Date: 03/29/2006 Speaker: Don Marquis, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kansas; Respondent: Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
This is probably the best video on abortion on youtube. Unfortunately, while 43,000 views is quite a lot, it is far less than many other abortion videos online that are complete garbage.
Peter Singer is great! I like his books about life and death. I don't agree with all of his views, but he is rational and logical. Now I respect many non-human animals.
adam stanley Where has Peter Singer stated that the life of a baby pig is more valuable than the life of a human? That doesn't sound like something he would say. Peter Singer simply argues that we shouldn't value human life for the sake of human life, and we shouldn't value the life of a homo sapien over the life of another species for no reason.
adam stanley Ironically, human beings are screwing up the world more than any other organism. Intellectually, yes, but morally, they are not more relevant agents, particularly infants with an undeveloped nervous system. It is more morally acceptable to kill a 2 month old child than a dog. That's just how it is. Oh, and it just as bad to kill a 2 year old child than an adult chimp.
Can someone please explain how to approach the question of scientist doing experiments on an individual to benefit the world... using singers preferential utilitarianism.
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.
thank you paul you have made me feel better I don't know why people like singer and my ex are so nasty yes my mum did want me people led me to believe she didn't I was so angry so upset people tell lies people make stuff up I remember being upset
It's both laughable and frightening at the same time the way many people that disagree with Singer refuse to face the critique and the questions he raises, and simply take the coward's way out with a "Peter is crazy". If a person points out contradictions in the way you live your life, see it as a chance to reflect and become wiser. Don't take the coward's way out and run back into your dark cave.
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.
***** 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.
I guess that the very discussion on the topic of infanticide, the very permission of it as of a discussable topic, a calm consideration of it marks that something is very deeply wrong in our thinking, in our moral feelings. I follow here my personal feeling of disgust and notice of Bernard Williams.
Contrary to what Singer argues @ 59:00 onwards, even if the first four cells of an early embryo were totipotent, there would be no moral obligation to split the embryo into four people to maximize their potential. Since the morally relevant potential is determined by proper or healthy functioning, what is in the interest of the first four cells is that they make their contribution to the healthy development of the embryo of which they are proper parts. As long as they remain one coordinated unit, the future of the cells is the future of the organism which they comprise. The empirical evidence for such unity is quite abundant. One simple question to ask is: if the blastomeres are so disunited and independent, and are apparently ‘totipotent’, why do they not each regularly undergo their own independent embryological development? Why are there not human beings ‘breaking out all over’ within the uterus of a pregnant woman? Clearly this is because, within the unified entity that is the embryo, the cells communicate with each other, both suppressing each other’s potentialities and activating other potentialities all in the service of what, absent twinning or any abnormality, will become a mature, individual human being. Also, in response to the twinning argument, if I cut a flatworm in half and it survives as two flatworms, it does not follow that the flatworm was really two flatworms all along or that the flatworm was never one individual worm. Moreover, it is consistent with the empirical evidence to interpret twinning as a form of asexual reproduction in which the original zygote gives rise to another without every falling out of existence (Napier 2008). In other words, twinning may be a form of natural cloning or “budding” in which the original survives giving rise to another human being. In response to the Dicephalus Case, it may be said that there are in fact two organisms, although they may not be completely independent organisms. In most cases of dicephalus, it is possible to identify functioning organs for two organisms. For example, in Singer's example of Abigail and Brittany Hensel, each twin has her own stomach and heart; they have distinct brainstems and distinct spines that are only joined at the hips; and they have partially distinct organs that are united. This suggests that in fact, there are two organisms here although they are not fully independent organisms.
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.
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.
Parental infanticide researchers have found that mothers are far more likely than fathers to be the perpetrator for neonaticie and slightly more likely to commit infanticide in general In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible. In some countries, female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring, due to sex-selective infanticide. In China for example, the sex gap between males and females aged 0-19 year old was estimated to be more than 25 million in 2016 by the United Nations Population Fun
I don't know what others think, but Christian theists hold that the life of a human individual begins at the moment of conception. The Bible doesn't refer to an individual sperm or egg as a human individual, but it does refer to a fetus in a womb as one. Psalm 139 is probably the best known example of this.
Johanna040713 The Bible's only real mention of abortion or when life is considered to be of value would be in the Old Testament. Specifically Exodus 21:22, which states that if a pregnant woman is hit in a fight and that causes her to give birth prematurely, the person who hit the woman gets fined. Which is absolutely not the same standard to which people are held if they murder another human being. As for Psalm 139, I that's just some poetic stuff. Psalms is of course just a bunch of poetry, essentially. Taking what's written there as being some secret squirrel off-handed way for positions held by Jesus to be laid down is an anachronism. You (or anyone who holds that view of Psalms 139) are just trying to read your own interpretation into it to justify that stance. Point being, if abortion were important to Jesus and the early people of the religion that'd eventually become Christianity, chances are they would have explicitly said something about it. Which they didn't. The religious prohibitions are 100% about making sex retain consequences (thus the Church's opposition to birth control as well) because Paul was super weird about sex and felt that sex should only ever be for procreation, which is a view the Church held onto to this day.
+Guy Potts Is an ovum a human being(i.e. a living member of the species homo sapiens)? no. Is a Sperm a human being? no. Is a fertilized egg a human being? Yes. There is no room for potentiality. The human existence is a continuum and doesn't start with birth but the egg and the sperm seperatly are not part of this continuum. A tree is not a chair even if it could be transformed in one. Potentiallity doesn't matter.
This is so dishonest because it is using language as it's complete method of reasoning. I would rather hear someone say it is personal God given choice.
I am actually undecided on the morality of abortion. With that indecision in mind, I am researching the positions of public intellectuals and philosophers more. The issues I have with Singer's arguments for why abortion is morally permissible are something like this... Let's consider his premises: a foetus has no desires; it feels no pain (until a certain point in embryonic development); it is not a person under Singer's definition. It seems to me that even if you grant all of these premises, there is still a problem. Consider a person who is in a coma. They are not self aware, they have no desires, they feel no pain. They aren't capable of rational thought in this state - it seems under Singer's definition they do not qualify as a person at this moment in time. We all know there is something wrong about killing the comatose person. Then, we must remember that the scenario is even worse than this if it is to be paralleled with abortion. We know that the foetus is to develop into a person with desires, a will to live, rational thought etc. in a matter of months. If in the case of the comatose person the doctor said "the patient will be fine within a few months", it is even worse to deprive them of their future well-being. There may be complications in a pregnancy or the recovery of a comatose person, but let's say we have a decent degree of certainty of a good outcome in either case. What makes it immoral to forcibly terminate the life of an ill person, but moral or at least amoral to terminate the life of the foetus. I advise you at this point not to quibble with the fact that I said "life of a foetus", because it is not controversial to say so: a foetus is by normal biological definition alive and human. It has its own DNA sequence, it respires, and the fact that it cannot survive in the early stages of its development without its host, the mother, is quite besides that definition. The individual sperm or egg is not going to develop into an individual if let alone. I do not think there is an argument to legitimise the "potential life" argument for the sperm or egg. They are nothing in this moral dilemma until they are brought together to start the embryonic process. * I should add, whether my position were under normal circumstances pro-life or pro-choice, I think abortion is absolutely permissible when the mother's life is in danger. I would extend the parameters of the mother's life being in danger beyond just physical complications to her mental health and suicidal thoughts also. I genuinely invite any counter arguments to the one I have laid out here. It would be easier for me to adopt a pro-choice position, which is the position I have by default assumed because of my liberal English education, because it is a far more socially acceptable view in the western world. I cannot however get past what seems to be something inherently immoral about taking a life when there is no other life in danger for the existence of that aforementioned life. Certainly, in the case of abortion, it is usually the trading of a life for the convenience of the mother (or indeed the father or others). The thought experiment I laid out explores the inherent feeling of wrongness about this which we have become desensitised to in the case of abortion, I think. *The only problem I have with my own argument at this point is deciding when exactly the fertilised egg is deemed a life. Is the fertilised egg itself alive? Is it only alive when it becomes a foetus? When does it become a foetus? It is clear a foetus is alive, but I have been unable to find a defining time at which the egg becomes a foetus, or a scientific conclusion that says the fertilised egg itself is alive. Any light that can be shed on this particular issue would be appreciated.
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.
The right to life does not rest on anyone's personal desire. The very thought of basing the most important right of all on something so flippant, changeable and shallow as personal desire is absurd. The right to human life, which is the foundational right of all human rights, is absolute, incontrovertible and begins at the moment that human life begins and ends at the time that human life ends. The so called right of a mother to end the life of her child does not exist because, without the foundational right to life, she herself would have no right to exist. Thus, by choosing to end her own child's life, she is stating that it's human life is worth less than hers. Such thinking is prejudicial, illogical, insupportable and dangerous to all civilization.
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?
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.
I think something Singer should think about is the argument KOWING that the act infanticide could rob her potentiality and then deliberately proceed to do so in a premeditated manner within a finite period before she developes her "emobodiment of mind" is in itself immoral or at least questionable to a degree. In layman's terms, if i can rob someone from 4:30pm to 4:35pm on a particular date without them objecting, then it would be okay, but the knowing of it and then carrying out of it is intuitively immoral.
Singer's view on killing being wrong is that it violates the individual's preferences and plans for the future. An infant presumably lacks these, thus killing them 'robs' precisely nothing from them for there is nothing to be robbed. Singer's argument has nothing to do with potential.
it robs their and the society's potential, what do u mean it's got nothing to do with potential? if they killed edison the invention of light bulb would probably be delayed, that period of time without the light bulb is society's potential and productivity being lowered and robbed because edison's potential was robbed due to infancticide
vwazp If Edison had been aborted, he would never have existed, no-one would have ever heard of a lightbulb, and consequently no-one would have ever thought "fuck, I really wish we hadn't aborted that kid because otherwise we'd have lightbulbs"... simply because no-one would have heard of them in the first place. It is quite likely that the lightbulb either would've been invented by someone else or we'd have some other form of light on demand today. Who knows, maybe that alternative would've been even better than the lightbulb but no-one bothered to invent it because we already had lightbulbs! Also I'm sure there are some individuals that we wish had been aborted (Hitler as the standard example)... potential is not always positive.
vwazp I wouldn't have been mad if I had been aborted because at that time I wasn't sentient and my identity/consciousness had certainly not been developed. Would I have been mad about being killed as a five-year-old? Fuck yeah! But I would have been mad THEN, not now, because I would not exist now to be mad. You, presumably, would be mad if you had been aborted but that's only because it's already true that you exist now. If you had been aborted you would never have existed to be mad about being aborted or otherwise.
vwazp I wouldn't be mad if my kid was aborted because presumably I/my wife or whatever would be the one making that choice. If someone else aborted my child, then fuck yeah, but that's a whole different matter.
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
@@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.
What about the woman whose body holds this zygote inside her? It is her choice and a choice she should be able to make without judgement. No one simply decides to abort at a given whim. It is a well thought out decision. Given the many reason for abortion (perhaps pregnancy resulted from rape or incest) should a woman be forced to carry on this pregnancy to full term and give birth to an unwanted child that has resulted from physical violence? Would it be fair to force certain beliefs on her in this instance, when she herself does not believe. It is her body, her life, her choice. People are not intrinsically uncaring monsters. But why do we believe that women who want to abort are monsters, uncaring, unethical, unmoral, uneducated human beings. No one has to live with the consequences of either an abortion or full term pregnancy than the woman herself. Which is weighed up prior to her decision. They are rational, intelligent, caring, and ethically moral human beings just like everyone else. The woman is missing from Marquis's argument.
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
The whole argument about desire is such a joke! Serial killers have desires. Just coming up with a theory to sell books and get your so-called research at university funded in order to get recognition does not make your desire to do so profitable to the world. It may be to you and others' profit but tha is it! This man's legacy is laughable at best and dangerous at it's worst.
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.
Our individual DNA process is a continuous process, unfurling from the moment of conception. There is no later stage of our existence that is not dependent on earlier stages of our existence, as a continuous entity in space and time. Our DNA process is continuous in both space and time from the moment of our conception, to the moment of our death. Acceptance, rationalization of the termination of an already unfurling DNA process, once invited to unfurl, requires the irrational acceptance of a temporal bias. In the continuum of space/time, that continuously unfurling DNA process is not a complete individual human 'yet.' That is because we are not regarding that human over the complete time-space continuum that it exists in. But, the only thing required to see the complete individual human is the passage of time. We are, of course, much more than our unfurling DNA processes, but whatever we are, the basis of our life, cannot exist without the unmolested possession of that unfurling DNA process. The fetus is a concrete example of a new individual DNA process, unfurling. There is and has been a conflict to define the most fundamental aspect of an individual -- the term of its existence. The resolution of this conflict -- between the newest individual and others -- is resolved by others, based on whatever philosophical or moral guidance they bring to the conflict. The rationalizations in support of abortion boil down to the convenience of the others, based mostly on a shaky temporal bias that is permitted to stand, unquestioned.
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.
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.
1:01:41 If we developed technology to "separate" any part of an adult human to create a new human *_without jeopardizing the life of the original_* then "separating" any human regardless what stage that human is in -- zygote or adult -- would not be wrong. But it would definitely NOT be obligatory to perform such a "separation". The distinction is between what nature chooses as oppose to what humans manipulate. Singer is wrong.
@@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 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
It is a very common and reasonable distinction, but perhaps the terminology is somewhat confronting. A 'person' in this philosophical thought is merely an entity with self-awareness and the ability to project one's life into the future and so on. If a lobster were mentally developed enough to possess this, then that lobster would be referred to as a 'person'. It is far more efficient to use the terms 'human being' and 'person' as opposed to 'human-without-self-awareness-and-vision-of-the-future' and 'human-with-self-awareness-and-vision-of-the-future'. More practically we do already discriminate between 'persons' and 'just plain human beings' when terminating life support on the comatose.
It's not a new concept. In medicine people who are brain dead are disconnected from life support as a matter of course. It's recognized that even though their body is alive, that they are technically a "living human", there is no person left. As such, there is no life there worth preserving, no more than a skin sample for any of us bathed in nutrients and kept alive in a petri dish would be a person of equal value to the individual it was harvested from. Human cells being alive, but with no mind, no consciousness, are of no value in and of themselves.
BigMikeMcBastard The cells are valuable but of course not in terms of personhood. They are our valuable parts of our whole sum. And we need to be good to them When the organism has health, quality of life and wants to live.
CONSENSUAL sex is something adults do. Kids have no business doing it. If they can't take care of a baby, then they should go back to having good old fun instead of fucking like dogs all the time. If they get pregnant from rape or other extreme cases, then I'm all for abortion. However, if they had CONSENSUAL sex, then they should bear the responsibilities or ABSTAIN from it.
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.
Dr Marquis weakens his argument by continually referring to the infant selected for abortion as “she”. In regards to sex selection abortions, as in China with one child policy, female babies are almost always chosen for abortion. Choice of female babies is more acceptable. Male babies selected for abortion would strengthen his case for many who would be more opposed to killing male babies.
This is probably the best video on abortion on youtube. Unfortunately, while 43,000 views is quite a lot, it is far less than many other abortion videos online that are complete garbage.
This is so true.
mutual respect, deep analysis and two main academic debaters in a classic moral debate. 10/10!
Holy crap, that first guy's question was longer than the speeches.
Gah... people who have to lecture for five minutes before they can ask a question.
You weren't kidding. I wish that guy had been aborted.
Peter Singer is great! I like his books about life and death. I don't agree with all of his views, but he is rational and logical. Now I respect many non-human animals.
the man condones infanticide. for me, that's crazy. He values a baby pig, more than a human.
adam stanley
Where has Peter Singer stated that the life of a baby pig is more valuable than the life of a human? That doesn't sound like something he would say. Peter Singer simply argues that we shouldn't value human life for the sake of human life, and we shouldn't value the life of a homo sapien over the life of another species for no reason.
Human beings are better than pigs, dogs or even pandas. The people that believe otherwise, are screwing up the world,
adam stanley Ironically, human beings are screwing up the world more than any other organism.
Intellectually, yes, but morally, they are not more relevant agents, particularly infants with an undeveloped nervous system.
It is more morally acceptable to kill a 2 month old child than a dog. That's just how it is. Oh, and it just as bad to kill a 2 year old child than an adult chimp.
adam stanley Of course you think humans are better... you are human.
Wow, incredibly good faith shown by Don Marquis. RIP.
Im a vegetarian and respect for human beings and animals
Can someone please explain how to approach the question of scientist doing experiments on an individual to benefit the world... using singers preferential utilitarianism.
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
thank you paul you have made me feel better I don't know why people like singer and my ex are so nasty yes my mum did want me people led me to believe she didn't I was so angry so upset people tell lies people make stuff up I remember being upset
It's both laughable and frightening at the same time the way many people that disagree with Singer refuse to face the critique and the questions he raises, and simply take the coward's way out with a "Peter is crazy". If a person points out contradictions in the way you live your life, see it as a chance to reflect and become wiser. Don't take the coward's way out and run back into your dark cave.
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.
1:26:39 bookmark (q&a)
I guess that the very discussion on the topic of infanticide, the very permission of it as of a discussable topic, a calm consideration of it marks that something is very deeply wrong in our thinking, in our moral feelings. I follow here my personal feeling of disgust and notice of Bernard Williams.
Contrary to what Singer argues @ 59:00 onwards, even if the first four cells of an early embryo were totipotent, there would be no moral obligation to split the embryo into four people to maximize their potential. Since the morally relevant potential is determined by proper or healthy functioning, what is in the interest of the first four cells is that they make their contribution to the healthy development of the embryo of which they are proper parts. As long as they remain one coordinated unit, the future of the cells is the future of the organism which they comprise. The empirical evidence for such unity is quite abundant. One simple question to ask is: if the blastomeres are so disunited and independent, and are apparently ‘totipotent’, why do they not each regularly undergo their own independent embryological development? Why are there not human beings ‘breaking out all over’ within the uterus of a pregnant woman? Clearly this is because, within the unified entity that is the embryo, the cells communicate with each other, both suppressing each other’s potentialities and activating other potentialities all in the service of what, absent twinning or any abnormality, will become a mature, individual human being.
Also, in response to the twinning argument, if I cut a flatworm in half and it survives as two flatworms, it does not follow that the flatworm was really two flatworms all along or that the flatworm was never one individual worm. Moreover, it is consistent with the empirical evidence to interpret twinning as a form of asexual reproduction in which the original zygote gives rise to another without every falling out of existence (Napier 2008). In other words, twinning may be a form of natural cloning or “budding” in which the original survives giving rise to another human being.
In response to the Dicephalus Case, it may be said that there are in fact two organisms, although they may not be completely independent organisms. In most cases of dicephalus, it is possible to identify functioning organs for two organisms. For example, in Singer's example of Abigail and Brittany Hensel, each twin has her own stomach and heart; they have distinct brainstems and distinct spines that are only joined at the hips; and they have partially distinct organs that are united. This suggests that in fact, there are two organisms here although they are not fully independent organisms.
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.
1:00:30 Singer almost admits that it was him who was an an embryo but he catches himself and then refers to it as "the pregnancy"
I heard from Gary Vee (success speaker) that if I'm a singer I should publish a song online everyday. Think it's a good strategy?
24:53 promortalists/ epicureans, negative-utilitarians: so death isn't out of the question
MY EX HAS MS AND WAS A DRUG ADDICT WAS IT OK TO KILL HIM
yes
um
13:08 Basis of Singers arguement
I don't see any cruxes.
are you kidding me? This is not a debate. He kept on reading his shit for 40 min.
Parental infanticide researchers have found that mothers are far more likely than fathers to be the perpetrator for neonaticie and slightly more likely to commit infanticide in general
In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible. In some countries, female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring, due to sex-selective infanticide. In China for example, the sex gap between males and females aged 0-19 year old was estimated to be more than 25 million in 2016 by the United Nations Population Fun
37:01
Wouldn't this 'right to life for potenciality' also suggest that every sperm and egg have the right to life?
I don't know what others think, but Christian theists hold that the life of a human individual begins at the moment of conception. The Bible doesn't refer to an individual sperm or egg as a human individual, but it does refer to a fetus in a womb as one. Psalm 139 is probably the best known example of this.
No.
Johanna040713 The Bible's only real mention of abortion or when life is considered to be of value would be in the Old Testament. Specifically Exodus 21:22, which states that if a pregnant woman is hit in a fight and that causes her to give birth prematurely, the person who hit the woman gets fined. Which is absolutely not the same standard to which people are held if they murder another human being.
As for Psalm 139, I that's just some poetic stuff. Psalms is of course just a bunch of poetry, essentially. Taking what's written there as being some secret squirrel off-handed way for positions held by Jesus to be laid down is an anachronism. You (or anyone who holds that view of Psalms 139) are just trying to read your own interpretation into it to justify that stance.
Point being, if abortion were important to Jesus and the early people of the religion that'd eventually become Christianity, chances are they would have explicitly said something about it. Which they didn't. The religious prohibitions are 100% about making sex retain consequences (thus the Church's opposition to birth control as well) because Paul was super weird about sex and felt that sex should only ever be for procreation, which is a view the Church held onto to this day.
+Guy Potts Is an ovum a human being(i.e. a living member of the species homo sapiens)? no. Is a Sperm a human being? no. Is a fertilized egg a human being? Yes. There is no room for potentiality. The human existence is a continuum and doesn't start with birth but the egg and the sperm seperatly are not part of this continuum. A tree is not a chair even if it could be transformed in one. Potentiallity doesn't matter.
applejuice juice precisely my point. if i remember correctly
This is so dishonest because it is using language as it's complete method of reasoning. I would rather hear someone say it is personal God given choice.
I am actually undecided on the morality of abortion. With that indecision in mind, I am researching the positions of public intellectuals and philosophers more. The issues I have with Singer's arguments for why abortion is morally permissible are something like this... Let's consider his premises: a foetus has no desires; it feels no pain (until a certain point in embryonic development); it is not a person under Singer's definition. It seems to me that even if you grant all of these premises, there is still a problem. Consider a person who is in a coma. They are not self aware, they have no desires, they feel no pain. They aren't capable of rational thought in this state - it seems under Singer's definition they do not qualify as a person at this moment in time. We all know there is something wrong about killing the comatose person. Then, we must remember that the scenario is even worse than this if it is to be paralleled with abortion. We know that the foetus is to develop into a person with desires, a will to live, rational thought etc. in a matter of months. If in the case of the comatose person the doctor said "the patient will be fine within a few months", it is even worse to deprive them of their future well-being. There may be complications in a pregnancy or the recovery of a comatose person, but let's say we have a decent degree of certainty of a good outcome in either case. What makes it immoral to forcibly terminate the life of an ill person, but moral or at least amoral to terminate the life of the foetus. I advise you at this point not to quibble with the fact that I said "life of a foetus", because it is not controversial to say so: a foetus is by normal biological definition alive and human. It has its own DNA sequence, it respires, and the fact that it cannot survive in the early stages of its development without its host, the mother, is quite besides that definition.
The individual sperm or egg is not going to develop into an individual if let alone. I do not think there is an argument to legitimise the "potential life" argument for the sperm or egg. They are nothing in this moral dilemma until they are brought together to start the embryonic process. *
I should add, whether my position were under normal circumstances pro-life or pro-choice, I think abortion is absolutely permissible when the mother's life is in danger. I would extend the parameters of the mother's life being in danger beyond just physical complications to her mental health and suicidal thoughts also.
I genuinely invite any counter arguments to the one I have laid out here. It would be easier for me to adopt a pro-choice position, which is the position I have by default assumed because of my liberal English education, because it is a far more socially acceptable view in the western world. I cannot however get past what seems to be something inherently immoral about taking a life when there is no other life in danger for the existence of that aforementioned life. Certainly, in the case of abortion, it is usually the trading of a life for the convenience of the mother (or indeed the father or others). The thought experiment I laid out explores the inherent feeling of wrongness about this which we have become desensitised to in the case of abortion, I think.
*The only problem I have with my own argument at this point is deciding when exactly the fertilised egg is deemed a life. Is the fertilised egg itself alive? Is it only alive when it becomes a foetus? When does it become a foetus? It is clear a foetus is alive, but I have been unable to find a defining time at which the egg becomes a foetus, or a scientific conclusion that says the fertilised egg itself is alive. Any light that can be shed on this particular issue would be appreciated.
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.
The right to life does not rest on anyone's personal desire. The very thought of basing the most important right of all on something so flippant, changeable and shallow as personal desire is absurd. The right to human life, which is the foundational right of all human rights, is absolute, incontrovertible and begins at the moment that human life begins and ends at the time that human life ends. The so called right of a mother to end the life of her child does not exist because, without the foundational right to life, she herself would have no right to exist. Thus, by choosing to end her own child's life, she is stating that it's human life is worth less than hers. Such thinking is prejudicial, illogical, insupportable and dangerous to all civilization.
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 think something Singer should think about is the argument KOWING that the act infanticide could rob her potentiality and then deliberately proceed to do so in a premeditated manner within a finite period before she developes her "emobodiment of mind" is in itself immoral or at least questionable to a degree. In layman's terms, if i can rob someone from 4:30pm to 4:35pm on a particular date without them objecting, then it would be okay, but the knowing of it and then carrying out of it is intuitively immoral.
Singer's view on killing being wrong is that it violates the individual's preferences and plans for the future. An infant presumably lacks these, thus killing them 'robs' precisely nothing from them for there is nothing to be robbed.
Singer's argument has nothing to do with potential.
it robs their and the society's potential, what do u mean it's got nothing to do with potential? if they killed edison the invention of light bulb would probably be delayed, that period of time without the light bulb is society's potential and productivity being lowered and robbed because edison's potential was robbed due to infancticide
vwazp If Edison had been aborted, he would never have existed, no-one would have ever heard of a lightbulb, and consequently no-one would have ever thought "fuck, I really wish we hadn't aborted that kid because otherwise we'd have lightbulbs"... simply because no-one would have heard of them in the first place. It is quite likely that the lightbulb either would've been invented by someone else or we'd have some other form of light on demand today. Who knows, maybe that alternative would've been even better than the lightbulb but no-one bothered to invent it because we already had lightbulbs!
Also I'm sure there are some individuals that we wish had been aborted (Hitler as the standard example)... potential is not always positive.
vwazp I wouldn't have been mad if I had been aborted because at that time I wasn't sentient and my identity/consciousness had certainly not been developed. Would I have been mad about being killed as a five-year-old? Fuck yeah! But I would have been mad THEN, not now, because I would not exist now to be mad.
You, presumably, would be mad if you had been aborted but that's only because it's already true that you exist now. If you had been aborted you would never have existed to be mad about being aborted or otherwise.
vwazp I wouldn't be mad if my kid was aborted because presumably I/my wife or whatever would be the one making that choice. If someone else aborted my child, then fuck yeah, but that's a whole different matter.
This just goes to show you, if your axioms lead you to an obvious, morally reprehensible conclusion, you need to go back and rethink your axioms.
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.
Peter Singer is going to enjoy his reward, hell.
Peter Singer and Princeton University have the blood of Alfie Evans on their hands
What about the woman whose body holds this zygote inside her? It is her choice and a choice she should be able to make without judgement. No one simply decides to abort at a given whim. It is a well thought out decision. Given the many reason for abortion (perhaps pregnancy resulted from rape or incest) should a woman be forced to carry on this pregnancy to full term and give birth to an unwanted child that has resulted from physical violence? Would it be fair to force certain beliefs on her in this instance, when she herself does not believe. It is her body, her life, her choice. People are not intrinsically uncaring monsters. But why do we believe that women who want to abort are monsters, uncaring, unethical, unmoral, uneducated human beings. No one has to live with the consequences of either an abortion or full term pregnancy than the woman herself. Which is weighed up prior to her decision. They are rational, intelligent, caring, and ethically moral human beings just like everyone else. The woman is missing from Marquis's argument.
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
The whole argument about desire is such a joke! Serial killers have desires. Just coming up with a theory to sell books and get your so-called research at university funded in order to get recognition does not make your desire to do so profitable to the world. It may be to you and others' profit but tha is it! This man's legacy is laughable at best and dangerous at it's worst.
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.
Our individual DNA process is a continuous process, unfurling from the moment of conception. There is no later stage of our existence that is not dependent on earlier stages of our existence, as a continuous entity in space and time. Our DNA process is continuous in both space and time from the moment of our conception, to the moment of our death.
Acceptance, rationalization of the termination of an already unfurling DNA process, once invited to unfurl, requires the irrational acceptance of a temporal bias. In the continuum of space/time, that continuously unfurling DNA process is not a complete individual human 'yet.' That is because we are not regarding that human over the complete time-space continuum that it exists in. But, the only thing required to see the complete individual human is the passage of time.
We are, of course, much more than our unfurling DNA processes, but whatever we are, the basis of our life, cannot exist without the unmolested possession of that unfurling DNA process.
The fetus is a concrete example of a new individual DNA process, unfurling. There is and has been a conflict to define the most fundamental aspect of an individual -- the term of its existence. The resolution of this conflict -- between the newest individual and others -- is resolved by others, based on whatever philosophical or moral guidance they bring to the conflict. The rationalizations in support of abortion boil down to the convenience of the others, based mostly on a shaky temporal bias that is permitted to stand, unquestioned.
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.
Wouldn't every viable sperm and egg have a potential?
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.
this is great. marquis gets absolutely owned and he knows it.
1:01:41 If we developed technology to "separate" any part of an adult human to create a new human *_without jeopardizing the life of the original_* then "separating" any human regardless what stage that human is in -- zygote or adult -- would not be wrong. But it would definitely NOT be obligatory to perform such a "separation". The distinction is between what nature chooses as oppose to what humans manipulate. Singer is wrong.
@@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
Oh, now they've started to differentiate between 'persons' and just plain human beings..
It is a very common and reasonable distinction, but perhaps the terminology is somewhat confronting. A 'person' in this philosophical thought is merely an entity with self-awareness and the ability to project one's life into the future and so on. If a lobster were mentally developed enough to possess this, then that lobster would be referred to as a 'person'.
It is far more efficient to use the terms 'human being' and 'person' as opposed to 'human-without-self-awareness-and-vision-of-the-future' and 'human-with-self-awareness-and-vision-of-the-future'.
More practically we do already discriminate between 'persons' and 'just plain human beings' when terminating life support on the comatose.
It's not a new concept. In medicine people who are brain dead are disconnected from life support as a matter of course. It's recognized that even though their body is alive, that they are technically a "living human", there is no person left. As such, there is no life there worth preserving, no more than a skin sample for any of us bathed in nutrients and kept alive in a petri dish would be a person of equal value to the individual it was harvested from. Human cells being alive, but with no mind, no consciousness, are of no value in and of themselves.
Triazic That is true and a great foot in the door already into the philosophy of personhood.
BigMikeMcBastard The cells are valuable but of course not in terms of personhood. They are our valuable parts of our whole sum. And we need to be good to them When the organism has health, quality of life and wants to live.
This man is seriously deranged!
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.
CONSENSUAL sex is something adults do. Kids have no business doing it. If they can't take care of a baby, then they should go back to having good old fun instead of fucking like dogs all the time.
If they get pregnant from rape or other extreme cases, then I'm all for abortion. However, if they had CONSENSUAL sex, then they should bear the responsibilities or ABSTAIN from it.
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.
Singer is crazy. Why is employed by Princeton.
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.
Dr Marquis weakens his argument by continually referring to the infant selected for abortion as “she”. In regards to sex selection abortions, as in China with one child policy, female babies are almost always chosen for abortion. Choice of female babies is more acceptable. Male babies selected for abortion would strengthen his case for many who would be more opposed to killing male babies.
peter singer is a hypocrite