First, let's work in the framework that "creating a thriving global civilization" is used as our metric for success
Also, by specifying it is global "civilization" you care about, you're explicitly excluding hunter gatherers from any ethical concerns. So according to this metric, the genocide against the native Americans was ethical, since it helped global civilization (but hurt the uncivilized people). Same thing with slavery, since they captured uncivilized people from Africa and enslaved them to help civilization.
But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that instead of civilization you meant to say something like "all humans". But then the problem is, why stop there? Why should we have ethical obligations to one species out of billions, and no ethical obligations to any other species? This gets back to my original example of a question that can clearly never be settled by science, which is "how many kittens lives is one human life worth?" There's just no objective way to balance the happiness of one person against another, let alone balance the happiness of one species against another.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-12-02 03:11 pm (UTC)First, let's work in the framework that "creating a thriving global civilization" is used as our metric for success
Also, by specifying it is global "civilization" you care about, you're explicitly excluding hunter gatherers from any ethical concerns. So according to this metric, the genocide against the native Americans was ethical, since it helped global civilization (but hurt the uncivilized people). Same thing with slavery, since they captured uncivilized people from Africa and enslaved them to help civilization.
But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that instead of civilization you meant to say something like "all humans". But then the problem is, why stop there? Why should we have ethical obligations to one species out of billions, and no ethical obligations to any other species? This gets back to my original example of a question that can clearly never be settled by science, which is "how many kittens lives is one human life worth?" There's just no objective way to balance the happiness of one person against another, let alone balance the happiness of one species against another.