I dont recognize anything you've said.

Give me a reason to think babies are 'special' beyond that they are God's little gifts?

I dont recognize anything you've said. — AmadeusD

I guess we're at an impasse, not understanding what one another are saying. Alas.

There's nothing inherenlty good about a baby being born. Its often bad for all involved. — AmadeusD

You seem to be conflating what is objectively useful from what society deems as valuable.

You can say the same about a beautiful woman. They are not valued outside of the human realm but most guys will drool over her, while she has her best reproductive value at least.

Also in turn society values them highly. If you think it is perfect egalitarianism go to a nightclub on your own on any weekend and see how you are treated by the bouncers compared to attractive an woman. Many other examples but that would be the most stark.

As the old saying goes 'women and children first'. That leaves men at bottom of the barrel.

I suppose I was discussing a fact of nature in my OP, so your response is a correct answer to my original query. However I was not aware at the time, that my value judgement of sex being dirty or whatnot, again not talking from a Puritanical point, just that it can be hot and nasty and also fun, is probably a societal view so perhaps better to shift the goalposts now to the societal aspect.

You seem to be conflating what is objectively useful from what society deems as valuable. — unimportant

I am asking for a reason for the deeming of value. I can't understand it, without recourse to a fiction. If that's the case, that's fine. I am interested in something more.

You can say the same about a beautiful woman. — unimportant

Definitely. But "special" is different from "beautiful". The latter is wholly subjective. There are no standards. We can say a woman is beautiful because she causes x feelings which are directly to do with beauty - sexual arousal, visual satisfaction etc..
I find it much harder to get an avenue of reasoning going for the value (intrinsic, that is) of a baby being born. Babies are surplus. They are often unwanted. Again, without recourse to a 'life is sacred' type line, I'm wanting some reason to think babies are special beyond "well, quite a few people think this".

I'm not really sure how hte nightclub thing relates here, so i'll leave it.

just that it can be hot and nasty and also fun, is probably a societal view so perhaps better to shift the goalposts now to the societal aspect — unimportant

Hmm, that's reasonable. I view sex similarly to birth: An alien coming across it would probably be horrified, not knowing it's probably one of the greatest experiences a human can have.

But they are objectively not special in any sense other than a theological one. — AmadeusD

Are humans special? Are babies human?

I don't know of any other species which uses language, composes poetry, mathematizes the physical universe, develops vehicles to fly around within the atmosphere and even beyond, develops traditions which last for thousands of years and span civilizational epochs, and worships God. If humans aren't special then I don't know what is.

There are lots of charitable readings of the OP. One is that something as special as a human being could result from an act that is so similar to acts that all of the non-human animals engage in. There is also the fact that the sexually promiscuous person's life is liable to change quite drastically once they find themselves with a newborn baby.

Sure, we could call humans 'special' but that's somewhat arbitrary. Tuataras are the only beaked reptile in the world. And also a near-dinosaur. We could call any specie special.

My point is that any given baby is a drop in an ocean of noise. There's nothing 'special' about a baby unless you import something more than the fact of it's existence (perhaps it survived an incredibly difficult pregnancy?).

I don't know of any other species which uses language, composes poetry, mathematizes the physical universe, develops vehicles to fly around within the atmosphere and even beyond, develops traditions which last for thousands of years and span civilizational epochs, and worships God. If humans aren't special then I don't know what is. — Leontiskos

And yet an infant does none of the things you itemize, but it's still special. What makes it more special is that its worth is not tied to what it does, but what it is.

I find it much harder to get an avenue of reasoning going for the value (intrinsic, that is) of a baby being born. Babies are surplus. They are often unwanted. Again, without recourse to a 'life is sacred' type line, I'm wanting some reason to think babies are special beyond "well, quite a few people think this". — AmadeusD

I think I largely agree with you. But I am hard wired to want to protect a baby once born. Not that I’d want to keep it myself if it were not mine. We emerge from a culture that venerates snd sentimentalises babies and childhood and we appear hard wired to nurture, rear and teach. Does this make it ‘special’? Probably no more than many other things. Personally when a young woman tells me she isn’t into children and doesn’t want babies, I feel pleased for her. I’ve known many older childless women and not one has ever regretted it.

The OP seems to express a familiar Protestant hatred of sex which Denis Potter beautifully expressed in The Singing Detective.
.

And yet an infant does none of the things you itemize, but it's still special. What makes it more special is that its worth is not tied to what it does, but what it is. — Hanover

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things.

Sure, we could call humans 'special' but that's somewhat arbitrary. — AmadeusD

What is your definition of "special"? I don't think it's arbitrary at all. I think I am adhering to the definition of 'special' and you are not.

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things. — Leontiskos

Unless it won't, yet it still will have the same value.

Unless it won't, yet it still will have the same value. — Hanover

Then you are committed to the claim that if human babies did not ever grow into human adults they would have the same value as they do given the current state of affairs, which is absurd.

I think we are on the same page, for once, if we agree that both the value of sex and babies are an anthropomorphism.

Both the view that sex is good/bad and babies being special is subject to being a human. Of course some do not feel the same way such as asexuals, gays have different value of beauty, sociopaths will not care for babies or other humans, but by and large a normal example of a person in society is expected to view babies as valuable and special.

It is simply a product of the usual Darwinian urges is it not? like how humans are social creatures in general, and other rules of thumb that make up the traits of the species. As how fish are expected to swim and monkey expected to climb. There are exceptions where it isn't but by and large that is what is expected of the average human specimen.

A mother is expected to love her child and indirectly the larger society they are in are expected to see the baby as special because that is what keeps the species going. So it can simply be said it is natural selection because if that wasn't the case neither of us would be here typing and the mothers and societies that didn't see babies as special didn't continue their progeny.

The OP seems to express a familiar Protestant hatred of sex which Denis Potter beautifully expressed in The Singing Detective. — Tom Storm

Here you are glossing over/ignoring the many times I stated it is not MY view. I guess you just skimmed a couple of the recent posts.

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things. — Leontiskos

Indeed, it is like buying stock with potential. They know that, as a human, it has value.

However I would not say that is why there is the urge to protect the baby. It is rather it is just an instinct. Likewise how a man finds a woman attractive it is not some rational calculation that she will provide good off spring. A man just finds her 'hot'. It isn't a calculation that a person who finds a baby 'cute' is saying to themselves 'one day they will maybe be the next Einstein'. They just have the instinct to protect them due to natural selection having favoured those before which did so.

Here you are glossing over/ignoring the many times I stated it is not MY view. I guess you just skimmed a couple of the recent posts. — unimportant

No, the bit of mine you quoted was my reaction to the views put forth in the OP.

Then you are committed to the claim that if human babies did not ever grow into human adults they would have the same value as they do given the current state of affairs, which is absurd. — Leontiskos

What gives human babies inherent value is their current status as humans, not that the majority of human babies go on to be adults or even that the expectation is that they will be adults.

It's not absurd to attribute humanity to babies unconditionally, refusing to accept your criteria that personhoid requires certain abilities either immediately or eventually.

Your position also demands that an embryo is a fully protected person, having the fully expected eventual attributes of a person. That is a position you can take, but its opposite can't be waved away as absurd. Your position is also inconsistent with traditional right to life positions in that it grants person status to embryos, not because of what they are, but what most embryos have the potential to be, even if we know this particular one may never be.

I also don't know what you make of the mentally incompetent person, who lacks your personhoid criteria and who will never achieve it, having personhood perhaps because his brothers and sisters had it.

I’ve known many older childless women and not one has ever regretted it. — Tom Storm

I've never met a happy one, unfortunately. I think that stands to reason though - females are literally psychologically hardwired (on avg) to have children. Not having htem must be a burden of some kind, even if one can work through it.

What is your definition of "special"? I don't think it's arbitrary at all. I think I am adhering to the definition of 'special' and you are not. — Leontiskos

Then give hte definition you're adhering to. I'm seeing no reasons - which is what I've asked for. Is it "it's a baby"? Because that's not a reason. I need something more than the fact of it being a baby to care (in this context - I don't hate babies). The definition of special is "better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual."

Babies are exactly not this.

It is simply a product of the usual Darwinian urges is it not? — unimportant

This is why "special" seems a random label designed for something, rather than reflecting something. I don't know why. That said, i am most closely aligned with antinatalism, so showing my hand a bit. I think you've got it right - we've inserted this term without sufficiently defining it so we can continue to have babies despite overwhelmingly good reasons not to, for the most part. Not a moral argument here - I just cannot understand the press to consider babies 'special'. They simply aren't. They're one of a billion and useless, without sucking out resources from the world around them. I want the reason that gets past this.
I note the two arguing against me are (most likely.. Don't want to put my foot in it) coming from theological positions. I accounted for that, so unsure I need continue answer those challenges without the reason I'm after articulated clearly.

You're neck-deep in strawmen. Again:

Then you are committed to the claim that if human babies did not ever grow into human adults they would have the same value as they do given the current state of affairs, which is absurd. — Leontiskos

That's a counterfactual claim. I am talking about a world where babies never mature into human adults.

That's a counterfactual claim. I am talking about a world where babies never mature into human adults. — Leontiskos

No, it's not a counterfactual and not a strawman. You provided criteria for personhood (specialness), which if it can be shown certain humans don't possess, then you must either (1) admit humans are not special, or (2) admit your criteria are wrong.

Infants do not possess the criteria you itemized for specialness. You then said that since they will one day have that criteria, then that potential is sufficient for calling them special.

My point is not that there is a possible world where no infant grows up, so the counterfactual/hypothetical world disproves your position, but it's that right this second in this very world there are infants born that we know will never mature, never have any significant mental or physical capacity, and never do any of the things you claimed made humans special.

So why hold those beings of no current or future meaningful ability or utility special?

No, it's not a counterfactual — Hanover

Oh, it definitely is. I should know: I'm the one who wrote it. Even in a grammatical sense the sentence is a counterfactual. You're starting to sound like Michael.

Oh, it definitely is. I should know: I'm the one who wrote it. Even in a grammatical sense the sentence is a counterfactual. You're starting to sound like Michael. — Leontiskos

Here's the quote:

And yet an infant does none of the things you itemize, but it's still special. What makes it more special is that its worth is not tied to what it does, but what it is.
— Hanover

You:

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things. — Leontiskos

You're telling me an infant is special because it grow to do those things. But what of those that don't?

- The point has to do with the final causality of the human being, not the contingent nature of particular humans. Hence the explicitly counterfactual phrasing:

Then you are committed to the claim that if human babies did not ever grow into human adults they would have the same value as they do given the current state of affairs, which is absurd. — Leontiskos

You are relying a persistent strawman of, "maybe some baby does not grow to be an adult, therefore that baby does not have value." The problem with your position has to do with the failure to understand the final causality of the baby, and this is the same error that @AmadeusD makes. You both want to talk about babies irrespective of their human nature and their human telos. In a long historical sense, babies are special because humans are special, not because they are nascent. If their nascency makes them special in some way, it is only because of the less restricted potential bound up with it ("He could become anything!").

(Or in a very simple sense, you don't think baby racoons are special. The difference-maker for what makes it special is its human nature, and it is silly to try to understand that human nature without reference to human maturity and human ends and capacities.)

To the extent this suggests some sort of objective basis for the determination of value in the sense there are agreed upon criteria that can be measured in some empirical sense, this strikes me as a category error. Value is not measured that way. If you don't see it as a category error, but you insist no distinction between value based judgments and empirically measurable ones, then it's just question begging, assuming what you've set out to prove, which is there is no difference between value judgments and empirical ones, placing within the premise your conclusion: humans are not special. — Hanover

The deeper problem here is that you're just appealing to your Moorean meta-ethic where 'good' (or 'special') is undefinable and therefore, if admitted, also mystical and esoteric. So you think that it must be impossible to explain why babies are special (or why anything at all is good), and that if someone does this then they must have said something wrong (hence trying to misconstrue what I've said counterfactually into something that is merely contingent and therefore less plausible). It also follows from this that "you can say whatever you want" (because everyone's claims about the 'good' and also the 'special' are basically unjustifiable anyway).

This is a representation of the sort of thinking that says, "I say babies are special, and you can't gainsay this because morality is about values not facts, and neither one of our views has any real grounds to support it." Despite being common, this approach to morality is banal and wearisome. It's basically the religious version of error theory, where one embraces the idea that moral utterances are intrinsically confused and lacking in intelligibility, but nevertheless keeps uttering them.

The deeper problem here is that you're just appealing to your Moorean meta-ethic where 'good' (or 'special') is undefinable and therefore, if admitted, also mystical and esoteric. So you think that it must be impossible to explain why babies are special (or why anything at all is good), and that if someone does this then they must have said something wrong (hence trying to misconstrue what I've said counterfactually into something that is merely contingent and therefore less plausible). It also follows from this that "you can say whatever you want" (because everyone's claims about the 'good' and also the 'special' are basically unjustifiable anyway). — Leontiskos

It's really not that complex. I'm simply pointing out that your definition of specialness isn't valid because it doesn't work when you evaluate specific examples.

Why we think human beings are special (which seems to refer to a "personhood" definition) can't be determined by some speculative historical analysis nor some post hac explanation. Norms are derived (whether they be moral, legal, basic manners, accepted social protocol) through complex social interaction over thousands of years, not necessarily reducible to a single guiding principle and not even necessarily consistent at any given time given the large amount of individuals involved and time that has transpired.

Of course an anthropologist can examine homo sapiens and describe their language skills, tool using skills, ability to plan for the future, learning abilities, etc. and point out how we're different from the other animals both in degree and type. You can't then use those observations and just declare that we must have created our moral systems based upon that. That is, just because we are different in ability doesn't mean that was the cause of our belief in our moral worth.

The reason you can't is because there are infants that don't have any advanced ability, plenty of cultures historically have held that slaves, women, and certain ethnicities are not of "special" status, and many cultures do not accept Enlightenment principles that "all men are created equally."

You also have no explanation for how embryoes work into your definition, being forced to declare it "silly" that some might not hold embryoes the same value as adults even though they have the potential to become adults. That is, your position isn't even fully accepted within modern society.

So, if I look at the here and now and ask why it is that infants are special, it's because we decree it so. It is a rule that governs our society regardless of where it came from. You can argue the origin of that rule came from certain principles and I can argue it came from God, but all that is an aside because mine is unprovable and yours is empirically invalid. I take mine as more valid because it doesn't pretend to be empirically derivable, but it is clearly axiomatic. It is axiomatic thelogically and secularly. Secularly, it is a principle upon which we have built our society, and enforced it as a non-debatable norm. Kantian dignity and secular humanism demand this principle as do Enlightenment principles of equality, historically responsive to tyranny and hierachical classism. You're just pretending to know why we've ended up where we are and have offered an overly reductive basis, as if we can explain all assignment of moral worth upon humanity to the fact that human ability is greater so we therefore assign humans higher moral worth.

As I've said, the facts are not with you. Humans have always had greater ability, but they've not always considered all humans of greater moral worth, and there are even some now that in the animal rights arena that challenge whether any humans have greater moral worth than other animals.

This is far far beneath you Leon. You didn't even respond to my substantive reply which puts complete paid to your position against me.

Your only argument is that babies are special because they are human (fair, in the sense that we're not talking about puppies.. but). I have already made it clear that is not a reason. That is tautology. That is simply a claim, and an extremely parochial one.
What makes humans special? Consciousness? Deliberation? Moral reasoning? Babies have none of these (in the sense needed to make "human" a special category). Babies are next to useless. There is no error here - you are just not giving a reason. Just state the reason - stop prevaricating. Give a reason that isn't circular for the "specialness" of babies - given that they do not meet any of the criteria for the intension of that word, i'm left wanting.

In a long historical sense, babies are special because humans are special, not because they are nascent. — Leontiskos

It seems I have nothing to answer for here.