On May 26, 2007, at 4:16 AM, John Ku wrote:
I think maximization of negative entropy is a poor goal to have.
Although life perhaps has some intrinsic value, I think the primary
thing we care about is not life, per se, but beings with
consciousness and capable of well-being. Under your idea, it seems
like the "interests" of a large tree might count for as much, if
not much more, than a human being.
I also think being beneficial to humans is a bad criterion. We care
about humans because most humans have particularly rich and complex
mental lives, not because they are biologically human (e.g. have 23
chromosomes or descent from a certain evolutionary lineage, etc.).
We care about humans in the first instance because we are human.
While it has become somewhat fashionable to distance ourselves from
the reality of our own being and calmly contemplate species-death I
for on do not consider it a healthy practice.
You might scrape off a few skin cells of mine and keep them alive
in a test tube but the mere fact that those cells are human and
living doesn't mean we have any reasons to promote its life. I
would hold the same goes for living human organisms that are
braindead with no capacity for consciousness ( e.g. anencephalic
infants). Also, if there were aliens with as rich and complex a
mental life as humans, their interests should count for just as
much as a normal human's. To think otherwise would, I think, be on
a par with racism; philosophers call this speciesism.
To fail to defend and uphold the well being of one's own species is
likely to be an evolutionary dead end.
- samantha
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