Do you consider young children and very low-intelligence people to be morally-relevant?
(If—in the case of children—you consider potential for later development to be a key factor, we can instead discuss only children who have terminal illnesses.)
Long answer: When I read Peter Singer, what I took away was not, as many people here apparently did, that we should value animals; what I took away is that we should not value fetuses, newborns, and infants (to a certain age, somewhere between 0 and 2 years [1]). That is, I think the cutoff for moral relevant is somewhere above, say, cats, dogs, newborns… where exactly? I’m not sure.
Humans who have a general intelligence so low that they are incapable of thinking about themselves as conscious individuals are also, in my view, not morally relevant. I don’t know whether such humans exist (most people with Down syndrome don’t quite seem to fit that criterion, for instance).
There are many caveats and edge cases, for instance: what if the low-intelligence condition is temporary, and will repair itself with time? Then I think we should consider the wishes of the self that the person was before the impairment, and the rights of their future, non-impaired, selves. But what if the impairment can be repaired using medical technology? Same deal. What if it can’t? Then I would consider this person morally irrelevant. What if the person was of extremely low intelligence, and had always been so, but we could apply some medical intervention to raise their intelligence to at least normal human level? I would consider that act morally equivalent to creating a new sapient being (whether that’s good or bad is a separate question).
So: it’s complicated. But to answer practical questions: I don’t consider infanticide the moral equivalent of murder (although it’s reasonable to outlaw it anyway, as birth is good Schelling point, but the penalty should surely be nowhere near as harsh as for killing an adult or older child). The rights of low-intelligence people is a harder issue partly because there are no obvious cutoffs or metrics.
I hope that answers your question; if not, I’ll be happy to elaborate further.
Do you consider young children and very low-intelligence people to be morally-relevant?
(If—in the case of children—you consider potential for later development to be a key factor, we can instead discuss only children who have terminal illnesses.)
Good question. Short answer: no.
Long answer: When I read Peter Singer, what I took away was not, as many people here apparently did, that we should value animals; what I took away is that we should not value fetuses, newborns, and infants (to a certain age, somewhere between 0 and 2 years [1]). That is, I think the cutoff for moral relevant is somewhere above, say, cats, dogs, newborns… where exactly? I’m not sure.
Humans who have a general intelligence so low that they are incapable of thinking about themselves as conscious individuals are also, in my view, not morally relevant. I don’t know whether such humans exist (most people with Down syndrome don’t quite seem to fit that criterion, for instance).
There are many caveats and edge cases, for instance: what if the low-intelligence condition is temporary, and will repair itself with time? Then I think we should consider the wishes of the self that the person was before the impairment, and the rights of their future, non-impaired, selves. But what if the impairment can be repaired using medical technology? Same deal. What if it can’t? Then I would consider this person morally irrelevant. What if the person was of extremely low intelligence, and had always been so, but we could apply some medical intervention to raise their intelligence to at least normal human level? I would consider that act morally equivalent to creating a new sapient being (whether that’s good or bad is a separate question).
So: it’s complicated. But to answer practical questions: I don’t consider infanticide the moral equivalent of murder (although it’s reasonable to outlaw it anyway, as birth is good Schelling point, but the penalty should surely be nowhere near as harsh as for killing an adult or older child). The rights of low-intelligence people is a harder issue partly because there are no obvious cutoffs or metrics.
I hope that answers your question; if not, I’ll be happy to elaborate further.