Once again, I had a conversation with my mum concerning euthanasia. Being a staunch pro-choicer, it is obvious where my argument went. My mum is not the philosophical kind at all, in fact she is extremely dogmatic and was a bit outta her league on this one. I here do not wish to discuss euthanasia as such, but will investigate her oft-invoked statement “you are not the Creator of life, therefore you cannot take it away.”
I will deconstruct the argument two ways, one which I shall call the “layman argument” and the other, the “logical argument”. I stress that the latter is far more convincing, but some of you may consider the former. There is no contradiction in conclusion, simply methodology, and the arguments, to the best of my knowledge, are not in conflict.
The layman argument
The statement in question focuses on a current law of Nature, one which may not hold for long, especially with the advent of cloning in the late 1990s. Whilst most governments have intervened to ban cloning of humans, if one were to successfully clone a human, that is not to say he would be morally justified in taking the clone’s life away. Therefore, morality is not synonymous with divinity or creation; the argument is entirely spurious.
The logical argument
JFQ enumerated (three) criterions to establish a rational system of morality.
“
1. we need to establish what the nature of a proposition about ethical norms is
2. we must establish that such propositions are in fact propositions (meaning they can be either true or false)
3. we need to embark on a rational investigation into the foundations of those propositions.
”
We must reject the idea that morality originates in divinity.
Assuming that it passes the first test (which it doesn’t, but a discussion of that would lead to an excursion into general principles beyond the scope of this post), it surely fails at the second.
The divine, whatever it is that gives rise to use even generating ideas of a divine, is an intensely personal and private experience. So private in fact that it is impossible to speak about divinity in such a way as to construct sensible propositions. There are no public criteria for the usage of such language which invalidates any and all language games. The proposition in question is not really a proposition at all, since it is so esoteric and intelligible to those outside that private, individual sphere.
I will deconstruct the argument two ways, one which I shall call the “layman argument” and the other, the “logical argument”. I stress that the latter is far more convincing, but some of you may consider the former. There is no contradiction in conclusion, simply methodology, and the arguments, to the best of my knowledge, are not in conflict.
The layman argument
The statement in question focuses on a current law of Nature, one which may not hold for long, especially with the advent of cloning in the late 1990s. Whilst most governments have intervened to ban cloning of humans, if one were to successfully clone a human, that is not to say he would be morally justified in taking the clone’s life away. Therefore, morality is not synonymous with divinity or creation; the argument is entirely spurious.
The logical argument
JFQ enumerated (three) criterions to establish a rational system of morality.
“
1. we need to establish what the nature of a proposition about ethical norms is
2. we must establish that such propositions are in fact propositions (meaning they can be either true or false)
3. we need to embark on a rational investigation into the foundations of those propositions.
”
We must reject the idea that morality originates in divinity.
Assuming that it passes the first test (which it doesn’t, but a discussion of that would lead to an excursion into general principles beyond the scope of this post), it surely fails at the second.
The divine, whatever it is that gives rise to use even generating ideas of a divine, is an intensely personal and private experience. So private in fact that it is impossible to speak about divinity in such a way as to construct sensible propositions. There are no public criteria for the usage of such language which invalidates any and all language games. The proposition in question is not really a proposition at all, since it is so esoteric and intelligible to those outside that private, individual sphere.
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