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Originally Posted by peter12
I think that higher life is the crux. "Higher" in the sense that it has a cerebral cortex large enough to consciously recognize its own existence.
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Sure, but even that might not be good enough. I remember when my son first was able to recognize that the baby in the mirror was HIM and not another baby. Is that a measure of self awareness? That happened quite a while after he was born.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
The question of rights is... a hard one. Aristotle said that man is a political animal. It is in our nature to ruminate over these questions. Something in our spirit or mind makes us want to answer these questions, I don't think science has a very big place at all in the larger debate about ethics. Although I think it can help to dispel certain pretexts we have about abortion.
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I think science has a very significant place in the debate about ethics. But as I said the science itself doesn't have an opinion in the debate, but it can surely enable it.
How much did a deeper biological understanding of ourselves contribute to the idea that slavery was wrong? If everyone still though that black people were a different, inferior species, would we still have slaves?
Science doesn't have an ethical opinion, but I think it can contribute information, criteria by which to evaluate, data by which to measure, etc.
It may change the debate at a fundamental level, how would it change our system of ethics if it was found that free will is an illusion?
