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Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
Your utilitarian answer sort of ignores the question: I said the death would be painless, quick and unexpected. The loner/homeless person wouldn't have time to suffer. You mentioned that you would suffer, but that isn't necessarily so. You could be a sociopath.
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One of the few examples where utilitarianism breaks down is when applied as a personal guidance on morality for sociopaths. It is a theoretical problem; I don't think any sociopath who loves to kill have strived to do so in the utilitaristic way. To think that way requires a very moral sort of person and if their ideal is to maximize happiness and minimize suffering in the world, what are they doing killing people? It absolutely makes no sense, But yes, from a morale theory point of view, that is a shortcoming.
But I still think utilitarism is useful in the case in the case of abortion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
I agree with what you say about 'gut' morality, but I do think that is exactly why people are against abortion. I think that fundamentally, people value human life. I think that our gut morality often conflicts with conclusions that we might arrive at by utilitarian logic. That is really the point I was driving at with my questioning.
edit -I don't want to seem to dodge this, but I don't have an answer for you. I'll try to explain where I'm coming from instead.
I typically use some form of utilitarian logic to deal with moral questions, but lately I've started to feel like this approach falls somewhat short of the ideals that we're used to. I'm not religious, but it seems like we treat human life as sacred as a matter of habit.
For example, if I were pressed to choose between a painful death for a dog vs a quick death for a human, I would undoubtedly choose for the dog to die. I can't possibly rationalize this as being based on suffering - that's not it at all. It's the waste of a human life that irks me.
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The death of a dog or the death of a human is something that your inherent morals can relate to. Of course people are worth more to us than dogs as our fitness is dependent on other people. I would argue that you don't really need utilitarianism to cover that bit. Instead you'd use it to help you when you don't have a gut feeling.
Whether or not an interest in fetuses is natural, I just don't think it can be. I think that gut feeling is placed there by culture, religious indoctrination or some other moral conditioning from the environment. As I mentioned, fetuses were just not a feature in the daily lives of our ancestors and neither were abortions. Therefore we can't have a natural instinct towards them. Imagine your lover being with another man; the feeling of jealousy is pretty much universal. It's natural and relevant to every man, even if some are more jealous than others. But can you say the same for wanting to protect fetuses? I don't think I have a gut feeling for fetuses and abortions, yet I am otherwise a healthy human being with normal feelings (including jealousy). You do stir feelings in me by showing me a picture of a 6 months old baby because that looks human to me, but an early embryo not so much.
I do have a gut feeling to sympathize with suffering mothers so I'm more interested in protecting them. Possibly, a good moral compromise between the interests of our natural instincts and the best possible consequences would be to allow abortions, but keep the time limit to do so as short as possible while still getting the best consequences from it (that is, people should have time to get tests done, but not wait for many months before making the decision).