i agree that moral agency is key, so too that rationality is fundamental, and clearly there is a boundary problem, where a featus has not the mental capacity to reason or comprehend that there are right acts and wrong acts. and yet very very small children might sufficiently be self aware and cognizant of moral issues as to set a very low age for self-sovereignty. its a question of human psychology and development…
That statement, as well as most in this thread, is arbitrary and lacks objective meaning or truth. A human has rights by their virtue of being human. Applying any other qualifier is ridiculous. If you disagree, please explain why a human needs to be rational or able to comprehend morality to have basic rights.
you are wrong.
a human has rights by virtue of their being a moral agent. Applying any other qualifier is ridiculous. now try explaining how moral agency can be possible without rationality ? i’d be impressed.
Humans have rights because God made them in his image and gave them rights. You may not believe in God, but if there is no God there is no such thing as objective morality. You may say that rational beings have rights, but that is subjective and arbitrary. Objective morality and rights only exist if God exists.
so you think moral agency with zero rationality is possible.
i think you lost the argument.
if what you are saying is true then there is no definitive defintion of what a human being is. The only logical defintion of a human has to be biological.
of course i dont dispute that humans are identifiable biologically , how on earth did you get otherwise from what i wrote ???
What about parents’ rights?
I’m not following you.
A human whose brain has been damage beyond repair and is a permanent coma cannot think critically or rationally, yet that person still has moral value and rights. I don’t see the the problem with that. By virtue of being human, this bed-ridden person still has rights given by God. They may not be able to ACT morally, because they cannot act at all, but they still have moral value.
I don’t understand your question. Could you please elaborate?
Then there should be no dispute about what rights one human has over another. Since rights are inherent to being human a toddler human is just as wronged when he is killed as an adult human would be wronged.
moral agency dude. think about what it means. think about if rationality has anything to do with it. if a toddler has sufficient rational capacity to be a moral agent, then i completely agree, he is a moral agent. if he hasnt then he hasnt. its a question of biology. if you like. in the sense of discovering by science whether they are moral agents or not. moral agents inhabit a subset of human bodies, and a subset of non-human rational agent bodies. not all human bodies are moral agents. dead bodies etc.
Do parents have a right to force their children to do things children don’t like? Can you exercise parental authority without infringing on children’s freedom? Can outsiders interfere with our parenting methods? Make us send kids to school and do other things against our will?
this person with no capacity for reason can not think of himself as your victim if you hurt him. you can do him no wrong. he is a human looking shell. the slang term is ‘vegatable’ for a reason, crude as it may seem.
Morality exists independently of the existence of humans. It must be so, otherwise morality is purely subjective. A toddler may be able to act rationally or not, but that doesn’t matter. By virtue of being human that toddler has moral rights.
Dead bodies are not moral agents because they have no soul.
Science cannot determine what is moral and what isn’t. The idea that it can is absurd.
Even if the person will never again be able to act rationally, if they are still alive they have innate human rights.
morality holds for all time for any and all moral agents. this is independant and universal. it so happens that some living human bodies are rational and hence moral agents and so are ‘caught by morality’ . your theory is that human beings have human souls that god loves and so they have rights. what about rational alien species out there in space? will their alien souls do?
i never said science can determine what act is moral and what isnt. it can certainly determine rationality, and hence the fact over whether such and such a thing is a moral agent or not.
you are a thing. get over it.
they have all the rights of a lampost, even if their relatives fawn over the empty shell of what their loved one used to inhabit.
Yes, a parent can force a child to do morally acceptable things like chores, exercising manners, etc. Of course, the child can exercise his freedom to leave his parents as well. If the child is too young to make such a decision then the burden is on the parent to make moral decisions for their children. Outsiders should not interfere with parenting methods. Forcing a parent to send kids to school is disgusting coercion.
You’re attempting to be snarky and I don’t know why. I’m not attacking you.
My argument boils down to this: If there is no God, there is no such thing as OBJECTIVE morality or rights. For you to speak of objective morality in the absence of God, you need to prove that such a concept can exist.
If God exists, then he created everything, including aliens if they exist. I won’t venture to guess what rights he would have bestowed upon them