Philosophical Vegan Forum

Volenta wrote: They do have a response for that, namely that there is not yet an individual to harm. A fetus is considered a living being—even though not sentient—where reproductive cells aren't. But I'm sure that someone who isn't playing the devil's advocate is presenting this case better than me.

Cells are living beings, though, since life is just the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. There is absolutely no reason why you should consider fetuses living beings but say that cells aren't living beings. Cells, fetuses, trees - they're all living beings. Both reproductive cells and fetuses have the potentiality to become human beings. Saying that only fetuses count in potentiality is drawing the line of potential arbitrarily between two stages of reproduction.

Volenta wrote: They do have a response for that, namely that there is not yet an individual to harm.

Just saw the debate, and I'm a bit astounded that he actually argued that, but even more so that Singer responded to it so poorly by assuming it was actually a coherent point.

The defense Marquis provided was completely irrelevant to his value proposition, and the best response would have pointed that out rather than treated it as if it were some serious point. If a life is valuable due to its potential future value, any biological questions of current life or individuality are irrelevant because that's irrelevant to the future value.

Singer could have followed that up by debunking it on biological terms anyway, showing that what an individual is isn't clear anyway, but he missed the mark on that one.

Furthermore, Marquis talks about potential goods/value in life; what are those goods, and why are they good/valuable?

Because the only way he has given 'potential goods' value is to appeal to the value of these goods, which is to say whatever he bases those on is the real assumption here, and if he's not basing them on the realization of wants, he's in a lot more trouble than just the implication that everybody should be morally obligated to procreate as much as possible.
If he is basing it on the realization of wants, he really has a lot more to substantiate in terms of the overall good of bringing another being into the world as a net value, particularly if it's against the wants of others, and reduces the potential goods of others' futures.

I wouldn't call Marquis rational. Sounding rational and being rational are very different things.
Singer is, but unfortunately missed the mark on this debate.

I guess you can argue that if Singer wasn't up to the task of correcting this guy, maybe he has just never been properly corrected on his views. Singer brought up the ambiguity of the individual, but I don't think that was very convincing to him, and I can understand why.

Soycrates wrote: Both reproductive cells and fetuses have the potentiality to become human beings. Saying that only fetuses count in potentiality is drawing the line of potential arbitrarily between two stages of reproduction.

That was Singer's response, but it wasn't a very useful one unfortunately.

Technically correct, but it misses the key logical problem of the argument, and unfortunately it's not rhetorically very convincing.

brimstoneSalad wrote:

Soycrates wrote: Both reproductive cells and fetuses have the potentiality to become human beings. Saying that only fetuses count in potentiality is drawing the line of potential arbitrarily between two stages of reproduction.

That was Singer's response, but it wasn't a very useful one unfortunately.

Technically correct, but it misses the key logical problem of the argument, and unfortunately it's not rhetorically very convincing.

How is it not useful and why do you find it unconvincing?

Soycrates wrote: How is it not useful and why do you find it unconvincing?

It's not useful first because it wasn't convincing. I don't know Marquis' mind, but my guess at why it wasn't convincing:

It's empirical in nature, which means more or new evidence could (or he imagines it could) clarify the issue (which seems to be what he's hoping for, as his 'theory' is advanced), it is not a fatal flaw as a logical problem would be.
Empirical matters are also matters where he can throw up his hands and say it has to wait for the science to come in and give more information- in other words, being out of his hands like that means he isn't compelled to think terribly much on it and it won't keep him up at night worrying about it.

But it's also counter-productive because it grants the defense far more than it is owed.

To highlight the absurdity of addressing his defense in this way, I'll compare it to a defense I see as equally absurd:

Challenge: "Wouldn't that mean that not taking every chance to procreate is equally immoral?"

Defense: "No, because an embryo doesn't rhyme with anything, sperm rhymes with perm, and egg rhymes with peg, so that makes abortion and not procreating totally different."

How do you respond to that argument?

Do you accept that as a reasonable defense, and then feel challenged to find some word that rhymes with embryo to contradict such powerful reasoning? Or do you call it what it is -- completely irrelevant and, sorry, fucking idiotic?

Dignifying idiocy like that gives it undue credibility. Singer should have called him on his bullshit and left it like that rather than taking it seriously and challenging it with an empirical argument (with facts Marquis already knew).

After you address the more pressing issue that the very idea of defending his concept like that is moronic, sure, it's probably fine to in addition say "and furthermore, even if we lived in bizarro land and that kind of reasoning was at all valid, which it isn't, you're also completely wrong about the facts which are X".

But he didn't do that, and so he pretty much gave the debate to the opposition.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Because the only way he has given 'potential goods' value is to appeal to the value of these goods, which is to say whatever he bases those on is the real assumption here, and if he's not basing them on the realization of wants, he's in a lot more trouble than just the implication that everybody should be morally obligated to procreate as much as possible.

So basically, you argue that the potential live of the potential person has to be demonstrated to be worth living? Maybe antinatalism isn't that wrong at all.

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I'm not so sure you can completely dismiss potential value either, and Singer probably thinks so either. It comes back a lot with questions about death.

Let's take the case of a woman in a coma with only the brainstem in function. This woman is not sentient at that point in time, and therefore there are no present interests she could have. To make the case complete it would have to be a woman that has no friends or family, so nobody cares about her if she were to die. Is it possible to make a case why it's wrong to end the live of this women, without appealing to potential future value?

Soycrates wrote:you have to be some sort of spiritual or religious to call anything sacred.

Otherwise, you're using the word incorrectly.

Traditionally this was solely a religious word, but languages evolve and I often hear "sacred" used in secular ways. When, I read your post I understood "sacred" as something extremely special rather than the religiously or spiritually "sacred"

Volenta wrote: So basically, you argue that the potential live of the potential person has to be demonstrated to be worth living? Maybe antinatalism isn't that wrong at all.

Not only to be worth living itself, but also with regards to the moral effects on the world around it.

Beyond abortion being equivalent to not procreating, my point is, the rightness or wrongness of either is based on consequence, which is measured in terms of something else entirely. You can't make blanket cases like he's doing -- it's a case-by-case matter.

In some cases, it would benefit the world greatly for a particular person or couple to have children, in other cases it would not. In most cases where people seek abortions, it's the latter of those two.

If he wanted to argue coherently against abortion, he would have to establish the grounds upon which value was measured, and then make a strong empirical argument against abortion based on its effects.

Volenta wrote: Is it possible to make a case why it's wrong to end the live of this women, without appealing to potential future value?

You mean to say she will wake up?

In either case, this is handled by interests. I may depart from Singer on this point. We DO have an interest in what happens when we aren't around, even after we die. People will die for causes, and as such they prove that their interest in the success of those causes is greater even than their interests in their own lives. This is not always irrational or ill informed. If somebody will die for something, in an important sense, it is more immoral to harm that cause than to kill that person.

Life and death are irrelevant beyond the application of interests to them, which are usually but not always very strong.

If somebody has an interest such that, if she fell into a coma with the chance of waking up she be kept alive and given that opportunity, then it is in part right to do so -- but that interest also has to be weighed against the harms it may cause, the resources it costs, and the interests of others.

If somebody has the interest such that after she dies, her body be plated in gold and mounted on top of the Eiffel tower, again, it is in part right to do that -- but the sum total of rightness or wrongness depends again on weighing that against other interests.

This is why, in part, is is wrong to desecrate the burial sites of ancient peoples. They didn't want their remains desecrated. Though they no longer exist, we should respect their wishes as we would want our wishes respected -- in so far as practical, and weighed against other matters of importance. It may well be that the benefit to anthropology is greater than the wrong of desecrating those graves to study them. Those are things to consider.

I don't care if somebody is temporarily non-sentient, or permanently so, their interests while they were sentient still matter. The interests of what happens to somebody's body when she is going to wake up, however, happen to usually be much stronger than the interests of what happens to it when she dies and will not be waking up- this has to do with the opportunity cost, and all of the other extant interests that would be realized following waking which are also violated by preventing that. Some people are profoundly unambitious and have no future plans or interests beyond watching next Sunday's TV lineup, and for them it might not be provided you killed them during commercials and before the cliffhanger ending.

In any case, it depends on past and extant interests, not imagined potential future ones.

The only reason I wouldn't desecrate the burial sites of ancient peoples is that it would upset people who are alive.

Most "pro-choice" proponents have set a pregnancy time-line cut off point when they think that it's too late to abort. I like to wait and ask what they think this dead-line should be until after they have already explained their rational for "pro choice." I've heard reasoning as to why this deadline could not might as well be a few months later but this reasoning never meshes with their previous pro-choice arguments.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Not only to be worth living itself, but also with regards to the moral effects on the world around it.

Beyond abortion being equivalent to not procreating, my point is, the rightness or wrongness of either is based on consequence, which is measured in terms of something else entirely. You can't make blanket cases like he's doing -- it's a case-by-case matter.

In some cases, it would benefit the world greatly for a particular person or couple to have children, in other cases it would not. In most cases where people seek abortions, it's the latter of those two.

If he wanted to argue coherently against abortion, he would have to establish the grounds upon which value was measured, and then make a strong empirical argument against abortion based on its effects.

Surely I agree with that.

brimstoneSalad wrote:You mean to say she will wake up?

Yes, sorry, forgot to mention.

brimstoneSalad wrote:In either case, this is handled by interests. I may depart from Singer on this point. We DO have an interest in what happens when we aren't around, even after we die. People will die for causes, and as such they prove that their interest in the success of those causes is greater even than their interests in their own lives. This is not always irrational or ill informed. If somebody will die for something, in an important sense, it is more immoral to harm that cause than to kill that person.

Life and death are irrelevant beyond the application of interests to them, which are usually but not always very strong.

I disagree with you.

I don't think interests can exist independent of subjective experience, a world without sentient beings is a world without interests. Interests without sentience are just concepts without a foundation. It's somewhat the same as arguing that a world without any subjectivity still contains objective morality (or aesthetics). When somebody dies, their interests quite literally vanish with them. That's not to say the interests can't be taken over by somebody else, but then that person has an interest in making the death man's interest her own.

If an interest can only be realized by dying, it's not going to be beneficial to realize that interest because there is nobody to please anymore after death (unless the interest is a shared interest of many conscious creatures of course). And that's quite paradoxical.

brimstoneSalad wrote:This is why, in part, is is wrong to desecrate the burial sites of ancient peoples. They didn't want their remains desecrated. Though they no longer exist, we should respect their wishes as we would want our wishes respected -- in so far as practical, and weighed against other matters of importance. It may well be that the benefit to anthropology is greater than the wrong of desecrating those graves to study them. Those are things to consider.

It just feels wrong. I think this is only moral intuitions playing a role here. I don't think there can be made a case why it's immoral to do so other than taking the nowadays actually-existing interests in consideration.

brimstoneSalad wrote:I don't care if somebody is temporarily non-sentient, or permanently so, their interests while they were sentient still matter.

In this case they do matter, but I think so for another reason than you do. It's because of her subjective experience that can be retrieved, and in this future subjectivity this interest is getting weight again.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Some people are profoundly unambitious and have no future plans or interests beyond watching next Sunday's TV lineup, and for them it might not be provided you killed them during commercials and before the cliffhanger ending.

Their interests never vanished during the commercials, but they do when being in a state of unconsciousness like a coma.

brimstoneSalad wrote:not imagined potential future ones.

Well, imagined... Whether they are just imaginations or should become real is the thing we are discussing. With a consequentialistic outlook you're always interested in future outcomes.

Volenta wrote:

brimstoneSalad wrote:This is why, in part, is is wrong to desecrate the burial sites of ancient peoples. They didn't want their remains desecrated. Though they no longer exist, we should respect their wishes as we would want our wishes respected -- in so far as practical, and weighed against other matters of importance. It may well be that the benefit to anthropology is greater than the wrong of desecrating those graves to study them. Those are things to consider.

It just feels wrong. I think this is only moral intuitions playing a role here. I don't think there can be made a case why it's immoral to do so other than taking the nowadays actually-existing interests in consideration.

I agree. The reason we think it's wrong to desecrate the burial sites of ancient people is because it upsets living people. It upsets living people because we have fond memories of our ancestors and our culture, and we feel wronged when artifacts of that ancestry and culture - such as burial grounds - are destroyed. But that doesn't mean it is "wrong" because we should respect the wishes of those who have passed. It only says we feel bad about not respecting those wishes.

I can't see anything objectively wrong about disrespecting the wishes of the dead, only that it emotionally upsets the living. The dead no longer have interests, we can't act in accordance with interests that do not exist. If you have no desire to abide by a deceased's wishes after they're gone, and you're the only one who could feel that obligation, not following those wishes harms absolutely no one. If my loved one is on their death bed and in secret I promise them that I'll do something for them when they pass away, and later on I choose not to do it, nobody is negatively affected. Our values are affected - that I in some sense lied to a loved one, that I don't keep my promises - but these are only valid defenses if you accept virtue ethics.