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Estarlio comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong
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How do you reconcile that with:
The "as long as the people are ok with it" deals with the "effect it has on those that remain". The "removes the possibility for future joy on the part of the deceased" remains, but depending on what benefits the society was getting out of consuming their young it might still come out ahead. The future experiences of the babies are one consideration, but not the only one.
Granted, but do you really think that they're going to be so incredibly tasty that the value people gain from eating babies over not eating babies outweighs the loss of all the future experiences of the babies?
To link that back to the marginal cases argument, which I believe - correct me if I'm wrong - you were responding to: Do you think that meat diets are just that much more tasty than vegetarian diets that the utility gained for human society outweighs the suffering and death of the animals? (Which may not be the only consideration, but I think at this point - may be wrong - you'd admit isn't nothing.) If so, have you made an honest attempt to test this assumption for yourself by, for instance, getting a bunch of highly rated veg recipes and trying to be vegetarian for a month or so?
The value a society might get from it isn't limited to taste. They could have some sort of complex and fulfilling system set up around it. But I think you're right, that any world I can think of where people are eating (some of) their babies would be improved by them switching to stop doing that.
The "loss of all the future experiences of the babies" bit doesn't apply here. Animals stay creatures without moral worth through their whole lives, and so the "suffering and death of the animals" here has no moral value.
Pigs can meaningfully play computer games. Dolphins can communicate with people. Wolves have complex social structures and hunting patterns. I take all of these to be evidence of intelligence beyond the battery farmed infant level. They're not as smart as humans but it's not like they've got 0 potential for developing intelligence. Since birth seems to deprive your of a clear point in this regard - what's your criteria for being smart enough to be morally considerable, and why?
If you're considering opening a baby farm, not opening the baby farm doesn't mean the babies get to live fulfilling lives: it means they don't get to exist, so that point is moot.
If you view human potential as valuable then you end up saying something like that people should maximise that via breeding up to whatever the resource boundary is for meaningful human life. Unless that is implicitly bound - which I think to be a reasonable assumption to make for most people's likely world views.