Killed Anything Today?

[Greta]

Gosh sorry Greta! I wasn't trying to be dramatic only realistic about human life span and I am currently in good enough health.

That's good news!

... the terminal disorder known as "life".

[Immanuel Can]

No, not at all. Little squishy things without a functioning nervous system are in less need of empathy than grown mammals with relationships and life experience.

This is what abortionists always do: define their victims down to nothing. Ignore their brainwaves, their independent circulatory system, their heartbeats, their fingerprints, their viability and the certainty of their future place among the community of persons -- call them, "nothing but squish cells," and they you can kill then without compunction.

It worked for the Nazis with the Jews, enabling human beings to kill human beings without reservation: why would dehumanization not work for abortionists?

So it's predictable.

Causing harm and suffering for kicks to intelligent animals capable of emotional suffering is the worst thing anyone can do. Thus, if that's not morally wrong, then nothing is.

Yes, it's morally wrong. But you have no logical explanation for why you say it is. In a merely material universe, nothing is actually wrong...not even that.

The logical explanation is that order is more rare and precious than disorder.

No, it's not logical. You have no way to explain why "order" deserves the adjective "precious," and "rarity" isn't necessarily a "precious" thing at all. Today, in the West, at least, polio is rare. That doesn't make it "more precious" than health.

But if rarity counts for "preciousness," then what do you say about every unique child in the womb?

[uwot]

Serious question, Immanuel Can, when do you believe the human soul is created, and how developed must it be before it is immortal?

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

I was going to say that overpopulation of a species is a mostly temporal, self-fixing problem, unless it's good at adapting to new or bare minimum resources, or is a dangerous animal.

Yes overpopulation is a temporary situation, the wild population will rise out of control till everything is sick, starving and dying. Not only the large herbivore prey animals, but all ground dwelling herbivore will be wiped out for lack of food. What IC has described in the swamp near his home has been reported numerous times before, a total lack of green as high as the deer can reach.

Those tend to be the most common ways wild animals die regardless of overpopulation. They don't usually die from complications of old-age like the human species does. It's why most mammals live far longer in a zoo. Not aquatic ones of course.

I think one important thing to note is that hunting is an action and overpopulation is not. Even if it does reduce the more suffering to the alternative of natural process, the conscious choice to cause suffering opens it up to an ethical question, since we can't object to the ethics of nature.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

No, not at all. Little squishy things without a functioning nervous system are in less need of empathy than grown mammals with relationships and life experience.

This is what abortionists always do: define their victims down to nothing. Ignore their brainwaves, their independent circulatory system, their heartbeats, their fingerprints, their viability and the certainty of their future place among the community of persons -- call them, "nothing but squish cells," and they you can kill then without compunction.

It worked for the Nazis with the Jews, enabling human beings to kill human beings without reservation: why would dehumanization not work for abortionists?

I don't know if it's about 'dehumanizing' them for a moral agenda as it is finding a real basis for why human life is actually valued over other kinds of life. I think most people tend to agree that our intelligence plays a big role in the roots of this basis but they don't agree how this principle should be implemented. They get conflicted and blend together a use of both deontological ethics and utilitarianism, which in my opinion just does not work. It leads to some pretty inconsistent results.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't know if it's about 'dehumanizing' them for a moral agenda as it is finding a real basis for why human life is actually valued over other kinds of life. I think most people tend to agree that our intelligence plays a big role in the roots of this basis but they don't agree how this principle should be implemented.

Good point.

The problem with "intelligence" as a criterion is that it is not an equally-distributed quality. Some humans have more of it, and some less. Some animals have more of it, and some less. And, as P. Singer has pointed out, some animals have more of it than, say, badly mentally-handicapped humans, or perhaps extreme dementia sufferers.

So whatever else that criterion will conduce to, it won't be to equality. The irresistible corollary to using "intelligence" as the criterion will be that those who have more of it are, in the relevant sense, more "valuable" than those who have less.

They get conflicted and blend together a use of both deontological ethics and utilitarianism, which in my opinion just does not work. It leads to some pretty inconsistent results.

Absolutely right. Or just as bad, they throw in some kind of ungrounded virtue-ethic approach, which conflicts with BOTH.

To know which of the three (or whatever else) one would need a meta-ethical system: an overarching account of moral metaphysics (ontology) that we could use to tell us which of the normative systems (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, or whatever) we should be trusting.

Good points.

[Abunai]

Brain cells and time.

[Greta]

No, not at all. Little squishy things without a functioning nervous system are in less need of empathy than grown mammals with relationships and life experience.

This is what abortionists always do: define their victims down to nothing. Ignore their brainwaves, their independent circulatory system, their heartbeats, their fingerprints, their viability and the certainty of their future place among the community of persons -- call them, "nothing but squish cells," and they you can kill then without compunction.

That sounds a lot like conservative Christians sending those squishy things off to their doom in Iraq twenty years later because God told GWB to liberate Iraq.

Meanwhile, every time you eat meat you ignore brainwaves, independent circulatory systems, heartbeats, unique markings, the animal's viability and the certainty of their future place in the world. To call them, "nothing but meat," and then you can kill then without compunction.

It worked for the Nazis with the Jews, enabling human beings to kill human beings without reservation: why would dehumanization not work for abortionists?

Godwin's Law is invoked!

[Immanuel Can]

That sounds a lot like conservative Christians sending those squishy things off to their doom in Iraq twenty years later because God told GWB to liberate Iraq.

What makes the war in Iraq a "Christian" issue? I'm unaware of that dimension of its motivation, but please do enlighten me.

I'm reminded of the axiom about two wrongs...

[uwot]

What makes the war in Iraq a "Christian" issue? I'm unaware of that dimension of its motivation, but please do enlighten me.

Always a pleasure, Mr Can: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

[uwot]

It worked for the Nazis with the Jews, enabling human beings to kill human beings without reservation: why would dehumanization not work for abortionists?

Well, again, Mr Can: when do you believe your god puts a soul in an embryo, and at what point does it become immortal?

[Greta]

What makes the war in Iraq a "Christian" issue? I'm unaware of that dimension of its motivation, but please do enlighten me.

Always a pleasure, Mr Can: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

That's the quote :)

[Belinda]

What makes the war in Iraq a "Christian" issue? I'm unaware of that dimension of its motivation, but please do enlighten me.

Always a pleasure, Mr Can: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

That's the quote

I always thought that G W Bush was quite a pleasant man, and I am inclined to believe that he was not very bright but was a puppet of big Oil.

[Impenitent]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAm4nHFOir0

watches beware...

-Imp

[Greta]

Always a pleasure, Mr Can: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

That's the quote

I always thought that G W Bush was quite a pleasant man, and I am inclined to believe that he was not very bright but was a puppet of big Oil.

His family was part of Big Oil. I wonder what the world would be like today if, in response to the 11 Sept attacks GWB declared that the US would move to renewable energy and rub the terrorists of their oil revenue? The terrorists would have drifted into irrelevance through lack of resources and billions today would face a safer future through slowing of climate change. However, Bush was an oil man so that was an impossibility.