From my perspective, the fact someone could say that a line is drawn "arbitrarily" is absolutely a worthless red herring. You could argue that the difference between pre-birth and post-birth fetuses is fuzzy and arbitrary, but we still don't allow people to kill newborns. You could argue that the difference between a child and an adult is a fuzzy, arbitrary line, but we still don't allow the exploitation of children. We can argue that the line between a combatant and a non-combatant in a warzone is a fuzzy, arbitrary line, but we make killing civilians a war crime. The fact that moral lines can be drawn in a way that someone considers to be arbitrary is basically no different in form or substance from arguing that morality does not exist. Nothing is fixed. Everything is fuzzy. If you can't draw a line because you could draw it somewhere else, the end result is barbarism.
I'm pretty sure the idea that drawing a line somewhat arbitrarily implies there shouldn't be a line is a straw man. Who is arguing this? The quote from the article advocates for more stringent morals--that beings that aren't fully human should be given similar moral weight as humans. It also suggests, more broadly, that we should reconsider both where these lines are drawn and if they should really be lines instead of gradients. But I see no indication that the lines should become less restrictive or any trend toward barbarism.
I took issue with the quoted part: "it is unclear why it is important for us to preserve the view that biological humanness is both necessary and sufficient for full moral status."
Notice how they said both "necessary and sufficient"? When both are included, there's an implication here that it might be possible for someone to be fully biologically human and yet without full moral rights - that, for example, someone with a different number of chromosomes isn't entitled to life - that someone can be a human and that being human is not "sufficient" for them to have human rights. That's dystopian. Maybe I'm assuming bad faith on the part of the author.
>That's dystopian. Maybe I'm assuming bad faith on the part of the author.
I think you are. Because while your examination of the logic is sound as far as it goes, I think you stop where the author trusts you to continue.
The idea that humans don't deserve full moral rights is so unpopular that author trusts you to infer that they hold some other view. Along the lines of "maybe there are non-human species which deserve full moral rights as well."
I will deliberately not get more specific than that about what the author, because if I did I would probably be bringing the details of my own views rather than theirs. But for myself, it seems highly plausible that other species with highly sophisticated individual social behavior may be able to suffer in ways we're used to thinking of as unique to human experience. And I think there are other people, maybe not yourself, who might accept this plausibility if they are forced to confront the reality of human chimeras.
Of course, there's also the priests, and I expect a very different reaction from them.
I think the other direction is implied, that is someone not being biologically human can be considered conscious and “human” like a chimp, or some hybrid chimera monkey-human.
In fact, now that the line can be blurred means we will need to put the matter up for lawyers, legislators, and judges to decide. What can go wrong there?
> You could argue that the difference between pre-birth and post-birth fetuses is fuzzy and arbitrary
If you don’t view the “attached” women as a living person that can die from childbirth..
Also, there is a very real difference between a first trimester fetus and a third trimester one. The latter is only ever aborted when the life of the mother is in danger (eg. with mothers less than 18).
