Doubtdispelled wrote:

Matt_B wrote:Or, better still, read Practical Ethics

Oddly enough, I was reading this when you posted that. It doesn't make any of what he says seem any better. I've had to go away for a while to think about what I find so disturbing in his writing on this subject, (and I'm definitely pro-choice and pro voluntary euthanasia) and I think it's the fact that he always uses the words 'kill' and 'killing'. For instance he never ever mentions anything about the infants he thinks we should be allowed to consider disposing of (in his perfect utilitarian world) being 'allowed to die' in the cases where medical intervention keeps them alive. In the case of spina bifida he uses the phrase 'helped to die', but he still means killed.

It's all so cold and clinical, as though he's determined to ignore everything about us that actually makes us human. Yet he's such a valiant supporter of animal rights. It doesn't make sense.

Edit to add: I've just noticed that the title of that excerpt is 'Taking Life'. I wonder who he thinks we would appoint to do his killing for him? Who should be the 'taker of life'?

A recent article in The New Yorker shrewdly identified a key contradiction in Singer's approach to ethics. Confronting him with the fact that his own mother was dying of Alzheimer's disease, which rendered her, in Singer's scheme, a "nonperson," but that he had not euthanized her, Singer responded by saying it was "different" in the case of someone he knew and loved, and that he choose to care for her as long as possible, spending copious amounts on health care, albeit on someone doomed to die, rather than giving the money to aid those who could live. "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult." Betraying the abstract viewpoint that is an occupational hazard of the academic, Singer had no problem of prescribing euthanasia to imaginary others, but found it impossible to do in his own case with someone all-too concrete.

Shrunk wrote:In the case of Prager, his rationalization isn't even all that rational, as it consists of imagining that his own moral beliefs also exist in the mind of God, and this somehow makes them more "objective" than if they only existed in his (i.e. Prager's) mind.

Matt_B wrote:Anyway, I'd have to ask you on what grounds you'd draw the distinction between:

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:You can't ultimately prove a^2+b^2=c^2 for a right angled triangle, it doesn't mean geometry is any less useful. My table isn't going to suddenly collapse in on its own weight if builders stop believing in god.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:Who cares if you can't prove murder is objectively wrong if god doesn't exist? You can't ultimately prove a2+b2=c2 for a right angled triangle, it doesn't mean geometry is any less useful. My table isn't going to suddenly collapse in on its own weight if builders stop believing in god.

The other problem is that when you start invoking a god to solve all these ultimate proofs, you can use it to justify all sorts of nonsense.

What a ludicrous rant.

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Matt_B wrote:Anyway, I'd have to ask you on what grounds you'd draw the distinction between:

I'm sorry, Matt, but why ask me? I'm not the one making extreme unemotional pronouncements on how we should be thinking about these things, and apparently making a decent living out of doing so. I could give you my own opinions, coloured as they are by empathy and my own emotional reactions, but (see Shrunk's following post) they would not be acceptable because they don't contain the necessary amount of 'rationality'.

Thommo wrote:

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:You can't ultimately prove a^2+b^2=c^2 for a right angled triangle, it doesn't mean geometry is any less useful. My table isn't going to suddenly collapse in on its own weight if builders stop believing in god.

Do you mean that you can't prove that we can't prove this for real world objects, rather than for right angled triangles?

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:You can't ultimately prove a^2+b^2=c^2 for a right angled triangle, it doesn't mean geometry is any less useful. My table isn't going to suddenly collapse in on its own weight if builders stop believing in god.

Do you mean that you can't prove that we can't prove this for real world objects, rather than for right angled triangles?

Where is the proof that it works for all right angled triangles? And where is the proof that whatever you have used to prove it is true? And so on...

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:That is essentially what christians do with secular ethics, so why don't they extend that line of inquiry into other models or statements about the world?

Why does it matter if the non religious can't definitively prove murder is immoral, or rule out stealing as an moral act? Anymore than it matters if they can never find the true value of pi? (We can still design round objects)

An incomplete system of ethics is (1) not useless and (2) potentially better at achieving desired goals for a community than a religiously based one.

This makes me wonder (while we're on the topic of finding ultimate proof for beliefs), where is the proof that a complete system of ethics results in better living conditions, or whatever?

Shrunk wrote:What that confirms to me is that it is a misconception to think of moral judgment as primarily a rational process. It seems to me that it is your emotional reaction to Singer's ideas that are causing you to feel revulsion at them. And I can't say I don't feel a similar reaction. But, on a purely rational basis, I have a hard time forming convincing counterarguments to his positions.

So it seems more the case to me we form our moral judgments emotionally and irrationally, and then attempt to form rational justifications for them post hoc. (Actually, that's not just my opinion, but actually has some support in neuroscientific research).

Spinozasgalt wrote:DD, you might like this old gem of an essay from Cora Diamond. In it she criticises Singer precisely for failing to account for concerns like yours. At the very least, I think you'll find it refreshing after Singer's alternative.

I meant that if we appeal to people to prevent suffering, and we, in our appeal, try to obliterate the distinction between human beings and animals and just get people to speak or think of 'different species of animals', there is no footing left from which to tell us what we ought to do, because it is not members of one among species of animals that have moral obligations to anything. The moral expectations of other human beings demand something of me as other than an animal; and we do something like imaginatively read into animals something like such expectations when we think of vegetarianism as enabling us to meet a cow's eyes. There is nothing wrong with that; there is something wrong with trying to keep that response and destroy its foundation.

Spinozasgalt wrote:Also, is the longest sentence in the thread?

Matt_B wrote:

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Matt_B wrote:Anyway, I'd have to ask you on what grounds you'd draw the distinction between:

I'm sorry, Matt, but why ask me? I'm not the one making extreme unemotional pronouncements on how we should be thinking about these things, and apparently making a decent living out of doing so. I could give you my own opinions, coloured as they are by empathy and my own emotional reactions, but (see Shrunk's following post) they would not be acceptable because they don't contain the necessary amount of 'rationality'.

If you're satisfied that issues of morality are purely emotional arguments where rational discussion has no place, I suppose we'll just have to leave the argument there.

Still, this being the rational skepticism forum and all that, I'd thought that it was worth asking. Obviously not.

Doubtdispelled wrote:There's no need to be snarky, Matt.

I make it perfectly clear that I am aware my highly developed sense of empathy and emotionality can be a hindrance when it comes to rationality, but have I indicated satisfaction with this? Have I said rational discussion has no place with regards to morality?

I think this is called misrepresentation. Please don't do it.

Matt_B wrote:In that case, why were you snarky?

Matt_B wrote:yet you chose to put words into my mouth instead.

Matt_B wrote:Now, are you going to attempt to answer the question or not?

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Matt_B wrote:In that case, why were you snarky?

I wasn't. I even apologised for asking why you were asking me.

Matt_B wrote:yet you chose to put words into my mouth instead.

I did? Which ones?

Matt_B wrote:Now, are you going to attempt to answer the question or not?

Maybe, given my original reaction, I need to know why you think it necessary to ask? You want me to demonstrate that I can't counter Singer's arguments? As some kind of 'gotcha'?