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Originally Posted by tore
No, I don't. I'm not a strict utilitarian. I think utilitarian arguments make sense in the question of abortion because, regarding abortions, I have no stronger moral instinct or normative rule I feel I have to go by which says it's wrong (f.ex thou shalt not kill). In other words, my preferred tools from my moral toolbox are not available and then I have to opt for something else. For me, then, it makes sense to try for the best possible consequences and I think the utilitarian idea of minimizing suffering often leads to good consequences (I don't like suffering, so in a sense, I am sometimes a utilitarian). So, when it comes to abortions, I want the consequences which leads to minimal suffering and best consequences for society.
A thought experiment that would perhaps put us more on the same wavelength here would be if you just forget about utiliarianism and think of me as someone who wants to minimize suffering in the question of abortions, regardless of established moral theories.
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My objection from the beginning has been that you're failing to establish a serious moral distinction between killing a human fetus vs killing any other human. In other words, I'm saying that whether you acknowledge it or not, "thou shalt not kill" probably has a place in your morality. If not, then I'd ask you for an alternative moral doctrine that outlines why killing people is right or wrong and in which circumstances this applies.
This is what I thought you were doing with your endorsement of the utilitarian ideal to try to minimize suffering. If you are going to arbitrarily apply different standards to different scenarios whenever you see fit, then you're basically cheating, imo. If you can't account for the rule using utilitarian logic, then how can you expect to use it to outline an exception to the rule?
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Alright. You're trying to establish that humans have some basic moral worth which is a lot more than a chicken or any other non-human species, or even in a different category of worth which no number of chickens can achieve. As a thought experiment, let's mentally accept that and make it part of utilitarian theory. We want to maximize human happiness and/or minimize human suffering. We don't care about chickens. Even if you incorporate that as a rule into utilitarianism, it doesn't change the moral worth of the average human fetus vs. the average adult human. In other words, it doesn't really change the utilitarian argument I've made in the case of abortions.
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You're still fixating on suffering. My point is that suffering is not the reason we consider killing (innocent) humans to be wrong. At best, it's a peripheral issue which can make a murder more or less heinous.
So, if killing innocent people is wrong in general, then minimizing suffering isn't a valid reason to kill them.
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