Show me someone who actually needs to be convinced. Just about everyone acts as if that is true. One could argue that they are just consequentialists trying to avoid the bad consequences of treating people as if they are not morally special. I’m not even sure that is the psychological reality for psychopaths though.
Also, a corollary of what Matt said, if humans aren’t morally special, is anything?
Leaving aside the physical complications of moving cows, I think most vegetarians would find the decision to push a cow onto the train tracks to save the lives of four people much easier to make than pushing a large man onto the tracks, implying that humans are more special than cows.
EDIT:
The above scenario may not work out so well for Hindus and certain extreme animal rights activists. It may be better to think about pushing one cow to save four cows vs. one human to save four humans. It seems like the cow scenario should be much less of a moral quandary for everyone.
I agree that they would probably have that reaction, but that’s not the question; the question is whether that’s a rational reaction to have given relatively simple starting assumptions.
‘Starting assumptions’ as I used it is basically the same concept as ‘terminal moral values’, and a terminal moral value that refers to humans specifically is arguably more complex than one that talks about life in general or minds in general.
More-complex terminal moral values are generally viewed with some suspicion here, because it’s more likely that they’ll turn out to have internal inconsistencies. It’s also easier to use them to rationalize about irrational behavior.
I think “making the argument that humans have some special moral place in the world” in the absence of an eternal soul is very easy for someone intelligent enough to think about how close humans and goldfish are “in the space of ‘things that one can construct out of atoms.’”
You seem to be equivocating. What do you really think?
(1) Do you believe there are logical reasons for terminal values?
(2) Do you believe that it would be easy to argue that humans have special moral status even without divine external validation (e.g., without a soul)?
Show me someone who actually needs to be convinced. Just about everyone acts as if that is true. One could argue that they are just consequentialists trying to avoid the bad consequences of treating people as if they are not morally special. I’m not even sure that is the psychological reality for psychopaths though.
Also, a corollary of what Matt said, if humans aren’t morally special, is anything?
The question might be less “do humans have some special moral place in the world” than “do human beings have some special moral place in the world”. For example: are we privileging humans over cows to an excessive extent?
Leaving aside the physical complications of moving cows, I think most vegetarians would find the decision to push a cow onto the train tracks to save the lives of four people much easier to make than pushing a large man onto the tracks, implying that humans are more special than cows.
EDIT: The above scenario may not work out so well for Hindus and certain extreme animal rights activists. It may be better to think about pushing one cow to save four cows vs. one human to save four humans. It seems like the cow scenario should be much less of a moral quandary for everyone.
I agree that they would probably have that reaction, but that’s not the question; the question is whether that’s a rational reaction to have given relatively simple starting assumptions.
Since when were terminal moral values determined by rationality?
‘Starting assumptions’ as I used it is basically the same concept as ‘terminal moral values’, and a terminal moral value that refers to humans specifically is arguably more complex than one that talks about life in general or minds in general.
More-complex terminal moral values are generally viewed with some suspicion here, because it’s more likely that they’ll turn out to have internal inconsistencies. It’s also easier to use them to rationalize about irrational behavior.
So then what did you mean by this?
Jack and mattnewport both seemed to do a good job above.
You seem to be equivocating. What do you really think?
(1) Do you believe there are logical reasons for terminal values?
(2) Do you believe that it would be easy to argue that humans have special moral status even without divine external validation (e.g., without a soul)?