Comments on: O Father Where Art Thou?

By: rollo

rollo — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:16:30 +0000

#30 -It doesn’t.
Nor does Solomon’s solution to the disputing women.
Nor does the subject of incest except tangentially.
As a case. But this is not “a case”. This is a direction.
The immediate context of the post is “a case”. The greater context is where we’re going.
What’s at play here is sexual ethics, Darwinian reconfiguration, the assumption/denial of responsibility for the outcome.
In the murk of that these cases go undecided, grinding along against the inarticulate resistance of non-rational holdovers of dogma and received injunction – superstitious reluctance to surrender the shaping mechanisms of human presence to the blind claws of grasping self-interest.
None of it is alien, most of it is inhuman, but only by degrees. Like that frog in the water on the stove we just sit and watch the sides of the pot while nothing seems to change.
Incest is taboo, so is the consumption of pork in some cultural ethics, so is cannibalism in most. The rationality behind those taboos can be dissolved – reduced to either situational aptness or mindless obedience to tradition – and dispensed with.
Leaving us no morality but reason.
And reason’s no morality at all.

By: DW

DW — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 01:46:44 +0000

Regarding Comment #29, it seems if this form of reproduction has a long term effect, it would be to reinforce patriarchy. Women provide the bulk of child care – that is the single biggest handicap women face getting ahead in public life. Under this system, selection is for men who excell in public life (smart, physically impressive, etc) but provide zero child care. It’s like a harem except without the man having to provide any economic input.

More seriously I find both the donors and the single mothers a little disturbing. Lesbians and couples with infertility problems I understand, but frankly if you’re unwilling or unable to find someone willing to raise a kid with you maybe the next generation doesn’t need your kids. Likewise, if you’re unwilling to put in the time as a father, maybe you shouldn’t be reproducing either. The funniest of course are the single moms who think they can still find a husband after having a sperm donor baby.

By: ogmb

ogmb — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:59:48 +0000

Seigmund and Seiglinde

To avoid German ei vs. ie mistakes, simply remember that each is pronounced (in English) like the second letter: ie = “e”, ei = “i”. Hence: Siegmund and Sieglinde.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:59:44 +0000

Rollo (#24), I don’t see how in vitro fertilization relates to this case.

By: saurabh

saurabh — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:55:48 +0000

You know, this is a pretty interesting from a mate selection point of view. Robert Trivers suggested that the sex that has the greatest parental investment will tend to become choosier in mate selection. In this case, there is literally zero male investment, meaning the burden falls entirely on females. If this becomes a more widespread strategy, female sexual selection should drive male evolution increasingly. Looking forward to your ornate horned crests, guys?

By: Leonard

Leonard — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:41:59 +0000

Tom, the coefficient of relatedness of half-sibs is 0.25. By comparison, relatedness of full sibs is 0.5; first cousins (with full outbreeding) 0.125. The 0.25 of half-sibs is the same as your relatedness to an aunt or uncle.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:37:48 +0000

“The article shows women who believes that they ought to have children almost no matter what, as if they have some right to it.”

Those damn women. Always trying to control their fertility. Time for us to take the position of South Dakota and make sure they use their uteruses as God intended.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 14:55:10 +0000

Regarding Lemuel Pitkin’s two posts. First thank you for responding!

Post 1) Well clearly the norms and conceptions of family life is changing, that the article shows. But the question remains if this is a desired change. My point was that instead of answering that question heads on I wanted to point out something that looks like a paradox. Namely that biology matters (that genes actually matter for how the child will be), but appreantly only so far (not so far that the children should have access to those 50% of their genes that comes from the father, and be able to understand and develop themselves in light of those 50%). What I found to be a good point in David Velleman’s comments was (not that I have any clue if this was his intention) that Belle Waring critizes the donor for wanting to spread his genes, but she does not critize the want-to-be mothers for wanting to spread their genes in this manner. The article shows women who believes that they ought to have children almost no matter what, as if they have some right to it (they make themselves moral objects, not agents). Then Waring goes on to supply the same logic by critizing the male donor, as if he is the agent and the morally responsible. Basically, I found Waring to just repeat a typical male-female stereotypes, that I find to rather obscure moral issues then make them clearer.

2) My apology for snaring, but my point is simple: You cannot decide what is interesting or, actually, what the article really says, by trying to get to authors intetions. Tim O’Keefe ends up bypssing whatever might be of interest – and what the article really conways – by focusing on the author’s intetions, or at least he risks doing that, depending on what one thinks of the article.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:28:29 +0000

Can someone with a biological background perhaps discuss the genetic risk associated with two half-siblings mating? Is it significantly worse than first cousins?

By: rollo

rollo — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 08:06:10 +0000

Back home we call it line-breeding.
Got a good milker? Breed her off the progeny.
The hysterical cliché default is puddles of fur and biological ineptitude, but the fact is that good traits come to the fore, up to a point. And the rest go into the knacker’s wagon. Cat food.
The lab monkeys know this.
Incest is taboo – so should have been in vitro fertilization, and for the same reasons.
Yes it works – but not always. And it’s a subversion of an already adequate system, with no humanly adequate replacement.
When it goes south, it goes way south – re-direction of the human enterprise is damn near irreversible.
It’s as though Solomon’s famous baby was actually split down the middle and kept alive and given to each of the disputant mothers.
Happy now?
A short-term solution with long-term consequences.
What’s in error is the meddling.
Once begun it’s a monumental task to get back to where the real path was.
Dairy herds are easily collated – humans not so.
By humans.

By: InShock&Awe

InShock&Awe — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 04:59:18 +0000

From the article: ” Mutts are always the friendly ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who don’t bark and have a good character. I want a mutt.”

Wow..!

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 04:40:40 +0000

(I mean Greg’s comment at 15, not the snark immediately above.)

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 04:40:13 +0000

Thanks novalis—the linked discussion is fascinating.

Greg I think has hit the key point here, but is it really so sad or disturbing, or just a sign of how norms and conceptions of family life are evolving? This is one of the only areas, after all, where people are free to organize their lives more or less as they please, and it’s interesting to see what they come up with…

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:08:29 +0000

And then with Tim O’Keefe’s comment we were back to the good old days when the job of hermenutics was to get us to the authors intentions.

By: Tim O'Keefe

Tim O'Keefe — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 02:09:05 +0000

David Velleman writes… “the article is primarily about the shallowness and selfishness of the prospective mothers.”

I didn’t get that from the article at all. The author of the piece certainly said nothing explicitly of the sort, and I saw little in the tone or organization of the piece that said it via insinuation. If anything, the author seemed fairly sympathetic to the prospective mothers, although there are definitely details (like the shopping around for proper heights, skin tones, etc.) that are meant to raise eyebrows.