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SaidAchmiz comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong
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Is there any evidence that could lead to the mother assigning her baby the same value as I do? Couldn't tell you. (I've never been a mother.)
Vice versa? Probably not.
After all, it's possible that two agents are in possession of the same facts, the same true beliefs, and nonetheless have different preferences. So evidence doesn't do very much for us, here.
In any case, your objection proves too much: after all, try telling a dog owner that his dog is not morally important. For extra laughs, try telling the owner of a custom-built, lovingly-maintained hot rod that his car is not morally important. People (myself included) get attached to all manner of things.
We have to distinguish between valuing something for its own sake (i.e. persons), and valuing things that those persons value (artwork, music, babies, cars, dogs, elegant math theorems, etc.).
I quite agree, but evidently that's a point of contention on this thread.
That is true, but I think my quip still stands. I suspect that the mother in my example would strongly insist that the moral value of the baby is high for its own sake and not just because she happens to love the baby (along with her newly remodeled kitchen). Would you call her mistaken?
Only if she agrees with me that self-awareness is a key criterion for moral relevance.
Of course, the real answer is that mothers are almost never capable of reasoning rationally about their children, especially in matters of physical harm to the child, and especially when the child is quite young. So the fact that a mother would, in fact insist on this or that isn't terribly interesting. (She might also insist that her baby is objectively the cutest baby in the maternity ward, but so what?)
Same would apply to other things in SaidAchmiz's list, too.
I don't think that is true. For a dog, maybe, for a hot rod, definitely not.
What about for the Mona Lisa?
The question of whether the aesthetic value of beautiful objects can be terminal is an interesting but unrelated question.
Unrelated to what...?
The discussion has gone like so:
SaidAchmiz: Babies are not morally important.
Lumifer: A mother would disagree!
SaidAchmiz: Yeah, but that doesn't tell us much, because someone might also disagree with the same thing about the Mona Lisa (Implication: And there, they would clearly be wrong, so the fact that a person makes such a claim is not particularly meaningful.)
Things are not persons and their price or symbolism does not affect that.
My point was: many people would say that the existence of the Mona Lisa is independently good, that it has value for its own sake, regardless of any individual person's appreciation of it.
They would be talking nonsense, of course. But they would say it.
Just like the mother with the baby.
Edit: Also what Nornagest said.
I'm not sure most people treat personhood as the end of the story. It's not uncommon to talk about artistic virtuosity or historical significance as a source of intrinsic value: watch the framing the next time a famous painting gets stolen or a national museum gets bombed or looted in wartime.
Granted, it seems clear to me that these things are only important if there are persons to appreciate them, but the question was about popular intuitions, not LW-normative ethics.