The fact that infanticide has been practiced so widely suggests strongly that most people don’t “instinctively” see babies as people.
NO! As you have yourself correctly pointed out, it is because most cultures, with ours being a notable exception, assign a low value to “useless” people or people who they feel are a needless drain on society. (mistake fixed)
Hm. So what seems to follow from this is that most people don’t actually consider killing people to be a particularly big deal, what they’re averse to is killing people who contribute something useful to society… or, more generally, that most people are primarily motivated by maximizing social value.
Yes? (I don’t mean to be pedantic here, I just want to make sure I’m not putting words in your mouth.)
Blast me! I meant to say that our culture is an exception, not an “inclusion”. So this statement is largely true about non-western cultures, but western ones mostly view the relatively recent concept of “individuality and personhood are sacred” as their main reason against murder.
So is your position that we inherited an aversion to murder from earlier non-western cultures, and then when we sanctified personhood we made that our main reason for our pre-existing aversion? Or that earlier cultures weren’t averse to murder, and our sanctification caused us to develop such an aversion? Or something else?
Both, probably. We inherited all of their aversion (being a modest amount), and then we developed the sacredness, which, all on its own, added several times more aversion on top of that.
NO! As you have yourself correctly pointed out, it is because most cultures, with ours being a notable exception, assign a low value to “useless” people or people who they feel are a needless drain on society. (mistake fixed)
Hm. So what seems to follow from this is that most people don’t actually consider killing people to be a particularly big deal, what they’re averse to is killing people who contribute something useful to society… or, more generally, that most people are primarily motivated by maximizing social value.
Yes? (I don’t mean to be pedantic here, I just want to make sure I’m not putting words in your mouth.)
Blast me! I meant to say that our culture is an exception, not an “inclusion”. So this statement is largely true about non-western cultures, but western ones mostly view the relatively recent concept of “individuality and personhood are sacred” as their main reason against murder.
Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.
So is your position that we inherited an aversion to murder from earlier non-western cultures, and then when we sanctified personhood we made that our main reason for our pre-existing aversion?
Or that earlier cultures weren’t averse to murder, and our sanctification caused us to develop such an aversion?
Or something else?
Both, probably. We inherited all of their aversion (being a modest amount), and then we developed the sacredness, which, all on its own, added several times more aversion on top of that.