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Originally Posted by CSflim
Ok. Ignore the law. Ignore how people would react to her. Also ignore considerations of aberrant behaviour.
My question is:
Is a mother who physically abuses a very young child doing anything morally wrong?
If the answer to this question is 'yes', then why is it wrong.?
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I gave you one reason already, which I hold to be sufficient.
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So socially defined taboos are sufficient to determine an act morally wrong?
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No, a socially defined taboo can be moral. Breaking a moral socially defined taboo is immoral (up to extenuating circumstances -- it is immoral to steal, but there are circumstances where it would be immoral not to).
Your statement changed my implicit 'can' to a universal 'are' -- socially defined taboos can be moral, as opposed to socially defined taboos are moral.
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I certainly accept that taboos can be functionally useful (e.g. the incest taboo). But incest is not wrong by virtue of the fact that there is a taboo against it - if it is wrong, it is wrong for other reasons. One need only look at historical examples of what was once considered taboo to realise this.
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And I gave you one reason why such a taboo would be moral. Distinguishing between non-intelligent infants and mentally crippled people, and intelligent human beings, is an overly difficult and dangerous act -- failure is
EDIT easy and expensive. A taboo against harming such non-intelligent human-shaped things is thus moral -- and currently, it may be the only moral solution availiable.
As I have noted, there are other reasons not to eat small children and mentally crippled people. I stand by my arguement that the above reason is sufficient.
If you want some practical results:
I find nothing morally repugnant about brain-stem-only cloned human organ banks, assuming a zero rate of failure on the brain-stem-only part.
I find nothing morally repugnant about stem cell research in general (specific stem cell research is different).
In both of those cases, the benefits would outweigh the costs of distinguishing 'stem cells' and 'organ farms' from 'human beings'.
For different reasons than the above, if someone where to hurt someone's pet, I would find that immoral. But not on the same plane as hurting a human. Under the catagory of a practical moral taboo-widening, I'd extend that to non-pets that "could be pets" -- the exact width sufficient or nessicary would be a hard problem.
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In these cases there is much psychological pleasure to be had (for differing reasons) from the occurrence of physical pain. The psychological pleasure wins out over the physical pain - this is why it is enjoyable. The net result is pleasure, not pain.
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I'll be more blunt.
I am not a utilitarian. Your arguement seem to assume utilitarianism is correct, and some correct units of utility are pleasure and pain.
The world is not a better place if you made tonnes of hypothetical 'happy' machines, in my opinion.
As an example, there is a rare genetic condition that results in someone being unable to feel pain. Harm to this person still occurs.