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    Lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
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    Lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid schizophrenics are rightly excluded from the class of free moral agents.

    Afterlife & DeathEternal Conscious Torment
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Moral freedom requires a minimal degree of rationality, including an ability to learn from experience, an ability to discern normal reasons for acting, and a capacity for moral improvement.
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    • 2.Lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid schizophrenics all lack some part of the rationality required to qualify as free moral agents.
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    • 3.However causally undetermined some of their behaviors might be, lacking the required rationality disqualifies them from being free moral agents.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Moral agency admits of degrees rather than a binary threshold, as argued by Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-responsiveness account.
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    • 2.Paranoid schizophrenics and severely brain-damaged individuals often retain partial reasons-responsiveness sufficient for graded moral standing.
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    • 3.Excluding agents from moral freedom entirely based on diminished rationality conflates impaired agency with the complete absence of agency.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Peter Singer and utilitarian traditions ground moral consideration in sentience and capacity for suffering, not rationality or moral agency.
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    • 2.The claim illicitly substitutes criteria for moral responsibility with criteria for moral considerability, collapsing two distinct normative categories.
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    • 3.Lower animals may lack free moral agency yet still possess morally relevant interests that generate obligations in others, as Kant himself acknowledged in indirect duty accounts.
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    Afterlife & DeathEternal Conscious Torment

    Related

    Excluding agents from moral freedom entirely based on diminished rationality con...However causally undetermined some of their behaviors might be, lacking the requ...Lower animals may lack free moral agency yet still possess morally relevant inte...Lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even para...
    +5 moreShow less
    Moral agency admits of degrees rather than a binary threshold, as argued by Fisc...Moral freedom requires a minimal degree of rationality, including an ability to ...Paranoid schizophrenics and severely brain-damaged individuals often retain part...Peter Singer and utilitarian traditions ground moral consideration in sentience ...The claim illicitly substitutes criteria for moral responsibility with criteria ...

    Similar

    Lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps...93%However causally undetermined some of their behaviors might be, lackin...76%The creation of free moral agents carries an inherent risk of ultimate...73%Individuals are not morally required to benefit society in every way t...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: heaven-hell
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    If that is true, then not just any causally undetermined choice, or just any agent caused choice, or just any randomly generated selection between alternatives will qualify as a free choice for which the choosing agent is morally responsible. Moral freedom also requires a minimal degree of rationality on the part of the choosing agent, including an ability to learn from experience, an ability to discern normal reasons for acting, and a capacity for moral improvement. With good reason, therefore, do we exclude lower animals, small children, the severely brain damaged, and perhaps even paranoid ...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit