Are you arguing that a both have rights, but one trumps the other? Or are you arguing that only one of them has rights?

If I were to hold up a hand and say "here is a hand" and you asked for proof, there would similarly be little more to say.

Banno, do you really believe that it is equally as obvious that a woman should have a right to abortion as the fact that your hand exists? C'mon man.

I think it is a complex issue, and is clearly not resolved in the philosophical literature on abortion.

That's not quite right. If there were a vote in 'merca, it would be legal

There have been votes; and red states vote no; and blue states vote yes. There is no consensus.

I have shown a method that can be applied to ethical issues in order to cut through the bullshit. We differ as to what we think folk should do.

You haven't and that's what I am asking you to do: what method?????? You have offered nothing but a blanket assertion that a woman has more rights, or a higher degree of a right, to bodily autonomy than the zygote has to life. Nothing else has been elaborated on.

Second, I'm not doing politics here, but ethics

I am not asking politically: I am asking ethically. You have been refusing to engage in ethics, not politics.

I appreciate your elaboration!

But, and again from a high level, what I'm calling attention to the sense in which the mind constructs reality on an active basis moment by moment.

I don’t disagree with anything you said in your response; but what I am wondering is if you believe that there are forms to reality as it is in-itself or not (which is what ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’, which you brought up, are debating). If you agree with me that the forms of reality are really attributed by our cognition; then they are not ‘real’ (in the realist’s sense) but rather transcendentally ideal; and this would be a position which is neither nominalist nor realist (in the sense of those terms as you defined them). What are your thoughts?

See, this is good question to spark the conversation. I wish @Banno would have brought this up, because, if I were doing the arguing for them, this exactly what I would offer in favor of supporting that a woman has a different moral status than a zygote.

I would save the child over the billion zygotes, and prima facie this supports @Bannos point; however, upon deeper reflection, I don't think it helps their case. I am not saying that we cannot have different moral weights for different relevant moral factors when morally analyzing a situation: I am saying that we cannot violate someone's rights.

You may ask: what is the morally difference, then Bob? It's simple: it is always wrong to kill an innocent person, but it is not always wrong to let an innocent person die. Omissions are not morally calculated the same as commissions. In your scenario, if I had to go use the zygotes to put out the fire to save the child, then I would be doing something immoral; but if I am letting the zygotes die because I cannot save them and the child and the child has more moral weight (in this situation) than the zygotes, then nothing immoral is happening. This is no different than having to choose between saving a 90-year old or an infant---one should save, all else being equal, the infant because age can be a morally relevant factor in that kind of dilemma. HOWEVER, age is not a morally relevant factor to whether or not you can violate a 90-year old's rights---e.g., you cannot use the 90-year old's life to save the infant.

Hopefully @Banno decides to engage in the conversation.

Yeah, that's why I would have to think about it more. That's a good point.

You are right: I didn't ask that. So why did you comment on my post? I am not following on what your response has to do with my response to Banno. What you brought up was not even remotely relevant to what we were talking about.

Abortion is a super controversial topic, and there absolutely no consensus, like in physics in your analogy, that pro-choice is the right answer. What you are doing, is lazily asserting your position and then saying it is obvious as justification.

E.g., "Why should a woman be allowed to abort a child?"
Banno: "Because it is obviously true"

What kind of intellectually lazy, disingenuous response is that?!?

I respect you Banno, and I want to have a substantive conversation about this topic that challenges both of our positions; but in order to do that you have to actually give an account of why you believe pro-choice is the right answer. Otherwise, there's nothing for me to engage with you about.

As a side note, how do you expect to convince a pro-life person that your position is correct if you just blanketly assert and say it is obviously true as justification?

My apologies Mww, I forgot to respond.

Because of the definition in play for the conception of reality, which is a category, having all the real as schemata subsumed under it, re: “….Reality, in the pure conception of the understanding, is that which corresponds to a sensation in general; that, consequently, the conception of which indicates a being (in time).…”

Ahhh, I understand now. For me, what is real for my understanding, in the Kantian sense, is not the same as I would define “reality”. My understanding is limited, and deploys a limited concept of ‘real’ in order to construct my conscious experience. Through reason, pure reason, which is purely self-reflective, I can know that reality must be far more than what the understanding determines it to be.

The parenthetical is wrong: a thing can exist and not be given to the senses. Without the parenthetical the statement is a contradiction, re: there could be a thing in reality but is not.

Perhaps I used your terms incorrectly: then it would be “you are saying that there could be a thing which is in reality but is not (i.e., is not real because it cannot be given to the senses).”

I think I get where you are coming from now: you are using the concept of ‘reality’ which is a transcendental category of the understanding; and deny, for some reason, the concept as understood by self-reflective reason—by meta-cognition.

Like I said before, my first point would be a semantic note: when something is not real, it does not exist because it is not—under your view, this does not hold because some things which exist are not real.

My other point, now, would be that our self-reflective reason has the ability to understand, just like it can about other transcendental things, that the true concept of reality cannot be identical to that category of the understanding which you refer; because something can be which is not sensed.

If you deny this, then the very concept of ‘reality’, as a category of the understanding, is not real; nor anything which is not currently being sensed; nor anything else transcendentally determined. I think you are just going to bite the bullet on this; so let me just point out that if there really aren’t these a priori modes of cognition (which they cannot be real according to your view) then that undermines the grounds that anything object which is cognized is real—for how can something which isn’t real cognize something which is?????

YEA!!!
(Does the happy dance, feet just a’flyin’, enough to make Snoopy jealous, I tell ya)

(:

I don't want a footnote Wayfarer: I want a response (:

I don't think so; although I would have to think about it more. I would imagine that, all else being equal, cremating a body is done out of respect for that dead person in order to give it to loved ones to cherish. Since they are dead, there is nothing really being violated about them by doing that (like disrespecting their corpse by having sex with it would).

For me, it is fundamentally about properly respecting life relative to the nature and Telos of each life-form (as best as possible).

I am asking you why you believe that a zygote does not have the same fundamental right to not be killed when innocent like a woman does; and you refuse to engage. No, you do not get to blanketly assert that a zygote does not have the right to life and then try to pin it on me to explain (again) why I think it does.

Are you going to actually answer the question and engage in a discussion on ethics?

You didn't address anything we were really discussing about: I am asking @frank if it is morally permissible (and subsequently legally permissible) to have sex with a corpse, and there answer was ~"no". My point is that this is wrong, as it is wrong to have sex with a corpse; and any view that grounds rights completely in the quality of being alive will have to admit that, in that theory, it is never impermissible to do heinous things. So far, @frank has dodged this problem instead of biting the bullet.

What you are asking, is whether or not, separately from my discussion with frank, it is morally permissible to have sex with a corpse if that now dead person signed a contract giving proper consent to it being done. This presupposes that the dead person prima facie has a right not to be used as a sex doll, which is incompatible with @franks position. For me, I am going to say it is impermissible; because I believe that it is possible to commit immoral acts upon oneself, which are beyond the purview of justice (because it does not relate to how one should treat other people), and one such act is allowing people to degrade your corpse with sexual acts. However, I would say that not everything that is immoral should be illegal; as laws are about justice, which is a sub-branch of morality. The law should not regulate that what specifically you should do with your own body, as we have seen how much of a disaster that becomes. So, in short, it would be immoral but not illegal (according to me).

The modern take would be to say that it should not be illegal and whether or not it is immoral is irrelevant; because each person should be able to pursue their own conception of the good.

You are just sidestepping the conversation and begging the question. I have tried many times to inquire on what moral grounds you believe this and you keep sidestepping.

If I take your position seriously, then we cannot say that a dog fossil is a dog fossil.

Bob. We burn corpses. We bury them. Are you saying this is immoral?

1. This is a red herring: you are purposefully avoiding my line of questioning.

2. No, burying them is not immoral per se. This doesn’t violate any of their rights which are applicable to dead people.

What reasons? This is the problem with your position: you have no moral reasons to punish or rehabilitate them because you deny that anything wrong is happening to that corpse. Having sex with it is morally on par with having sex with a sex doll (for you).

To admit someone as mentally ill, you must have a proper moral reason or reasons for doing so. What are they doing that is wrong?

I appreciate your response.

I understand you will probably reject this, because of the overwhemingly nominalist cast of modern culture and philosophy. But that's OK, and thanks for reading.

I think we are currently in different headspaces: you view this as a dispute between nominalism and realism, whereas I see it as a semantic note. For me, ‘reality’ is the ‘totality of what exists’; and ‘existence’ is the primitive concept of ‘being’. What I understand you to be doing, is trying to convey an interesting point with (in my opinion) bad semantics by making a distinction between existing qua the universe (or what is phenomenal) vs. qua the form of that universe. The problem with this is the same as @Mww: you are positing that something can not exist but is, when, in truth, what you are really trying to convey is that something can exist which is not a part of the physical universe. It is impossible, still yet, for me to coherently parse your semantics since you confirm the existence of things which do not exist (according to your schema)—e.g., the square root.

I was not, and am not, suggesting that nominalism is necessarily true: I wasn’t intending to comment on that whatsoever, and still don’t feel the need to given my complaint above. However, if I must, then I would say that the rationality which we perceive as the form of the universe, to me, is the transcendental ideality of human a priori cognition. To me, I struggle with providing any proofs about reality as it is in-itself. To me, to take a ‘realist’ account, in the medieval sense, is to necessarily posit that the a priori ways by which we experience is a 1:1 mirror of the forms of the universe itself; and I have absolutely no clue why I should believe that. Likewise, to posit a nominalist account, I don’t see any reason to believe that, given the modern perspective, we understand that reality in-itself lacks any forms. Perhaps you can give some insight into this.

Things that exist as phenomena. And recall, 'phenomena' means 'what appears'.

Perhaps I am too stuck in the Kantian mindset; but the Peirceian perspective you quoted was, by my lights, about reality in-itself—not phenomena.

Eric, with all due respect, you are not understanding what I am saying. I can tell, because:

And on that note we will have to agree to disagree. I understand and respect your principled opinion. But I (along with many other people) consider a brain dead body to be a hunk of meat, not a person.

You asked:

Do you consider a brain dead individual on life support to be a member of the human species?

I never once claimed that a dead human being is a person. I said it is uncontroversially true that a dead human being is still a member of the human species. This is not a matter of opinion: biologists do not think that you magically are no longer a member of Homo Sapiens when you die, just as much as a dead dog is not thereby no longer a dog.

To be fair, in colloquial speech, we use "person" and "human being" interchangeably and loosely sometimes; but we have to separate these conceptions to have a proper discussion of rights.

You said that dead people have no rights; therefore, your position necessitates that it is not impermissible, in principle, to do those horrific things. That was my point.

So you believe someone can have sex with a dead corpse? So you believe that a person's organs can be harvested even if they did not previously consent?

Yes; and that is uncontroversially true. Where it gets controversial, is what rights (if any) a brain dead human being has (and, likewise, a completely dead human being has).

The whole point of having a discussion about abortion is to test and discuss our ethical theories. You are copping out with blanket assertions. If you want to engage in a productive ethical discussion, then hit me up.

I want to here, Banno, your moral theory. Explain it, so I can see what I am working with here. How does the graduations of rights work?

Then, Michael, you are literally arguing that there is no point at which a human being acquires rights.

Even if you grant that a being is a member of the human species, that does not mean they count as a person or as a moral agent.

I never suggested it did. I don’t know why everyone is coming at me with straw mans after I gave a very specific argument that addressed this very point. I will say it again. Not all human beings are persons, and not all persons are necessarily human beings. The obvious rejoinder to my position, prima facie, is the personhood-style arguments; but I think they fail for many reasons (which I will skip over for now) and that the best way to ground rights is in the Telos (ps: I know that’s a dirty word now) of a being such that it marks them out as a person (as opposed to being currently a person). In short, I take a hybrid view between animalism and these personhood-style positions.

children's legal status is also different

When talking about abortion, this point would imply that, it is possible that, an unborn child’s legal status is that it can be killed. At that point, it doesn’t a legal status; which is what a personhood-style position is going to want to argue.

People's status as an agent may change if they go into a permanent coma, we have next of kin rules, waivers, and even (arguably) the ability to extend our capacity for consent after our death with organ donation and wills.

These are all good points. I would say that that:

1. The morally relevant differences between these examples and abortion is NOT that people’s status’ change but, rather, that, when properly understood, they are toto genere different moral dilemmas.

2. Euthanasia does not involve, when properly understood, the killing of an innocent person in the sense which happens in abortion: the person who wants to die is giving consent from a rational state of mind, whereas the unborn child is not. I think it is implied in “innocence” that the person is not partaking in whatever is in question; but, if you want, we can just tack-on “it is wrong to kill an innocent person who isn’t properly consenting to being killed” (and, yes, “properly” is doing a lot of work here).

3. Killing a person who is in a permanent coma, who had not properly consented to being killed prior to comatose, is being murdered; and, no, a family member should not have the power to command their execution.

4. Consent for organ donation and wills are examples of consent which are properly crafted during a rational mind-set; and so this is perfectly fine. However, to use a person’s dead corpse to experiment on or donate in ways which were not consented would be immoral; even if it could save someone else’s life.

Moreover, unfertilised gametes and severed limbs are recognisably of the species homo sapiens and are not treated as moral persons

Unfertilized gametes and severed limbs are not members of the human species: they are parts of humans.

The unfertilised gametes, severed limbs and dead bodies aren't even conscious, the former two have no moral agency and the latter are treated as moral agents (as if they were alive) in a limited fashion.

According to personhood-style arguments, I think you bring up a good point here (although I know this is not what you are intending to convey) that dead bodies would not have any rights whatsoever; because rights are associated with actual personhood—current persons. So it should be, under their view, morally permissible to do anything to the dead corpses (such as having sex or using it as a punching bag).

It only makes sense to give it EVEN PARTIAL respectful treatment, other than as a mere subjective taste, if one is thinking about it like an Aristotelian: that being was a member of a species which marks it out as a person, and this means I still have to respect this being even after death.

To summarise, each of those entities counts as a member of the species homo sapiens, but they are not a moral agent

What is a moral agent is different than what is a person; and the former has nothing to do with grounding rights. Moral agency is about which agents are held responsible for their free acts and to what degree; and personhood is about features of the mind which ground certain innate rights.

This is still circular logic. What makes one collection of cells and protoplasm a member of the human species? It is not merely the presence of a particular set of genes/chromosomes - there must be something else.

A genetically unique individual which has the genes of a human is, standardly, considered a member of the human species. I don’t see anything circular here.

Thus, a purely logical concept can still have reference to something concrete, even if cognition of something concrete belonging to that conception, is not determinable from such mere reference alone.

I think we are saying the same thing, then. I am saying that the concept refers to something concrete.

Space, a purely logical concept if there ever was one, would be useless if it didn’t refer to concrete things, so……there ya go.

Nooooo. The concept of space refers to extension—I think you are thinking it refers to something concrete because it is used to represent objects.

So, no, I do not deny the thing-in-itself references something concrete, while maintaining the thing-in-itself is a purely logical conception.

If by “pure logical conception” you just mean that it is a concept which is derived from pure reason; then I agree.

"It's human, so you mustn't kill it",

I never argued that: this is a blatant straw man.

ignoring capital punishment and war and euthanasia.

What?!? :sad: You are making me sad, Banno, with all these blatant straw mans.

It does nto have the moral standing of the person carrying it.

So your view is based off of degrees of moral standing for persons? Is that the idea? So a elderly person has less rights than a person in their prime?

It's not true that all women who have sought abortions denied the humanity of what they were killing, and this is still true today.

Interesting story, and very heartfelt. I don’t think that even women in the West necessarily abort while denying the humanity of their children: I think there are people who just don’t understand ethics (or disagree with my ethics [;) and they sincerely believe they are doing the right thing.

Also, I will say that, to your point, your example exemplifies a rare occurrence in abortion-situations in the West (if we were to map it over) because in your example the women are doing it solely for the benefit of the child—so it is a complete sense of respect for them (even though I think what they are doing is immoral).

For that of which I merely think, which would be that thing which for me cannot be real because I have no intuition of it, there’s no difference in my internal treatment of a real and a non-real thing, insofar as the only representation for either of them is a conception or a series of conceptions, in accordance with a rule.

Why isn’t it real for you if you have no intuition of it??? Your car in the garage isn’t real right now, even though you have every reason to believe it is there, because you can’t currently sense it?

The real, then, is the set….not a subset…..of existent things given to the senses, which says nothing at all about things not given to the senses, and for which, therefore, the real has no ground for consideration.

This is incoherent though: you are saying that there could be a thing which is in reality but is not (i.e., does not exist because it cannot be given to the senses). Do you see what I mean? You are playing around with ‘being’ in ways that are not fundamental enough (:

Hence to reason about experience, and to know things not directly perceived from that reasoning alone, is a posteriori reasoning.

Then, you are claiming that all a posteriori knowledge is about non-existent things; since only directly perceived things exist, and knowledge of not-directly-perceived things constitutes a posteriori knowledge.

Your answer doesn’t respect the question. Trust me, it’s pertinent, at least to the theme we’re immersed in up to our eyeballs in right now.

How so? Isn’t it epistemically justification enough to claim that the car is in the garage (even though I don’t see it right now) because I had just drove it in there 5 seconds ago?

The pre-structure here, re” “all bodies are extended”, is an empirical principle, in that it applies to things alone, and is only susceptible to natural proofs, but our knowledge of this arises through separate pure principles of universality and necessity, in that without these pure principles, the empirical principles cannot have natural proofs at all, from which follows the possibility some bodies are not extended, and we are presented with a contradiction and our knowledge of empirical things becomes forever undeterminable.

Correct; and I believe this is exactly to say that “all bodies are extended” is true for human experience; but not for reality as it is in-itself.

Ok, then: A blastocyst is not a human being. The blastocyst is alive. It can be considered as a seperate entity - it might be moved to another host, for example. It has human DNA and so on, but it is no more a "member of the human species" than is your finger.

My finger is not a beginning stage of human development: that’s the difference.

We have on the one hand a woman, perhaps a nurse, perhaps a CEO, perhaps a sister, mother, daughter, perhaps a care giver or volunteer.

All red herrings, my friend.

Someone who can express their needs, who makes plans and seeks to fulfil them and who has a place in our world.

You don’t think a baby has a place in the world? You don’t think that a baby would express, if they could, that they don’t want to be murdered? Irregardless, this is all irrelevant to my position: I don’t think it is morally relevant to this moral dilemma whether or not the mother or baby can express their needs, is capable of planning, nor “has a place in the world”.

What exactly morally are you suggesting? I think I’ve made my argument clear: in a standard abortion case, we have a woman that wants to uphold their right to bodily autonomy and can only do so by means of murdering another human—and to do so is always morally impermissible because murder (viz., killing an innocent human being) is a bad object for actions (and so all actions of that species are wrong). What’s your position? Are you make a consequentialist-style argument that we should justify the good end (of upholding the woman’s bodily autonomy) via a bad means because the end consequentially outweighs (perhaps significantly) the bad means? Is that the idea???

What exists is what you can meaningfully encounter.

I appreciate the elaboration!

The only issue I have is with your semantics: I think you are using ‘existence’ as if it is reserved for only things which exist materially (or perhaps physically). E.g., the monetary value of a diamond exists because there is a monetary value to a diamond; my feeling of pain exists even though it is not located anywhere in material (or perhaps physical) reality; the agreement which a contract represents exists because there really is an agreement being made between both parties; etc. Nothing about this suggests that these things exists as a different type of existence nor that they are real but don’t exist. Something exists if it is—that’s the only and nicely circular way of defining being.

As to things that exist but aren't real - well, fictional characters would fit the bill. We will both know who Bugs Bunny and Sherlock Holmes are, so we have a common reference point, but they're not real. Nowadays we're constantly bombarded by unreal imagery.

Technically, fictional characters exist and are real fictional characters. What you are doing is conflating this with colloquial language where one would mean by “is this fictional character real?” “is this fictional character referencing a person or thing which existed beyond a mere work of fiction?”. I think your “real” vs. “existent” distinction collapses once the ambiguity in colloquial speech is resolved.

How do you explain what it means to be a Homo sapiens?

a homo sapiens is a contradiction in terms: it is a species.

The typical definition of a species, which holds generally for its members and absolutely for its healthy members, is "A group of organisms that share similar physical and genetic characteristics and are capable of interbreeding to produce viable offspring".

There are ways to tell: I was saying to the naked eye. We can examine it in the lab and determine if it is a human being (or, if you prefer, human fertilized egg).

A member of a species has to be an organism, taken as a whole, of that species — Bob Ross


This is circular.

No it is not. In order for X to be a member of the set of all existent square blocks, it must be a square block.

This is basic biology. It is a member of the human species if it that certain kind of animal: homo sapien. — Bob Ross


Well, I wouldn't say that homo sapiens are single-celled animals.

This is basic biology: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Homo-sapiens . When, for you, does an organism become a member of its species? Anything you say is going to be utterly arbitrary, if it is not conception.

Not to the naked eye---so?!? The point is not whether or not one can tell if it is a human being: the point is whether or not a fertilized egg is a human being.

What does it mean to be a member of the human species? Is the placenta a human being? It has human DNA, is a living organism, and develops from the blastocyst. Is the heart a human being?

This is basic biology. It is a member of the human species if it that certain kind of animal: homo sapien.

A member of a species has to be an organism, taken as a whole, of that species: so obviously, e.g., a human heart is not a human being.

If a blastocyst separates into twins, is that one human being becoming two?

Technically, yes. Just like how, likewise, siamese twins are one human being. I think you may be confusing persons with human beings—e.g., siamese twins are one human being, but (usually) two persons.

Lets break this down.

I appreciate the elaboration!

Firstly, “a priori” refers, within the context of transcendental investigations, as “that which is independent of any possible experience—viz., independent of empirical data”. “Knowledge” is just a justified, true belief (with truth being a version of correspondence theory) or, more generically, ~”having information which is accurate”. Knowledge a priori, then, is when one has a true, justified belief about something which was not derived from empirical data (but, rather, the means by which our representative faculties intuit and cognize that data). The proposition “all bodies are extended” is universally true for human experience and a priori because the way we experience is in space (necessarily); and so this is a priori known. Now, to your point, of which I concede, in order to acquire this a priori knowledge one must have the self-reflective cognitive abilities to reason about their experience transcendentally; and so a baby, I agree with you, necessarily does not have a priori knowledge even though they necessarily have an a priori means of experiencing and the a priori propositions are true of their experience as well (e.g., “all bodies are extended”). I was conflating, I think, that which is a priori with that which is a priori knowledge. E.g., intuition (necessarily) in space is a priori but is not knowledge, but some propositions are true a priori and are grounded in it (such as “the line drawn between two points is the shortest path” in geometry).

Secondly, I recognize that you reject the JTB theory of knowledge; so let me try to address yours as it relates hereto.

This is why in my knowledge theory I broke down what knowledge is into two camps.

When we ask “what is knowledge?”, we are expecting an monistic answer—e.g., “it is <…>”—and not a plurastic answer—e.g., “it is <…> and <…>”. You are saying that knowledge doesn’t have one fundamental identity but, instead, is two separate irreducible ones—namely “applicable” and “distinctive”.

This immediately incites the question: “if A is knowledge and B is knowledge, then aren’t they inheriting the same type of knowledge and, if so, thereby the question of ‘what is knowledge?’ is still unanswered?”. That’s like me saying knowledge is a priori and a posteriori. Ok. But we are asking “what is knowledge?”; so how did that answer the question?

Of course, you probably have an answer to this that I don’t remember….it has been a while (;

Briefly, I will also say, that your schema doesn’t negate the possibility of a priori “knowledge” (in your sense of knowledge): it would be applicable knowledge, as the whole metaphysical endeavor of transcendental investigation would be applicable knowledge. The question becomes: “why don’t you think that we can apply a priori knowledge without contradiction and reasonably to the forms of experience (viz., the necessary preconditions for the possibility of experience) given that we both agree that our experience is representational?”.

For example, we applicably know math through 'base 10'. But math can be in any base. Base 2, or binary, is the math we use for logic circuits.

The fact that we can do math in different bases does not negate that the same mathematical operations are occurring, and that they are synthetical, a priori propositions.

The ability to think is not generally prescribed as 'knowledge'. Just like the ability to 'move my limbs' doesn't mean I know 'how to move them to walk'.

Correct. I was using the phrase too loosely.

It is purely an abstract thing that cannot be applicably known.

Ehhhh, then you cannot claim to know that there must be a thing-in-itself at all; or otherwise concede that you can know applicably, through experience, that if our experience is representational then there must be a thing-in-itself.

"The thing in itself" is a space alien

Then a thing-in-itself is not a concept which is purely logical—that was my only point on this note. It is referencing something concrete. @Mww is denying this, and I thought so were you.

I am not familiar enough with quantum physics to comment back: I don't understand how to reconcile qp with practical life---it seems incoherent.