Defense of the abortion/Discussion about Ethics

[Nonatheist]

Justification will be needed, it would also depend on if newborn doesn’t feel pain permanently or temporarily.

 

[Elf01]

Justification will be needed, it would also depend on if newborn doesn’t feel pain permanently or temporarily.

Why would the not feeling pain being a temporary state matter?

Also, what justifications would be needed in both cases?

 

[Nonatheist]

Killing a being that temporary doesn’t feel pain would be same as putting it to sleep before killing it.

If being was able to feel pain in the past, and will be able to feel pain in the future, it’s value status that feeling pain gives will not be diminished by a temporarily state of painlessness.

Necessary well being of more sentient being, or more beings of the same sentience.

 

[goout]

…

There is two different meanings of the word ‘human’.
You have biological one, as the human species(DNA and all that) and philosophical one (What does it mean to be a human).

Right we get your point.
I just want to know how George Floyd got on the wrong end of someone’s philosophy.
Can you explain that for us? Cause it seems that philosophy is hurting a lot of people.

Why don’t you just admit that your ideas are nothing but a naked appeal to power?
We are not really having a meaningful discussion in this thread.
You are simply asserting your right to decide who deserves recognition as a human being and who is worthy of having their neck stomped.

 

[Nonatheist]

Philosophy can and did hurt people in the past. So can lack of philosophy.
Cop who murdered George Floyd didn’t think much in that moment, there is no philosophy there, just the brutality of man,

l don’t think there is one true ethical philosophy that people must live by, even if there was l doubt humans could ever know of it.

My theory was based on how we as humans already view morality, l just wanted to rationalize it.

 

[Servant31]

So animals absolutely do have moral value. And torturing animals is completely wrong (I’m sure we agree there). The difference you might be referring to is do animals have a soul. In truth I don’t know how that works. We say all human life has God given value. This in no way means animals don’t have value. But if the choice is between an animal and a human, the human has a higher order. If a dog is attacking a child, it isn’t immoral to stop the dog using strong means, if that’s what is required. But one is certainly not to cause undue suffering to anything in Gods creation. We are called to look after creation, and treat it as well as possible. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen, but that’s the goal. Does that make sense?

 

[CaptainPrudeman]

People in India don’t harm cows for religious reasons, not moral ones.

The ancient religion of the region informed their moral and cultural values surrounding cattle. Don’t see how you countered my point there.

What you are saying right now is moral relativism, which l try to avoid.
We value dogs more, but by no objective factor does dog have more moral value than a chimpanzee.

Try to avoid it all you want, but that’s simply how humans determine the value of animals. It’s determined by how valuable they are to that society. Another good example is that of ancient Egypt. Their worship of cats put them on the same level as man or even gods, far above other animals of equal or greater sentience. If humans objectively valued animals based on sentience, how exactly did Egypt make cats so important without prior religious or cultural reasons?

Also, that could be used to justify humans murdering eachother.
If one human society deems slavery or cannibalism as valuable, than they would be justified in doing that.

No, not really. The utility value system only really works with non-human animals, not actions against others. The way we value other people I’d a different discussion entirely.

All I’m trying to say is that there are a fair few holes in your explanation of human value of animals. I have yet to see a counter-example to utility-based value though.

 

[jochoa]

Why would torturing be immoral?

Given the context of true friends, that is such an odd question to me. I would have never thought true friends would be friendly over torturing others.

Do you get together with friends and torture others for a good time?

Is it because God says so or?

To my knowledge, God doesn’t explicitly say “no torturing.” Now God does say “thou shall not murder,” and no torturing is implied when God says, “Charity is patient; is kind…Charity is greatest.”

 

[kapp19]

Dropping in on this thread again - seeing the lack of progress still (based mostly on a bad metaphysical foundation, which is the major obstacle… see the OP’s mocking of natural law above) - just to add that Thomas sees “cruelty to animals” as immoral only with respect to property violations and the potential harm to human psychology (which increases the more human-like an animal is), NOT as something “evil in itself.” See the SCG iii 112… (I suppose he would also include spite for creation - but that would have to be a rather explicit intention, meaning, “I want to destroy this thing simply because God made it.”) Just some food for thought…

Back to watching.

 

[MamaJewel]

l think pain,suffering and death are bad things, That’s set in stone. Now l look at who can experience pain and horrors of death the most.
That’s where sentience come into play. More more sentient being is, the more pain it experiences and it’s more aware of death.

I want to challenge you on this sentience perspective.
We know that children and adults synthesize pain and trauma differently.
Healthy adults (by age 30) have achieved physical maturity of their brains and are capable of processing pain and trauma in ways that a developing young adult and children are not.

As a result, pain and trauma have more profound, long lasting impacts on children and young adults whose brains are physically still developing.

Just because research has evidence that a developing embryo or fetus doesn’t have neural connections that allow it to perceive pain the way human beings in later stages of existence do, does not mean that they don’t experience pain.

Also, we don’t know what the human embryo or human fetus is thinking.

And honestly, we don’t have a way of currently proving that they absolutely are not thinking and feeling during the earliest stages of development. There maybe a collective form of thought that is occurring through chemo-bio-molecular processes as the junk DNA establishes the embryo as a human being. The developing embryo or fetus may actually feel pain or discomfort through chemo-bio-molecular processes since the nervous system isn’t complex yet.

We don’t know and the absence of evidence does not mean the evidence of absence.
Check out this 48 day old embryo in the video. It’s moving its hand/arm.
https://www.ehd.org/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=51

Btw, I had an 11 week old fetus that would not quit rubbing his face and the doctor told me that they love to rub their face at that age. Hmmm…

Do dead folks love to rub their face? Nah… they can’t do that.
But they can do this:

Are 'Flatliners' Really Conscious After Death?

What happens in the brain and body in the moments after cardiac arrest?

www.livescience.com

If we can be conscious after death, floating above doctors and recognizing what is going on, then why can’t we have a similar experience before birth as the nervous system starts up? We’re human. It’s in our code…HAR and DNA

 

[Nonatheist]

That’s maybe how they determined their values in the past, but l am looking for an objective theory for that.
Egypt didn’t have an ethical theory, they values cats and dung beetles purely because of their religion and culture.

Humans are animals, so for us to be above other animals, we have to have something other animals don’t. l can also point examples throughout history where animals were more valuable than other humans.
Examples from history don’t help us build something close to an objective ethical theory

 

[Nonatheist]

When l said them l asked for an explanation

 

[Nonatheist]

So, natural law theory ends up with.
Humans have all possible moral worth
Animals have none.
That’'s because of core idea that the world is designed for humans, so animals are just there to benefit humans.
l really doubt natural law theory would have a decent answer on this topic(animal moral value)

 

[kapp19]

Yes you have got it. The hierarchy of being… which points in the direction of the real issue here which is mainly metaphysical. You can wait for another 300 posts of nitpicking over your intuitive values-laden deontology or just skip it and see that this is the only real obstacle to what you are saying and is therefore the only way to get to the truth, which you stated you are looking for here.

 

[Nonatheist]

l based my thinking mostly on consequentialism.

What would be metaphysical problem with mine line of reasoning?

 

[Nonatheist]

That would be same as saying ‘we can’t ever know if trees feel pain’.
For something to feel pain(as we know in humans and most other animals), being has to have complex enough brain and nervousness system.
When l say pain l mean pain as suffering, some beings can know when they are hurt, without really suffering.

We do know that, thinking can be looked at through brain scans.

That does seem unlikely/impossible, l could say the similar thing ‘Pigs maybe have much higher sentience than humans do, they just dont show it’

‘Love to rub their faces’ don’t mean that they consciously do that.
It would mean ‘Usually they tend to do that’.

As for consciousness after death, there isn’t any real science on that topic.

 

[kapp19]

The part about measuring goodness within consequences is the starting point for realizing the scope of the problems in consequentialism… How do you determine what counts as good, and then how do you measure it, and compare non-commensurate goods?

So you have at once a metaphysical problem (how to define good), an epistemic problem (how to measure it - with limited knowledge of future contingents), and an ethical problem (choosing between non-commensurate goods) which leads back to the metaphysical problem we began with (how to define good).

Which version of consequentialism is closest to your view?

Here: Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

-K

 

[goout]

So, natural law theory ends up with.
Humans have all possible moral worth
Animals have none.
That’'s because of core idea that the world is designed for humans, so animals are just there to benefit humans.
l really doubt natural law theory would have a decent answer on this topic(animal moral value)

You don’t understand natural law.

 

[Nonatheist]

l would be closest to rule consequentialism.

l don’t think that ‘goodness’ can be defined. Same with justice. Those are the concepts exist as brute facts. There are things that are fundamentally good, such as: Life, freedom and well being.

With that in mind, it’s not hard to logically measure it.

l don’t see a problem there, we ought to choose the action which is more good(produces more goodness)

 

[Nonatheist]

Natural law is very human centric idea.
It states that humans ought to act according to their nature, that nature fundamentally doesn’t include the life of non-human beings.