Is one human life worth more than another?

[sean]

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?