(December 5, 2010 at 8:33 am)Arcanus Wrote: It is not about Homo sapiens being special; it is about Homo sapiens being the subject. It is a fallacy to construe an argument against the killing of X innocent creatures as being in any way for the killing of all ~X innocent creatures.
Firstly, Your argument relies on the idea that it is necessarily morally wrong to deliberately kill an innocent human: "1. The deliberate killing of innocent humans is morally wrong."
What is your justification for this assertion?
And my question was just out of interest, and is likely relating to the justification for 1, more simply put it is: What is to stop someone replacing 'human' with 'creature'?
As far as Euthanasia being an insufficient under-cutter is concerned, you only make this point relative to pain, I reject pain, pleasure, happiness etc as the object of evaluation regarding morality, I guess this is something It would be better to expand on in our debate
Quote:theVOID Wrote:Is turning off the life support of someone unlikely to regain any normality not the deliberate killing of an innocent human?
Euthanasia is an undercutter which I had already addressed in my original post.
That is not considered euthanasia in most legal systems, having 'Do Not Resuscitate' and 'Terminate Life Support' orders is usually legal while euthanasia is not.
Quote:theVOID Wrote:If there are any exceptions to the first premise, then it is not necessarily true that the deliberate killing of an inocent human is wrong, so your argument is not sound in that respect.
You risk committing the Special Pleading fallacy here. If elective abortions do not qualify under a defined exception, then the argument holds. (For example, you referenced euthanasia, that turning off the life support of someone "unlikely to regain any normality" is arguably a moral good. That may be so, but it is an exception that does not include elective abortions; the probability of normality for the unborn is very high after nine months of life support.)
First off, I don't evaluate normality. This isn't a concern for now. I will address it at your request but we are going to be talking about this in a more formal situation soonsih.
Secondly, I am not special pleading, I am saying you have provided no qualifier for the contended premise. If 99.99% of cases of x (killing an innocent human) is 1 (morally wrong) then it is not necessarily true that x=1.
You need to qualify what makes most x=1 compared to those than aren't, then show that the disputed example of elective abortion is compliant with the qualifier. If you can do that I am obliged to agree.
I suspect that the exceptions that permits euthanasia would also permit abortion.
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