...the OP mentions that... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not that clearly. It suggests the unlikely situation where the parents are OK with having their infants killed. We might pass such circumstances over.

So we move on to the few and the many. Here you are on firmer ground, but @Wayfarer's use of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is a more effective critique of Singer here. Notice that the consequentialist justification for the act of genocide would here need to outweigh the grief of their parents. Such a justification might be given, in which case in Singer's terms the genocide might thereby be justified. Singer's account would be internally consistent. Infants do not on his account have personhood, and so no personal rights.

There are problems with SInger's account, some of which you are beginning to address. I'd put the difficulty down to his attempt to provide an algorithmic answer to ethical issues. They are simply not so amenable to solutions, being far to intractable. This can be seen in the explosion of "gotcha" arguments, many deriving from Foot's tram. Your post is a generic addition.

The discussion of potential may be more productive. Singer has been obliged to reconsider his approach to disabilities on these sort of grounds. Nussbaum criticises Singer for neglecting the dignity and capabilities of all human beings, including those with disabilities. She argues that his focus on rationality and autonomy as criteria for moral worth fails to recognise the inherent value of each person’s potential for flourishing within a just, supportive social framework. This is a productive vein of thought.

The slippery slope is implicit in your post. And there is considerable nuance in Singer's writing that is missed in the OP.

I can't find a specific quote, but my understanding is that Singer only supports infanticide in cases where the infant is severely disabled - e.g. spina bifida or anencephaly.

This position has encountered vocal opposition from the disabled community.

This position has encountered vocal opposition from the disabled community. — EricH

Yep.

The main source is Practical Ethics. Now somewhat dated.

Here's a sympathetic piece on trying to understand Singer: What I learned about disability and infanticide from Peter Singer. On display is both the appeal of the clarity of his arguments, along with a certain surdity to wider issues.

A well considered rebuttal can be found in Alford's The Discordant Singer. Perhaps the strength of this article is in it's claim that Singer fails to acknowledge the consequences of his own position for those with disabilities. And perhaps Singer has begun to acknowledge that he carried into his considerations a common set of social prejudices.

There's much more of course. This is not a small topic.

Not that clearly. It suggests the unlikely situation where the parents are OK with having their infants killed. We might pass such circumstances over.

It's literally the main substance of the post and the summary you put in to the AI.

Supposing we agree with Singer, does it then follow that war crimes that kill children below a certain age threshold should be considered on par (or in fact less aggregious) vis-á-vis those that kill livestock? To press the point, if a genocidal state decides to enforce a genocide solely by killing newborn infants born to some group, is this naught but a mass violation of "property rights," as it would be if they were to instead kill livestock and pets?

I would think not, right? Parent's attachment to newborns or unborn children is often far greater than it is for pets, let alone livestock. More to the point, destroying people's children is very much "genocide" in a strong sense. It is destroying their future.

The problem is articulating this from the point of view that justifies infanticide on Singer's grounds. For, if we claim that parents care more about their infants than most people care about their pets, a critic can simply say: "only perhaps on average." Afterall, there might be people who willingly practice infanticide with their own children but have beloved pets. Some people allow dangerous pets to maim or kill their infants precisely because of this sort of prioritization (plus wishful thinking). So, it seems all we are appealing to is "average sentiment."

I clarified this as well. You haven't responded to it at all, but instead seem to have invented your own post to respond to that says "Singer cannot say killing infants is bad and if we accept his point of view genocide will follow!" which is, of course, nowhere in the post. Other commentators seemed to grasp this at least. Does Singer have something else to appeal to instead of average sentiment in his work? That's all you have pointed to. I'm not sure, I was just following out the basics.


The post you responded to:

If the only thing that's different about killing infants is the sentiment of those affected, and we weigh sentiment against sentiment as we would in other cases, that seems problematic. To give a stark example, this would mean that it is a worse crime for someone to shoot someone else's beloved dog for barking and annoying them than it would be for them to strangle a newborn to death for annoying them with their crying if the father is uninterested in the child and the mother is ambivalent about being a mother.

This, at the very least, violates moral intuitions and current law across the world. Likewise, it implies that it might be worse for soldiers to accidentally blow up a kennel than a nursery just in case the dog owners really loved their "fur babies," whereas the parents of the infants in the nursery saw them as a burden. It would also imply that war crimes that kill infants in countries where parents are more likely to see new children as a burden are less severe on average. But parental ambivalence and seeing infants as primarily a "burden" is significantly more common in the developing world due to there being fewer resources, less access to family planning, and larger existing families. Yet this would imply that it's worse to accidentally blow up babies in Vermont or Quebec on average than in Afghanistan or Iraq, or worse in poorer neighborhoods than in wealthy ones, because parental ambivalence tracks with wealth.

If these conclusions are wrong (they seem abhorrent) then the ethical value of infants is not reducible to the sentiment of parents and other "interested parties," but must be secured by something greater.

One option open to Singer is to claim that parent's have a personal right to have and raise children. This right might not be absolute, but it would be much stronger than the sentiment we associate with killing beloved pets. But then Singer needs to explain why families (and communities) have a particularly strong rights vis-á-vis their children as opposed to their pets. The obvious reason is "because children become "people" in Singer's terms, while dogs never will, and because they are the living continuation of cultures and communities," yet this response would simply spotlight how Singer's view fails to take account of these factors when declaring the newborn to be of "less value."

The slippery slope is implicit in your post.

lol, I guess if you read what you want to see.

It's literally the main substance of the post and the summary you put in to the AI. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's your argument, but that's not how I read it. The argument in a nutshell appears to be that genocidal infanticide would for Singer morally neutral, but that contrary to Singer's view, infants have moral value, and that therefore Singer is in error. Now this is a good argument.

But if instead you want to argue that Singer is reliant on some "average sentiment", go ahead. That's a considerable weaker argument, since Singer can depend on parental attachment, the social value placed on human life and to a lesser extent the potential to become persons rather than to sentiment, and so to carry the consequentialist line to reject genocidal infanticide.

The stronger case against SInger's consequentialism remains that it does not match our ethical intuitions. That is, it leads to outcomes we find immoral.

If these conclusions are wrong (they seem abhorrent) then the ethical value of infants is not reducible to the sentiment of parents and other "interested parties," but must be secured by something greater. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Whether they're capable of being harmed, I think, is what Practical Ethics Singer espouses. His discussion of infanticide in the book follows a related logic. The calculation done regarding the euthanisation of an infant is whether its life is substitutable for another - if the parents commit 100% to having another child and that child would almost certainly not have a deleterious health condition, then his logic regarding harm minimisation kicks in.

I don't think there's much reason to believe he'd consider the infants in your OP differently. You can already think of them in terms of potential lives in his framework - OP provides no reason to trigger the logic that Singer uses, with lots of caveats, to talk about infanticide.

It's your argument, but that's not how I read it. The argument in a nutshell appears to be that genocidal infanticide would for Singer be morally neutral,

It's easy to dismiss an argument if you refuse to read it and just dishonestly misrepresent it over and over I suppose. I assume your reading comprehension isn't quite this poor and you are just being disingenuous at this point.

- Which is where Banno almost always ends up within a thread. :up:

hey are the living continuation of families and cultures. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fwiw, this was my only thought throughout your entire post, so i'm glad this was the conclusion lol. I actually take Singer's point, and as a pro-choicer I have some version of "babies aren't self-aware" going on in my set of takes on the various sticking points. But this, above, notion is far, far more important morally than a single baby's life imo. Or even many baby's lives. It's what they would become, in the round - not individually.

Whether they're capable of being harmed, I think, is what Practical Ethics Singer espouses. His discussion of infanticide in the book follows a related logic. The calculation done regarding the euthanisation of an infant is whether its life is substitutable for another - if the parents commit 100% to having another child and that child would almost certainly not have a deleterious health condition, then his logic regarding harm minimisation kicks in. — fdrake

Pretty much. But in the scenario of the OP, that replacement does not occur. Therefore harm is done to the parents.

OP provides no reason to trigger the logic that Singer uses, with lots of caveats, to talk about infanticide — fdrake

It's pretty deaf to Singer's argument, really. Not that Singer's argument is acceptable. Again, the parents of those infants would be a bit upset at the genocide, and their discomposure is morally relevant. So the supposed argument against Singer in the OP does not get off the ground.

So even though Singer downplays potential harm, his justification for not killing infants arbitrarily turns on indirect consequences such as emotional trauma to the parents or social breakdown. These consequences do derive in part from the way humans intuitively value the future of infants. This isn't a reliance on some "average sentiment" but on the harm done to the parents and their community.