Ah. Now I think I see where you are coming from. For some reason you seem to have assumed that I was talking about you. I wasn't. I was talking about Singer.
So:

Matt_B wrote:you weren't getting on your high horse about being so much more empathic and emotional than me, after all?

No, I wasn't.

Matt_B wrote:The whole part about you refusing to answer because I wouldn't consider it acceptable.

Again, no. I meant that it wouldn't be acceptable to Singer, those like him, or philosophically rational ethical considerations in general.

Matt_B wrote:to illustrate that you probably hold speciesist views

Well you could have just asked. I don't, certainly not to the extent that you might be assuming. When it comes to severely damaged children, and perhaps reading about parents' fights to have them treated no matter what, I shake my head. Not that I would ever like to be put in that position. It was difficult enough having to decide - as an older pregnant woman - whether to actually have the test which would show any abnormalities for which an abortion would be offered, said test at that time bearing a risk of actually causing miscarriage itself.

Were you perhaps expecting me to say that killing the animal would be easier than killing the baby because it's an animal, and that I would make that distinction? You'd be wrong. Your second example is, in my opinion, flawed and can't be considered easily because it fails to take into account the suffering of the woman whose womb contains the child.

This argument is so wrong — both rationally and empirically — that its appeal can be explained only by (a) a desire to believe it and (b) an ignorance of history.

Perfect example of projection right here.

Doubtdispelled wrote:Were you perhaps expecting me to say that killing the animal would be easier than killing the baby because it's an animal, and that I would make that distinction? You'd be wrong. Your second example is, in my opinion, flawed and can't be considered easily because it fails to take into account the suffering of the woman whose womb contains the child.

Yes, I was expecting you to say that killing the animal would be easier, albeit far from easy. And are you totally sure about your answer? A neighbour of mine had a pet cat, which she obviously loved, but it was diagnosed with cancer and she made the difficult decision to have it put down. That's what I'd see as the normative view in such circumstances, as people would think it remarkably selfish - if not downright cruel - to keep a pet alive if it was in considerable pain all the time.

As for the second example, yes, the mother's suffering is regarded as paramount in such circumstances and rightly so. However, with the birth of a severely disabled child, and the emotional connection and responsibility that comes with it, it's not like the suffering ends there. In many ways, it's only just beginning.

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). 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.

Personally I'd see speciesism as being significantly an exercise in pragmatism.

We distinguish between humans and other species based on the seemingly significant differences between average humans and the apparent brightest members of other species, which seems justifiable.

When it comes to looking just at humans, we tend to apply particularly conservative criteria when it comes to things like withdrawing medical treatment/food/water from humans, typically limiting that to unconscious humans with seemingly no chance of recovery.

That might be inconsistent with the way we might treat other animals, but there's a fairly good pragmatic argument for keeping things like that - it helps avoid dubious grey areas and possible slippery slopes, and saves people having to try and work out things like whether a particular person's sentience is no more than that of a cow or chicken.

Regarding euthanasia, even where not actually legal, it does sometimes get quietly done by doctors pushing things a little when it comes to balancing pain relief and lifespan in terminally ill patients, but usually pretty close to a natural end.

I suspect a better insight would be to look not at what we allow ourselves to do, but at how people would feel when a human of impaired consciousness or sentience dies other than by human action.
If someone with advanced degenerative brain disease or someone who was born with little or no awareness of the world dies, not many people would see that as being a great tragedy, and the few who would would often have feelings complicated by affection for the person who once was, or by ideas of the person who might have been.

Also, drawing a dividing line means we are freed from having to treat animals like humans in other ways - while we might understandably feel a compulsion to protect a fellow human from death by crocodile, it wouldn't be practical to act the same way when it came to migrating Wildebeest.

It's one thing to take sides and intervene on behalf of ourselves or 'our' animals, but pretty obviously we can't intervene on the side of every animal.

I wanted to laugh when I read the first line of the title. You're going to permit Dawkins not to believe in God? That's big of you, Mr. Prager.

Shrunk wrote:

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'?

I find this passage from the Steven Best article interesting and revealing:

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.

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). 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.

I am unsure what you mean when you state that we form our moral judgements irrationally and emotionally, though if that is your view, you might want to ask yourself if they are really judgements at all.

Mick wrote:I am unsure what you mean when you state that we form our moral judgements irrationally and emotionally, though if that is your view, you might want to ask yourself if they are really judgements at all.

Of course they are judgements. If someone imagines a particular situation and has a strong emotional response while doing so, that is making a fairly deep judgement on the situation.

I think it's rather like when people talk of 'principles' as if they were some independent thing when in fact they're really crystallised generalisations people refer to to justify or explain what they feel about various situations.

When people talk of principles or rights (or divine law, for that matter), what they're often doing is trying to put some position they hold beyond argument, and even when they aren't, they're making some more general point, linking one situation with a set of others.

With regard to animal 'rights', the principles various people point to seem essentially to be justifications for the way they feel when they think about particular situations.

I think it's far more honest for people to admit that that's the way they think than for them to pretend they are following some particular principles.
After all, there are lost of conflicting principles around, and there is no obvious objective method to choose between them.

For example, a believer may one day quite genuinely believe homosexuality is a sin and then change what they quite quite genuinely believe as a result of finding out their child is gay or their best friend is gay. They haven't made that change on the basis of some system of rational logic, but on the basis of thinking about situations and the consequences of choices and seeing what feels right and what feels wrong, and looking at things they thought before and realising that maybe generalisations they could previously support, they can't support any longer.

When people cherry-pick scripture (as pretty much every believer does, even the ones who claim otherwise), they pick and choose to fit around what they feel is right, using the scripture to justify their feelings.
Even those who go for a basket of cherries pre-picked by someone else are still (in countries where they have a choice) choosing one flavour of religion over another, and most are still likely to be placing different emphasis on one or other aspect based on their personal feelings.

Now, it's not all a one-way thing - by taking some general positions, people will tend to affect how they feel when they reflect on situations, and someone taking a particular position may tend to have that position reinforced by exposure to one or other skewed type of information or misinformation, or by concentrating their thinking on certain aspects of an issue.

Think of the Golden Rule, arguably the foundation of much morality.

Effectively it's asking "How would you feel if someone did to you what you're thinking of doing to someone else - would you like it?".

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'?

I'm really not trying to be rude here but it seems a bit like you're not aware of how one should read philosophy. Again, I don't know your background well and I'm not trying to insult you here.

Philosophy, at least in my understanding is a forum in which such difficult questions and propositions can be asked and formed without fear of reprisal for saying something tasteless or seemingly uncaring. What you see as Singer being cold and clinical I take as him being rigorous in his thinking.

What you need to do, instead of dismissing his theses because they arrive at the wrong conclusions to you is to consider what might be wrong with his reasoning. And, if you can't find any fault in his reasoning, what is it about your moral intuitions that leads you to think him incorrect? The point is, Singer is not in the process of pushing new legislation on the treatment of human and non-human animals. What he is in the business of doing is making us ask pertinent questions about our ethics and what it is about us that makes us entitled to life when other animals with similar faculties are not. If he is to be taken seriously his thesis could just as easily afford non-human animals greater rights as they could clarify what it is about human life that makes us entitled to live out our lives regardless of our capacities as people. Peter Singer's tone is irrelevant, his reasoning what is important.

tolman wrote:

Mick wrote:I am unsure what you mean when you state that we form our moral judgements irrationally and emotionally, though if that is your view, you might want to ask yourself if they are really judgements at all.

Of course they are judgements. If someone imagines a particular situation and has a strong emotional response while doing so, that is making a fairly deep judgement on the situation.

I think it's rather like when people talk of 'principles' as if they were some independent thing when in fact they're really crystallised generalisations people refer to to justify or explain what they feel about various situations.

When people talk of principles or rights (or divine law, for that matter), what they're often doing is trying to put some position they hold beyond argument, and even when they aren't, they're making some more general point, linking one situation with a set of others.

With regard to animal 'rights', the principles various people point to seem essentially to be justifications for the way they feel when they think about particular situations.

I think it's far more honest for people to admit that that's the way they think than for them to pretend they are following some particular principles.
After all, there are lost of conflicting principles around, and there is no obvious objective method to choose between them.

For example, a believer may one day quite genuinely believe homosexuality is a sin and then change what they quite quite genuinely believe as a result of finding out their child is gay or their best friend is gay. They haven't made that change on the basis of some system of rational logic, but on the basis of thinking about situations and the consequences of choices and seeing what feels right and what feels wrong, and looking at things they thought before and realising that maybe generalisations they could previously support, they can't support any longer.

When people cherry-pick scripture (as pretty much every believer does, even the ones who claim otherwise), they pick and choose to fit around what they feel is right, using the scripture to justify their feelings.
Even those who go for a basket of cherries pre-picked by someone else are still (in countries where they have a choice) choosing one flavour of religion over another, and most are still likely to be placing different emphasis on one or other aspect based on their personal feelings.

Now, it's not all a one-way thing - by taking some general positions, people will tend to affect how they feel when they reflect on situations, and someone taking a particular position may tend to have that position reinforced by exposure to one or other skewed type of information or misinformation, or by concentrating their thinking on certain aspects of an issue.

Er, no emotional response itself is a judgement. We interpret a situation, I am sure. I am not challenging that! Why I am saying here is that the whole thing, the conviction, morality itself, might be non-cognitive,. Especially since , on his view,it is formed in emotion and irrationality.

Mick wrote:Er, no emotional response itself is a judgement. We interpret a situation, I am sure. I am not challenging that! Why I am saying here is that the whole thing, the conviction, morality itself, might be non-cognitive,. Especially since , on his view,it is formed in emotion and irrationality.

An emotional response to a perceived situation is a form of judgement on the rightness of the situation.

If someone is going to think further*, that response may not be a final judgement, but (if done properly) much of the thinking further is going to involve imagining more situations and seeing what they feel like.

Someone might claim that they are rationally philosophising around a moral situation using language, but in reality the language they choose to use, the rational arguments they choose to deploy and the principles they choose to point to [as argument-stoppers or otherwise] are likely to be strongly influenced by how they feel about a situation.

If they fail to realise that, or realise it and choose not to admit it, that doesn't mean that that isn't what they're doing.

(*and if they aren't going to think further, but are simply going to dress up their gut reaction in some suitable principles, as many people do much of the time, the gut reaction effectively is the judgement.)

What I am proposing is that shrunk should consider whether is view is best understood as a non-cognitive a view

Matthew Shute wrote:I wanted to laugh when I read the first line of the title. You're going to permit Dawkins not to believe in God? That's big of you, Mr. Prager.

It worries me a little. Permissiveness is the first sign of liberalism. And we all know what liberalism leads to.

Mick wrote:What I am proposing is that shrunk should consider whether is view is best understood as a non-cognitive a view

Assuming that means what I think it means, it seems a bit of a mis-statement of what Shrunk was saying.

The idea being put forward was that people in general [not at all Shrunk in particular] form judgements based significantly on emotion which they then try and support with logical-sounding rationalisations.

What is 'non cognitive' about someone deliberately imagining one or more complex situations and seeing what feelings imagining those situations evokes?

Personally, I would consider it far more rational for someone to try to be aware of the emotional content of their thoughts than to ignore them and pretend that they are being essentially 'rational'.
Not only is the latter course intellectually dishonest, but it has significant risk of leading to bogus conclusions and/or unwarranted confidence in those conclusions. Personally, I don't see those latter things as a Good Thing, though clearly some other people think differently.

To me, one of the main points of trying to understand logic and rationality is to understand when it isn't happening.

Spinozasgalt wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:I wanted to laugh when I read the first line of the title. You're going to permit Dawkins not to believe in God? That's big of you, Mr. Prager.

It worries me a little. Permissiveness is the first sign of liberalism. And we all know what liberalism leads to.

Does it lead to permissiveness?

Liberally!

Spinozasgalt wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:I wanted to laugh when I read the first line of the title. You're going to permit Dawkins not to believe in God? That's big of you, Mr. Prager.

It worries me a little. Permissiveness is the first sign of liberalism. And we all know what liberalism leads to.

Nothing wrong with what he said. He didn't mean to imply that he has the power to stop Dawkins, nor did he suggest that Dawkins needs his OK. It is just a way of speaking about what you will let him get away with-without objection. We all do this in other ways-particularly with epistemic justification.

tolman wrote:

Mick wrote:What I am proposing is that shrunk should consider whether is view is best understood as a non-cognitive a view

Assuming that means what I think it means, it seems a bit of a mis-statement of what Shrunk was saying.

The idea being put forward was that people in general [not at all Shrunk in particular] form judgements based significantly on emotion which they then try and support with logical-sounding rationalisations.

What is 'non cognitive' about someone deliberately imagining one or more complex situations and seeing what feelings imagining those situations evokes?

Personally, I would consider it far more rational for someone to try to be aware of the emotional content of their thoughts than to ignore them and pretend that they are being essentially 'rational'.
Not only is the latter course intellectually dishonest, but it has significant risk of leading to bogus conclusions and/or unwarranted confidence in those conclusions. Personally, I don't see those latter things as a Good Thing, though clearly some other people think differently.

To me, one of the main points of trying to understand logic and rationality is to understand when it isn't happening.

Never mind.

Mick wrote:

Spinozasgalt wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:I wanted to laugh when I read the first line of the title. You're going to permit Dawkins not to believe in God? That's big of you, Mr. Prager.

It worries me a little. Permissiveness is the first sign of liberalism. And we all know what liberalism leads to.

Nothing wrong with what he said. He didn't mean to imply that he has the power to stop Dawkins, nor did he suggest that Dawkins needs his OK. It is just a way of speaking about what you will let him get away with-without objection. We all do this in other ways-particularly with epistemic justification.

I know, I was joking. Just be grateful it doesn't happen often.