Parental Love and Procreation

Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):206-226 (2022)
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Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to explore the forcefulness of the adoption challenge to procreative parenting. After framing the challenge, I consider two of the most developed attempts to respond to it, due to Luara Ferracioli and Elizabeth Brake. I argue that neither strategy is a promising way to vindicate the permissibility of procreative parenting. I then present several reasons to value procreative parenting that are underappreciated in the recent literature. Though these considerations deserve more philosophical attention, I’m agnostic about whether they are strong enough to overcome the adoption challenge. I explain why this agnosticism is reasonable, and the debate about permissibility arguably intractable, in the context of prevailing deontological assumptions structuring discussions of procreation. I conclude by arguing that an independently interesting metaethical thesis, which I call deontic fictionalism, may give us some perspective on this debate and others like it.

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Sam Shpall
University of Sydney

Citations of this work

Procreation is Immoral on Environmental Grounds.Chad Vance - 2024 - The Journal of Ethics 28 (1):101-124.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The limits of morality.Shelly Kagan - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Love as valuing a relationship.Niko Kolodny - 2003 - Philosophical Review 112 (2):135-189.
Scalar consequentialism the right way.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):3131-3144.

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