it, since that child might not have intellectual faculties yet… only *potential* ones.

While I do agree that one shouldn’t accept to die for one’s children, one will never the less accept great losses, which is somewhat contrary to the ideas that man ought to live rationally, for his own rationality, reason for reason’s sake, in other words.

I think that the attitude towards chilldren is only part of the process of accepting our nature, as thinking bodies. What’s your take on it?

2

If breeding is an inborn human *instinct*, how do you explain the fact that some of us have no such instinct? I have no *instinct* that tells me to breed. Quite the opposite.

What you are defining an instinct to breed is most likely a misinterpretation of two things:

  1. The desire to have sex.

  2. The *social mandate* that procreation is a required part of living a happy, full life. This belief stems from two sources. The first is religion; major religions have been encouraging people to breed to excess for centuries, in the hope that it will lead to more followers (see Catholics, Mormons). The second is that before the industrial revolution (and still today in some underdeveloped nations), more children meant more workers. It was a means of production.

Instinct is not a reason to have children. Anyone who thinks this is a good reason, shouldn’t be having them.

3

From an Oist perspective, if a parent isn’t receiving the pleasure he had expected from a child, we would be morally justified to abandon that child, or even killing it, since that child might not have intellectual faculties yet… only *potential* ones.

It is one thing to explain your own ideas to Objectivists, but it is another thing entirely to presume to speak for the Objectivist view. I take offense to the absurd notion of considering the murder of a child to be a morally proper act, and it is obscenely absurd to suggest that such an horrific act is somehow justified under Objectivism. Please speak for yourself and your own ideas, and let Objectivists speak for themselves.

4

Procreation is a celebration of life. We don’t procreate because we “have” to, we procreate because we “want” to.

It is our way of saying that the world we live in, is fit for the life of another human being, i would just be adding another potential victim otherwise.

Hence, it is still a choice and not an instinct that we have to carry out.

And i agree with stephen, please do not further such notions under the name of Objectivism. A child is human, with cognitive faculties and not just a “potential”.

dinesh.

5

If we are both mind and body, a union in a single entity of the two, which is what I believe, then it is logical to presume that both elements are part of our self-image, part of the *actual* self.

You do not perpetuate your own body by having children. You make a new body, which may have some similaritys to yours, but it is a different body nonetheless.

Nor do you perpetuate your mind by having children. You make a new mind, to which you may teach some things which you know, but it is a different mind nonetheless.

Having children may be of assistance in perpetuating your ideas, since you may teach your children things which you believe to be important, but it is not a way to perpetuate yourself. If you are planning on having children in order to do so, I suggust you reconsider, since you will likely become unplesent when you realize that your children are not you.

6

Hey Prometheus

In these days, I would really question how many children were born because someone wanted to celbrate life vs how many are born becuaset hey were to stupid to us a condom or some other form of BC. Consider the sociual and economic state of america at present, I highly questiont the morality of breeding.

7

In this case, I’d say that perpetuating your body, your genes, is as important as perpetuating your ideas, perhaps even more, since the drive to have children is deeply embedded into our somatic psychology, it’s one of the basic instinct, especially since few people are that cerebral to actually hold ideas of their own and value them as something to be transmitted.

I know that most objectivists  don’t accept the notion of instict, fearing that it is a form of pre-cognition, or a way to introduce a god or another. What I’m talking about here is automated, instinctual, behaviour, a complex one, but a behaviour none the less, a behaviour without any ideological load.

You’re almost right: no Objectivist accepts such notions. This is all blatantly deterministic, and as such any Objectivist rejects these premises entirely. Therefore the rest of your argument is meaningless.

CapPigDog:

In these days, I would really question how many children were born because someone wanted to celbrate life vs how many are born becuaset hey were to stupid to us a condom or some other form of BC. Consider the sociual and economic state of america at present, I highly questiont the morality of breeding.

Prometheus obviously meant that procreation is properly a celebration of life, not that it is in fact such in every single case. Also, the morality of procreation has nothing to do with the “social and economic state” of a given society (at least not in the context I take you to mean here).