1. pmail: fetuses & feelings
Student: Provided the fetus is not able to feel anything, I'm still
having a hard time grasping (i.e. agreeing with) arguments against
abortion. I don't see much a distinction between killing a new
embryo and using antibacterial hand sanitizer; both are just killing
cells without feelings. Is there another reason to distinguish them
other than saying that one is a potential person?
DrC: You could expand this intuition into an argument by
distinguishing the case of the fetus from an adult who is asleep, or
in a coma. You could discuss this `thought experiment’: A world just
like ours, except that when an adult falls asleep, s/he
transmogrifies into a fetus, and when s/he awakes, this is a process
of transmogrification from a fetus to an adult. Would it be okay to
kill the futus?

2. pmail: DV
Student: This pmail is regarding decision value utilitarianism. I am
having difficulty seeing how this is can be as rigorously outlined
and argued for as either consequentialist or deontologist ethics. It
seems to me that it can be adjusted so that decision lines up with
intuitions. We can defend a non-positive consequence maximizing
action based on the meaning of the action as having more value, or
vice versa. It is hard to see whether decision value is 1 part
consequence + 1 part meaning, or if it varies by situation.
DrC: You are facing a situation in which you will be under pressure
to abort a fetus. Consider buying lottery tickets that allow you to
buy (i) an abortion + a day at Disneyland, (ii) an abortion + Oxfam
donations to Haiti, (iii) avoiding an abortion (like a “Get out of jail
free” card in Monopoly) , (iv) avoiding an abortion + a day of
working at some job you detest. You would pay nothing for i,
nothing for ii, twenty dollars for iii, and forty dollars for iv. This
goes some way towards quantifying your aversion to abortion.
Others might assign different dollar values to these tickets. That
just means that utility is subjective. That’s the orthodox view in
decision theory.

3. pmail: happiness again
Student: When discussing my pmail in class, I believe that you
agreed with my general idea, but questioned my appeal to the
critical vs. intuitive (hereafter C vs. I) distinction as I have applied
it. I attempted to apply the C vs. I distinction in the same way that
Singer does (92-93) when he responds to a possible objection to
the indirect utilitarian reason against killing. The objection posits
that it could be the case that one may murder another with out
anybody learning of the victim's death, in which case the indirect
utilitarian reason, i.e., the effect on the victim's friends and family,
would be negligible. Singer responds that we "cannot foresee all
the complexities of our choices" and so must adhere to intuitive
moral principles, explaining this in much the same way as I have
attempted.
DrC: I think your application of C vs I is fine, as far as it goes. If I
said otherwise, I take it back! But the case for endorsing the moral
professor’s choice would be made at BOTH the C and the I levels,
because even at the C level there isn’t omniscient about the future.

4. pmail: twinning, feelings
Student: Re: Singer's point on twinning. Just because you don't
know whether an embryo will be one individual or two doesn't
make it any less than one individual. It seems unfair to say "Since
we don't know if it's one or two individuals, it's obviously none at
all." I'm pretty sure that if there's any doubt over whether
there's even *one* individual present, that would serve as basis
enough to err on the side of caution. Would this be a fair
response to Singer?
Student: Re: Infanticide, Singer seems to say that just because it
feels wrong to us to kill a newborn infant doesn't mean it is.
Granted, but wouldn't preference utilitarianism take into account
these cultural "feelings"?

5. pmail: Singer and Mill
Student: John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Utilitarianism (Chapter 12
in the Cahn anthology), writes that "happiness is desirable and the
only thing desirable as an end, all other things being only desirable
as means to that end" (100). Mill, then, makes the supreme value in
his ethical theory happiness (presumably achieved through the
Higher pleasures). I am wondering if Singer would also agree that
happiness is the ultimate aim. He, admittedly, seeks happiness
through preference satisfaction and not higher pleasures as Mill
does, but in the end they both seem to be seeking the same thing:
Happiness. Is this fair? If so, then is the "utility" in all forms of
utilitarianism "happiness", or could some form of utilitarianism
propose something else as utility, say beauty?
Student: Mill claims that "No reason can be given why the general
happiness is desirable, expect that each person, so far as he
believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." Singer
brings sentience into this, but utimately is not this Singer's reason
for accepting preference satisfaction as fundamental to his theory?

6. Singer Ch 7:
non-religious ethics
Singer: ... once we abandon those doctrines
about the sanctity of human life that -- as
we saw in Chapter 4 -- collapse as soon as
they are questioned.... (175)
DrC: Doesn’t Singer simply assume that
religious doctrines about the soul are beyond
the bounds of non-religious ethics? (137B)
Assuming doesn’t have the power to make
those doctrines collapse.

7. Singer Ch 7: potential
Singer: We saw in our discussion of abortion
that the potential of a fetus to become a
rational, self-conscious being cannot count
against killing it at a stage when it lacks
these characteristics.... (182M)
DrC: He dismisses without argument the idea
of degrees of potential (160B11ff), because it
won’t appeal to “traditional defenders of the
right to life”.

8. Singer Ch 7:
the principle of double effect
Singer: But the distinction between directly
intended effect and side-effect is a
contrived one. (210T)
DrC: It only looks contrived when a
judgment about the costs of the side-effects
is regarded as irrelevant to the justification
for the intended action. But DV takes those
costs into account: they can have greater or
lesser weight. If sufficiently great, they can
outweigh positive SU.

9. Cahn 13: Pojman
“Strengths and weaknesses of...”
W.D. Ross has argued that utilitarianism is to
be rejected because it is counterintuitive. If
we accept it, we would have to accept an
absurd implication. Consider two acts, A and
B, that will both result in 100 hedons (units
of pleasure or utility). The only difference is
that A involves telling a lie and B involves
telling the truth. The utilitarian must
maintain that the two acts are of equal
value. But this seems implausible; truth
seems to be an intrinsically good thing....

10. Cahn 14:
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle: Presumably, however, to say that
happiness is the chief good seems a
platitude, and a clearer account of what it is
is still desired. This might perhaps be given,
if we could first ascertain the function of
man. (113)