Is one human life worth more than another?

[sean]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

Among the many, many problems I have with Singer, he thinks that children younger than 2 and the mentally handicapped and have no inherent value, and can be killed for any reason, including the simple convenience of the caregiver.

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.

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

Singer is the living reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism.

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?