'Brain Dead' Child Wakes Day Before Being Removed From Life Support

[Cow Poke]

I can't really imagine a situation in which I would need to try to make nuanced judgments as to the infinitesimal differences in value between different mentally-fully-functional humans.

Since all I am saying is that an adult human has more mental functions present than a monkey, or a fetus, and that mental functions exist on a scale (from zero/insect to adult human), I don't see any need to get into really detailed specifics of tiny differences between different fully functional human minds or how those would or should be measured. From a practical perspective, we can consider such differences to be zero.

So, this whole exercise is just your attempt to justify your belief that it's ok to murder unborn and recently born children.

wow

[Sparko]

Theoretically yes (though I would totally reject using IQ as any sort of sole and direct measure of total mental capacities - which includes things as varied as consciousness, intention, memory, self-awareness etc), but in practice the difference in value between two humans is going to be so infinitesimal compared to say, a monkey, or a fish, or an insect, that it's not really worth talking about. It's like saying someone is at 99.999 instead of 100 in value, when we are comparing them to things which are at 0.1 or 0.001 in value (if we stick arbitrary numeric figures on it that I just made up).

Amusingly I guess that could make the following sentences coherent:
"What's the difference between me and you?"
"A fish."

You sound like a Utilitarian.

[Starlight]

You sound like a Utilitarian.

Yes. Utilitarianism is the most correct of the traditional moral paradigms.

[Teallaura]

Would you value a smart but immoral person over a stupid but moral person? How do you evaluate how smart a person is?

Where's PM and what have you done to him?


































*Sorry, we so rarely agree on this issue that I couldn't resist.