Hi there! Thanks for engaging with my post. A few points:
(1) In the case where the baby aliens belong to a non-rational species, they would be morally equivalent to pigs or cows. That seems like the right result: they're roughly equal to these animals, both in terms of their occurrent cognitive capacities *and* in terms of their potentialities, so it's hard to see what would ground the moral difference (it can't just be "they look like us"). One way of putting it is that when it comes to the baby aliens, the vegan name-the-trait argument *does* work: it would be morally arbitrary to say it's OK to kill pigs, but wrong to kill the baby aliens. Whether one takes this as reason to affirm the permissibility of killing the aliens or to deny the permissibility of killing pigs is up to one to decide.
In the case involving non-sentient human infants and the baby aliens, I deny that they're alike in all morally-relevant respects: the non-sentient human has potentialities for rationality (though these might go permanently unrealized), which the alien lacks. Your view implies that given a choice between the non-sentient human infants and a pig, it would be better to kill the infant. I think that's clearly false.
(2) I strongly disagree with your intuitions concerning Beckwith's Bob and Stuart case: I think it's quite clear that it would be murder to kill Bob, and I have absolutely no idea why an unconscious being having *formerly* been conscious is supposed to make a moral difference.
(3) I also think it's clearly wrong to manufacture unconscious human beings to harvest them for their organs. If you don't agree, then I'm not sure how to go about convincing you otherwise: I think here we've hit moral bedrock.
1. I agree the fact that the infant aliens look like human infants isn’t actually morally relevant - the point of specifying that they look like infants was just to say “hey, these beings are basically exactly like infants - except they lack the proposed criteria for personhood, belonging to a natural kind that is normally characterized by advanced cognitive capacities. It still seems wrong to kill them, so this can’t be the reason (or at least the only reason) why it’s wrong to kill babies.”
I also agree that the infant aliens are morally equivalent to animals with identical cognitive capacities. My view does indeed imply that it would be better to kill a non-sentient baby over a pig - though I’m not really troubled by this implication at all. It seems like clearly the right result to me. I think it’s obvious that even a fly, let alone a pig, would have more moral value than the infant in question
2. The motivation for the past consciousness view is that it accounts for two obvious moral truths - that it would be wrong to kill coma patients like Stuart and also that it’s fine to abort non-sentient fetuses. Adopting other views results in counterintuitive consequences in one of the two cases.
3. Yeah I don’t see how the human beings in question are any morally different than rocks. And I agree that our moral views so radically diverge that neither of us will probably be able to persuade the other on this topic.
Hi there! Thanks for engaging with my post. A few points:
(1) In the case where the baby aliens belong to a non-rational species, they would be morally equivalent to pigs or cows. That seems like the right result: they're roughly equal to these animals, both in terms of their occurrent cognitive capacities *and* in terms of their potentialities, so it's hard to see what would ground the moral difference (it can't just be "they look like us"). One way of putting it is that when it comes to the baby aliens, the vegan name-the-trait argument *does* work: it would be morally arbitrary to say it's OK to kill pigs, but wrong to kill the baby aliens. Whether one takes this as reason to affirm the permissibility of killing the aliens or to deny the permissibility of killing pigs is up to one to decide.
In the case involving non-sentient human infants and the baby aliens, I deny that they're alike in all morally-relevant respects: the non-sentient human has potentialities for rationality (though these might go permanently unrealized), which the alien lacks. Your view implies that given a choice between the non-sentient human infants and a pig, it would be better to kill the infant. I think that's clearly false.
(2) I strongly disagree with your intuitions concerning Beckwith's Bob and Stuart case: I think it's quite clear that it would be murder to kill Bob, and I have absolutely no idea why an unconscious being having *formerly* been conscious is supposed to make a moral difference.
(3) I also think it's clearly wrong to manufacture unconscious human beings to harvest them for their organs. If you don't agree, then I'm not sure how to go about convincing you otherwise: I think here we've hit moral bedrock.
1. I agree the fact that the infant aliens look like human infants isn’t actually morally relevant - the point of specifying that they look like infants was just to say “hey, these beings are basically exactly like infants - except they lack the proposed criteria for personhood, belonging to a natural kind that is normally characterized by advanced cognitive capacities. It still seems wrong to kill them, so this can’t be the reason (or at least the only reason) why it’s wrong to kill babies.”
I also agree that the infant aliens are morally equivalent to animals with identical cognitive capacities. My view does indeed imply that it would be better to kill a non-sentient baby over a pig - though I’m not really troubled by this implication at all. It seems like clearly the right result to me. I think it’s obvious that even a fly, let alone a pig, would have more moral value than the infant in question
2. The motivation for the past consciousness view is that it accounts for two obvious moral truths - that it would be wrong to kill coma patients like Stuart and also that it’s fine to abort non-sentient fetuses. Adopting other views results in counterintuitive consequences in one of the two cases.
3. Yeah I don’t see how the human beings in question are any morally different than rocks. And I agree that our moral views so radically diverge that neither of us will probably be able to persuade the other on this topic.