Note that there isn’t that coherent of a line between more intelligent mammals and human babies.
Of course there is. The latter is human and the former (assuming you mean “more intelligent non-human mammals”) is not. It is very easy to tell the difference and there are no doubtful cases.
There are no comparably clear lines to separate human fetuses, infants, children, and adults.
It’s good to note the obvious oversight in the grandparent’s claim. That said, a charitable reading of that claim (operationalized for your convenience) is that there does not exist a prediction rule that takes a fairly detailed description of a being’s* behavior in some task requiring intelligence and outputs a high accuracy classification.
*selected from a known mutually exclusive and exhaustive list of possibilities limited to human infants and adult intelligent mammals.
there does not exist a prediction rule that takes a fairly detailed description of a being’s* behavior in some task requiring intelligence and outputs a high accuracy classification.
To look for one presumes, as does Dallas, that the division between entities with rights and entities without is to be drawn in terms of current mental capability. Someone in dreamless sleep currently has less mental capability than an awake baby, or, I guess, a soon-to-be-born one. The argument for turning off Terri Schiavo’s life support was that she had no possibility of regaining any mental function, not that she currently had none.
Why are you replying to me instead of Dallas? I’m not defending the argument. I just noticed that more than one person was distracted by the obvious oversight, so I zombified Dallas’s claim as best as I was able.
Of course there is. The latter is human and the former (assuming you mean “more intelligent non-human mammals”) is not. It is very easy to tell the difference and there are no doubtful cases.
There are no comparably clear lines to separate human fetuses, infants, children, and adults.
It’s good to note the obvious oversight in the grandparent’s claim. That said, a charitable reading of that claim (operationalized for your convenience) is that there does not exist a prediction rule that takes a fairly detailed description of a being’s* behavior in some task requiring intelligence and outputs a high accuracy classification.
*selected from a known mutually exclusive and exhaustive list of possibilities limited to human infants and adult intelligent mammals.
To look for one presumes, as does Dallas, that the division between entities with rights and entities without is to be drawn in terms of current mental capability. Someone in dreamless sleep currently has less mental capability than an awake baby, or, I guess, a soon-to-be-born one. The argument for turning off Terri Schiavo’s life support was that she had no possibility of regaining any mental function, not that she currently had none.
Why are you replying to me instead of Dallas? I’m not defending the argument. I just noticed that more than one person was distracted by the obvious oversight, so I zombified Dallas’s claim as best as I was able.