When it comes to potential children, is to love them to leave them be (nonexistent)? I examine the possibility of virtuous reproduction, as well as some more basic theoretical issues surrounding the nature of moral goodness and obligation generally. Currently, there is a large body of literature in the field of reproductive ethics on questions of what considerations and practices ought to guide reproductive decision-making. The appropriate use of testing technologies to inform such decision-making, for instance, has been widely debated. Much smaller and less visible is the debate surrounding the prior question of whether reproduction itself is morally appropriate or desirable. I am particularly interested in how consequentialist strategies for including considerations of beneficence in reproductive decision-making have shaped moral approaches to reproduction. The principle of procreative beneficence (PPB), which mandates potential reproducers to select the best possible child, highlights the problematic nature of these strategies. The limited conceptual resources and problematic normative foundations of such strategies have stymied the development of a robust discussion on the ethics of reproduction itself. Other types of ethical approaches, loosely defined as deontological, offer superior accounts of what is at issue in reproduction, but also draw on some flawed background assumptions regarding, for instance, the nature of the moral agent and the scope of the moral sphere. The question of the morality of reproduction itself thus leads to an examination of far more basic issues in ethical theory: namely, the significance of meta-ethical commitments, and the desirability of a normative framework that offers a rich and agent-focused account of moral goodness and badness. I argue that a virtue-centred ethics, grounded in neo-Aristotelian naturalism, accomplishes just that. And it is well-equipped to provide a meaningful and helpful analysis of the morality of reproduction, both holistically, in terms of the potential virtuousness of reproduction generally, and in terms of how the virtues of courage and benevolence may be expressed in reproduction. I conclude that a virtue-centred assessment of reproduction offers a sound and practical form of evaluation and that a virtuous character may indeed be expressed through reproduction. / Thesis (Ph.D, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-17 10:44:50.827

David Benatar’s axiological asymmetry argument for antinatalism states that it is always bad for a sentient being to come into existence. There has been a lot of discussion about this argument since its publication in 2006, but this discussion has often been lacking by not accepting some ground rules, or assumptions, that Benatar establishes. In this paper I accept these ground rules, which is the person-affecting view, and the idea that the axiological asymmetry argument provides a lot of explanatory power, by single handedly being able to explain four other, primafacie plausible asymmetries. In this paper I investigate these other asymmetries to see (i) if they are true and (ii) if some other, more plausible theory, can explain them. My investigation shows that two of these asymmetries are false when understood in a theoretical way. When these two asymmetries are understood in a practical way, they are true, but then they don’t lend support to the axiological asymmetry argument. The third asymmetry, while true, is better explained by the so-called existence requirement. The fourth asymmetry, while true, doesn’t lend support to the axiological asymmetry argument since it doesn’t provide anything new to this argument. The conclusion drawn from this is that the explanatory power of the axiological asymmetry argument, with regards to these other asymmetries, is not that strong, which in effect weakens the plausibility of the axiological asymmetry argument for antinatalism. / David Benatars axiologiska asymmetri-argument för antinatalism säger att det alltid är dåligt för en kännande varelse att börja existera. Det har varit mycket diskussion kring detta argument sedan dess publicering år 2006, men denna diskussion har ofta varit bristfällig genom att inte acceptera några grundregler, eller antaganden, som Benatar etablerar. I den här uppsatsen accepterar jag dessa grundregler, som dels är den så kallade person-affecting teorin, och dels tanken att det axiologiska asymmetri-argumentet ger mycket förklaringskraft, genom att på egen hand kunna förklara fyra andra, prima facie rimliga asymmetrier. I den här uppsatsen undersöker jag dessa andra asymmetrier för att se (i) om de är sanna och (ii) om någon annan, rimligare teori, kan förklara dem. Min undersökning visar att två av dessa asymmetrier är falska när de förstås på ett teoretiskt sätt. När dessa två asymmetrier förstås på ett praktiskt sätt är de sanna, men då ger de inte stöd för det axiologiska asymmetri-argumentet. Den tredje asymmetrin är sann, men förklaras bättre av det så kallade existens-kravet. Den fjärde asymmetrin är sann, men ger inte något stöd till det axiologiska asymmetri-argumentet eftersom den inte tillför något nytt till detta argument. Slutsatsen som dras av detta är att förklaringskraften hos det axiologiska asymmetri-argumentet, med avseende på dessa andra asymmetrier, inte är så stark, vilket som en följd försvagar rimligheten hos det axiologiska asymmetri-argumentet för antinatalism.

Human infertility is not a new phenomenon, but it is as old as humanity itself. Currently in most developed countries, the number of couples who have a problem with childbearing is growing. This is due, among other things, to the lifestyle associated with career development and postponement of parenthood. While in the past infertile couples usually had only two options to deal with their sterility - childlessness and a substitute life program, or adopting a child. Today, infertile couples have a third option and this is the treatment of infertility using assisted reproduction methods. This year, exactly forty years have elapsed since the birth of the first child by means of extracorporeal fertilization. Already then the assisted reproduction was considered a method that is ethically problematic. Numerous specialists, such as physicians, biologists, lawyers, philosophers, theologians, and others, have been involved in the quest for ethical issues. Not only there has been no solution to some problems during the whole lifetime of assisted reproduction on which most experts and the general public would agree, but with the gradual development of this treatment method new problems have arisen. Today's stage of development of artificial insemination techniques and procedures together with modern...

This qualitative research focuses on the decision to stay childfree as a specific individual strategy for coping with the effects of climate crisis. The purpose of this study is to show ways in which the climate crisis is internalized and stressed within the decision to stay childfree. Data for this research were created through semi-structured interviews with 12 informants coming from all around the world. These informants were divided into two different categories. First of them, the kinnovators, perceive their decision to stay childfree as a way to erase the boundary between human and non-human worlds and therefore, similarly to Donna J. Haraway (2016), they perceive their childfreeness as an alternative to the popularly held belief of genalogical view on human kinship. These informants experience a great amount of environmental grief (Kevorkian, 2004) based on the values of antispeciesism and they see the main causes of climate crisis in the epoch of Anthropocene and therefore in the problems connected to human society - such as overpopulation (e.g. Ehrlich, 1986, compared to Haraway, 2016) or consumerism (Bell, 2004). Kinnovators perceive their decision to stay childfree as their individual responsibility and as a way to mitigate climate crisis, as well as a means to maintain their integrity....

Human infertility is not a new phenomenon, but it is as old as humanity itself. Currently in most developed countries, the number of couples who have a problem with childbearing is growing. This is due, among other things, to the lifestyle associated with career development and postponement of parenthood. While in the past infertile couples usually had only two options to deal with their sterility - childlessness and a substitute life program, or adopting a child. Today, infertile couples have a third option and this is the treatment of infertility using assisted reproduction methods. This year, exactly forty years have elapsed since the birth of the first child by means of extracorporeal fertilization. Already then the assisted reproduction was considered a method that is ethically problematic. Numerous specialists, such as physicians, biologists, lawyers, philosophers, theologians, and others, have been involved in the quest for ethical issues. Not only there has been no solution to some problems during the whole lifetime of assisted reproduction on which most experts and the general public would agree, but with the gradual development of this treatment method new problems have arisen. Today's stage of development of artificial insemination techniques and procedures together with modern...

No description available.