Re: Animal Research
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How do you know that your distinction between babies and rats is one that should be trusted? Hard to say "because everyone agrees" because there have been a lot of times when everyone agrees but they're all wrong or they all end up doing something that in hindsight seems they shouldn't have. I think that the appeal you mention, the intuitive appeal, is strong but insufficient to deal with the problem at hand. Your argument, like HPs, has very little force with me for this reason. I'm trying to give reasons for what I believe. You're just saying, "This is what I believe and I don't have to justify it because the problem at hand is vague." At least, that's what I take to be the case in the examples you've given- its hard to draw a line for hardcoreness in porn, etc. because we're dealing with vague concepts. But I've argued that the concepts involved in this case are not vague. If they were, how could we possibly justify rat experiments?
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Close, but not quite. I'm not saying that vagueness necessarily means I'm right; but rather that I'm willing to trust my instinct in vague cases. I think your argument has intellectual force, but it's ultimately unconvincing because there is an essential difference between humans and rats that makes innate sense to me. It's a little like the old computer science saw that it's very difficult to get a computer to recognize a chair. You can't test for given forms like "it has four legs" because there are all sorts of chairs, such as beanbags or recliners, that have no visible legs or no legs at all. Yet humans have a very easy time figuring out when an abstract object is in fact a chair. I recognize a difference that matters between rats and babies. I am sure you do too; you can't describe it specifically and so are unwilling (for purposes of this argument, at least) to concede the difference.
I can't describe it specifically, either. And so I'm not entirely convinced the difference is principled -- but even so, I'm quite happy with the rats-OK-babies-not status quo.
I like the argument, though. It's amusing to have people flame at you that they're right and yet not be able to quite justify it.
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