Re: John Anderson (1893-1962)
Posted by diogenes on 2025-January-6 14:54:45, MondayIn reply to Re: John Anderson (1893-1962) posted by Pharmakon on 2025-January-6 04:22:13, Monday
The review is a good one. The volume does go off on tangents, but I've found the tangents quite interesting. The author is very partisan, and I had already picked up on the author's morally conservative views. His criticisms of Peter Singer border on the bizarre. He writes of SingerHis claim that 'Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind [for the future], because snails and newborn infants are incapable of having such desires' is, on the face of it, simply false, and he does not defend it with any evidence. (p. 420)I could equally well point out that Franklin's counter-claim is also not defended with any evidence. In any case, Singer's view seems to me obviously correct. The idea that a day-old infant has desires or plans for its future is very strange. What sort of desires would they be? What characteristics of personality or personal identity does a newborn baby have that would elevate it above many animals that humans routinely slaughter for their convenience? But Franklin, as a Catholic, was perhaps bound to take exception to Singer's defence of infanticide, just as he was bound to take exception to his utilitarianism.  |
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