Procacious, I still don’t get WHY you believe what you do about human life’s value(or lack thereof).
How did you develop this view?
Then by that same idea, since humans are far more plentiful than dogs, we could abort half of all pregnancies, regardless of their stage of development and it would still be okay, given the current overpopulation. I am not attacking abortion, I am actually for it. Just trying to point out the stipulations of your post. Don’t kill me! I am the equivalent of a kick-ass seeing eye dog anyway! 
All things die and nothing that those things do in their lifetimes ever makes a permenant difference. If we nuked the entire planet, after a few hundred thousand years (or maybe a few billion, who knows) the world would be fine again. New life would have evolved in place of us and no one would care the that nuking ever took place. Nothing seems to be of lasting importance, humans included. Until I see proof otherwise, that is my view.
That would work well for me. I am of the opinion there are far too many humans anyway. Of all of natures species we seem to be the most destructive. If I could pick one species to eradicate, we would be it.
But why does how long something lasts have any influence on its value or importance? Since no thing lasts forever, do you believe that no thing has any value, or is value simply a function of how long something lasts? (The third alternative is that how long something lasts is not intrinsically relevant to it’s worth.)
Have you read any DeSade Procacious? Sounds like he’s your kindred spirit. You and Jeremy’s Evil Twin should have a talk.
And by the way
bolding mine. Are you trying to be the dramatic goth I think you’re being or are you slyly admitting to murder here.
just curious.
jarbaby
The puppy has the most nutritonal value of the three.
Sua
My real problem is that I have not yet been able to find any worthy measure of a being’s value. It isn’t that I have not tried, it is that I have not come to the same conclusions as others. I do not believe in any sort of religious beings (or afterlife) and never bought the argument that beings automatically have value even though that value cannot be identified. So instead, I try to look for individual characteristics and assign a value to them. The problem is, the bigger the picture, the less value each characteristic has. As I try to picture the whole world over time and assign value to each thing I keep noticing that each species will most likely die off eventually, thus making it hard to assign permanent value. It would seem that the smallest of nature’s creatures would have the most value since they give birth to new species. Many species that have gone “extinct” during the history of the world did not actually die out so much as evolve into a new species. Humans probably won’t do that. When we go extinct it will probably be due to some great disaster (possibly of our own making) and at that point nothing we ever did will matter. Sure the buildings we created will still be there, but life will eventually break them down over time until only the fossils show any evidence that we ever existed. At that time, does it really matter if we cured cancer? No. It appears that none of our great feats will have had any lasting purpose, which means that not only will our actions have had no value, but the people that partook in those actions have no lasting value as well. A depressing conclusion I suppose, but I have not yet seen a reason to assign anything but the most temporary of value to any living thing and like currency from a country that may go bankrupt at any moment, the fact that the value is so temporary makes what value it has seem like even less.
I have not read any DeSade, but perhaps I will write some someday 
Neither. To admit such a thing, even in a sly manner, would be foolish. So many criminals get caught because of the urge they have to share their crimes with others. But I suppose that is what jails are for…to weed the stupid and foolish criminals out of society so that the market is open for the best of the best. 
It is, I think, time to end this.
Peace,
mangeorge
Procacious wrote:
And slightly less right after menstruation.
If you reduce a top-of-the-line laptop computer to its component elements, you’d get a few bucks worth of carbon, hydrogen, silicon, iron, and copper. Does this mean a top-of-the-line laptop computer is worth only a few bucks? No. The value of a computer is not in the elements it’s made of, but in how those elements are put together.
Same goes for a human.
That is most certainly the case. I could assign value based on how much work a person is capable of doing in his/her remaining years (making the young more valuable than the old) or the amount of knowledge in his/her head (making the old more valuable than the young), or some combination thereof. Once they die however, they are like a broken laptop, only worth the sum of their individual parts.
The morning after pill is not an abortion pill. It merely stops an egg from being released. If you take it right after the sexual encounter you can cut your chances of pregnancy by 75%, by the fourth day it’s relatively useless. The morning after pill may prevent implantation, but no more than the pregnancy pill. They are the same thing except for the dosage.
IMHO, I could care less if it prevents implantation. I would actually be in favor of a pill that would prevent implantation if taken after a sexual encounter.
Mercutio wrote:
I’d never heard of the conventional birth-control pill being referred to as “the pregnancy pill.” That sounds more like a fertility drug!
(Bolding mine)
Are you saying that happiness and joy don’t exist at all or that it is not possible to attain them 24/7?
If happiness and joy don’t exist at all, then I have to disagree because I have felt these emotions. Friends and family seem to have these emotions. The words exist in our language because they’re describing actual emotions.
If you’re saying that it is not possible to attain them 24/7 then I agree with the statement, not with the conclusion. Emotions are never static but they constanly flucuate. Happiness and joy should not be expected to last forever. By that token, misery shouldn’t last 24/7 either.
I don’t believe people live in misery. Their lives are shaped by their outlook on life whether positive or negative. It is characterized by a state of peace or unrest, contentedness or uncontentednees, hope or lack of hope. Their outlook on life influences emotions and how they view the world around them. A negative outlook generally allows someone to see more negatives in the world while a positive one allows someone to see more good things. We all wear tinted glasses, it just matters what pair we put on.
As far as the OP is concerned, Mahaloth, you seem to be implying an extrinsic moral worth to the puppy and amoeba. It depends on our feelings not an intrinsic value. The emotional response we recieve directly correlates to its moral worth. Amoebas get no positive emotional responses so they are okay to kill while puppy dogs elicit a strong emotional response.
Secondly, the majority’s feelings also weigh in on the matter to determine its worthiness. If the majority feels it is not okay to kill fetuses, then it would be wrong. There is no intrinsic reason for not killing the fetus in and of itself. Essentially, it becomes a task of using a moral calculator and determining how everyone feels on the issue to determine its rightness.
I don’t think you want to go there because you seem to be looking for something more intrinsic in the fetus. Our feelings towards the death of said object is not a compelling enough of an argument.
I think the real question has become this:
- How can we tell which living things are morally acceptable to kill and which ones aren’t?
There are three basic views.
One, you can kill everything(thanks, Procacious. I know, I know, you wouldn’t kill nearly extinct things.)
Two, you can’t kill anything at all. Ever. Including bacteria and amoeba.
Three(and most encompassing), you can kill some things and not others.
So what is the way of telling?
I think the real question has become this:
- How can we tell which living things are morally acceptable to kill and which ones aren’t?
There are three basic views.
One, you can kill everything(thanks, Procacious. I know, I know, you wouldn’t kill nearly extinct things.)
Two, you can’t kill anything at all. Ever. Including bacteria and amoeba.
Three(and most encompassing), you can kill some things and not others.
So what is the way of telling?
I think the real question has become this:
- How can we tell which living things are morally acceptable to kill and which ones aren’t?
There are three basic views.
One, you can kill everything(thanks, Procacious. I know, I know, you wouldn’t kill nearly extinct things.)
Two, you can’t kill anything at all. Ever. Including bacteria and amoeba.
Three(and most encompassing), you can kill some things and not others.
So what is the way of telling?
They do exist, but I question how many people are even able to attain them 1/7 much less 24/7. Since I consider being dead completely neutral (the same status I grant dreamless sleep) the question of whether life is better than death is a question of whether you are happy more often than not (so at least half of all waking hours).
I wanted to point out just how accurate the last sentence was. This probably best sums up how moral worth is assigned. Now whether or not moral worth has any real value is a matter of opinion, but it makes the sentence no less insightful.
Well, I don’t want to say that I would never kill nearly extinct things. I like to keep my options open (but I do appreciate your effort to avoid offending me).
Nice summary Mahaloth, this is the essence of my previous post. Indeed what rules/ethics/evidence do we have to help us in deciding what critters are morally considerable? Some further food for thought…
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Value is a function of scarcity and as a result, those things there are fewer of carry more moral value. Thus, spotted owls become cute fluffy symbols of old growth forests, while barn owls are just another critter with wings.
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Not killing anything ever presupposes that life itself is the measure of moral worth. As such, anything that possesses life (plants and animals included) likewise possesses moral worth. (Anyone interested in this perspective might do well to read Paul Taylor’s *The Ethics of Respect for Nature *, which first appeared in the Journal Environmental Ethics in 1981).
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Critters in Group A are not okay to kill, but critters in Group B are okay to kill. For the sake of argument, humans and other mammals might be in Group A, while amoeba, bacteria, and insectavores are in Group B. A troubling Group C might include those things that we have difficulty figuring out: reptiles, fish, earthworms.
The point made by Wolverine is well taken: there most certainly does exist a somewhat powerful correlation between the moral value we assign to some critters and the emotional response these critters evoke in us. Of course this begs the question, does the emotional response give rise to the moral value, or does the fact that some critter has moral value then result in an emotional response? Note the latter option again assumes some degree of moral realism–intrinsic worth, which is most definately a fuzzy area for most folks.
Two final things to consider: the social construction of nature/wildlife, and the biophilia hypothesis.
The social construction of nature/wildlife refers to our tendency to assign meaning and value to otherwise neutral entities. For example, what comes to mind when you think of a pencil? Probably not much aside from a physical description of that object. However, what comes to mind when you think of a grizzly bear? For many people, there is a measurable (through galvanic skin response) result of thinking about this animal. We have images/meanings/values of the grizzly bear beyond the biological information of its home range, breeding habits, nutritional requirements, etc. A grizzly bear might symbolize wilderness, fear, freedom, the wild west, or any number of other things. In the final analysis though, a pencil is just a pencil, but a grizzly bear is something more.
The biophilia hypothesis is a position advanced by renowned Harvard biologist, E. O. Wilson that describes the existence of a genetic predisposition to affiliate with life. Stated another way, we (humans) are hardwired to see and experience nature. Saying something like, “It’s too nice a day to be inside” is indictative of this hypothesis. So if the biophilia hypothesis is true, then we would be predisposed to surround ourselves with images or the actual presence of living things. However, there is a limitation to this idea–we are only predisposed to affiliate with those aspects of nature that have been conducive to human survival over the thousands and thousands of years of our history. Thus, we like the big furry animals because they provide sustinance in terms of food, clothing and materials for tools. We are not, however, drawn to those critters that have not served us well in our evolution: snakes, spiders, insects, fish (for the most part). Bacteria and amoeba were unknown to our ancestors and thus presently play no discernable role in how we think of them (read: morally neutral).
jharding wrote “we are only predisposed to affiliate with those aspects of nature that have been conducive to human survival over the thousands and thousands of years of our history. Thus, we like the big furry animals because they provide sustinance in terms of food, clothing and materials for tools. We are not, however, drawn to those critters that have not served us well in our evolution: snakes, spiders, insects, fish (for the most part). Bacteria and amoeba were unknown to our ancestors and thus presently play no discernable role in how we think of them (read: morally neutral).”
Interesting hypothesis from the doctor. Looking at it from that point of view, the fetus would have to be valued as high or higher than any other animal. W
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We have always known about them(even a caveman could deduce a little person is developing in there).
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They are they key to our survival as a species.
If this connects to morality, killing fetuses wouldn’t just be wrong. It would be the most wrong thing one could do.
I think the proper approach is to ask, “For any given creature, what is the proper amount to kill?”
This is my moral view:
There is no creature it is acceptable to drive to extinction.
Even a high population can be overkilled (e.g., the passenger pigeon).
No creature is of infinite and inviolable value as an individual–but any genotype (race/subspecies/“kind”) should be treated as having an inalienable right to exist.
By attempting to maintain races & ecologies rather than individuals, we do a better job of preserving–or conservation, as we used to call it.
It’s a matter of stewardship of resources.