Is a Fetus a Moral Patient?

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There are genuine philosophical questions about, like, our animals moral patients. It seems pretty clear they're not moral patients whom we and we shouldn't worry about violating their rights. And i think the question of who counts as a moral patient is actually kind of complicated,. We should have some error bars around who we decide is or isn't a moral patient.

When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. We have what Julia Galef calls a “soldier” mindset: a drive to defend the ideas we most want to believe — and shoot down those we don’t. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a “scout” mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout’s goal isn’t to defend one side over the other. It’s to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what’s actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.