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- That's an excellent argument, possessing power to convince even those who would tend to follow Singer. I've never heard that one before. :up:

Peter Singer famously argues for infanticide up to a certain point. He claims that: "human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons”; therefore, “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee." — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Famously?" No wonder I've never heard of the guy. The underlined random assertion simply doesn't logically follow the preceding factual statement. It doesn't even seem to attempt to. So, at least for me, it doesn't ever actually reach the threshold of what constitutes "an argument". Basically, there is no "therefore" as the logic falls apart at that point so anything that comes after and is based on that non-logical assertion is akin to opinionated rambling. Yet, you seem to entertain it, which suggests perhaps I'm simply missing something. A baby does in fact have the status of personhood, legally, and socially. It's a baby person. Any disagreement of that is like saying a different ethnicity of humanity isn't a person because "I say so", at least to me. It's just another opinion. Do you disagree?

I'm reminded of an argument @Hanover once made, saying an unconscious or sleeping person is still a person, and their rights don't suddenly vanish. That was a response to some argument about mental invalids or some other business he responded to. Maybe it was an abortion debate. That was probably it. Just seems relevant to me. Basically stating just because, at a particular time (be it a newborn or a sleeping adult) that human being is not processing, communicating, and interacting with the world, doesn't mean they're not (or all of a sudden no longer) a human being. So, by that premise, to accept this man's claim is to also accept the claim that killing an entire city of people who happen to be asleep at the time of their death is technically not killing anyone. Which is comically absurd.

Seems like a fair counterargument to me, at least. Albeit likening the development of a newborn into a child is not quite the same as an adult waking up from a state of sleep. Yet, there are notable parallels, I'm sure many would agree.

Personally, I think such an argument makes him out to be little more than just another Jonathon Swift wannabe. You can tell he's quite proud of it. :lol:

The intellectual version of a cookie-cutter shock jock. Can't be insightful? Be controversial. The average person today is, after all, intellectually, and to an extent (likely as a result), morally, low-hanging fruit. Cheap taste and short memories. Easy to control. Thankfully.

A baby does in fact have the status of personhood, legally, and socially. It's a baby person. — Outlander

When, exactly, does a baby become a person? At the moment of birth? Well, what about two weeks before? A month before? Two months before? How do you draw the personhood line in a non-arbitrary way?

Someone who is intellectually crafty enough can construe arguments for pretty much any position, as Singer proves.

Since definitive philosophical arguments have yet to be found, determining what is true or false is, ultimately, a matter of intuitive discernment.

And intuitively, Singer is a moron.

Infanticide has a long complex history that is not perhaps as many would suspect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

A read through this shows mothers typically performed the act and it was to rid themselves of the burdens of either more mouths to feed or to eliminate handicapped children. The most rare reason was as sacrifice to appease the gods. The practice was extremely common prehistorically and well into very modern history. Examples are provided in England as recent as the Victorian era. Very recent examples exist in China.

Where you'll see infanticide is least likely is among the Abrahamic religions where it is strictly forbidden and has been n advance of many other religions and cultures.

It is no coincidence that you see similar prohibitions against feticide among these same groups.

The point here is that Western ideology is heavily shaped by its religious history and that ideology sanctifies human life. It holds that human life is special, sacred, and created in the image of God. Secular humanism, I'd submit, largely adopts this position but without subscribing to the theistic terminology.

Singer presents though a different worldview. It's one that challenges the specialness of human life and suggests all life must be compared to all other life, requiring we justify our basis for claiming a human infant is more worthy than a fully developed chimpanzee. The latter does seem more self aware and conscious than the former.

I don't find Singer persuasive, largely because I am fully accepting of the Western theistic view that humans are indeed sacred, meaning the value of the smartest golden retriever is infinitely less than the least aware infant.

But, yes, human society can survive and has survived large scale infanticide. I would think though, if I were Singer, I would reconsider my philosophical principles if they led to the reductio ad absurdem that such behavior is morally justifiable.

But he does have a point. I don't see a newborn as a full-fledged person. They're close to being a person, but the loss of a newborn is not as devastating as the loss of, say, a ten year old.

I don't find Singer persuasive, largely because I am fully accepting of the Western theistic view that humans are indeed sacred, meaning the value of smartest golden retriever is infinitely less than the least aware infant. — Hanover

Well, let's consider an average human vs a pig. The human has infinitely more value, right? We can't gas the human and eat him. But let's swap out the human's heart with a pig heart. Let's replace his arms and legs with pig arms and legs. Let's give him a traumatic brain injury that reduces his intellect to that of a pig. Can we eat him now? If we end up making him identical to a pig, down to the DNA, is it now ok to eat him?

They're close to being a person, but the loss of a newborn is not as devastating as the loss of, say, a ten year old. — RogueAI

That might be taken as a bit insensitive to one who has lost a newborn, right?

In any event, one person's personhood is not measured by how badly another is emotionally effected by his death. A homeless person who dies anonymously on the street, buried by the state in a pauper's grave, is no less a person because no tears were shed.

Well, let's consider an average human vs a pig. The human has infinitely more value, right? We can't gas the human and eat him. But let's swap out the human's heart with a pig heart. Let's replace his arms and legs with pig arms and legs. Let's give him a traumatic brain injury that reduces his intellect to that of a pig. Can we eat him now? If we end up making him identical to a pig, down to the DNA, is it now ok to eat him? — RogueAI

The Ship of Theseus. If we remove each human plank and replace it with a pig plank when is our person no longer the same person but now a pig?

I don't know the answer to that, but at that exact moment when you've extinguished the person by swapping out that critical part, you're a murderer.

That might be taken as a bit insensitive to one who has lost a newborn, right? — Hanover

Maybe, but is it true for most people? It seems there's an obvious spectrum of awfulness to it: losing a one week old embryo is not as bad as losing a two month old fetus, which is not as bad as a stillborn baby, which is not as bad as losing a toddler. Do you agree with that or at least see where I'm coming from?

I don't know the answer to that, but at that exact moment when you've extinguished the person by swapping out that critical part, you're a murderer. — Hanover

What if we swap out every part but his brain? He's obviously more valuable than the pig. What about after the brain injury that reduces his intellect/memory/awareness to pig levels? It's not obvious to me that he should be more valuable. I think he would be, but I suspect that's just specieism.

Let's give him a traumatic brain injury that reduces his intellect to that of a pig. Can we eat him now? If we end up making him identical to a pig, down to the DNA, is it now ok to eat him?

"ok"? That's just a reference to a social convention, not an inherent attribute of babies (or pigs). Thus being subjective the answer is variable depending on the observer.

So, assuming Singer is right about individual infants, if a genocidal regime only kills infants it isn't genocide because they aren't yet people? E.g., the far right in Israel would be as in the clear declaring: "from now on we should cut the throat of every Gazan infant and eventually the problem will sort itself out," as "we're going to round up and euthanize all the pets in Gaza?"

Note, both could be "justified" on the grounds that Gaza currently lacks the capacity to care for new infants or pets, but are these the same thing? Obviously we could reject Singer's initial claim. My point was that he seems committed to the idea that the hypothetical genocidal state would be doing no more than butchering someone else's pigs here.

Anyhow, ignoring potential cannot be absolute, right? Otherwise locking a child in a room and neglecting them, denying them education or play, etc. would considered acceptable on the grounds that they hadn't yet become what they were being prevented from being.

Children kept from all stimuli end up profoundly disabled. They might even meet Singer's criteria for non-persons in extreme cases (provided they can survive this level of neglect). Would there be "no crime" here in such neglect because the child never actualized their potential to be a person?

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Or another course is to find small truth and blow it up out of proportion - same exercise, same results. An example is ready to hand:

I don't think this is at all unfair to Singer's premise, nor unfair to adopt the premise to see where it leads. Based on his rationale for denying that infanticide is wrong (see OP), a child that is abused such that they do not develop self-awareness at least surpassing a pig can be killed without issue. Nor can halting their development be wrong, since there is no personhood to violate.

If, as you say, " all rights to life are absolutely grounded in being," and not "becoming," and we pair this with Singer's premise, how does it not follow that, so long as you deprive a child of development, you cannot be doing something wrong? Or is the complaint about following things to their logical conclusion in general? Accepting "all rights to life are absolutely grounded in being" as a premise is not stretching a small truth into a large one, absolutely means "absolutely."

It is problematic for Singer's initial premise to deny potentiality. That's the point. It leads to seemingly abhorrent conclusions. You can find absurdity in the other direction of course. Every time people fail to reproduce they could be accused of depriving "potential people" of life. But I think this just demonstrates the need for a middle ground grounded in a more robust metaphysics.

child that is abused such that they do not develop self-awareness at least surpassing a pig can be killed without issue — Count Timothy von Icarus

That pretty much does happen.

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But, yes, human society can survive and has survived large scale infanticide.

A society cannot survive an all encompassing campaign of infanticide as genocide though.

But the scale of genocide probably obfuscates things. Just consider something like this: US forces, thinking they are striking a terrorist meeting fire a missile at a wedding party. This has happened in the past. The missile doesn't injure any adults significantly, but kills four infants. On Singer's logic, nothing more untoward has happened here than if they mistakenly targeted a farm and killed four pigs, except that people might be more attached to their infants than their pigs. But that people might be extremely attached to their animals generally doesn't make failure to try to avoid animal casualties a war crime, hence the same might be thought to apply here.

That is, an artillery strike against a target is not justified if its near a grade school, but would be more justifiable if it was near a nursery.

I do not suppose for even a second that Singer was advocating child murder.

That's probably the thing he is most famous for, justifying "non-voluntary euthanasia" in a number of contexts, including killing infants and the disabled on the similar grounds to those offered for early term elective abortion."And I continue to think there’s no real ethical difference between bringing about a child’s death by turning off life support than by giving the child a lethal injection.” .

On Singer's logic, nothing more untoward has happened here than if they mistakenly targeted a farm and killed four pigs, except that people might be more attached to their infants than their pigs — Count Timothy von Icarus

And if that is his conclusion, then it should be evidence of the poverty of his position, not just a requirement that we accept an unpalatable conclusion.

This is the issue with ethical theorizing to begin with, which is that we have ethical intuitions at the outset and then we retroactively try to arrive at the principles we must have used to arrive at our intutions. That is, we list out what we know to be immoral acts and then we arrive at why we must be saying that. Infanticide falls within the list of known bad acts, so if the principle I arrive at to define bad acts doesn't include infanticide, then my principle is wrong, not that infanticide is acceptable.

That is, an artillery strike against a target is not justified if its near a grade school, but would be more justifiable if it was near a nursery. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And the least serious violation would be to crush the infant as it emerged from its womb because it wasn't of much present value at that point.

And yet if we had a infant crusher going from room to room in the hospital devestating families one by one, we'd see that man as a monster, worthy of our highest punishment, devoid of what we think to be the most basic of human properties.

The consequences of Singer's position come from his placement of moral worth upon self-awareness. So it follows that infant death is of less moral consequence than adult death and perhaps of ape death. My conclusion would differ from Singer's in that I would suggest that his thought experiments prove that self-awareness is not a guiding criterion for determining ethical worth. Instead of allowing his theory to be disproved, he instead doubles down and argues that ethics demands things we never realized, and now we know we've been doing it all wrong all these years.

The notion that infants are not self-aware, therefore it is acceptable to end their being, illustrates the utter disregard for the material human body in favor of one’s own abstractions. That one can look at an infant and make such a calculation in order to justify eviscerating that human being is a calculation that ought to be condemned as evil, but is the logical ethics of property dualism. The infant lacks an undefinable property, does not act as my ideal person would, therefore he is inhuman, a zombie, or otherwise not a person. It is perhaps the logic of all atrocity and genocides.

My point was that he seems committed to the idea that the hypothetical genocidal state would be doing no more than butchering someone else's pigs here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see your argument, which is to question Singer's position as not having any concern for the future state of humanity by only focusing on how we treat the present state of humanity. Techincally, you've not committed genocide to the extent you've really murdered any people. You've just murdered wanna be people, still in their nascent stage. That it happens to lead to the end of humanity doesn't mean it was genocide any more than is forced sterilzation. All you did was impact the rights of these generally useless creatures who had no real rights to begin with.

It just seems that the removal of the special status of humans and humanity is what is leading to these absurd results. And why limit ourselves to murder, why don't we ask which is worse, castrating my 2 year old dog or my 2 month old son, declawing my 2 year old cat or de-fingering my 2 month old daugther, and we can all use our imaginations to continue down this road of hypothetical horrors.

That one can look at an infant and make such a calculation in order to justify eviscerating that human being is a calculation that ought to be condemned as evil, but is the logical ethics of property dualism. — NOS4A2

I don't follow the bolded part. Property dualism would allow for a seperate soul that all infants have (and arguably fetuses too) that would protect them against any abuse, regardless of age, awareness, or intellectual capacity.

I don't follow the bolded part. Property dualism would allow for a seperate soul that all infants have (and arguably fetuses too) that would protect them against any abuse, regardless of age, awareness, or intellectual capacity.

It’s much the same. In my understanding Property dualism is like dualism except it uses non-physical mental phenomena instead of souls and spirits.

However, it seems to me that the obvious reason why a "genocide of infants" would be fully a "genocide" is because human infants have the potential to become human adults. They are the living continuation of families and cultures. And the destruction of this potential, even if you accept Singer's framing, represents a much greater damage to families and cultures than the killing of livestock. Yet this would also seem to undermine Singer's conclusion, in that an organism's potential seems relevant to its "moral worth," for lack of a better term. Otherwise, infant genocide would just be the same thing as an aggressive livestock culling, except that "it perhaps offends the victims' sentiment more." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does the following argument somewhat capture your objection to Singer?

(A) If infants are non-persons akin to livestock and the infants potential personhood is not intrinsic to the infant's moral worth, then infant genocide and aggressive livestock culling would be morally equivalent as long as all extrinsic factors are equal (offense to families, etc.).
(B) Infant genocide and aggressive livestock culling are not morally equivalent when all extrinsic factors are equal.
(C) Infants are either not non-persons akin to livestock or the infants potential is intrinsic to the infants moral worth, or both.

Edit: conclusion was too strong before. Fixed for sake of validity.


I think such an argument has force if one accepts Moorean arguments. Many hold (B) with such certainty that one could argue it outweighs the plausibility of Singer's theoretical case. I'm not sure if this is exactly how you meant for your argument to be taken. Please correct me if it is incorrect.

Now, here is how Singer, or a Singer defender, could try to lower the force of your argument:

Bias. Singer would likely give debunking explanations and counter-examples for the intuitions that support (B). (B) is, in this view, without rational support. Rather, it is due to cultural and evolutionary influences that should not be trusted.

Extrinsic potential. As a utilitarian, Singer does value potential states of affairs. Preventing persons from coming into existence on a large scale as with genocide would not maximize utility. The reason why infanticide and abortion are sometimes justified fits this view. A parent may choose to delay bringing a person about via abortion or infanticide, but they are not lowering the amount of persons that would exist. In cases of genocide, this is different, and this is a relevant difference from livestock most of the time.

Emphasis. The comparison with livestock seems worse when one does not consider Singer's wider view that the treatment of non-human animals should be significantly improved. Even if Singer argues for the lower moral status of infants, which is highly counter-intuitive, it should not be taken as being meant to be a comparison to our current treatment of non-human animals which Singer vehemently opposes.

With this in mind, I think there are ways forward for those following Singer to at least temper the effect of your argument. Still, as noted before, I think your argument has force.

"Famously?" No wonder I've never heard of the guy. The underlined random assertion simply doesn't logically follow the preceding factual statement. It doesn't even seem to attempt to. So, at least for me, it doesn't ever actually reach the threshold of what constitutes "an argument". Basically, there is no "therefore" as the logic falls apart at that point so anything that comes after and is based on that non-logical assertion is akin to opinionated rambling. Yet, you seem to entertain it, which suggests perhaps I'm simply missing something. A baby does in fact have the status of personhood, legally, and socially. It's a baby person. Any disagreement of that is like saying a different ethnicity of humanity isn't a person because "I say so", at least to me. It's just another opinion. Do you disagree? — Outlander

That is an understandable reaction to Peter Singer, yet, I think you're missing some context. Singer provides far more than mere random assertions. In Practical Ethics (2011), he spends multiple chapters building the case that leads to his views on abortion and infanticide. Personhood, as he defines it, is not synonymous with species membership, legal status, or social status. Rather, it is about moral status, and, according to Singer, species membership, legal status, and social status, are not what gives a being its moral status. Moral status is about what morally relevant capacities the individual possesses.

Also, Singer actually gives a response to the sleep-killing scenario you describe. In Practical Ethics he writes:

To have a right to life, one must have, or at least at one time have had, the concept of having a continuing existence. Note that this formulation avoids any problems in dealing with sleeping or unconscious people; it is enough that they, at one time, have had the concept of continued life may be in their interests. (Singer, 2011, p. 83)

Singer further justifies this by noting that we can have desires without them being at the front of our mind (Ibid.). I might want to buy a house, but I will only have this desire at the front of my mind when reminded of it in some way. Yet, according to Singer, I still possess that desire while unaware of it. It does not apply to a being if that being has never had a concept of having a continued existence, as Singer argues is the case for, for instance, a fetus.

The intellectual version of a cookie-cutter shock jock. Can't be insightful? Be controversial. — Outlander

He is certainly shocking and even offensive. But, rather than only caring about shock-value, I think Singer is most likely just a genuinely committed utilitarian that follows his arguments to their end, even when it sharply differs from what is deemed acceptable. I disagree with Singer on many things, but I think that he is a serious philosopher.

References
Singer, P. (2011). Practical ethics (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

:up:

Well, let's consider an average human vs a pig. The human has infinitely more value, right? We can't gas the human and eat him. But let's swap out the human's heart with a pig heart. Let's replace his arms and legs with pig arms and legs. Let's give him a traumatic brain injury that reduces his intellect to that of a pig. Can we eat him now? If we end up making him identical to a pig, down to the DNA, is it now ok to eat him? — RogueAI

Yes… well… hmm.

Excellent summary, you did it better than I.

I think such an argument has force if one accepts Moorean arguments. Many hold (B) with such certainty that one could argue it outweighs the plausibility of Singer's theoretical case. I'm not sure if this is exactly how you meant for your argument to be taken. Please correct me if it is incorrect.

Nope, perfect. Before I start, I'm curious since you seem knowledgeable about this:

Singer further justifies this by noting that we can have desires without them being at the front of our mind (Ibid.). I might want to buy a house, but I will only have this desire at the front of my mind when reminded of it in some way. Yet, according to Singer, I still possess that desire while unaware of it. It does not apply to a being if that being has never had a concept of having a continued existence, as Singer argues is the case for, for instance, a fetus.

What does Singer have to say about the infant who is deprived of the capacity to ever develop such desires through neglect and deprivation? No doubt, he still could claim it is wrong, but it would seem initially that he cannot call it any worse than animal abuse (indeed, based on his phrasing, it would be less worthy of opprobrium than mistreating a dog or pig, just so long as the infant's development is so retarded that such desires cannot emerge). Yet again, this violates our intuition. It seems fairly obvious that horribly abusing a child so as to massively retard their development is a particularly heinous crime, going well beyond the infamies of modern farming techniques (even if we happen to have a fairly strong inclination towards animal rights).

Bias. Singer would likely give debunking explanations and counter-examples for the intuitions that support (B). (B) is, in this view, without rational support. Rather, it is due to cultural and evolutionary influences that should not be trusted.

Yes, although I think this will be difficult because of the scale of what killing all of a people's infants entails. The result is extinction, the total erasure of that people. It's what the Nazi's attempted with the "Final Solution," just using slightly modified means. Hence, since "Nazi" is pretty much the closest thing we have in the modern era to "Satanic" in the old, we are probably justified in claiming that this extraordinary debunking claim requires extraordinary evidence. Since wholesale extermination through these means eradicates a people, Singer would need to show that these cultural and evolutionary sources of value are essentially wholly unworthy of consideration, not just suspect.

I will admit, I was thinking of bias and emotional appeal a bit here. Given the climate on campuses, I think an argument that plausibly leads to the conclusion: "Israel can exterminate the Palestinians without an almost maximal transgression of moral norms so long as they do it by only killing newborns" is going to be a total non-starter (and I mean, as well it should).

Extrinsic potential. As a utilitarian, Singer does value potential states of affairs. Preventing persons from coming into existence on a large scale as with genocide would not maximize utility. The reason why infanticide and abortion are sometimes justified fits this view. A parent may choose to delay bringing a person about via abortion or infanticide, but they are not lowering the amount of persons that would exist. In cases of genocide, this is different, and this is a relevant difference from livestock most of the time.

That's a fair point, and perhaps why the example of "loose rules of engagement that lead to unnecessary infant deaths" is a better one, although not as emotionally salient. I still think there is still plenty of reason to think accidentally and recklessly mortaring someone's horse is a lot different from mortaring their daughter.

Emphasis. The comparison with livestock seems worse when one does not consider Singer's wider view that the treatment of non-human animals should be significantly improved. Even if Singer argues for the lower moral status of infants, which is highly counter-intuitive, it should not be taken as being meant to be a comparison to our current treatment of non-human animals which Singer vehemently opposes.

Fair point, although in the context of war crimes this might matter less. Either civilian assets are intentionally being targeted (a war crime, but certainly one with degrees), or they are "collateral damage" or the result of loose rules of engagement. So, regardless of how animals are treated, it still seems that firing a rocket at a farm might be quite different from firing one at a nursery.

I'm not a fan of consequentialism, but the OP shows a poor understanding of Singer's approach.

Put simply, the parents of those infants would be a bit upset at the genocide, and their discomposure is morally relevant.

Anyway, I fed the summary from , together with the first sentence in 's OP, into PeterSinger AI, and here is the result.

I'm not seeing anything here that counts much against consequentialism.

Put simply, the parents of those infants would be a bit upset at the genocide, and their discomposure is morally relevant.

Yes, the OP mentions that. The problem is that the sentiment of parents, etc. is the only thing that is being violated here; killing infants becomes a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind.

Yet the state often weighs the sentiment of the few against the many, and will do things that absolutely devastated the few to benefit the many, so long as certain lines are not crossed (e.g. a violation of personal rights, something Singer denies for infants). For instance, the state might put a bunch of beloved animals down if they are enough of a nuance to neighbors. After a hurricane, if a bunch of needy animals are inconvenient, they might also be put down. Etc.

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.


The AI is like most AI, just slapping words together. It hallucinates an appeal to a slippery slope where there is none. It takes up the issue of personhood, which is tangential, etc.