Your “most mothers” example is confounded because mothers are related to their children. They wouldn’t readily accept death if it meant that someone else’s infant got to live.
Still, one can argue from intuition that there must be a reason to value the lives of babies over just simple sperm.
That speaks in favor of a gradual increase of intrinsic moral relevance as the infant becomes more aware of the world and its own point of view in it, forming life plans and so on.
I assumed that what we were talking about is whether an adult person’s life is equally worth saving under triage conditions as an infant’s. I don’t think we’re discussing whether adults should have different legal protection than infants.
Baby killing seeming worse than killing an adult: You might be right that some people have that intuition. Personally, I find both similarly intuitively horrifying, which, admittedly, somewhat goes to your point. There are many potential confounders like “it’s particularly bad to be abusive to beings who depend on you.” Let’s try to envision an example where the circumstances are similar. For instance, a mother with brain defect around rage shakes a baby too hard when she got overwhelmed with the difficulties of parenting. She deeply regrets it later. Or, a girlfriend with a similar brain defect around rage drives over boyfriend with a car after getting jealous for no good reason, and she also regrets it later. I think those are similarly tragic in what they say about the killer. However, if I had to assess “In which circumstance was more that is of moral value lost directly?,” I’d say in the boyfriend’s case because he had not just sentience, but also life goals and (presumably) friendships.
Your “most mothers” example is confounded because mothers are related to their children. They wouldn’t readily accept death if it meant that someone else’s infant got to live.
That speaks in favor of a gradual increase of intrinsic moral relevance as the infant becomes more aware of the world and its own point of view in it, forming life plans and so on.
I assumed that what we were talking about is whether an adult person’s life is equally worth saving under triage conditions as an infant’s. I don’t think we’re discussing whether adults should have different legal protection than infants.
Baby killing seeming worse than killing an adult: You might be right that some people have that intuition. Personally, I find both similarly intuitively horrifying, which, admittedly, somewhat goes to your point. There are many potential confounders like “it’s particularly bad to be abusive to beings who depend on you.” Let’s try to envision an example where the circumstances are similar. For instance, a mother with brain defect around rage shakes a baby too hard when she got overwhelmed with the difficulties of parenting. She deeply regrets it later. Or, a girlfriend with a similar brain defect around rage drives over boyfriend with a car after getting jealous for no good reason, and she also regrets it later. I think those are similarly tragic in what they say about the killer. However, if I had to assess “In which circumstance was more that is of moral value lost directly?,” I’d say in the boyfriend’s case because he had not just sentience, but also life goals and (presumably) friendships.