this issue, and why the other considerations are not. It must be remembered that the raising of a child in a modern developed country has a very large cost in financial terms, which is highly significant. It is well known that the amount required to raise one child in a developed country could probably raise many more in a poorer part of the world. So if increasing the human population is the aim, this can be achieved more effectively elsewhere. However in these days of increasing environmental pressure and terrible inequality, increasing the human population is not what we should be aiming for. Of course at this point someone could ask him/herself “If everybody became a utilitarian, would the human race become extinct?” The answer would be in this case no, because, if everybody were utilitarian, these problems would not exist to the same degree. In utilitarian terms, a general prescription either for or against reproduction is very hard to justify because each case would have its own relevant and specific features. However, we come to the assumption that reproduction is the cheapest method of recruiting moral agents, even granting that it has a high cost in time and effort and of course this would require empirical support. Someone should not of course forget to refer to the distinctions within the Utilitarian approach in Act and Rule Utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism is a formulation utilitarianism, which maintains that a behavioural code or rule is morally right if the consequences of adopting that rule are more favourable than unfavourable to everyone. The above is contrasted with act utilitarianism, which maintains that the morality of each action is to be determined in relation to the favourable or unfavourable consequences that emerge from that action. The principle of rule-utilitarianism is a test only for the morality of moral rules, such as "stealing is wrong" and not a test for particular actions. Adopting a ru...
