Richard Dawkins on Down Syndrome

Why is it wrong to murder people then? Suppose you had a big red button that would kill everyone in the world (in a manner of minimal suffering), is it okay to press it? You're ending everyone's suffering and pleasure, and putting them all into a neutral, certain state.

Suffering does exist, but on the whole people seem to like life, and want to keep it for as long as possible.

Murder doesn't have to be done in a manner that inflicts suffering, nor does it have to involve any social costs. Suppose the person you're killing is a total hermit with no relationship or dependency with anyone else. Or suppose a set of parents want to kill their own newborn child, who hasn't met anyone else yet and isn't going to be missed by anyone. If the murder takes place in a completely pain and stress-free way (e.g. under general anaesthetic), is that moral?

My point here is that, because most people want to retain their own life rather than end it, it shows that in most cases, taking the pleasure and suffering all into account, life is preferable to non-life. Which means that, by terminating someone's chance at life before they are able to experience it, you're unlikely to be doing them any favours. Whereas your argument seems to be based on the assumption that, on the whole, life is a bad thing to have.

Murder: "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice." What is lawful is a matter of social convention so I would rather you use "kill".

Also, it is true that on the whole people seem to like life but "whole" is not synonymous with "everybody" and especially those who are not born can't be said to want (or not want) to be alive.

Well, what do you want? We are life forms after all, either at the individual level or at the collective level we are programmed to value the chemical conditions we know as "life".

Richard Dawkings has most likely been influenced in his views by the world's most known utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer. I suggest his book Practical Ethics if you are interested in rational approaches to ethical matters.

I think there would still be cost to the murderers, who would likely experience guilt for what they had done, and people at risk of finding out, becoming distressed, and so on. But I understand the spirit of your argument, and supposing there was a truly isolated murder, in which one person was simply removed from existence with no additional adverse effects on anybody - that is to say no suffering caused, no well-being to others omitted, present and future included - then under those conditions I would struggle to find rational recourse for its condemnation. However, I'm tempted to say no such example of this sort exists, the example being so contrived as to only exist in thought experiments. In my view, murder is wrong in this practical sense.

I agree that from humans' perspective, life is almost always preferable to non-life, since everyone will state this preference and we have no reason to distrust people, thinking them lying or mistaken. However, that is a separate question as to whether life is better than non-life. That is another issue entirely and much more murky as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think Premise 4 is the relevant one to use here.

1. If there were a cure for DS, and we were debating whether or not it is moral to use it to turn a DS child into a non-DS child, then Premise 4 would be the correct one to use, because we would be making a choice between that child either having DS, or not having it. In this case, of course I would say it is moral to use the cure, and immoral not to use it.

In the discussion regarding whether or not it is moral to abort a DS child, we should be comparing their happiness/suffering trade-off, not with a non-DS child, but with a non-existent child or an aborted child. This is because you are making a choice between your child either existing and having DS, or not existing at all. In this case, I don't necessarily agree that the happiness-suffering tradeoff for a child with Down Syndrome is, on average, worse than for an unborn child who gets aborted, meaning that it is not necessarily moral to go ahead with the abortion, or immoral to cary the baby to term.

It's not that I expect otherwise; rather I say things like that to help cushion the blow when I'm trying to say something unpalatable.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm familiar with Peter Singer - Practical Ethics is already on my wishlist.

Because of course, Wikipedia is such a reliable source of information...

1.I used the word "murder" deliberately, in reference to types of killing which are unlawful under our current social conventions (assumes that "we" live under the same society - mistake). I wouldn't say that killing people is immoral, per se. There are plenty of reasons why killing (but not murdering) someone might be moral.



2. The point being made here is that it is often incorrect to assume that, by letting someone live, you are setting them up for overall unhappiness.

It is. Because, I am pretty sure Dawkins is utilitarian and if he was he would assess the situation in that way.

1. I agree.

2. That's where you get it wrong. You would not be aborting a "child". You would be aborting a fetus. Big difference (at the somatic, developmental, psychological and biological level). A fetus is not a child. This is a scientific fact. Btw, talking here of fetuses of less than 24 weeks. So in this view, a fetus is a potential child (i.e. does not exist yet) so you could compare it to a non-existing child because none of them exist. Only difference is that one has more chances than the other to "come into existence". So the comparison is between two potential non-existing children, one with DS and another without DS. Remember, a fetus is not a child. I have seen many pro-lifers make claims without reading their facts but it is a very important one.

1. The reason I discourage the use of "murder" is because it's moral nature is based on the particular society you live in and because it only takes a lot of people agreeing to make murder of a group of individuals lawful. "Killing" is more objective and clear. We are not engaging in social conventions, we are debating using reason thus social conventions should be set aside. Hence kill over murder.

2. In some cases, by letting someone live (this syntanctical construct is misleading, what you are doing is also not letting them die - it conveys the idea that someone has decided that he is going to actively make sure that you live - with all the moral assumptions that it carries) you are indeed setting them up for overall unhappiness.

My rationale for its condemnation would be that, by taking someone's life, in most cases you are making that person worse off than they were to start with, because you are taking something which is of positive value to them. They might not resent you for it after you've killed them, but even still, you've reduced the amount of overall happiness, or "utility" in the world.

I don't really agree that the two are separate issues at all. Whether something is "better" or "worse" is a purely subjective matter, and ultimately translates to whether or not it is "preferable". I would say that life is better than non-life, if and only if it is preferable to non-life (taking into account all the consequences of it).

1. Even if a fetus is not a child, the point is this: You have a choice over whether to abort or not to abort. Your decision will determine whether this fetus ultimately ends up as a DS-child, or no child at all. Therefore, to determine the overall morality of the decision, you should be comparing the happiness-suffering trade off of a DS child with that of a non-existent child, because those are the two end results you are choosing between

2. It doesn't matter whether a DS child is, on the whole, unhappier than non-DS children, because you're not choosing between the fetus ending up as a DS child vs a non-DS child.

3. By this logic, Dawkins should be saying that it is immoral to carry pretty much any child to term. Children of single parents might be, unhappier than children of two parents, all else being equal. Children born into poor households might be, unhappier than children born into rich households, all else being equal.

4.Pretty much everybody has some disadvantage to their happiness which is not shared by the general population.

I think this is a trap that people fall into when considering the value of life. As you mention, whether something is "better" or "worse" is a subjective matter, and value is tied to subjectivity as well. When considering the value of something, we are effectively estimating the cost of not having it. For example, if I value my car, it is only because without my car, life would be less convenient. My estimation of the degree to which I would be worse off without it corresponds to how much I value having it.

However, with one's own life, such an estimation cannot be made because I cannot not have my life. From my perspective, I am either alive or - nothing. There is no scenario in which, from my perspective, I am without my life. The consideration of value must be made from my perspective because we are talking of the value of my life to me - an assessment that cannot be made.

From my perspective, I always have my life. I cannot lose it. It can only be lost from the perspectives of other people, and so in my opinion it only makes sense to talk about the value of one's life to other people and not to oneself.

As for the utility of the world decreasing, I'd object to this as well. If there were a finite number of beings in the universe and they were all supremely happy, I would view this as better than if there were an infinite number of beings who each possessed only the tiniest sliver of happiness. The net 'utility' in the universe would be greater in the latter scenario, yet the first seems more appealing to me. I think the number of beings in the universe is irrelevant; what matters in my opinion is the quality of life for each individual.

We can see that one's preferences do not reliably translate into what is most satisfying or maximising of utility for individuals. Addicts have a preference to relieve their temporary withdrawal rather than persevere and achieve a happier life. People have a preference to spend their money now rather than save for retirement; a preference to enact revenge or to become spiteful when they are wronged; a preference to eat unhealthy foods; etc.

People have all manner of preferences which actively conflict with what is better for them in terms of their achieving well-being and happiness. In the case of existence, people have an irrational fear of death. The instinct to want to live for as long as possible is so ingrained in us that it's to be expected that our preferences may not align with what is actually 'better' in terms of maximising happiness, or mitigating suffering, or any other such moral concern, since the evolutionary pressures which guided our instincts' development couldn't care less about these things.

0.As long as everyone knows what I mean, I think we're fine. In this case, to clarify, I am referring to the types of killing which are currently illegal in the UK (as opposed to killing per se), and are therefore currently known as "murder" in the UK, and assuming that miser agrees that the law is right to prohibit these sorts of killing.



In some, but not all cases. 1.In many cases, by causing someone to die, the result will be that they will turn out to be, overall, less happy than they otherwise would have been. Since most people seem to try to avoid death rather than seek it, I believe that this is true in most cases.

This means that, 3. according to a utilitarian principle, killing either a human or fetus, without knowing how happy or unhappy they would have turned out to be had you let them live, is probably an immoral act.


NB: 4. I use the phrase "let them live", not in the sense that you are actively making sure that someone lives, but with the connotation that if you take no action, they will continue to live. "Let them live" i.e. let them be, don't actively interfere with their life, and it will continue.

3. If evidence shows that "children of single parents might be are on average unhappier than children of two parents, all else being equal", it would be reasonable for parents to have twochildren instead of just one. They are ensuring within their power and their knowledge that their child is on average as happy as they can make him to be.

4. Yes, but just because you have some disadvantage does not follow that you would not actively try to remove some of these disadvantages assuming no negative side effects. We are all sick at some moment of our lifes but if offered a sick-less life at no cost, I think most people would take it even though they would all still have some other sources of "unhappiness". The same goes for a whole other range not of disabilities but states and conditions that we would rather change if offered the chance with no cost or negative effect.

0. We are not concerning ourselves about the legal status of different types of killing. We are concerned with killing as the act of ending a life form. So we are not talking about whether brushing our teeth is murder (i.e. you are likely to be killing life forms in the process) or whether abortion is murder. We are talking about: Richard Dawkins on Down Syndrome and the reasons that led him to state the things he stated. Let us stay in-topic.

1. Again? I told you there is no one to feel unhappy about. No one is dying. A fetus is not a child but a developing proto-organism with 50% chance of developing into a child. There is no one there wanting to be alive. Abortion terminates fetuses' development. It does not kill child's lives because there is no child. I hope that much is clear.

3. You can't know how happy they will be until they are born and they live just like you don't know if tomorrow a bus will run over you and end your life. But in science we can collect data and perform statistical inferences based on the data so that we can make relatively accurate predictions of certain variables that we think are related to the happiness of an individual. So if the stats suggest that a potential individual will be born with certain conditions and we know that on average this individual might struggle more than an individual without those conditions AND we can prevent this potential individual from existing AND try to produce another individual AND there are no negative effects, then under the utilitarian principles, trying to make another individual might be the best choice.

4. Then, let me suggest an equivalent one called "letting them die" this is most often used with starving children in poor countries. The idea is that we are letting those children die and thus we are also killing them ourselves. And some say that it is not true, because what we are doing is not taking action rather than actively causing them to die. But under utilitarian principles and perhaps in several western legal systems as well, if it is under your power, there is no difference between letting someone die (taking no action) and killing it yourself. And of course there is no difference (from a consequentialist point of view), inaction (letting someone die by not doing anything) and murder look the same while action (preventing them from dying) is different. Since utilitarianism is a type of consequentialist philosophy, you could use the same principle here. Inaction (letting the fetus develop) and intervention (actively increasing the chances that the fetus develops into a child) look the same, while action (abortion or abortion and re-attempt at achieving fecundation) looks different. That is why I said that when you let it live you are also encouraring it to live (from a consequentialist point of view).