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Could this be due to the rise of pure mathematics in influencing philosophers? In pure math, counter examples play a very important role: show once counter exam

Could this be due to the rise of pure mathematics in influencing philosophers? In pure math, counter examples play a very important role: show once counter example, disprove an entire claim. The violinist in the article is clearly trying to be a pure math- like counter example, but to me, misses the emotional aspect of pregnancy (at the least) - a fetus is not a random person, it is you (partly), and furthermore, many would say society (and the species) depend on having babies, whereas the society and the species do not depend on violin players. Not saying I agree with these arguments only that the real world is substantially messier than pure math, and thus, pure math thinking may stumble when applied to real world problems. Tl;dr: humans are not rational in our beliefs and the continued attempts on all disciplines to assume we are, are well, irrational.

dereferenceddev 6y ago
I've rarely heard someone make the counter-point that a fetus is technically half "you", which really does fundamentally change the violinist example. The violinist experiment does have a lot of holes it it, but I think that one in particular almost turns it on its head, particularly because it circumvents the crux of the problem around consent (which I think is at the core of the problem). It would seem you would have to change the thought experiment to have the violinist actually be related to you (say a sibling). Now, would a person feel _as_ upset that they had to allow their sibling to use their kidneys for nine months in order to stay alive? That really changes it.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  A fetus is half another person, whose "selfish genes" would benefit by the fetus taking an excessive share of resources. So there's an inherent tension that isn't determined by culture or moral theories.
implements 6y ago
> society [...] depend on having babies, But civilisation doesn’t depend on maximising births, and actually probably would benefit from more resource intensive to produce artists, musicians, dancers, etc - is the other side of that argument.

dereferenceddev 6y ago

I've rarely heard someone make the counter-point that a fetus is technically half "you", which really does fundamentally change the violinist example. The violinist experiment does have a lot of holes it it, but I think that one in particular almost turns it on its head, particularly because it circumvents the crux of the problem around consent (which I think is at the core of the problem). It would seem you would have to change the thought experiment to have the violinist actually be related to you (say a sibling). Now, would a person feel _as_ upset that they had to allow their sibling to use their kidneys for nine months in order to stay alive? That really changes it.

perl4ever 6y ago
A fetus is half another person, whose "selfish genes" would benefit by the fetus taking an excessive share of resources. So there's an inherent tension that isn't determined by culture or moral theories.

implements 6y ago

> society [...] depend on having babies, But civilisation doesn’t depend on maximising births, and actually probably would benefit from more resource intensive to produce artists, musicians, dancers, etc - is the other side of that argument.