You’re correct about the heading, but I think that it’s intended to signify that in that particular section he’s speaking specifically about euthanasia as it might apply to infants, rather than the more general topic of euthanasia the whole article is about. Hence it’s infanticide and non-voluntary euthanasia; it’s covering the topic as it pertains to infants and other beings who cannot by their nature give informed consent, rather than just infanticide in general.
As to whether he claims infants don’t possess those rights; i’m unconvinced. Given the tone of Singer’s points, I would not be suprised if he did, unambiguously, say that infants have zero rights. But i’m unable to find it. He certainly does mention the subject, but it always seems to be in the context of either a comparison or under additional details. As I say, it might be that i’ve just missed the parts you’ve seen.
As I see it, he is discussing euthanasia with regards to newborns and trying to justify infanticide in that form. His justification addresses the moral standing of newborns and determines that they do not have moral standing of their own to preclude the termination. He makes reference to previous chapters discussing the topic, which seem to lay out his defense of the position that infants have zero rights. Also, he makes reference to previous discussion where he tries to preclude rampant infanticide on the grounds of utilitarianism - the principle of “most good” or “least pain” or whatever. Thus, random killing of newborns is not acceptable, not because newborns have any moral standing, but because it is pointless and causes pain to the parent’s, which do have moral standing. However, specific situations may be acceptable for infanticide where the balance of “pain” is lesser to terminate than to continue raising that child.
Of course, I don’t agree with his arguments of “replaceability” with regards to infants. Just because a set of parents may be wanting two children and see, for instance, early detection of some birth defect as grounds to abort and try again, doesn’t mean infants are seen as fungible. I’m also not certain I agree that newborns are not developed enough for them to have moral standing. I would have to study that argument in depth, and then do extensive study to understand better the states of development of fetuses and newborns. While that certainly is something I would expect an ethicist to delve into in trying to make a philosophical justification case, it is not something that I have the time or current inclination to pursue. Suffice it to say I am not convinced. Given that there is no policy matter under debate, I don’t have incentive to pursue the matter at this time.
It’s funny how people expect cites and facts where there’s none.
What kind of a fact does one expect that will change his/her opinion from “being pro killing newborns” to “being against killing newborns”. The axiom for any concluson should be “always vote for the life unless another life is in danger”. Even then nothing’s all that clear.
The whole thread is pretty bizzare and downright evil.
I do not think it is correct to treat the cited Singer piece as a statement of Singer’s beliefs on the one true moral theory. Singer is careful to argue from multiple different moral theories; in this case, he is arguing that infanticide can be justified on multiple moral theories. One of those is a theory of rights where " to have a right one must have the ability to desire that to which one has a right, so that to have a right to life one must be able to desire one’s own continued existence." And it seems true that, according to such a theory, infants do not have any rights.
As above, he may be unambiguous that, according to the above theory of rights given, infants have no rights, but I do not think he states, in that piece, that he thinks infants have no rights.
Given his preference for consequentialism, he would, in fact, probably say that there are no such things as rights, strictly speaking, and thus in particular infants don’t have rights. But while he would agree on that particular point, that is not what would justify infanticide as being permissible according to the moral theory he believes true.
Emphasis added. I think it’s a bit torturous to find that Singer sees a basis for an infant having the right to anything. I see no other reasonable reading of his position. He believes infanticide can be justified, and to the extent we provide the infant any protection, it’s in deference to the parents’ feelings, because he specifically excludes infants from the category of beings who can meaningfully possess the right to live.
No, he doesn’t specifically identify, say, the right to own property as another right infants lack. Does he need to? And I’m not getting at all your point that he’s advancing positions that he himself may not believe. I don’t see anything detached or arm’s-length about his argument. Not in this cite or anything else I’ve read attributed to him.
Is this addressed to me? I don’t think Singer thinks that infants have rights (which I said above), and I think Singer thinks that the position he is examining wrt rights entails that infants have no rights.
He is a consequentialist; as I say, if he says anywhere that he believes in rights at all, he must be speaking loosely. And I don’t think he so speaks in this book, because he examines positions that hold there are rights, strictly speaking. Aside from this, in that same section he talks about other positions, and how they justify infanticide. You even quote a part where he is doing so:
Here, as in the rights case, he is taking us through what a given position entails, namely the total view version of utilitarianism. What reading do you give of this section, given that he is talking about multiple positions?
I read each section as Singer offering further edification of a position that such things as infanticide are justifiable. One more way to look at why this would be okay, in other words.
Those multiple positions are only used as counterpoints, predicted responses that allow him to frame rebuttals from the position he is arguing. There is nothing unusual in that, and nothing that says he doesn’t hold the utilitarian position that he is arguing for, that infants have no rights, that infanticide as a form of euthanasia is valid, and that any reasons for not killing infants comes not from inherent rights of the infants themselves, but from other factors. There’s no reason do doubt that he actually holds his argued position.
To be clear; I don’t have any particular issue with people saying that Singer thinks that infanticide is unjustifiable. My issue is this harping on rights. If we care about what Singer thinks, then rights are not an issue, because he doesn’t believe in rights at all.
According to a utilitarian position, you and I have no rights. If we are treating Singer’s text as a statement of utilitarianism, then to point at the “infants have no rights” bit as important is not that interesting, that is just a normal feature of utilitarianism; rights are beside the point.
I don’t think that’s how he’s representing it here, even if he’s using terms like “rights” as a semantic convenience to make his point. He is specifically calling out that infants lack a right to live, and he must be doing so to make a particular point. And that point must be greater than providing an example of yet another area, like all areas, where he asserts that there are no rights simply because there are no such things in his view. Even if he uses the term loosely, he is assigning a right to live for entities that DO have certain mental capacities, the ones an infant lacks. I don’t think his utilitarian position changes the basic point, which is Singer would assert that we cannot rightly dismiss certain human entities’ right (or worthiness, or whatever) to live, and for others we can.
The point I would take him to be making is that even under this (reasonable) theory of rights, infants don’t have rights. So that when he makes the point about rights, it is not his own position that he is talking about. (But he may well be saying that this other position, the rights theory position, agrees with his position (on infanticide.))
As above, I think that he is saying that, under a certain theory (or if we believe in rights), then infants may lack rights while some non-infants may have rights. I do not think he is speaking loosely; this book is presented as a textbook on ethics, so while he may argue for various positions, and support various positions (as philosophy textbooks often do), I don’t think he will be loose with important terminology.
This could well be true, and I believe it is at least this. His position on infant’s “rights” (sorry, can’t think of another way to phrase it) is pretty well known (to the extent anything is well-known in the world of philosophy).
Right, so I agree with the larger point that some professional ethicists think that infanticide is sometimes justified. My point about rights, given the broader context, might have been pedantic.
The larger point still interests me, in that I wonder how pro-choice people who hold the following can justify setting public policy that restricts infanticide for those who believe it can be justified:[ul][li]No entity deserves protection or a right to live that lacks certain mental functions, and I set that line at some point before birth. Therefore abortion is justified.[*]Those who disagree have no business imposing their moral restrictions on those of us who believe the first point. Let us all make our own moral choices.[/ul]I am truly interested, and there’s no lack of such people on this board. Those who say abortion is justified as a matter of geography (the mother gets to decide all matters impacting her body) have no such challenge, I don’t think.[/li]
What would be the distinction to counter the statement, “I believe infantcide is justified because of logical syllogism X. If you disagree with X, fine. Don’t kill your infants. But mind your own business as it relates to mine.” Where, if anywhere, does the analogy fail? It seems difficult to get people to accept the question at all because of what seemed to be a pretty broad belief in this thread that it is simply axiomatic to all of us that infanticide is always wrong. Now that we know that is not the case, what is the response to someone truly proposing such a public policy? (Not that anyone is.) There may be an obvious answer that I lack the imagination to envision.
I’d think the argument to make there would be to show that there is some sort of objective difference in mental functioning between an infant that’s born and a fetus or embryo. I mean, if you’re making the argument, “No entity deserves protection or a right to live that lacks certain mental functions”, then you need a list of those mental functions that an entity has to have to deserve protection or a right to live, and that sets a pretty clear bright line.
“Does X have the following mental functions? If yes, then X deserves protection and has the right to live. If no, then X doesn’t.”
From our hypothetical person’s standpoint, abortion before point y is morally justified, but there’s no moral problem with somebody who sets point Y earlier. It’s not simply a matter of “Let us all make our own moral choices.” It’s "There’s a certain set of moral requirements, and then individuals are free, if they so choose, to be more rigorous. The person who eats meat may tolerate the existence of vegetarians while still finding cannibalism abhorrent. Although it’s morally permissible to eat meat, a person may choose not to for reasons of their own. Although it’s morally permissible to abort things that lack certain mental functions, a person may choose not to for reasons of their own.
I buy that (meaning, I see the logic of it). But that logic seems to abandon the “let’s all make our own choices” aspect I included. It would, for example, be consistent with the pro-life position, where the line is set much earlier and perhaps for different reasons. For a given pro-lifer “syllogism X” might have nothing to do with mental function, and they might feel just as strongly that their position is not one that can permit compromise. If that position can be dismissed, if can’t be on the basis of “mind your own business.”
Well, the pro-choice position isn’t strictly, “Everybody should mind their own business and decide for themselves where the line should be drawn between abortable or not abortable.” It’s “Fetuses (under a certain level of development) are not people and do not and should not have those rights that people do, and therefore abortion is morally permissible. While some people believe otherwise (the pro-life people), they are wrong in their believe. However, I’m willing to tolerate that belief, wrong though it may be, so long as it does not negatively effect me.”
It is, like I said, like my attitude about vegetarianism. I think that non-human animals don’t and shouldn’t have the same rights as people do, and therefore eating them is morally permissible. I think that those vegetarians who don’t eat meat because they think that animals have rights are wrong. But I’m perfectly willing to let them be wrong about that so long as they don’t do anything to stop me from eating it.
Okay, fair enough. But it does, IMO, provide enough room for a pro-lifer who bases his beliefs on different axioms to arrive at a similar conclusion–i.e., a fetus is self-evidently a human being deserving protection; you may not exercise your own beliefs beyond the line I draw in that I assert that in doing so you’d be harming another human being with the right to life. ISTM, one could disagree with the logic here, but could not dismiss it on “mind your own business” terms.
A “meat is murder” guy might, if it were in his power, make it illegal to eat meat, your own beliefs be damned. You couldn’t assert a “let’s all just follow our own consciences” defense alone. Right?
Clearly that’s what both pro-life and “meat is murder” people believe, and that’s pretty much what they advocate, isn’t it? Pro-life people DO believe that “a fetus is self-evidently a human being deserving protection; you may not exercise your own beliefs beyond the line I draw in that I assert that in doing so you’d be harming another human being with the right to life.”