Natural philosophers!

;)

Pshaw. I say again, pshaw.

Have you read "The fates of nations" by Paul Colinveaux?
Or, in a similar vein, Jared Diamond's "Guns, germs and steel"?
or Manuel de Landa's "War in the age of intelligent machines" Brilliant!

Natural historians, I meant to say...
Ah, Natural History, the slightly disreputable, chain smoking dowager aunt of the Sciences!

They're ALL branches of philosophy, mate. :D

I've never actually studied Singer directly or fully so I have no more than incidental knowledge of his positions, but he is somewhat like Radar, in that, having settled on some principles he builds on them exactly as logic dictates, but never then considers a reductio ad absurdum of his own position, because he is already sold on the principles and the numerous apparent successes along the way.

I think Smooth is unfair to him, and I could argue about his philosophy, but I only do that for money. And it isn't really my field, I'm more into metaphysics.

I can't pretend to be a student of Singer, or philosophy for that matter. I've read vanishingly small quantities of both.

But I'm interested in what Singer has to say about 'expanding circles' of empathy. As an ethologist, I'm interested in the roots of empathy in our biology, as described by primatologist Frans deWaal. Like Singer, I'm a hard consequentialist, but I think empathy provides a subjectivity within which utilitarianism makes sense. It's not an abstract calculus, it's insight into the causes of harm and the nature of suffering.

I think maybe the three big ideas in philosophical ethics -virtue, duty and the greater good- probably reflect three modes of the operation of empathy -subjective, collective and universal.

smoothmoniker's comments about children younger than 2 and the mentally handicapped made me think of the Stephen Hawking would have been left to die argument against Obama's health reforms. Lol!

And I never really got metaphysics. Is that like angels on pinheads and stuff?

No, I'm not fear-mongering here, that's directly from Singer, and it's a position he's restate and defended many, many times in his writing and public interviews. I'm not presenting an extreme distortion of his views, those are his views, and he makes no apology for them.

By all means, watch this entire interview for context, and read what he's written elsewhere, but here is Singer articulating exactly this point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bi81JcddWc#t=5m35s

I just watched that interview and I thought he made some good points actually. I don't think it's so shocking. He's not advocating the euthanasia of babies born with a disability. He's advocating choice for families when a child is born severely disabled: it's a tricky one and difficult to draw legislative lines, but the example he gives of a baby born with no brain, but a brain stem is an interesting one.

Why am I not surprised. :headshake

Yeah, he seems pretty reasonable to me.

Personally I think religious sloganeering around the 'sanctity of life' is little more than a fetish. Keeping somebody in a persistent vegetative state for decades when children die every minute of the day for want of a handful of rice is simply perverse.

I know a little girl who is quite severely disabled, and to be honest, when she was a baby, I wondered about the point of her life. It was a lesson for me because she is very much loved and altho she requires constant care, she gives a lot back to those around her and is an inspiring person to know. I like her a lot.

But she isn't insentient, she's a thoughtful and clever little girl. Also, she lives in an environment with the resources to care for her. Where people have a more ongoing struggle for survival, I expect the balance shifts because the survival of a family or community can be endangered if one individual becomes a significant burden.

I have some faith in the power of love, and I think an ideology that compels a woman to carry an unwanted child to term, or compels parents to keep alive a child whose future is severely compromised by illness, is actually contemptuous of the power of love and I despise it.

heh, probably how some feel about self proclaimed pedophiles. contempt makes the world go round, i guess.

I hate that this post by you has touched me so deeply. thanks

When Singer says it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific (Practical Ethics, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 175-217), he makes it clear that his views on killing are not the unfeeling triumph of unconstrained self interest, but an argument about how to do the best by people.

What he is saying is that dogmatic adherence to a doctrine on the sanctity of life is not guaranteed to lead to the best moral outcome. Representing this as the nullification of the rights of vulnerable individuals seems misleading at best.

I once allowed some people to search for the victim of an avalanche. He was dead anyway, but even if he had been alive, I made the wrong decision. I should have left him, because I put the lives of the searchers at risk. That's a situation where the 'sanctity of life' fails as an absolute principle. There are plenty more.

I commented that maybe that was part of his argument because I think thats how utilitarianism plays out sometimes. The world is full of ethical vegetarians who have reluctantly become so through introspection and analysis. If that isn't an absurdity in the species with the most lethal bite of any mammal, then what is?

I'm despising an ideology, you a person. I think that's the difference.

Thanks classicman! I'm touched that you're touched, seriously.
:blush:

Despite my quoting Singer, I'm not inclined to dismiss MacIntyre's Aristotelianism. I think the concept of a tradition of virtue, and of categories of living that reflect character and a moral attitude are quite valid.

As I've said, I situate an ethological formulation of instinctive empathy as primary in ethical decision making (a kind of emotivism). Subsequent to it, I invoke a consequentialist argument to explain how we come by an objective understanding of harm.

I despise religion in all its manifestations*, so my formulation of 'virtue' also tends to follow a naturalistic, anti-authoritarian and existential path that champions personal responsibility over mass chanting in unison. Of the theological virtues -faith, hope and charity- only charity acquires a positive evaluation in my ethical schema, and its co-opting as a characteristic virtue by religious traditions seems to me a baseless self promotion.

But there is definitely room for some crossover between my position and MacIntyre's.

For me, being attracted to children isn't a moral problem, it is a simple fact. Where I think MacIntyre might have something useful to contribute (and I intend to read some of his work) is in that the primary moral problem faced by paedophiles is the apparent absence of any clear tradition of right action that addresses their own particular needs. In MacIntyre's terms, there is no narrative tradition of paedophilia that enables virtue.

In truth there is. That tradition is well established, but it has been driven underground and all but destroyed by the wave of persecution over recent decades. I think it's important to rehabilitate it. There is a rich tradition to draw on, a tradition of paedophiles who are 'great souls' and are not 'moral monsters', and who have written movingly about their lives and experiences.

In these difficult times, I think it takes some courage (not merely daring) to assert the potential for good in paedophiles, so I'm going to give myself a pat on the back just for suggesting it.

*Just want to add, I'm sorry about any offense this statement causes. I realise it's unfair and unreasonable. I know religion is important to many people, including some people I care about. I'm leaving it in as a declaration of bias.

I should add that Aristotelian arguments stemming from the social forms of the telos of the polis are machinist, in that they honour the human superorganism, the city-state. This organism does not have human qualities, or human values, and it's own values are not relevant to what is good for human beings.

Not only are they not relevant, they are inimical. The city-state is to the human subject what a Silon is to Starbuck.

And I should also add that my attitude to religion is not personal. I have no sense that religion motivates the kind of prejudice of which I've been a victim.

Would that also hold true for the nation state?

What are you unsurprised about?

Yep. Same thing really. It's complicated. I'm patriotic in a way, but I put people before flags I suppose.

Nuttin' jus sayin'

"Is one human life worth more than another?"
 

Yes, in a subjective sense.


My life is, to me, worth more than the presidential porch monkey's.

My 3 year old nephew's life is, to me, worth more than my own.


Objectively: all of them, including mine, are 'worth' spit... ;)

Oh, Henry! So glad to see you!

And you may not believe this, but I actually AGREE with what you just said.

/Tips hat

Stir the musicians! I is returned! ;)
 

"Oh, Henry! So glad to see you!"

Queenie!

#

"And you may not believe this, but I actually AGREE with what you just said."

Which part?

The 'subjective value of a life' part, or, 'the presidential porch monkey' part?

HA!

Actually all three points: subjectivity, monkey business, and Spit.

subjectivity, monkey business, and Spit
 

A very nice summation!

One primate is pretty much the same as another, so no.

The question deserves an objective answer and a personal answer. In objective terms, no. But since we are social creatures, the lives of those I know are more "important" and will certainly take precedence.

Depends. I hate most of the humans I know, so I don't put them ahead of anyone else. Some exceptions exist, but not enough to base a concrete philosophy on.

I suspect not. Didn't we ban these guys or is this a new troll?

IP is from Vietnam = new model spammer

I voted troll.

sproll

Returning to topic: A faithful man could say, "God only knows," considering that man cannot. I think he'd be speaking no worse nonsense than anyone else.

Right off I would immediately remark, "You despise what you've been told about it." The unchurched very often display a depth of ignorance about religion and its manifestations that would scare a bathyscaphe. Where do you find the slogan Ignorance Is Strength again -- and who benefits in strength from that ignorance? Are you sure you'd want them benefiting?

Any system or organization can be gamed by any grifter for any reason. This does not in itself devalue the system or organization; it just illustrates the Biblical remark that "the love of money is the root of all evil." If the Bible had spoken of addictions in other than the Vulgate Latin sense (phrases like flammis acribus addictis), they'd have gotten in there too.

No, not told, churched. I have deep but informed arguments with religion. Of the Christian virtues --faith, hope and charity-- only charity comes anywhere near a virtue in my estimation. Faith and hope are insidious vices.

In their book Should the baby live?, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer examine the question that frames this thread: "Is one human life worth more than another?". They show how an intuitive answer to this question begs an assertion of the 'sanctity' of life.

This ideologically inspired slight of hand hinges on two separate meanings of the term 'worth'; the first an objective accounting of the value of a life, the second a subjective reality; the quality of a life.

My position is that the quality of a life may sometimes be less than the quality of any life, and that the courage to act on this conclusion by ending a life is inspired by comprehension of (paradoxically) the 'worth' of that life in the first sense. That comprehension goes far beyond cant and dogma.

Sometimes letting a baby die is an act of love. It isn't an easy option, and the suggestion that it might be is a gross insult to those people who have faced such a choice.

'Unchurched': One of the problems with understanding 'across the divide' is that whilst a majority of the faithful have never experienced atheism; the majority of atheists will have experienced faith. I think this usually makes it easier for an atheist to understand what it is to have faith, than for the faithful to understand what a lack of faith might feel like.

I so wanted to find a fishing emoticon where as the can of worms was hanging from the hook.