Reproduction is not a rational choice

Great response! I'll get right to it. Con immediately begins by asserting that it is the "gambling" that I find unreasonable, and his rebuttal is essentially constructed on those grounds. But this is not quite right. It is not merely gambling that I objected to in my initial argument, it is gambling when the outcome directly affects someone else's life. And since we necessarily cannot know anything about that person's life, we have no grounds whatever for making rational decisions based on that. Con is absolutely right to point out that MANY decisions we make it everyday life involve this kind of gambling, and he is right. But as I was careful to mention in my initial argument, there's a key difference: namely, other decisions that we make, such as going to the grocery store on Tuesday, may well be governed largely by chance; but they are not therefore irrational because we still have good reasons to do them. That is, there is some process by which we decide them based on information that we may know ahead of time. Here is some in the grocery store example: we have been to that grocery store before. We know how to get there. We know basically what to expect when we go in. We know basically what the nature of the trip will be. We know roughly how much money to bring based on our needs. The list goes on. Could any or all of these expectations be wrong? Certainly. But that does not make the decision to go irrational, because we have good, inductive evidence that at least most of these expectations will be met. My argument is that having a child cannot be anything like that. We have all seen other people have children so we know what to expect in terms of what the child might look like, the needs that might need to be met, and so on. But the experience of parenthood is one that will always be entirely new. Here, con objects that many decisions are entirely new, therefore they either must all be irrational, therefore the word loses its meaning. Not at all - as I mentioned in my first argument, there is a key distinction between those experiences and this one. Namely, most of our new experiences will not change the course of lives forever. And we do not run the risk in those experiences of affecting someone else's life forever, as we do in the case of children. Here con might object with something like, "But some of those decisions do. If someone quits his job and moves into the mountains with his family he would mostly satisfy the criteria you just named." Indeed, he would - but then his decision would also be irrational. It won't have escaped your notice that I did not argue reproduction is the only irrational action, just that it is one of many irrational actions. This point can be thusly summarized: con's objection that my standard is too broad, and thus not meaningful, does not stand. I have provided sufficient reason to think that most of our everyday actions can be made with good, inductive evidence of a roughly expected outcome. Therefore while these actions may ultimately be a gamble, as our intuitions and past experience could be wrong, that does not negate the fact that we HAD good reasons and good evidence for them, and therefore they are not irrational. Reproduction is inherently unprecedented for the individual, and it is a kind of experience that 1. We cannot know anything about a priori and 2. Will affect us and our children for the rest of our lives. These two assertions, when taken together, show that reproduction is not, therefore, a rational decision and is decidedly unlike other, everyday decisions we make that may involve a bit of gambling. Con says, "For example, "I want to do X" is a consideration, as is "X is more convenient than Y", however the former can be ruled out as a motivating prudent reason particularly because simply wanting to do something doesn"t make it the best course of action, all things considered." But of course I never argued that simply wanting to do something makes it a rational criterion. In that example, we would WANT to go to the grocery store BECAUSE we have good reasons for preferring that decision. This argument, then, doesn't hold up. I have no objection to con's criteria response. In fact, you'll note that I offered similar reasons in the grocery store example, and it is precisely these (and similar) criteria that I used in trying to show what actions are rational and what actions are not. Given all of this, it is clear that we have good reason to deny premise 2 of con's argument, namely that my criteria for rationality applies to any and all actions. There are many actions, as we have seen, that it goes not apply to. There are also some that it does - but of course it does not follow in any way logically that therefore reproduction is not irrational, it only suggests that those actions are irrational, too. And it seems to me that we have good reasons to draw that distinction. Now that we have drawn into doubt con's premises, there is no reason to think my initial argument does not still stand. I await con's response.