Got ya. Thanks for clarifying.

So there could be reasons to value the life of an adult more than the life of a baby? — Fire Ologist

Could be. I don't know all the potential ideas/scenarios which might exist. I have certainly heard that amongst Aboriginal peoples in my country, infanticide was sometimes practiced because food was't plentiful enough to sustain babies and the adults of the tribe. But one can imagine some funky scenarios - war, crisis, famine, etc, where a baby might be assessed as being of less value than an adult. Overall situations are more significant to me than categorical imperatives.

A test for benevolence is to see how much a person has sacrificed for you. As Jesus says, there is no greater love than laying down one's life for one's friends. In less extreme examples, if someone is devoting their time, money, and energy to you in a way that clearly imposes a cost on themselves, that is a clear sign that they value you. A public figure might tell the public the truth in a manner that has negative consequences for himself, which shows genuine concern for the public. Although, sometimes crafty people can feign self-sacrifice for malicious purposes. — Brendan Golledge

Don't think so.

Abusive parents/partners may well shower their children/partners with money, presents, elite education, holidays and time. But they may still be abusive.

A public figure who tells a story which is negative (on themselves) may be part of a carefully choreographed plan to distract from something else or buy credibility on the basis that they must be truthful. I've seen this recommended and implemented by public relations/spin doctors.

As for intelligence, you can look for a consistent record of success. — Brendan Golledge

I think intelligence is fetishized by culture. As Stephen Fry ( a former Mensa member) recently said in an interview, really super bright people often lack basic living skills and may struggle to even 'sit on the toilet properly'. I guess what this quip meant is that 'brains' don't necessarily equate with skill and success, even if many super successful peopel do appear to be intelligent. I have a couple of friends who are close to genius and their lives are ruins.

Not that this matters but if I could choose between being in the top 2% of super bright individuals on earth, or be a happy postman in an attractive city, I would choose the latter. :wink:

No reasonable person could read all three beings as morally hte same, without doing some loop-de-loops which rest on embarrassment, basically. — AmadeusD

Doesn't this perhaps go to the point made by @Banno earlier that religion or essentialism are influencing such views?

What's your view on the OP? I've lost your position in all of these 35 pages.

What would you say to someone who basically agreed with you, but said they did not find newborns and infants as valuable as full persons? — Fire Ologist

I'd ask for and listen to their reasons.

Notice I’m more interested in what people think a person is and what people think a new life is in the abortion discussion, but not so interested in talking about the moral implications. — Fire Ologist

Cool I respect that and you put your case well. It's not an area that interests me. But I am interested in people who are interested.... if that makes sense.

But someone says a zygote isn’t an early moment in the one life of a human being, a person, and I’m interested in their reasoning. — Fire Ologist

I wouldn't argue that. I'd be happy to say it is a 'potential person', a partial journey towards personhood, if you like and therefore (for me) not as valuable as a full person. That's my call based on some pragmatic values. Not being a practitioner of philosophy, I'm pretty much blind to the infinities this kind of discussion can generate.

Newborns are barely different than a small fetus when it comes to making choices, awareness like a human adult, etc. I don’t see it to be consistent to say you value the fetus more after its birth. The fetus once born is as feckless as a lump of cells.

The values folks seem to already know the adult is the most valued and by the time you get to the zygote stage, you obviously have nothing at all that would be valued like the adult. But the phrase “zygote is obviously nothing like the adult” seems to be based only cursory, surface observation, and when this quick treatment is left as good enough for value judgments, it leads to what I see as inconsistent logic (who are all the humans) and inconsistent value judgments (why do we value infants like they are persons like Mrs Smith). — Fire Ologist

Doesn’t resonate with me. But thanks for taking the effort. I’m pretty good with us holding different views on this.

But I’m interested in asking you something else. Where do you sit on euthanasia?

I agree abortion ought to be permitted. What a pregnant woman does or does not do with her pregnancy and her body is none of anyone else’s business, particularly not the state. — Fire Ologist

Cool. We could even leave it at that. :wink:

I can’t conclude a human zygote lump of cells is anything other than a stage in the one life of on individual human being. Adults can be called lumps of cells too, so that doesn’t help. — Fire Ologist

This is probably a quesion of values. I don't particularly value such cells. An adult human being (Mrs Smith of the previous discussion) is in the world, interacting, making choices, exchanging views, is loved and has a history and her loss is likely to be palpable. The loss of some cells may have a psychological impact on the putative mother, but for me cannot be compared to the 'value' or status of Mrs Smith. If you disagree with this, I suspect it's because we see things differently and I suspect such a quesion of competing values cannot be reconciled.

I doubt if anyone would find this convincing. — Banno

I wasn't attempting to put the argument convincingly, just trying to understand the thinking.

The motivation for this is almost always theological. Occasionally it is inveterate essentialism. — Banno

Yes, that seems likely.

Presumably they do not like the conclusion, that abortion ought be permitted. — Banno

That certainly seems possible.

But is their reasoning as simple as:

A bunch of cells may become a human being, that's close enough to Mrs Smith for us to be unable to differentiate between the two?

These debates seem like interminable time wasters.

Whatever rights we might grant to a cysts, the rights of the woman carrying it ought take precedence. Mrs Smith is of greater value than a collection of cells.

I'm sorry you cannot see this. — Banno

I agree with this. The people who don't see this seem to want a justification beyond the obvious. What do you think is at the heart of this difference?

Arguably, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, a hallmark of many systems, seems to rule out brute facts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't the 'brute fact' at the end of this one a necessary being or a circularity? Is this an idea you believe has merit?

"that the order of becoming and existence must be intelligible; that no phase of the process of contingent existence is intelligible in itself; and that therefore contingent existence is always relative existence, essentially referred, qua existing to another.” — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know what this means. I wonder if meaning and reason are human constructions or frameworks, how can we know that they are a part of 'reality' - whatever that might be.

let's call it phenomenological level in everyday life, right? We do somehow, sort of understand each other. Probably never to a "full extent", but somehow we do try. — KrisGl

Yep - kind of what I meant when I said -

we just make sense of others the best we can. — Tom Storm

To follow the notion that others are simply not our's to understand, to be radical about that would indeed lead to chaos. — KrisGl

Well, chaos is pretty big right now and seems to come down to people not understanding, hence the culture wars and tribalism that are at the heart of our conflicts. Richard Rohr, an interesting and radical Franciscan priest (I'm an atheist), says dualistic think is the limiting mindset which divides the world into binary categories like "us vs. them," "right vs. wrong," or "sacred vs. secular" - which generate internecine conflicts and violence. Anyway, see you on the threads.

It's well set out. I wonder how translations vary with him.

Interesting. Why have you always assumed that? — KrisGl

Intuition and experience. How could we truly understand each other, except through approximations? Many of us are strangers to ourselves, let alone to others...

Have you ever heard of his notion of loyalty to loyalty? I find it moving. — KrisGl

I know very little about it but I have to agree with Royce's basic thrust, as I understand it, that ethics is social and relational.

My own existence is certainly a fact - cogito ergo sum - but not of the kind that was mooted in the post I was responding to. After all, even Descartes himself noted that the existence of the world might be a spell cast by an evil daemon. — Wayfarer

Yep. I had in mind that for those who argue that "all is consciousness" this is amounts to a brute fact - they'd be claiming that consciousness is the foundational reality, beyond which there are no further explanations—it's simply taken as given. I would think that Kastrup, amongst today's more prominent idealists, might argue along these lines. But I think the term 'brute fact' is a bit on the nose and so people seem to talk more about the primacy of consciousness.

Another argument is that what exists according to natural science, does not include the observing subject who stipulates the axioms upon which it rests. That is the topic of the innumerable and interminable discussions about the hard problem of consciousness. It is also the major topic of both phenomenology and existentialism, which will probably not be cowed with threats of ‘brute fact’. :wink: — Wayfarer

Ha! Isn't 'the observing subject who stipulates the axioms upon which it rests' another brute fact? :wink:

My nights I spend at a bar, smoking and drinking way too much, hunched over some book, being asocial, surrounded by good people who are used to it, like me anyway, and for the most part have no fucking idea why the heck I'm doing all of this. Maybe some of you can sympathize a little more. ;) — KrisGl

Ha! I spent a good 20 years drinking in bars (many of them smoking too). But mainly getting to know and appreciate complete strangers. Conversation is a minor hobby.

What does it mean to understand? Is this a term only to be used when "success" is evident - to understand is to understand correctly or there is no understanding at all - or is there such a thing as "wrong understanding"? — KrisGl

Interesting. I have always assumed we don't really understand each other, we just make sense of others the best we can. A primary interest of mine is the ideas people believe and why.

Truth be told, it is difficult to find people interested in these authors, so I hope to find some companionship in this forum. — KrisGl

This site has many actively engaged readers of esoterica, so you should find some people to talk to. Royce doesn't come up all that often, his absolute idealism could be interesting to hear more about. Welcome.

I’m posting that video here because I think it challenges us to re-consider what constitutes language. To what extent is an immediate relationship with our non-human surroundings a language? — Joshs

It does challenge us to reconsider. I expect that most people think of language as a social phenomenon. Mel's responses involve sense-making and interacting with the environment, structuring the world and the things in it. Her blog, Ballastexistenz, was fascinating too.

Maybe you should take that with a grain of salt given that my favorite Chandler movie is the “Long Goodbye” by Robert Altman. That was widely criticized as being far from the standard vision of Philip Marlowe, but it’s one of my all-time favorites. — T Clark

It's a magnificent film and, as a revisionist noir, with a twist and directed by a genius, it's hard to ignore. I quite like the world weary Robert Mitcham Farewell My Lovely (done as a period piece 2 years later). I think the books are all about dialogue and mood. The plots are incidental. I just reread The Lady in the Lake and thought it was pretty good. The problem with Chandler is that he did it so well he has been copied continuously since the 1940's and by now the situations and characters are worn out. Hence Elliott Gould in 1973.

Sure. Time wasting is my specialty.

Actually, on reflection I can see how your points have merit when it comes to my hypocrisy argument. Unless the person argues that all life is sacred, no matter what circumstances, it may not be hypocritical.

Neither of you have demonstrated that at all: Banno just keeps blanketly asserting "it's obvious!". — Bob Ross

I tend to agree with Banno on this one. If you require argumentation to establish that a bunch of cells trumps the personal autonomy and rights of a woman, there's a problem.

Are you saying the religious shrug their shoulders to worldwide hunger and withhold support where their non-religious counterparts are trying to assist? — Hanover

No, I was arguing that some of those who hold a faith in Gods (and the free market) seem to be against universal healthcare. In Australia, for instance, healthcare if mostly free if you are poor or homeless. People are less likely to die unnecessarily from preventable conditions. Many opponents of universal healthcare I've encountered are also opponents of abortion. It's not like they give that much of a fuck about life. Just this particular issue. It's also a curious read of the Gospels (for those who are Christians). Jesus would be a supporter of universal healthcare.

I'd also hold that the sanctity of human life encompasses the right to live to the ability to one's creation, so much so that I would be violating your human rights if I held you against your will in my basement, yet I don't think it hypocritical to incarcerate the guilty. What this means is we draw a distinction between justifiable imprisonment and unjustifiable imprisonment.

We can do the same for killing. Examples would be war, self-defense, and punishment. I get that you disagree that capital punishment should go in that list perhaps for a variety of other reasons, but someone who is opposed to murder can consistently and non-hypocritically be in favor or capital punishment just as someone can object to an unjustifiable X but support a justifiable X. — Hanover

I was talking specifically about capital punishment and abortion. These other examples are a distraction even if they are also examples of contradictions - there's a reason some religions spawn conscientious objectors. I am not making an argument against capital punishment, I am simply identifying a contradiction. It should be noted that there are some religious folk (famously Sister Helen Prejean) who do campaign against capital punishment who are also against abortion on the basis that only God can take lives.

I expect to come back around to liking it down the line, when I might try a different translation. — Jamal

I had the virtually same reactions to this breezily sardonic novel a couple of years ago - same edition. I wondered three things - was my ambivalent reaction a cultural matter, a problem of translation or had the bloody thing simply dated?

what do you mean. Please tell me. Please — AlienVareient

Just a joke. E.g., save you a lot of time so you can move on to something useful :razz:

I find your position very interesting and I respect it.

the result of some dogma that demands zygote = person without much thought into what that means and it obviously comes from a religious tradition foreign to my own that violates my views of the who we all are. — Hanover

Yes, that is probably the answer to my quesion to

And I say all this because I am about as religious a poster as posts here — Hanover

Yes. Perhaps my reaction to this is a banality - to identify as religious can signify different things to different people; it’s a very adaptable term. And seems to encapsulate some of our worst and best impulses. The 'religious' may have very little in common.

As a general matter, I advocate for sanctifying life, not just in a humanist way, but in a way that truly seperates life and humanity in a mystical way. — Hanover

Fair enough. I think in the end this 'mystical' perspective will always come down to the presuppositions we hold. Elaborate post hoc justifications are often built upon them. I'm not sure I know what sanctifying life means, except as a kind of poetry.

A lot of people I have encountered who pontificate about the 'sacredness of human life' are simple hypocrites. They're quite comfortable with capital punishment and don't seem to mind if the poor die in vast numbers through lack of affordable services.

Your question is illicit. The standing of Mrs Smith ought far surpass whatever standing you might grant the blastocyst — Banno

I agree with this. This is not a matter I generally debate as it's a cesspit of virtue signalling and philosophical bullshit. What do you think is happening when people make the sorts of arguments that makes?

Just looking for some tips and suggestions. Answers appreciated : ) — AlienVareient

Get out while you still can. :wink:

To be a living system is to maintain a normative pattern of interacting with an environment in the midst of changing conditions. Sense-making is about pragmatically relevant actions , not concordance with ‘reality as it is’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. This doesn’t make what sense-making reveals as an illusion, or mere appearance as opposed to the really real. It shows us that this is what ‘reality as it is’ IS in itself. — Joshs

Point well made.

@wayfarer I'm interested in your perspective on what @Joshs has written here.

Thank you. There's a lot there. Appreciated. Is there some Deleuze here in the notion of meaning and identity being shaped by relations and differences, not by intrinsic essence?

Our understandings of the world aren’t ideas in the head, they are activities of engagement.All other corners of the world untouched by our participation also are agentially perspectival with respect to themselves via their interaffecting within configurative patterns of interaction. Hoffman and Chalmers still think of consciousness as an Ideal substance. — Joshs

That's so interesting, but it's also a notion that's hard to adjust to given the way things are habitually described and understood.

I'm not clear how the subjective experience of eating chocolate, say, is a product of, shall we say, patterns of interaction within a network, shaped by how beings engage with their environment. I'm trying to understand what this frame contributes to a 'deflation' of the hard problem. Can you tease this out a little more for a layperson?

All this is insubstantial in the argument I presented to you. 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. Someone who can express their needs, who makes plans and seeks to fulfil them and who has a place in our world.

We have on the other hand, a group of cells.

That you value those cells over the person who must carry them is heinous. — Banno

:up:

What explains a Habermas scholar being fooled by Habermas? Dumb? Perverse? Doesn’t really seem to fit. What, then? — J

Indeed. Isn't it traditional to dismiss as nonsense ideas we don't understand or ideas which sit at odds with our own sense making intuitions? There are numerous writers and thinkers I find unappealing, on the basis of their prose or subject matter. I would never mistake this for nonsense, except perhaps that I can make 'no sense' of their work. In my experience, many people believe they must grasp the entire spectrum of philosophical ideas. If they don't, they often conclude that the work itself is flawed.

What about an asylum seeker. — Samlw

Yes, in Australia asylum seekers/refugees were relabelled 'illegal immigrants' quite successfully to play to the bedrock of community prejudice against 'hoards of folk' coming in and 'stealing jobs and bringing crime'. The usual tropes. Immigration involves a range of complex issues, not just those at the point of entry - what happens to an established culture and values when different and perhaps antithetical values and beliefs enter in large numbers? What quotas do you set when there is an almost inexhaustible supply of refugees in the world? What is the future of the nation-state and national identity? I don't have enough expertise in the area to say.

To be a law of logic, a principle must hold in complete generality.
No principles hold in complete generality.
There are no laws of logic. — Banno

Well, that's logical...

She does not wish to conclude that there are no laws of logic, and so argues that a principle need not hold in complete generality. Instead, they hold in given logics. — Banno

A likely concession! Well, it's pretty much off limits to me, I have no knowledge of logic or philosophy, so I'll need to leave it to the cognoscenti. Thanks for the clear explanations.

Why doesn't that surprise me? :wink:

:up:

A lot to think about here. One would almost assume that nothing can be known if paraconsistent logic is sound. At the very least, it suggests that how we deal with the notion of contradiction has to be revised. I fear the potential for quantum woo emerging from the dying embers of classical logic...

Just as the apparent contradictions between classical physics and quantum physics might be about how reality manifests in different scales, perhaps logics may vary depending on the calibration of the problem they are applied to. Or something like that.

Thank you.

But the substantive question relates to knowledge, which is why my first post in this thread concentrated on that topic. — Leontiskos

Well, yes, in the end that's what all this leads to. Fair point.