It is clearly correlated, since the probability of the fetus’ survival increases as it develops, as the evilness of killing does. However I don’t think the probability of becoming a fully functional human is what determines the moral condemnation of killing. To illustrate my intuition, consider:
Babies are clearly not fully functional humans. I doubt we can acknowledge full functionality earlier than in age when humans are capable of reproduction. In Sierra Leone a newborn baby has a 26% chance of dying before age of five, and probably further non-trivial chances of dying until puberty. If the probability argument holds, killing a one year old child in Sierra Leone would be about 30% less evil than killing an adult. Yet many people hold that killing children is actually worse than killing adults.
Imagine a world where after conception the embryo had almost 100% probability of survival until adulthood. Would that mean that killing a morula in such hypothetical world would equal a full-fledged murder?
Those are certainly valid points you’ve just made. I think there’s not much to defend from my original statement when you consider Matt Simpson’s reply.
It is clearly correlated, since the probability of the fetus’ survival increases as it develops, as the evilness of killing does. However I don’t think the probability of becoming a fully functional human is what determines the moral condemnation of killing. To illustrate my intuition, consider:
Babies are clearly not fully functional humans. I doubt we can acknowledge full functionality earlier than in age when humans are capable of reproduction. In Sierra Leone a newborn baby has a 26% chance of dying before age of five, and probably further non-trivial chances of dying until puberty. If the probability argument holds, killing a one year old child in Sierra Leone would be about 30% less evil than killing an adult. Yet many people hold that killing children is actually worse than killing adults.
Imagine a world where after conception the embryo had almost 100% probability of survival until adulthood. Would that mean that killing a morula in such hypothetical world would equal a full-fledged murder?
Those are certainly valid points you’ve just made. I think there’s not much to defend from my original statement when you consider Matt Simpson’s reply.