Do you have a problem with the idea that animals have continuous “characters” since birth? Because that gets rid of the troublesome word “personality.”
The word ‘personality’ is troublesome when applied to animals. I feel like a lot of the opposition to abortion and early infanticide can be sourced from the phrase “unique personality”. If you say a baby has personality, you are pre-supposing they are a person, which triggers the ingrained right-to-live reflex. Not questioning the right-to-live reflex at all; I think it’s a marvelous thing.
Whatever people mean when they say an animal has personality other than personality—I will use your term character, it seems to capture the essence of the non-anthropomorphic ideas people have about animals and photocopiers. The unique character of a pet animal isn’t a strong argument for its right to live, because pets with ailments regularly get put down when the cost for treatment gets into four digits. Also, an animal’s character is not a good argument against eating it, because >95% of the world is not vegetarian or vegan.
So I feel like there is some meaning-smuggling going on. The assertion is we shouldn’t kill babies because they have personality like us, and the argument holding it up is that they have personality like animals do.
So I feel like there is some meaning-smuggling going on. The assertion is we shouldn’t kill babies because they have personality like us, and the argument holding it up is that they have personality like animals do.
I agree with you that character isn’t what gives an entity a right to life. But I don’t think that’s my argument.
To turn a dog into a person you have to do a lot of work. Turning a copier into a person is similarly difficult. But to turn a baby into a person, you just have to wait a few years. It’s automatic, so long as you provide it with sufficient fuel.
If we say “We care deeply about protecting butterflies because they are beautiful, but don’t care at all about protecting caterpillars because they are ugly” then others have a strong reason to question how much we actually care about protecting butterflies (or know about the world), because there are no butterflies that weren’t caterpillars.
And so even though the caterpillar has none of the outward qualities that make us care about butterflies, our feelings about butterflies should extend to them, because they are butterflies, just not yet. But note that we don’t extend those feelings to nectar and leaves and air, even though butterflies are composed of the things that they eat and breathe and cannot exist without them, because nectar and leaves and air are fungible and caterpillars are not.
Your primary argument is “caterpillars are ugly,” and I agree with that. My claim is that argument is insufficient to reach the conclusion that we should not protect caterpillars: you have to show that caterpillars are not butterflies, and that must be done in such a way that is consistent with the statement “I care about protecting butterflies.”
Similarly, we care about persons, and because we do that we should care about babies that turn into persons, even if they aren’t persons yet, because those babies are not fungible. When I ask the question “when did I awaken as a person with a mind?” I might point to my earliest memories or when I began thinking independently or some other milestone- but when I ask the question “when did I begin as a continuous being?” there seems to be one obvious answer, and it’s when my DNA was assembled for the first time.
If your standard is that something has to be sapient right now in order for it to have any protection, that opens the door to a number of horrors. Can someone kill a sleeping human without moral culpability because while asleep a human only has character, not personality? What about if that human has suffered irreparable necrosis of most brain tissue? If your answers for those differed, it’s probably because those represent very different expectations about the future- the sleeping human will probably awaken shortly and resume being a person, but a human with a necrotic brain probably doesn’t have any personhood left in them. And so to treat a baby like a human with a necrotic brain is to ignore the important thing that makes us value sleeping humans- the future.
But to turn a baby into a person, you just have to wait a few years. It’s automatic, so long as you provide it with sufficient fuel.
It takes a hell of lot more than sufficient food to get a person out of a baby. If you do that, at best you end up with a feral child. Human certainly, but only questionably a person. More likely you end up with dead baby from any of a number of untreated diseases. We are social animals. Without company, even those of us that are fully formed often go mad.
Your argument suggests that the existence of an ‘uplift box’ that turns dogs into people would give people-rights to dogs, as the process would have been automated. To the extent that turning a baby into a person is automated, it doesn’t mean that any less work is done—it just means that the work has been done by natural selection rather than human ingenuity. So I think the ‘work needed’ measure of how beings of potential value inherit value is somewhat flawed, the flaw coming from thinking about one particular dog and the work needed to raise it to human status, while neglecting the next billion dogs.
As to the caterpillar/butterfly analogy: if we agree that we value butterflies for their beauty, it’s not at all obvious that we shouldn’t breed them for their beauty. Analogously, with limited parental resources, why should humans not produce an excess of babies (or heterogenous fetuses, for that matter) and select based on the predicted characteristics of the adult? Note that in this case we raise our expected utility, whereas in the case of killing a sleeping human we most definitely lower it.
EDIT: I should make my own position clear on this. I vigorously oppose infanticide based in large part on the great psychological and social harm it inflicts. I have basically no problem with zygote selection.
Your argument suggests that the existence of an ‘uplift box’ that turns dogs into people would give people-rights to dogs, as the process would have been automated.
I’m not terribly concerned about that case, and I think my framework handles it pretty gracefully. If dogs have unique characters and can become people in a non-fungible way just like babies have unique characters and can become people in a non-fungible way, then dogs deserve baby rights.
But there’s an underlying issue that highlights: whether our ethics are focused on conservation or, for lack of a better word, quality. A conservation-centered ethic sees people as irreplaceable and expensive; a quality-centered ethic sees people as replaceable. If you can make a million unique sapient simulated people at the push of a button, then the conservationalist ethic simply doesn’t seem appropriate- they’re eminently replacable, and so they’ve become fungible in the way I suggest sperm are, even though they’re cognizant enough to be people. Likewise, by the time the ability exists to turn a dog into a person, it’s not clear that personhood will be sufficient to grant the rights that it does now.
As to the caterpillar/butterfly analogy: if we agree that we value butterflies for their beauty, it’s not at all obvious that we shouldn’t breed them for their beauty. Analogously, with limited parental resources, why should humans not produce an excess of babies (or heterogenous fetuses, for that matter) and select based on the predicted characteristics of the adult?
Note that while butterflies are valuable because of their beauty, people have rights because of their uniqueness/irreplaceability. I don’t see anything wrong with designer babies or human genetic engineering; I just have a moderate preference for gamete selection over zygote selection, and think that if we have reached a point where we are willing to kill undesirable babies we will probably also have reached a point where we are willing to kill undesirable adults, as eroding one protection appears like it will erode the other.
but when I ask the question “when did I begin as a continuous being?” there seems to be one obvious answer, and it’s when my DNA was assembled for the first time.
Is your answer any different for identical twins, who of course only separate after fertilization? Conjoined twins that don’t fully separate? How about chimeras? (Yes, there have been documented human examples.)
Is your answer any different for identical twins, who of course only separate after fertilization? How about chimeras?
Yes; if I had a twin, my obvious answer would be when I separated from my brother. Were I a chimera, I suspect I would have researched the issue more extensively than I have now, but at my present level of understanding it still seems like there’s a discontinuous event- when the cells fuse together to form one organism.
It seems to me that you can find a discontinuous event for most person precursors, and the discontinuity is important for that question (because the components were continuous beforehand, and the composite is continuous afterwards). The main counterexample I can think of is clones- if I create a thousand copies of my DNA and implant them in embryos scrubbed of DNA, then they seem fungible in a way that a thousand unique fertilized embryos are not. And then, because they are fungible, I would ascribe to the group of them the specialness of a single fertilized embryo, and would only have qualms about destroying the last one (or perhaps last few). Note that as soon as they begin to develop, they begin to lose their fungibility (and we could even quantify that level of fungibility/uniqueness), and could eventually become unique people (that share the same genes).
Likewise, the position “every sperm is sacred” seems mistaken because sperm are by nature fungible (and beyond that, we can complain about the word sacred).
Likewise, the position “every sperm is sacred” seems mistaken because sperm are by nature fungible (and beyond that, we can complain about the word sacred).
In what way are sperm fungible? There is usually a wide variety of difference between two random ones from the same person. After all, half the genetic variability of two siblings is due to the difference in sperm.
It’s true that differences are such that we can’t easily tell much difference between any two sperm (of the same sex and chromosome number) -- but the same is true of a just fertilized zygote or just divided embryo, which you appear to count as non-fungible when you say that “I can’t think of a situation where I would be willing to accept the death/murder of a fetus or infant where I wouldn’t be willing to accept the death/murder of an adult.”
It seems that “fungibility” needs to be treated as a continuum. I think that just about all reasonable criteria for deciding this turn out on closer inspection to be fairly continuous.
It seems that “fungibility” needs to be treated as a continuum.
Agreed.
In what way are sperm fungible?
It mostly seems that way because they’re massively overproduced, but you are right to question that.
I think I’m going to turn to my claim about future development as important in identifying sperm as more fungible and fertilized eggs and beyond as less fungible, but I agree that claim is weaker than I thought it was when I made it.
Excellent point. I can even see in where I went wrong; I had an opaque concept in mind that “human lives are valuable” and was treating the baby as fungible in the sense that it doesn’t appear to be a human now, so it isn’t instrinsically valuable and can be replaced with another baby, later, at no loss the potential futures.
The word ‘personality’ is troublesome when applied to animals. I feel like a lot of the opposition to abortion and early infanticide can be sourced from the phrase “unique personality”. If you say a baby has personality, you are pre-supposing they are a person, which triggers the ingrained right-to-live reflex. Not questioning the right-to-live reflex at all; I think it’s a marvelous thing.
Whatever people mean when they say an animal has personality other than personality—I will use your term character, it seems to capture the essence of the non-anthropomorphic ideas people have about animals and photocopiers. The unique character of a pet animal isn’t a strong argument for its right to live, because pets with ailments regularly get put down when the cost for treatment gets into four digits. Also, an animal’s character is not a good argument against eating it, because >95% of the world is not vegetarian or vegan.
So I feel like there is some meaning-smuggling going on. The assertion is we shouldn’t kill babies because they have personality like us, and the argument holding it up is that they have personality like animals do.
I agree with you that character isn’t what gives an entity a right to life. But I don’t think that’s my argument.
To turn a dog into a person you have to do a lot of work. Turning a copier into a person is similarly difficult. But to turn a baby into a person, you just have to wait a few years. It’s automatic, so long as you provide it with sufficient fuel.
If we say “We care deeply about protecting butterflies because they are beautiful, but don’t care at all about protecting caterpillars because they are ugly” then others have a strong reason to question how much we actually care about protecting butterflies (or know about the world), because there are no butterflies that weren’t caterpillars.
And so even though the caterpillar has none of the outward qualities that make us care about butterflies, our feelings about butterflies should extend to them, because they are butterflies, just not yet. But note that we don’t extend those feelings to nectar and leaves and air, even though butterflies are composed of the things that they eat and breathe and cannot exist without them, because nectar and leaves and air are fungible and caterpillars are not.
Your primary argument is “caterpillars are ugly,” and I agree with that. My claim is that argument is insufficient to reach the conclusion that we should not protect caterpillars: you have to show that caterpillars are not butterflies, and that must be done in such a way that is consistent with the statement “I care about protecting butterflies.”
Similarly, we care about persons, and because we do that we should care about babies that turn into persons, even if they aren’t persons yet, because those babies are not fungible. When I ask the question “when did I awaken as a person with a mind?” I might point to my earliest memories or when I began thinking independently or some other milestone- but when I ask the question “when did I begin as a continuous being?” there seems to be one obvious answer, and it’s when my DNA was assembled for the first time.
If your standard is that something has to be sapient right now in order for it to have any protection, that opens the door to a number of horrors. Can someone kill a sleeping human without moral culpability because while asleep a human only has character, not personality? What about if that human has suffered irreparable necrosis of most brain tissue? If your answers for those differed, it’s probably because those represent very different expectations about the future- the sleeping human will probably awaken shortly and resume being a person, but a human with a necrotic brain probably doesn’t have any personhood left in them. And so to treat a baby like a human with a necrotic brain is to ignore the important thing that makes us value sleeping humans- the future.
It takes a hell of lot more than sufficient food to get a person out of a baby. If you do that, at best you end up with a feral child. Human certainly, but only questionably a person. More likely you end up with dead baby from any of a number of untreated diseases. We are social animals. Without company, even those of us that are fully formed often go mad.
I am willing to call interaction with people ‘fuel’; I chose that delightfully stretchy word on purpose.
Your argument suggests that the existence of an ‘uplift box’ that turns dogs into people would give people-rights to dogs, as the process would have been automated. To the extent that turning a baby into a person is automated, it doesn’t mean that any less work is done—it just means that the work has been done by natural selection rather than human ingenuity. So I think the ‘work needed’ measure of how beings of potential value inherit value is somewhat flawed, the flaw coming from thinking about one particular dog and the work needed to raise it to human status, while neglecting the next billion dogs.
As to the caterpillar/butterfly analogy: if we agree that we value butterflies for their beauty, it’s not at all obvious that we shouldn’t breed them for their beauty. Analogously, with limited parental resources, why should humans not produce an excess of babies (or heterogenous fetuses, for that matter) and select based on the predicted characteristics of the adult? Note that in this case we raise our expected utility, whereas in the case of killing a sleeping human we most definitely lower it.
EDIT: I should make my own position clear on this. I vigorously oppose infanticide based in large part on the great psychological and social harm it inflicts. I have basically no problem with zygote selection.
I’m not terribly concerned about that case, and I think my framework handles it pretty gracefully. If dogs have unique characters and can become people in a non-fungible way just like babies have unique characters and can become people in a non-fungible way, then dogs deserve baby rights.
But there’s an underlying issue that highlights: whether our ethics are focused on conservation or, for lack of a better word, quality. A conservation-centered ethic sees people as irreplaceable and expensive; a quality-centered ethic sees people as replaceable. If you can make a million unique sapient simulated people at the push of a button, then the conservationalist ethic simply doesn’t seem appropriate- they’re eminently replacable, and so they’ve become fungible in the way I suggest sperm are, even though they’re cognizant enough to be people. Likewise, by the time the ability exists to turn a dog into a person, it’s not clear that personhood will be sufficient to grant the rights that it does now.
Note that while butterflies are valuable because of their beauty, people have rights because of their uniqueness/irreplaceability. I don’t see anything wrong with designer babies or human genetic engineering; I just have a moderate preference for gamete selection over zygote selection, and think that if we have reached a point where we are willing to kill undesirable babies we will probably also have reached a point where we are willing to kill undesirable adults, as eroding one protection appears like it will erode the other.
Is your answer any different for identical twins, who of course only separate after fertilization? Conjoined twins that don’t fully separate? How about chimeras? (Yes, there have been documented human examples.)
Yes; if I had a twin, my obvious answer would be when I separated from my brother. Were I a chimera, I suspect I would have researched the issue more extensively than I have now, but at my present level of understanding it still seems like there’s a discontinuous event- when the cells fuse together to form one organism.
It seems to me that you can find a discontinuous event for most person precursors, and the discontinuity is important for that question (because the components were continuous beforehand, and the composite is continuous afterwards). The main counterexample I can think of is clones- if I create a thousand copies of my DNA and implant them in embryos scrubbed of DNA, then they seem fungible in a way that a thousand unique fertilized embryos are not. And then, because they are fungible, I would ascribe to the group of them the specialness of a single fertilized embryo, and would only have qualms about destroying the last one (or perhaps last few). Note that as soon as they begin to develop, they begin to lose their fungibility (and we could even quantify that level of fungibility/uniqueness), and could eventually become unique people (that share the same genes).
Likewise, the position “every sperm is sacred” seems mistaken because sperm are by nature fungible (and beyond that, we can complain about the word sacred).
In what way are sperm fungible? There is usually a wide variety of difference between two random ones from the same person. After all, half the genetic variability of two siblings is due to the difference in sperm.
It’s true that differences are such that we can’t easily tell much difference between any two sperm (of the same sex and chromosome number) -- but the same is true of a just fertilized zygote or just divided embryo, which you appear to count as non-fungible when you say that “I can’t think of a situation where I would be willing to accept the death/murder of a fetus or infant where I wouldn’t be willing to accept the death/murder of an adult.”
It seems that “fungibility” needs to be treated as a continuum. I think that just about all reasonable criteria for deciding this turn out on closer inspection to be fairly continuous.
Agreed.
It mostly seems that way because they’re massively overproduced, but you are right to question that.
I think I’m going to turn to my claim about future development as important in identifying sperm as more fungible and fertilized eggs and beyond as less fungible, but I agree that claim is weaker than I thought it was when I made it.
I have a friend who’s a chimera. I used her as an example for this sort of question when I TA’ed intro ethics and my students found her fascinating.
Awesome. Having “near” examples can be quite handy in helping people take hypotheticals seriously.
Excellent point. I can even see in where I went wrong; I had an opaque concept in mind that “human lives are valuable” and was treating the baby as fungible in the sense that it doesn’t appear to be a human now, so it isn’t instrinsically valuable and can be replaced with another baby, later, at no loss the potential futures.