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[Pnx]

Sorry to lag behind and fail to follow up the debate, but anyway....

My point on the whole pig comparison is that there's a distinct double standard. Look, let me make a list of things my dog can do.

1. It can read my body language, pick out phrases and words, and has some understanding of my tone of voice.
2. It will seek me out and comfort me when I'm crying.
3. It will play with me.
4. It makes friends, both with people and other dogs, and remembers them.
5. More to the point, if I hide the ball, the dog knows the ball still exists (suck it, baby).

So why is that a newborn baby, that can do, at best, three or four of those things, more of a person than the dog?

Do we argue it's by virtue of its potential? Then you can't be pro-choice, because that fetus has the potential to be a vastly intelligent creature, heck that sperm has the potential to be an incredibly intelligent creature (think about that the next time you're about to kick a guy in the crotch).

The only reason seems to be just because it's easier to consider humans automatically people and other creatures not, and that frankly that reeks of hypocrisy and is incredibly prickish.

[MonkeyHead]

Would you ever consider euthanasing your dog, or ever had any pet euthanised?

But thats just it - people are people. Animals are not. But thats probably the carnivore in me speaking.

[Euld]

But we DO consider euthanizing people.  Old people, terminally sick people.  Even children are "euthanized" if the time and place are right.  For example, African women who were kidnapped in the slave trade would sometimes throw their children overboard to spare them a life of suffering.  I don't agree with euthanizing people (on the fence when it comes to animals), but people do it, or at least consider doing it.

[SalmonGod]

I'm pro-choice on the basis that it's a form of self-defense, not because I think there's some time period during which it's ok to consider the fetus as non-human.  Being forced to raise a child under the wrong circumstances can ruin a lot of lives, and adoption isn't a very good option.  I believe people have a right to defend themselves against threats to their quality of life.

I also believe it's wrong to inflict suffering on anything that seems capable of experiencing suffering.  At the same time, living things consuming other living things is just the way nature works.  So I believe we have a responsibility to be humane, even to creatures that we slaughter for food.  That responsibility is not grounded in the intelligence of the suffering being, only in the fact that it experiences suffering.  However, I don't eat human babies, so that responsibility falls into a different context.  Part of that context is that most people have a pre-conceived emotional investment in their own offspring.

I know there are tons of minor contradictions I could be called out on right now, such as the fact that I've enjoyed fishing for sport on occasion.  I'm just going to go ahead and concede such things in advance, and admit that I don't have much of an answer to them.  These things always break down at some level if pushed hard enough, otherwise we would have a universal concept of morality that everyone in the world could agree on already.

[Pnx]

Would you ever consider euthanasing your dog, or ever had any pet euthanised?

Yes I have had a dog euthanised, and it was heartbreaking. But it prevented her from living out a slow agonizing death. Euthanasia is sometimes a preferable alternative to a horrible, horrible, life. Even if it is ethically tricky.

But thats just it - people are people. Animals are not. But thats probably the carnivore in me speaking.

And blacks are blacks, and whites are whites. Men are men, and women are women. You do realize this is the exact line of thinking every racist and sexist has ever used right?

[Nadaka]

Would you ever consider euthanasing your dog, or ever had any pet euthanised?

Yes I have had a dog euthanised, and it was heartbreaking. But it prevented her from living out a slow agonizing death. Euthanasia is sometimes a preferable alternative to a horrible, horrible, life. Even if it is ethically tricky.

But thats just it - people are people. Animals are not. But thats probably the carnivore in me speaking.

And blacks are blacks, and whites are whites. Men are men, and women are women. You do realize this is the exact line of thinking every racist and sexist has ever used right?

You really have to be joking... right?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But thats just it - people are people. Animals are not. But thats probably the carnivore in me speaking.

And blacks are blacks, and whites are whites. Men are men, and women are women. You do realize this is the exact line of thinking every racist and sexist has ever used right?

There's quite the difference here. It is an objective fact that mental capacity, and thus the capacity to be harmed, varies greatly between species. It's why most people don't bat an eye at tuna fishing but are disgusted at dolphin farming practices. It's why you can own a dog and it's alright, but why owning a human is slavery. It's why people don't particularly care if you burn microorganisms to death but would be very unhappy if you did the same to most macro organisms. There is a clear difference that does not exist in your examples, because all of your examples are inter-human discrimination.

[Pnx]

There's quite the difference here. It is an objective fact that mental capacity, and thus the capacity to be harmed,

Except the case I'm arguing here is that in a baby there is little to no difference between it and an animal.


EDIT:

Would you ever consider euthanasing your dog, or ever had any pet euthanised?

Yes I have had a dog euthanised, and it was heartbreaking. But it prevented her from living out a slow agonizing death. Euthanasia is sometimes a preferable alternative to a horrible, horrible, life. Even if it is ethically tricky.

But thats just it - people are people. Animals are not. But thats probably the carnivore in me speaking.

And blacks are blacks, and whites are whites. Men are men, and women are women. You do realize this is the exact line of thinking every racist and sexist has ever used right?

You really have to be joking... right?

Blacks are innately superior to whites, men are innately superior to women, humans are innately superior to animals. You can see how this is a logical fallacy right?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's quite the difference here. It is an objective fact that mental capacity, and thus the capacity to be harmed,

Except the case I'm arguing here is that in a baby there is little to no difference between it and an animal.

But there is: A baby has and is born with the capacity to grow into an adult. The capacity exists at birth, it needs to only be exploited over the course of many years.

[Pnx]

There's quite the difference here. It is an objective fact that mental capacity, and thus the capacity to be harmed,

Except the case I'm arguing here is that in a baby there is little to no difference between it and an animal.

But there is: A baby has and is born with the capacity to grow into an adult. The potential exists at birth, it needs to only be exploited over the course of many years.

So then the sperm has the same rights as the baby?

[Frumple]

Oh, not just the sperm. Ovaries, too.

It's one of the reasons the 'potential' thing really breaks down if you push it to its logical extreme. From that angle, every woman not being pregnant at all times is morally the same as abortion (an unfertilized egg is as much a loss of potential as an aborted fertilized one.), and not just masturbation, but simply the natural death of sperm is morally reprehensible.

It takes freakish dystopian science to even attempt to genuinely hold to the moral end-goal of that kind of reasoning. Iron wombs, harvested sperm and eggs, and a birth rate that's hilariously unsustainable.

[Realmfighter]

What about the plants that are to be consumed, used as material to produce the fetus? They also have the capacity to grow into an adult, so wouldn't eating anything then count as cannibalism?

[Frumple]

What about the plants that are to be consumed, used as material to produce the fetus? They also have the capacity to grow into an adult, so wouldn't eating anything then count as cannibalism?

We're generally pretty comfortable with largely ignoring the moral status of other species (Except to the extent that violating that status leads to poor moral behavior against the in-species). Cannibalism is strictly in-species

We also (like to) hold the potential of humans to be higher than the potential of other species (for varying reasons, depending on what axioms you're working off of), so sacrificing the latter for the former is okay, so long as the disparity isn't too high.

[Pnx]

So the conclusion is that there isn't really a good reason for babies to be considered better than animals? Or do I have to strike baby-back ribs off the menu?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's quite the difference here. It is an objective fact that mental capacity, and thus the capacity to be harmed,

Except the case I'm arguing here is that in a baby there is little to no difference between it and an animal.

But there is: A baby has and is born with the capacity to grow into an adult. The potential exists at birth, it needs to only be exploited over the course of many years.

So then the sperm has the same rights as the baby?

No. Sperm doesn't hold mental capacity of any sort. Neither does a fetus, for that matter, until it has developed a brain and nervous system. I never even brought sperm into this.

There is a very important difference between capacity and potential.