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This is so true.

That is a really stupid characteristic to use as our definition of what makes life valuable. All organisms, including bacteria and cells have DNA. There is nothing special whatsoever about DNA or DNA unfurling, it seems to me that using self-consciousness, self-awareness, emotions, pain, or really anything else would be better. Additionally, sperm and eggs both have DNA and I could make a similar argument that their DNA awards them a right to life, which I assume you would agree would be ridiculous.

Nonsense. We are the sum total of our self-awereness expressed through language. You would not be able to present your argument above that DNA is what makes you what you are without first being self-aware and secondly being able to use language. Your position doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Ideal desire ...

Nah because murder infringes on another person's desire and future desires. Murder infringes on multiple Essential Intrests/ Desires of a person, in fact thwarts all of a persons intrests/ desires. And if murder was accessible it would cause societal unrest which would upset many intrests/ desires. So overall the desire or the murderer does not outweigh the desire of the murdered ir their family/ society.

i agree and people think its us anti abortionists who need to see a thrapists

Which one?

They're mild mannered academics who write about morality and thought experiments for a living, neither of them is deranged.

Omg shut the fuck up :D

yes

um

Then refute it. If you're so wise and Singer is such a hack, why is he able to get his apparently inane and idiotic writings published? Surely someone reviewing the papers would have noticed the glaring errors you think he makes

So we're never allowed to make conclusions that go against moral dogmas? We're just supposed to accept the Christian morality as the only possible worldview and instantly reject anything that deviates from it?

Interracial marriage was a morally reprehensible to the majority of americans pre 1990's. The same type of argument Singer uses could be used to talk about why banning interracial marriage is wrong. Does that mean we need to "rethink our axioms". How something "feels" to us tells us almost nothing about its ethics, we are notoriously intuitvley wrong about almost every moral proposition and have to be culturally educated in order to become "domesticated" look at human history none of our moral sentiments are inherent as almost every atrocious behavior has been valued by some group and some time

There's nothing obvious morally reprehensible when we talk about morality. It's subjetive

@@leishmania4116 So, "raping little kids for pleasure" is morally....subjective? Sure... I understand atheists and others need to justify certain philosophical priors, and so they reason backwards, from their conclusion, but please, don't deny reality. At least do a Moorean Shift to get out of saying something obviously untrue.

@@LoliPantsu8 >>"So we're never allowed to make conclusions that go against moral dogmas?" No one said that. Straw man. >>"We're just supposed to accept the Christian morality as the only possible worldview and instantly reject anything that deviates from it?" I'm not sure why you would go straight to Christian morality, but no. You don't accept a worldview because another one is clearly false. You need to have good reasons, which is outside of the scope of my comment. Saying morality is at least sometimes objective, and that you can be objectively wrong about something being moral, is not to say that Christianity is true. But it is a point in it's favor, I'll give you that. You would need a more cumulative case for Christianity, like the one William Lane Craig makes.

!!!!!!!!

Singer is probably just going to reject your intuition about the comatose person. Can you justify your intuition? If they can't feel pain, and if they don't have the kind of future-directed desires and goals that death thwarts, then what's wrong with it? They don't experience pain, and nothing is thwarted or harmed by the death. I'm not saying you're wrong, just wanted to press you on an area where I think you were perhaps a little quick.

I appreciate I posited no objective reason why killing someone is inherently immoral if no pain is felt, I did just assert and question why it is that it seems inherently wrong. If Singer, or anyone for the matter, were to flatly reject that there is anything wrong with killing someone who has a future and has done nothing wrong, even if it is painless, I would consider them strange to say the least. I'll quickly point out though that future desires and goals are surely the foetus and the comatose person have, future-directed (presently held) ones obviously not. A future of value as Marquis would say, they almost certainly have in some capacity. I don't think exploring the intuitive feelings that we hold widely in what might be termed a social contract or moral feeling is a bad or misguided idea, Shelly Kagan is a wonderful philosopher and asks these kind of questions without being able to answer why something is immoral, but accepts it is for all intents and purposes because we "know" it to be so in some deep (but perhaps not really true) sense. One of his lectures on "why is death bad" ends with a "I don't know" result. I know a consensus isn't a good reason for something being so, a large religious group might find something objectively immoral moral; but I mean the whole of humanity if pressed would have difficulty finding the morality in this scenario. And that is the important point here I think: the logical conclusion of it being okay to kill an unfeeling, but alive, comatose person is that there's nothing really wrong with killing your average living person if they do not anticipate the event and feel no pain at all. There's no magic difference between a healthy person and a poorly person that makes it immoral to kill one and not the other, all other things being equal including a painless execution. "Nothing is thwarted... by the death" - their future is, and that is a key point. If the person has no inherent value, nor their future, and the only things that matter are their feeling of pain or "thwarting" of some current goal two things seem clear and odd to me: 1. the arbitrary criterion of "a current goal being held" is the only determining factor between you being okay to kill or not (so, if at any time you have no goal, you're fit for killing - being asleep would surely qualify this if a coma does) 2. the kind of painless execution seen in Japan upon people instantly vaporised by the dropping of a nuclear bomb would not be considered immoral on this view, so long as the vaporised individual had no current aim - they were idling. I think that "current goal" idea is a very weak criterion, with equally as little objective reasoning behind its value as a condition as my assertion that there is something inherently wrong with killing a person which requires a greater evil to justify it (i.e the saving of more lives as a result of the one death).

There are actually some really important differences between painlessly killing a healthy sleeping person and a fully comatose/brain-dead human being. The former nonetheless has various desires, goals, and plans that they want to actually fulfil and complete in their life. We can define these things a little more broadly than just 'goals that you are consciously holding and thinking about right this second'. Death is harmful because it denies the fulfilment of those held things. The fully comatose person doesn't have any of these things, and the harsh truth of the matter is that they don't have any meaningful kind of future. They're not capable of reflective thought, or contemplating the goals and desires they used to have before they entered a comatose state. Futures of different people can have more or less value than each other depending on a variety of factors, but if a human being is fully comatose then it doesn't seem like they have any value at all to be experienced in their future. Beyond that, because they're comatose, they're not even subjects of any experiences, value, goals, etc. at all. If you think they do then I'd appreciate hearing your suggestions for what those things of value might be. I'm not really sure what Marquis would say about a comatose patient - I think it would depend on the specifics. If there's no future like ours to experience then it wouldn't necessarily be wrong, this is why he's okay with abortion in the case of serious disability, for example.

I haven't claimed that the comatose person does experience anything in their current state, just as the foetus doesn't. I am challenging the idea that the only moral worth comes out of their current state. Regarding the individual's future you said "People being fully comatose... it doesn't seem like they have any value at all to be experienced in their future" - people can and have been fully recovered from being in a coma, so that's simply not true and is one of the reasons I used it as an example. A very normal and goal-filled life can follow, as with a pregnancy. My claim is that with *full knowledge* of the human life that will come to fruition after the lifting of the coma or the end of the pregnancy in the scenario I gave, there is as much a grounds for the arbitrary assignment of moral worth to an impending goal-harbouring individual as there is to an individual who has goals. My point is exactly based around that distinction between "current state", and before and after. If an individual were to be healthy and well, with goals and desires, fall completely brain-dead for 5 minutes, then come round to normal life again after those 5 minutes, it would be morally permissible to kill them in the 5 minutes they were out, according to the view you are defending (which I appreciate because I can thrash out these ideas). *edit* I should add I agree there is good grounds for supporting abortion of a foetus showing disability, or in the case of the mother being at serious risk.

People who are asleep or temporarily unconscious do not stop having desires and preferences for the future. Those preferences are just dormant and inaccessible to the rest of us temporarily. when you wake up from sleep, you still have the same plans for the future. you don't have to rediscover who you are and what you aspire to accomplish every morning you wake up. A permanently comatose person has no feasible prospect of achieving any of those dreams, and so killing them is more akin to killing a tree or a cabbage.

One can argue that for raw potentiality but if you make potentiality that broad a bowl of food that has the ingredients to be processed into being sperm is also a potential human.

The term ‘potential’ has different meanings. It can mean ‘possible.’ For example, flour, water, eggs and raising powder have the potential to become a cake, which means that it is possible for these ingredients to become a cake. 'Potential’ may sometimes also mean ‘probable.’ For example, one may say that the Lakers have the potential to win the NBA Championship. By this, one may mean that there is some probability that the Lakers will win the NBA Championship. Finally, ‘potential’ may mean that an entity, which has a certain nature, has an inherent capacity to realize its particular nature. For example, one may say that an acorn has a potential to become an oak. This may mean that the acorn has the inherent capacity to realize its nature of being an oak. On the most plausible reading of potential, namely, in the third sense, sperm and ova do not have the inherent capacity to realize the nature of being an agent. At best, they have the inherent capacity to realize their nature of being functioning sperm and ova. Indeed, as Joel Feinberg has pointed out, critics who continue to insist that the potentiality of the sperm and ova is identical to the potentiality of the zygote are vulnerable to a reductio ad absurdum, namely, “[a]t the end of that road is the proposition that everything is potentially everything else, and thus the destruction of all utility in the concept of potentiality. It is better to hold this particular line at the zygote. Hence, the argument that sperm and ova could be rightholders is also not a problem for the most plausible potentiality account.

Seems quite self evident so why are pro philosophers still using in such a vague manner? At the other end they often use terms in a very restricted way like a pre-conscious fetus has no 'interests'.

No. This is addressed by Marquis and in the literature. Namely, a sperm is not the same unique individual entity as the fetus. The fetus has a FLO, but a sperm does not. Only a sperm + egg does. (To be clear, a sperm has a future, but it's not a future like ours (FLO)).

interesting Veritas, but does that mean that someone who is in medical school have a FLO of a doctor, while someone in high school does not, and thus should be seen as less. Perhaps it would be more moral to terminate a high schooler vs a medical student.

He'd probably say that it wouldn't be permissible under most scenarios because it would go against the interest of the person experimented on, unless the experiment would be unknow to the person (because the knowledgewould cause distress), wouldn't cause the subject any harm, and wouldn't interfere with other interest aka what he's doing throughout the day extra. Basically he would say we can't override another person's interests unless their interest are to harm others. And the only way to expirement on the subject would be if he was somehow never aware it was happening, which he'd probably point out is impossible in real life.

Also someone answered you... just way later

Yes one would wonder does he think a single bacteria isn't really a single organism either? Another problem I have is this restricted or narrow use of 'interest' only in the mental sense and not 'to have a stake in' sense. & I didn't quite understand the you should make the infanticide decision ASAP. By his argument it has no interests so it shouldn't matter either way. Lastly relying on societal preferences to stop babies being killed is very shaky, unless of course he is happy if that society has preferences to allow it then that makes it permissible.

Good point. This also reveals the sheer arbitrariness of accounts like that of Singer and Boonin. The expression "X has an interest in Y" can either mean "X is interested in Y" or "Y is of X's interest." While it is true that a fetus does not want its life to continue (in a conscious sense) and so will not mind if you kill it, this only shows that fetuses are not interested in continuing to live . It is quite possible that while X is not interested in continuing to live , continuing to live is X's best interest , in which case we will have a reason (which can be extremely strong) not to kill X. According to Marquis , because of human fetuses have a future with value is in their interest that their life continues and therefore killing them is wrong. The fact that fetuses are not interested in continuing to live (ie what is ) does not shake this idea.

Just added you on Fb would love to chat more about it.

Josef Steel I think David Oderberg has the best response to Singer's twinning objection. He also addresses the totipotency concern so I'll refer to his paper "Modal Properties, Moral Status and Identity" which is available online. Re: personal identity I believe you are simply mistaken on this. Let us investigate whether your argument is sound. We can begin with the following account of what it is to have a FLO: X, at time t, has a FLO if and only if (1) X exists at t, and (2) X exists for some period of time after t, during which X has valuable experiences that make X’s life after t worth living, on the whole. So this definition entails, correctly, that if some being has a FLO then the experiences that constitute that FLO must be had by that being. Therefore, if a fetus has a FLO, then the fetus must indeed be the same being as some future being with valuable experiences. It is also true that if fetuses have FLOs, then we have the experiences that were the FLOs of our fetuses. However, that does NOT entail that if fetuses have FLOs then we were fetuses! To illustrate, let us suppose that the psychological theory of personal identity is true. In that case, I didn’t come into existence until my mind (i.e. my mental or psychological states) came into existence. Thus, on this view, we must distinguish between me and my biological organism: that thing that was initially a zygote and became the fully grown human being that is currently writing this comment. On the psychological theory, I am not identical to my biological organism; after all, there was a time at which my organism existed yet I did not. Yet, it seems, my organism itself (1) used be a fetus at some prior time t, and (2) currently has valuable experiences that make life subsequent to t worth living. Thus, the conditions outlined in FLO-def are satisfied: when my organism was a fetus, it had a FLO; and that is so whether or not my fetus was me, and thus whether or not the psychological theory of personal identity is true! Therefore Marquis' argument still stands.

I really don't see any relevant distinction between an organism that has a potential to have future valuable experiences and one that has just become sentient and is capable but cannot yet cognitively appreciate any valuable experiences. Sure bare sentience is valuable but so is having the potential to have that capacity. If we use a Marquis like argument both have the potential for valuable sophisticated experiences. BTW David Boonin failed to explain why just being sentient makes a difference but he admitted to me his argument wasn't a formal argument anyway. OFC my line of reasoning expands the moral circle to other animals with similar capacities but I'm quite happy to do that.

Nat A: I disagree with your assumption that abortion is always "a well-thought out decision". I think this may have been the case at one time, but as abortion becomes more acceptable within society, it loses at least that one aspect of its potential drawbacks. Society says "okay", there's no longer a need to decide whether one can handle society's possible condemnation if abortion is chosen. There's less connection to religious principles as the ultimate guidance in one's life, the consideration of the sanctity of life is being diluted to a general belief in a God who is indistinct, a life force, no longer a God who is like mankind. Younger people have become more apt to think of sex as a physical process to which they're entitled by biological reality- "I want it, therefore it is my natual right"; to some extent, the human body has always has been subject to this reality, but the consequences once held some restraint on this. Human nature to belong to a partner is real, this may be denied, but females do take the chance that the man will attach to them more if they're bearing the man's child; it may not prove to create that bond, so the female has taken a chance on facing the choice ofvwhether to abort or not. This in itself has become a matter of les "serious decision" than it once was. The belief that the embryo is just a bunch of cells has become much more widely promoted as scientific evidence, the embryo has lost its importance as a human being until its appearance is more "human". Abortion is definitely becoming less of a serious decision. My thought are based on my observances since I was young. I recall the day Roe vs. Wade was passed legalizing abortion. I was in nursing school at the time and aware of the level of import given to the decision both before legalization and after. The decision is not the serious self assessment as it was back then, in 1973.

If abortion is murder - as Marquis' argument seeks to show - then it's irrelevant what the woman wants, because murder isn't something that anyone is permitted to commit. The only way to avoid this is to show why Marquis is wrong.

@@zero_one6297 murder is the unlawful killing which is legal button legality doesn't always go exactly with philosophy because our constitution is deemed to be self-evident however what he does try to prove is that it is ethically unjust

@@nolan13075 your analogy is as stupid as Singer's.

@@nolan13075 First of all, there is a misconception of biology and potentially on Peter Singer's behalf. Those cells would be potential human life only if a human being intervened to change its potentiality and therefore, it's nature. If a human being did indeed intervene and separate those cells from the nucleus, then it would would indeed have a future of value and it could be morally wrong to stop it's process into becoming fully developed human being... but not before. The humans threatened by nature are human already. Their nature doesn't require human intervention to acquire a future of value, it already possesses this element.

@@emilianomacias You could argue at the same time to requires human intervention from the mother to keep feeding it

@@tx6723 even born babies require exterior human intervention to keep feeding themselves. When the parents refuse this it's called child abandonment.

@@emilianomacias also they aren't potential human life they have all the traits of an individual cell that can become a human they are totipotent they are just held together also we deny with nature chooses in terms of cancer or any disease because it would deprive them of a valuable future these cells are also victims of nature and we must save them according to FLO

+Gran Dragon Imperial Nazi nonsense.

You weren't kidding. I wish that guy had been aborted.

ddy98 I of course respect and acknowledge your right to have a different opinion than Peter. I too disagree with some of what he says. The important thing - for society and for own sake - is that we are willing to listen and engage in a meaningful debate.

***** "No one refuses to challenge Singer you fucking idiot." This line instantly shows everybody who the real "fucking idiot" is.

***** All I see here is a lot of rudeness and question-begging. Singer argues for his views, you just handwave them. How about an argument? Singer's contemporaries can manage one, why can't you?

Adam Southworth First off, you start by saying that Singer's points aren't worthy to be refuted. Then you move on to try to refute them. But that's fine. Second, your statement that certain normative statements are above need of argumentation is invalid: one always needs to support one's normative statements or views with an argument - saying that certain normative statements or views are above that leads to backwards thinking, where everybody can say anything and claim their view is above argumentation. Therefore, create an argument that supports your statement that life is sacrosanct. If you are not willing to do that, we are at a point where you and I can say whatever we like which means this discussion is void and meaningless. Thirdly, you cannot reject all that Singer says with the statement "the worth of life should not be subject to haggling as for goods at a bazaar": A) this completely misses the point that there is no clear definition of "life". At what point does the merged sperm cell and egg become a life? B) this statement is based on the premise that life is sacrosanct, which again you don't have an argument to support.

Adam Southworth Nothing compels anyone to concede that all human life should be considered sacrosanct. If you feel that it should be, then you need to make a good argument for that -- if you want to convince those of us who disagree.

how is the embryo responsible for the rape? first you postulate that it is wrong to kill it (as long as it's been conceived in a consentual sex act), then one sentence later you are pretty quick to dismiss its right to life because it came into being by an immoral/criminal sex act, even though the embryo itself is not the rapist. doesn't make sense.

I don't think simply belonging to the species Homo sapien ought to give one a right to life, especially in cases like abortion. Did you even watch the debate?

You haven't expressed your foundation for the "right to human life" you've only described it and tried to explain its importance.

If simply belonging to the human species does not give one a right to life then we are all in serious danger for what then, protects your right to continue breathing? Calvino, you may want to direct your question to the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence which identifies the three inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps you don't agree with them. If not, please enlighten me as to why not.

delderful Whence cometh those unalienable rights? I'm a utilitarian, which means that basically I see that pleasure and pain are intrinsically good and bad respectively, and therefore every action I take has to aim to maximise the amount of pleasure and reduce the amount of pain caused. I don't really believe that "rights" should be anything beyond useful laws, or rules-of-thumb, which people follow which ultimately increase pleasure or decrease pain. They do not have some transcendent power which makes them good-in-themselves. The reason people should stay breathing is because people are conduits of pleasure, intellectual creatures are capable of higher pleasures still such as the appreciation of literature, conversation or one's place in the universe. When I believed in "rights" I asked myself, why would I need rights? To preserve life. Why preserve life? Because life is good. Why is life good? Ultimately I have found no "Good" so wholly undeniable as the pleasures, there need be nothing beyond pleasure in my eyes to justify: It simply is Goodness. If one is preserving something because it is a useful tool to some other end I have always found that one should look for that end and spend their resources maximising _that_ rather than their time maximising a distracting means.

You just answered you own question and gave one reason why life is to be preserved.

I don't see any cruxes.

This is terrible argumentation. The whole issue of abortion doesn't lie on the whim of a woman's personal choice with her own body. It's not about masturbation. The reason it's a difficult topic is because it involves a third party, the baby. Women cannot rape anyone with their penises because they don't have penises. Women have no right to tell men what to do with their own body! Their only vote on rape laws should be to help them make the choice. They have NO right to dictate what a man does with his body!

AppleFaction to counter a bad arguement, you proposed a much worse one.

men should make sure there women dont have abortions sign of true gentlemen

@@pamelabibby8642 since men can't get pregnant they should fuck the hell up. They have no right to force a woman to go for nine months carrying a parasite in her body

pamela bibby since men can't get pregnant they should fuck the hell up. They have no right to force a woman to go for nine months carrying a parasite in her body

He uses falsely to refer to the fact that the preferences to be killed were achieved through questionable means. In the first case it was mental illness and in the second case religious delusion. Yes, there is an assumption that the belief in a sanctified afterlife is 'false', and admittedly Singer should have said something less certain like 'dubious'. That is a whole other issue entirely, but you should look up 'burden of proof' regarding claims made about religion and the afterlife. I do not understand your final statement. In both cases Singer's conclusion is that one should intervene to prevent their death. How do you then go on to say that we would end up denying people's continued lives ie killing them?

Triazic Well, simply put - if Singer's criteria as to whether someone should live or die is based on basically a utilitarian model of optimum life expectancy (in this case for children/babies), then this would definitely set precedent for *_ANYONE of ANY AGE_* as to whether they should live or die. As is being discussed on "death panels" for patient life extension.

Christian Prepper No. Singer's goal is to optimise the net preference satisfaction of all individuals, which has nothing to do with life expectancy. The preference to live is taken as the strongest preference since it encompasses all others. If someone wants to live, there would need to be extraordinary grounds to go against that (eg killing Hitler), so there is no precedent for ending the life of say, your elderly grandmother who still wants to live despite having a short life ahead of her.

Christian Prepper - You got a point. I think Peter Singer is dangerous.

Christian Prepper Actually science has proven it false hence your argument is nonsense based upon your ignorance.

Christian Prepper nobody defends killing children. What is being discussed is whether fetuses are indistinguishable from children

Its b/c they want to abort some preborn babies. ONLY with abortions the word like fetus is used to describe the preborn baby other wise its a baby. We don't hear people say we are having a fetus.

Bel Mum fetus is a scientific term you nut

At 13:46 minutes Singer is being quoted from his book and he says that parents should have the right to kill their infant up to 2 to 3 years of age and more definitely if they are handicapped​.

I know you wrote this 4 years ago.... but holy shit 2018 did just that.

adam stanley Ad hominem, great argument there moron.

adam stanley Who is why? I looked up the Princeton faculty online and could not find him/her.

Lee Reynolds www.princeton.edu/~psinger/index2.html That took all of 5 seconds to find....

Oners82 I'm interested in your worldview. What exactly does Singer talk about that is crazy?

Lee Reynolds I didn't say that he is crazy, you're responding to the wrong person mate.