The reasons that Singer singles out disabled infants rather than blacks or females, is that he doesn't think that even given the types of discrimation these groups face, that one could make any sort of judgment that their life was not worth living just because of this. But disabilities do differ in severity and hence it is possible to imagine disabilities so severe and painful that the disabled would be better off not to continue living. It is crucial to recall too that even on Singer's criteria only disabled with the severest disabilities would be, or should be if he were more careful, candidates for being killed. As I mentioned before, part of the intuitive shock from SInger's argument arises from the fact that most of us really do not accept that neither the normal child nor the disabled child has a right to life. But if the right to life is conceptually tied to a desire of continued existence and the ability to conceive of a continuing self, then Singer is surely correct. Railing at him about privileging reason, autonomy etc. is hardly the appropriate response. You must show that the concept of a continuing self and a desire for continued existence are not conceptually required to have a right to life. It is not that obvious that Singer is wrong and he is joined by many other philosphers including Mary Anne Warren, Michael Tooley, and Richard Brandt, who all set out similar requirements and all of them end up supporting infanticide..
What did you think of the case in Saskatchewan that I mentioned in which a father put his disabled daughter in his pickup truck and put a pipe from the exhaust into the cab and asphyxiated her? She had nothing but operations since birth, was in continual pain, had driven the wife frantic, was exhausting their resources, and was scheduled for another major operation because the others had not been successful. They did not want her to go to an instititution to languish until she died, as SInger would put it. Disabled people were adamant that the father be given a stiff sentence, and he was.However many others thought that he should not be convicted at all or given community service etc. So for ten years (I believe), a man is separated from a family that he loves and supported and sent to jail to be supported by the public purse and where no doubt he will learn a new trade, being a criminal. .
CHeers, Ken Hanly
Marta Russell wrote:
> Ken Hanly wrote:
>
> >
> > THe standard of humanity you are criticising has to do only with
> > personhood. But this has nothing to do with placing any particular moral worth
> > on reason, autonomy etc. either. Singer's criteria are conceptual, not moral
> > requirements, for having a right to life. He is not saying that the normal
> > infant is more valuable than the
> > disabled infant. He is saying that neither has a right to life. Why? Because
> > neither is capable of envisioning a future that it would lack if killed or can
> > desire such a future etc. Now this may be stupid or whatever, but it has
>
> > nothing to do with placing more value on the normal than disabled infant- even
> > though it does have ethical implications. These ethical implications are just
> > as negative for normal as for the disabled since both lose any appeal to a
> > right to life to protect them against being killed.
>
> Ken, we are still in disagreement over this. If we read between the lines by
> examining what Singer discusses and how he discusses it, Singer *singles out*
> disability as a basis for killing when he does not give the same weight to killing
> nondisabled infants. He cloaks this in the rationale of "suffering" -- whatever
> he thinks suffering is. I can find no passage where Singer goes on and on,
> paragraph after paragraph about the "quality of life" of the nondisabled infant.
> He does not talk about killing black babies, or female babies, or poor babies,
> only disabled babies. What about homosexual babies who make their parents unhappy
> when they discover this factor later in life? Well since one cannot "see"
> homosexuality at birth Singer conveniently escapes that one.
>
> Marta