Hey!
Welcome to Talk Freethought!
Shall we start with some of the mechanics? I clicked on
Reply With Quote, and that provides me with your post, here, that I can interject comments into.
Nested quotes happen: You'll be able to see something I posted, and then what you said about it, and then what I said. Only sometimes they don't. That is, the website's software is acting up. So sometimes the nested quotes won't be there when you wish they were.
And, actually, I misled you above when I said I clicked on Reply With Quote. I right-clicked on it, and then selected
Open Link In New Window.That way, when looking at the quote tags confuses me, I can instantly alt-tab over to your original post, which is much clearer than what I see in this dialog box.
A note on netiquette: If you're responding to just part of a post, it's polite to delete the parts you aren't responding to. That way, people reading our discussion won't keep reading the same material over and over to no benefit.
There is a useful Split Quotes button above this box that I'm writing in. On my screen, above this box that I write in, there are three rows of icons. The fifth button from the right looks like a speech balloon from a cartoon. The one just to the right of that is another speech balloon, but colored blue, and containing an exclamation point. (Note for people reading over our shoulders: This is his first discussion board.) If you hover over the blue one, it says Split Quotes.
If you see something you want to respond to, you can place your cursor just behind it, and then click the split quotes button, which will give you an unquote tag to end what I was saying, and a quote tag to start my text up again, and a space between for you to write in.
Probably none of that will make sense until you try it.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me on this topic. I apologize for the delayed reply. Sick family on this end. Well mended now, and sleeping.
That's good news.
"Thatguysnephew is curious about atheist morality, what it's like, how it works."
I am! My curiosity stems from the respect I have for my uncle.
Right back atcha.
He is a well-reasoned atheist.
Well, thank you.
I don't normally make that brag. But I do make this one: When Christians tell me that atheist morality has no logical foundation, I'm quick to say that it is
at least as well-founded as religious morality.
The way he thinks attracts me. He believes that the truth can stand up on its own two feet without having to cover it up behind a curtain that should be paid no attention, or by convincing everyone that the king is clothed when he is in fact not clothed.
I consider myself a utilitarian as well. Perhaps that word is worth more than I know, but using your approximate definition ("I think making people happy is good. Making them unhappy is bad, also known as evil.") I consider myself a utilitarian. This conversation may reveal to me that I am not in fact a utilitarian, but so far I think I am.
I assume that, at bottom, everybody is. Psychopaths excluded. Nobody would say that morality requires behaviors that just make people miserable.
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1) Clarification of utilitarianism
The utilitarian's general problem (as told to me in a medical ethics course):
There is a riot about to spring into action in a smaller town. There are two main factions within the city. The impending riot was started when an underboss (a leader, but not the main leader) from one of the factions was murdered. The riot will likely result in a blood bath. A large number of people are about to die at the hand's of their neighbors. The sheriff of the city is understandably worried. He's under pressure and time is of the essence. There is a drifter in town. Has been there three days. The underboss was killed two days ago. The drifter is about to leave town. He'll go beg elsewhere; this town is getting scary. The sheriff arrests the drifter. Interrogates him. Plants evidence on him. Blames him for the murder of the underboss. It wasn't the other faction that killed the underboss. The leaders from the factions come together and review the evidence that the drifter killed the underboss. It's very convincing. The sheriff acted alone. No one is the wiser. The drifter is lethally injected. One person dies. The drifter is unhappy, understandably, but the people who didn't die as a result are happy (or maybe think they're unhappy, but they'll never know how unhappy they would have been).
A common response to utilitarianism. I've never heard that exact hypothetical before, but the point is a common one.
Another hypothetical involves a healthy patient under anesthesia. If he is killed so we can harvest his organs, several other lives would be saved. Does a utilitarian prefer to kill one innocent person, or to let several (perhaps equally innocent) people die?
Some say that Ursula K. LeGuin's short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a criticism of utilitarianism. Others, however, say it criticizes the substitutionary punishment of Jesus. (It's a great story. Quite short. The narrator moves are just fascinatingly weird, unique. I'd provide a link, but I'm not finding one that goes to the actual story rather than to comments. Maybe you've read it.)
The utilitarian response to these hypotheticals is that framing people for murder (or harvesting the organs of healthy people) makes people
unhappy. That is the
point of the hypotheticals. It is always the point. And so we utilitarians just point this out:
A world in which sheriffs falsify evidence will be unhappier than one in which they don't. A world in which people are afraid to go to the hospital because their organs might be harvested would be unhappier than one where that doesn't happen.
Always, the utilitarian's answer to the hypothetical is that the hypothetical situation is objectionable to utilitarians for utilitarian reasons.
And that's
why the hypothetical was raised. Opponents of utilitarianism would never raise a hypothetical that would result in people actually being happier. Suppose someone tried to oppose utilitarianism by positing someone who wanted to play golf on a Sunday rather than go to church. He skips church; he plays golf; everybody lives happily ever after. And the utilitarian's response is "So?"
And the anti-utilitarian knows that. So, in every case, the hypothetical case which is supposed to debunk utilitarianism is actually an illustration of how utilitarianism actually forbids bad things.
...
I reconcile this problem by holding that God knows what is best in the long-run. The sheriff, fearing God, wouldn't blame it on the drifter but would instead trust that God would work out a riot that results in a blood bath for the ultimate good even though the result would be proximately very, very bad. Great big proximate unhappiness for ultimate happiness.
So, yes, you are a utilitarian.
First question: How do you reconcile the utilitarian's general problem? I may have butchered that analogy. I hope that won't take away from the idea that utilitarian's have a problem.
Your hypothetical was good. I hope my response was good too.
2) Defining of personhood
From the Biblical perspective this is simple. God made all mankind in his image. That gives all mankind an irrevocably large amount of value. "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." (One digression, more for the other viewers: if your heart rages at hypocrisy after reading that, good. Maybe those "christians" don't know Christ. Maybe they cling to their own self-righteousness instead of the blood-purchased righteousness of Christ).
Mankind. wiploc, I think I'm going to define that word biologically as Homo Sapiens. I might be in error. Hopefully this conversation will bear that out. (Another digression: Could it be that God made other biological image bearers on some distant planet who aren't Homo Sapiens? Yes, I do.)
A person has personality. Dogs have personality, so it is wrong to torture puppies. Dogs have hopes and desires and fears. Brain-dead humans have none of these. A brain-dead human is not a person. Nor is a fertilized human egg cell.
My understanding of personhood from the atheistic perspective (or any perspective beyond a biblical perspective) is shallow-ish. The atheistic perspective I've heard is from a medical ethics class. I believe personhood boiled down to five different requirements that were all necessary. One was autonomy. I've forgotten the other four.
Story of my life. So many valuable lists that I remember just part of.
If a tree could talk, and said things to persuade us that it was conscious, hopeful, fearful, had desires, then it would be wrong to cut down the tree for firewood.
I don't leap to accept the autonomy requirement. Conjoined twins come to mind.
How do you define personhood, wiploc?
I don't claim to have a good robust definition. No more than I imagine you claim to know how ensoulment works.
But you can't be a person without opinions and desires. I think I've given this example before in our email exchange: Suppose a woman wanted an abortion, and her husband objected, and they wound up in court, and the court appointed an attorney to act in the interests of the embryo.
I don't think an embryo can have interests. It doesn't want to live. It doesn't want to die. There is no way to violate its rights.
If you cut someone's hair, that's a violation of rights
if they don't want it cut. But if they do want it cut, you can charge money for that. Whether it's a crime or a money-maker depends on what the customer/victim wants. An embryo, not wanting anything, has no rights to be violated.
The instinct to protect children is admirable. This instinct has a strong tendency to make people happier. But you wouldn't want to indulge that instinct if people wound up forbidding chastity on the grounds that it harms sperm cells by not letting them survive by fertilizing eggs. That would be a time when we need to let intellect overrule instinct.
It would be harmful to force unwilling people to have children. And it does no harm to a sperm cell to be denied an egg. Sperm cells don't have opinions, fears, aspirations, hopes, desires. Sperm cells aren't people.
It is the same with embryos.
Pregnant women are definitely people. Unlike embryos, they do have rights.
