Obligation to care for a child
 

Imagine you're stranded on an island somewhere. You're the only person on the island, and don't have the ability to leave. One day while wandering around you find an infant. Since there are no other people, the infant will die if you don't care for it. It's not your child, nor did you do anything to cause the child's existence/presence. Do you have an ethical obligation to care for this child?

My opinion: there are competing rights here. The child has a right to a basic amount of care until it becomes an adult. You have the right to be unencumbered by childcare if it's not your child. I think an unfortunate situation that isn't the fault of either party should not require one to give up their rights for the other, in the same way that I'm not required to help pay to rebuild someone else's house if it burns down.

Bye-bye, baby. *punts infant into the ocean*
...

Altruism has its limits. What resources would I have to care for an infant? Probably none.

And I've got enough of my own problems with water, fire, food, shelter.

Unless its starts raining Carnation... baby would need to grow teeth right-quick.

Sure as hell do.

I'm not sure how to connect ethics and rights but perhaps because I am a parent, I always put my kids before myself so I'd naturally care for an unprotected child/baby.

It's not like I'd have anything better to do anyway.

I suppose it comes down to how you feel about it. Could you leave a helpless infant to die a pretty crappy death. Could you kill the baby yourself (to save it from suffering as well as prevent it from taking your resources)?

Personally, I would look after the kid. I wouldn't necessarily feel good about it but it is the morally right thing to do.

just a minor twist..


you come across a car accident, and the driver needs your help. he's stuck and the motor's just caught fire. do you have a moral obligation to help this person?

its not your fault, its not your accident, but this person is dependant on you to survive.

of course you help! you have a moral (and legal?) obligation to do your utmost to ensure this persons saftey. same goes for the child.

besides the obligation to help out, i would have thought that human contact would be important, albeit the human being an infant.

I would feel a thrill of new purpose in my life when I found that child, and I would be excited for the company.

Moral obligation? Who knows. I only know how I would respond.

Hell I'd help. Whether I have the obligation or not would not cross my mind. I mean, walk away and leave it to die? Big weight on my conscience. There's only you, and the kid. Why not be together? There's no one else on the freakin' island. Nothing better to do. And I like kids. Sure, it might be tough to do if you're stranded and have to fight for every bit of food and shelter you can get. But company...I'd be happier.

You have no legal obligation to put yourself in harm's way to help someone. A car that is already on fire and filled with gas, is a bomb waiting to go off. I can't say what I would or wouldn't do until I was actually standing there, but I certainly wouldn't hold it against anyone who waited for the fire to go out before going up to the car.

Another version of this favored by a certain medical school interviewer is: "You're walking down the street when the person in front of you drops over, they're not breathing and bleeding from the mouth, you have no breathing barrier, do you begin CPR?"

As for the infant - This presents the biggest logistical problem to feeding it, for me, but that's not to say that I wouldn't try. Besides, depending on the location of the infant, it could be significant to the possibility of getting my ass off of said island.

I guess this is where being female comes in handy - stick the kid to your chest regularly and given time (and enough food) the milk will come. There was a nifty thread about that recently in LL that Hunnychile started. Where is that... Aha! - LINK -

I feel that even though you do not have the obligation to help the infant that you should consider what if no one finds you on this island? Would you really let your only possibility of company die? You would probably go crazy like Tom Hanks on Cast away.

Safety in numbers. I'd raise the child as a means of increasing my chances of survival.

Consider pooling labour resources (division of labour with regard to shelter, fishing, gathering, etc.) and the benefit of protecting one another come sickness, injury, or attacks from wild animals.

I would view the child as a long-term asset with a short-term challenge.

I don't believe any of us have any absolute right to be taken care of, even babies. There is no built in obligation to help anyone else.

I believe that you should try your best to help the baby survive, as well as you can. Survival of self must always come first, as the baby would die without you anyway. If the baby comes between you and survival, then it's days are numbered no matter what you do. Without a sufficient amount of food you would not be able to produce the milk the baby needs either.

The history of humanity reflects a value placed on life, even in tough times we will try to help our fellows out. But when the shit really hits the fan it's every man for himself. It's a very good survival strategy. Reproducers can usually make more babies, whereas babies do a terrible job of self sustenance.

I take care of the baby as best I can. It's the only morally right choice, IMO, and this is not only from the Jewish point of view, which teaches "pikuach nefesh dokhin et hakol...." "Saving a life overrides every other commandment," but also in my own secular view, man is a social creature, and has responsibilities to his fellows. Furthermore, from an energy standpoint, what goes around comes around. If I take care of the baby, that energy is being put out into the universe, and perhaps it will stimulate rescuers to come and find both of us.

Another option: Baby MRE.

Another consideration: raising the child to sexual maturity.

I'd do it for purely selfish reasons.

If I failed, anyone who found me wouldn't be upset that I didn't try, they'd just be sad that I wasn't able to save them.

If I succeeded, I could potentially have more labor, company, entertainment, potential sexual pleasure (as eerily noted above), twice as many hands and feet to explore the island, build shelters and gather food.

It seems like a lose/lose to not care for them..

Yeah, I just don't see the logistics working out. What resources would a man have while stranded on an island that could feed a child?

Anybody have any wilderness survival tips regarding how to feed a kid with shellfish and coconuts?

Are there enough resources on the island to support two people? If yes, then you save the child, if maybe, then you save the child, if absolutely not, I dunno. Ethics have limits, but altruism can be strong in humans especially towards babies. We want to love babies, it's encoded deep inside us.

I couldn't walk away simply because of empathy, pity, and altruism.

Selfishness, in my opinion, is the root of all evil.

Good luck with that world view.

so you'd raise it if it were a female..is that what you're saying? :P

is that what you mean by 'safety in numbers'? population increase? interesting theory!

I don't think Barak Guru really cared whether it was male or female so long as it can satisfy is animal urges...

History would prove that his point of view is pretty common.

I couldn't disagree more. I think people are supposed to be selfish, in the objectivist people should act in accordance to their own viewpoints, ideals, desires sort of way. Unless they go screwing that up for others, of course.

I would definitely try to raise the kid. I don't have a lot of experience about such things, but I'd try my best. My main motivation would be the saving of a human life, but I guess company and help would be advantages too. I figure that sort of thing would sort of grant you a friend for life.

And here I was kinda hoping Baraka had a smooth spot like me. So I wouldn't be the only one of my species. :(

No, actually selfishness in this case would mean that someone would actually have a chance at survival. If you expend all of your resources to help the child, only to die, or get very sick, then the child would only suffer longer for having been made healthier by taking all the resources, while you either die, or watch the baby die while you are too weak to help it. In all probability, your worldview would kill both individuals. This question's answers aren't so black and white.

I see it differently. Selflessness would more likely be rewarded as the baby becomes strong and capable as you age and weaken. Two heads are better than one.

I would name the baby, Wilson.

No. Whoever left the baby there has the ethical obligation.

You do, however, have self serving reasons to keep the child alive.

Taking all of your parameters into account. you would first have to decide if there are enough resources on the island for the child to grow to usefullness. So say, 10-15 years worth of sustainable resources.

Then there is your own health. Were you a diabetic before waking up on this island, or similar medical condition that requires daily medication that you don't have anymore? Will you survive 10-15 years?

Are your chances of survival dimished by keeping the child alive?

I think companionship would be the biggest reason to keep the child. That added to the sense of purpose derived from raising the child would help keep you from the loony bin.

Imagine if you were ever rescued. Having a child our young adult who was raised completely outside of civilization, no cars, money, shopping malls, microwaves, McDonalds, cell phones, TV's, computers, video games, real clothes, shoes would totally send the scientific community into a tizzy and you would be famous.

I'm not sure we (humanity) have an actual ethical obligation. But my emotions (that I'm proud of) would not let me ignore a helpless infant. I would care for it. I would die gladly helping an innocent.

This and my overactive imagination almost sent my laptop crashing to the floor. :)

Somewhere between 4-6 months a baby can actually handle "solid" foods. They'd be malnourished but they should be able to survive a chewed up version of whatever you're on. It's dangerous and only a last resort though.

Just how long do you see this survival taking? If you have plenty of resources to feed both, then you feed both, for many of the good reasons previously posted by others.

The fact that it would take many years to raise a child to be productive and helpful to survival, you would have to have years of supplies, or a steady supply to get the child to that point.

My point is, in a survival situation, you don't usually have enough supplies even for a long term survival of self, much less the greater amount of supplies to take care of someone who can't help out in any situation. Weeks is a long time in survival and you are talking about years to raise another human being....

Except we aren't robots and company plus a driving goal and reason to live is far more powerful than the small amount of extra resources the baby would take up.

Have you ever been truly alone, in an actual wild place? Not some state park with trails or two miles from a house but the actual wilderness. It's a jarring experience with supplies and a guide/friend, I can only imagine how scary a true survival situation would be.

I'd pick up the baby & quest for its parents. If I discovered them dead, I'd raise it as my own. If I found them alive, I'd punish them, & then raise it as my own, unless they had a damn good explanation for abandoning it.

Yes, I do. Well, at least a moral obligation. If only to give comfort to a dying child (in the case that I couldn't feed it because it was too young or was otherwise sick).

However, the OP did say, "the infant will die if you don't care for it." This implies that I have the resources to do so and that the infant is of an age at which I am able to feed it.

There was nothing in the OP about limited resources, nor was there anything in the OP about the age of the infant/child. So I can't really give a specific answer.

Supplies? My assumption is that survival is based on utilizing resources on the island. Food and shelter would be the only requirement. Although I was never a girl scout, I do know that I'd learn to do what it took to survive and keep that baby alive. And yes, for years.

And how?

all I hear is "aspects aspects, factors factors... yes, no, and yes with no, no and yes."

You would or would not do it, the only aspects worth factoring would be those listed and repeated, self-concern mostly (including survival and conscientious sainthood, company, love, sex, or one violent back pay on dinner... lol.). There is also the matter of retribution and judgement if that's your distinction (belief), and if so, see the thread for God and religion.

My impulse would be to get the kid to shade, hang out with him for a while, then hide him in shade with food and some sort of entertainment (like a nice round stick, and/or whatever soft things I might have had with me) and while he's safe and sound I'd scour the island for the parents, or ANYONE else, even a matronly orangutan would be chill to hang with until eventually I was rescued or died.

In the meantime I'd be digging the biggest hole I could and lining it with twigs, sap and anything flat, making an underground house, with a nice wide, deep and irrigated dry trench, as a trap. Reinforce and water seal the roof, and begin on tunnels and chambers.

Water, fish, vegetation? Build it, hunt it, eat it ...

I guess it depends. If it were the beginning of my stay on this theoretical island, maybe I'd help it survive while I surveyed the island for possible sources of food and water.
If the island seems very survivable (resources are plentiful), then why not trying to raise the child, teach it what you can, and later have a companion?
If the situation is dire, and it seems like parenting is not something I can do in addition to finding the necessary survival stuff, then I'd probably want to give the child a quick death.

If its an island, and I'm the most intelligent being there, ethics and everything else go out the window. It's the United States of me. I decide what lives and dies, and that includes something like a baby. If I think there might an advantage later to keeping it alive, why not.