Not that clearly. It suggests the unlikely situation where the parents are OK with having their infants killed. We might pass such circumstances over....the OP mentions that... — Count Timothy von Icarus
This position has encountered vocal opposition from the disabled community. — EricH
Not that clearly. It suggests the unlikely situation where the parents are OK with having their infants killed. We might pass such circumstances over.
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."
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 slippery slope is implicit in your post.
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.It's literally the main substance of the post and the summary you put in to the AI. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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
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,
hey are the living continuation of families and cultures. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Pretty much. But in the scenario of the OP, that replacement does not occur. Therefore harm is done to the parents.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
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.OP provides no reason to trigger the logic that Singer uses, with lots of caveats, to talk about infanticide — fdrake
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