Yes, of course the population is made up of individuals and each individual's suffering matters.

But that's not the eugenicists primary concern. It's easier to understand when you remember the really big eugenics movements, like Nazism and White Supremacy, which care less for the individual and more for the "purity" of the overall race.

It's an important distinction to make because it's an underlying worldview that does often affect our politics in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, ways.

Think animal rights vs. conservationists. Most of the time these two groups align, but sometimes conservationists will seek to conserve the overall population of a species in ways that harms individual animals more than animal rights groups find acceptable.

So back to the question of incest: If I am a eugenicist, I oppose incest because I don't want the DNA of the overall population besmirched. If I care about individual rights, I am concerned about the welfare and suffering of individual children potentially born into more suffering than necessary.

You're missing the key point of my comment.

The author posits eugenics as a concern for the purity? health? goodness? of the overall population. But in reality, much (most?) concern surrounding the fitness of future children is because we are concerned about the welfare of those children as individuals.

>Eugenics, a literal translation of the Greek for "good birth," aims to improve the population through interventions. Positive eugenics aims to increase “good” and “desirable” traits, whereas negative eugenics aims to reduce “bad” or “undesirable” traits.

Herein lies the problem with their theory: it assumes that people oppose incest for the good of the overall population.

I, and I assume most people, oppose incest out of concern for the welfare of the individual potential children. Children born with genetic diseases suffer. I believe it is our duty to prevent the suffering of children as much as possible.

To reduce eugenics merely to a "good birth" would include something as simple as taking prenatal vitamins. At which point the term loses all meaning.

So what?

>You can't grind something up and extract x grams of value from it - it's not some objective physical property of a thing.

This is a strange analogy. There are many objective things in the universe that don't have mass.

>Everything is always valuable to someone for some reason.

I don't see how relational value would work without the anchoring of inherent value. In other words: if the valuer doesn't matter, why would his or her valuing matter?

You don't think disabled people and children are inherently valuable/have personhood?

I'm not a deep ecologist, so I don't ascribe to that. You do you though!

That sounds fancy, but what exactly do you mean?

Recognizing my personal obligations towards a person on the basis of some connection we have is one thing. But it's a different thing entirely from assigning moral value to that person. All persons have the same basic moral value which is entirely independent from how I may or may not be connected to them.

Cmon, the world doesn't revolve around you or me. We cannot base moral theory or law on such navel gazing tactics!

Only some homo sapiens. And certainly not all the homo sapiens we would want to include under the category of persons. So the definition of a person needs to be a different one.

>Yes

Cool. Then you do agree with everything I was saying in the first place. Good talk.

You're turning into some strange sort of pretzel here.

But let me try to glean the main message here: you DO understand that Australian people have rights that have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal relationship to them.

You're missing the point. I hope.

You cannot possibly actually believe an Australian deserves fewer human rights than a French person simply because you happen to be French.

"Ordinary people" are quite capable of understanding that racism is bad.

And surely it makes no sense to place more importance on someone who lives 100miles from me rather than 1000miles. Even the "ordinary person" would be able to understand that both of these persons are equally deserving of basic human rights and decency.

In fact the "ordinary person" can even understand that their own child and a complete stranger have equal rights.

What you're perhaps more importantly speaking to is personal responsibility: I have a personal responsibility toward my family that I do not have toward a stranger. That has nothing to do with how the law should deal with my family vs. strangers to me however. The law and philosophy need to treat all persons equally. "Ordinary people" do understand that.

Just to be clear: Are you condoning racism? Why or why not?

And do you actually think we should base philosophy and/or laws on what the individual prioritizes in their private life? OR do we recognize that our subjective preferences are not a good basis for general rules without reference to more objective things?

Omgosh, I just realized you're not the other commenter. Your little icons have the same color and I didn't register further than that. Please forgive my snark!

Exactly.

To draw a circle that includes all of the humans we would like to include as persons (children, elderly, average citizens, people with varying degrees of mental disabilities), it becomes unavoidable to include many animals in that same circle.

Oh, look at that, you've argued yourself into a corner for all the world to see, but you can't deal, so you accuse me of bad faith.

C'est la vie. Better luck next time!

>you are denigrating the Human.

How in the world do you get that from anything I said?

>Accusations of -Ism's (and the assignment of any kind of moral weight to such accusations) is the last refuge for the incompetent.

So now you just don't think racism exists?

I'm taking you by your own words. You may change your stance at any time!

Huh?

Seeking to elevate the status of non-humans means I don't like humans and can't dislike racists?

What the what now?

>Yes, those things would be permissible, and that is okay.

What are you talking about? You're literally condoning racism, sexism, and nationalism?

What is so special about homo sapiens then? We're just one kind of animal among many. So in order to say we're special, you'd better have some solid reasoning other than "but we're hUmAN!"

Without another objective set of reasons, that's not much better than privileging white people because you are white, or males because you are male, or Americans because you are American.

Wells, wells, wells... publicly protesting the concept of public protests. How the turntables.