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> The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing. This see
by taffer 7y ago
> The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing.
This seems to be an extreme pro-life point of view. You could ask exactly the same question about contraceptives.
- jonfw 7y agoJust because I don't think it's unethical to produce life in that circumstance, doesn't mean that I think it's your ethical imperative to produce life. Things don't go immediately from unethical to a moral imperative, there is a substantial gap that needs to be crossed.
- taffer 7y agoSo why do we inseminate animals artificially when there is no ethical imperative to produce life? And if you think life is so valuable by nature, why do we kill them then?
- jonfw 7y agoThe primary motivation to our livestock farming is certainly the utility, not some sort of ethical imperative. My argument isn't that it's virtuous to farm livestock, my argument is just that it isn't unethical.
- taffer 7y agoYou said: > it seems to me that it is less ideal from the perspective of the animal for their entire bloodline to be terminated I think if you compare the utility that livestock farming provides, with all the externalties and all the suffering it produces is indeed unethical.
- rhn_mk1 7y ago> Things don't go immediately from unethical to a moral imperative, there is a substantial gap that needs to be crossed. I would accept that in the general case, but since you let your utilitarian views slip, I have to ask: what's the difference? When something is immoral, it means it has a negative utility, and therefore it should be avoided. When something is moral, it has a positive utility, and therefore it's something that should be strived for, barring any other activity with greater utility. In my eyes, that makes every moral thing a utilitarian's moral imperative, with the only gap being things that have no moral value. How does my view differ from yours?
- jonfw 7y ago> barring any other activity with greater utility I can think of a number of activities that would provide greater utility than attemting to impregnate as many women as possible. I'm not a pure utilitarian and I see a distinction between the concepts of morality and utility. Mostly because I'm not capable of gauging utility all the time, so I can fall back on broader moral principles.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoThank you for the answer. It seems we have the same view, but we speak about it differently: while an action may be moral or not, being a prerogative only matters in practice if it can be assessed. The difference is that I don't mind calling even the smallest, least important actions, which have the least chance to be the best thing to do at the moment, prerogatives.