In metaphysics there are accidental and substantial changes. — LostThomist
You completely missed the point.
To simply compare any 8 cells with the 8 cells in a developing human is an illogical comparison because any 8 skin cells cannot develop into a whole human body. — LostThomist
Anyway - The accidental vs. substantial change distinction is Aristotle, right? So, it's not metaphysics, it't Aristotle's metaphysics. It's not true. It's not logical. It's just your way of looking at things. — T Clark
What anybody calls him (and some people - mostly those that have never read his work - call him some very horrible things) is of no consequence. What matters is whether they can engage with his ideas - whether to try to rebut them or something else.I would hardly call Singer a philosopher much less sophisticated. — Thomist
As long as you make a clean job of it and finish me off, I would have no complaint to make. In working out whether you feel it is morally permissible however, you would need to take account of the feelings of those that have come to care about me. Even though I am not nearly as widely beloved as Taylor Smith or Beyoncé Noakes, I expect there would be enough people that would be quite upset about it that you would decide that the morally preferable path is to not stab me.So if you are in a coma from which you may awake........can I stab you? — Thomist
Even though I am not nearly as widely beloved as Taylor Smith or Beyoncé Noakes, I expect there would be enough people that would be quite upset about it that you would decide that the morally preferable path is to not stab me. — andrewk
any attempt to say that the woman has a right to remove the baby (even if the intention is not to kill the baby) is like saying that I have a right to eject a stowaway in my plane after I have taken off. Yes that action alone does not directly kill the person, but if I threw that stowaway out of my plane at 30,000 feet, I would be in denial if I said that I did not know that the fall would kill him. The same goes with babies. Saying that a woman has a right to eject the baby from the womb at younger than 20-24 weeks would most assuredly kill the baby and even after 25 weeks, it is not a sure thing that a prematurely born baby would survive even with our new and updated technology in NICU wards. — LostThomist
So let's have the rest of your argument - the part where you show how, once we've concluded that a foetus is actually a human, that it follows automatically that we cannot terminate it. — Pseudonym
That reality is only normal within a modern world in which these things are possible. — Noble Dust
The ability doesn't suggest the moral. — Noble Dust
THEREFORE: There is no other place other than conception that can be the metaphysical beginning of personhood — LostThomist
No, infanticide is unfortunately considered necessary in many tribal cultures and paleoanthropological evidence seems to suggest it has been since human culture began, so yes the decision to end a life in the face of interminable suffering is, unfortunately 'normal'. — Pseudonym
Normal has an ontological and epistemological connotation beyond simple cultural acceptance. Normal against what? — Noble Dust
Further more, I don't care about paleoanthropomorphicaloligal evidence — Noble Dust
men like to focus on the one issue where their own innocence is assured. — unenlightened
The point of mentioning the metaphysical argument for biologically human life beginning at conception is to disprove any future argument which denies the humanity as a basis for abortion being moral.
Then.....I go on to argue against those who separate biological humanness from personhood — LostThomist
I use the word "magically" somewhat sarcastically........but what I mean by that is that...........the other places to use as the starting point for life would make it seem like a baby just popped into existence, whereas with conception you can see how it came about and thus proves itself more valid as an explanation.
Differentiating "hand waving" as an explanation for things from being able to show the causality — LostThomist
Why are there no philosophers and no threads arguing that when a homeless person freezes to death while there are warm places locked up all around him, that is murder; that refusing your spare bedroom to a refugee is murder. — unenlightened
For these examples to be parallel with abortion, one would have to set the scenarios up so that a homeless man or a refugee has his neck snapped by a doctor and is sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner, otherwise, they bear no resemblance to abortion.
Also, these examples you've given are ironically emotional appeals. — Thorongil
But the same people who fulminate against abortion do not want to take responsibility for any of the many unwanted children languishing in care homes, let alone people whose lives they could save. — unenlightened
Very simple - I could give my couch to a refugee to sleep, but how do I know that he won't turn around and rob me, or harm my family, etc.? I have no such guarantee, hence I'm not willing to take the risk. In addition, I am not directly responsible for his plight and suffering, the way the woman would be with regards to her child (in most circumstances).But I wonder, I really wonder why so much time is spent on this issue. Why are there no philosophers and no threads arguing that when a homeless person freezes to death while there are warm places locked up all around him, that is murder; that refusing your spare bedroom to a refugee is murder. — unenlightened
Except that the woman most of the time (excluding cases of rape) is partly responsible for the child who is there, whereas I am not, in any direct way, responsible for the refugee or any random person who has need.If it wrong for a woman to refuse to sustain and house someone in her body who has need, then it is wrong to refuse to sustain and house any person who has need. — unenlightened
As long as you make a clean job of it and finish me off, I would have no complaint to make. In working out whether you feel it is morally permissible however, you would need to take account of the feelings of those that have come to care about me. Even though I am not nearly as widely beloved as Taylor Smith or Beyoncé Noakes, I expect there would be enough people that would be quite upset about it that you would decide that the morally preferable path is to not stab me. — andrewk
If someone was in terminal pain but could not speak to express their wishes, would killing them be immoral? — Pseudonym
If someone was in a complete vegetative state from which they were unlikely to revive, would turning off the life support be immoral? — Pseudonym
You may have your own moral ideas formed by your religion, but these are relatively modern by human standards — Pseudonym
The book was a brief for "compassionate conservatism," but its claim raised a lot of skepticism, and not only among liberals. One problem noted across the political spectrum was Brooks' reliance on the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey to distinguish "liberal" from "conservative." The problem was that the survey didn't seem to accurately measure those categories and didn't distinguish well between social conservatives or liberals and fiscal conservatives or liberals.
What the MIT researchers did find, however, was that conservatives give more to religious organizations, such as their own churches, and liberals more to secular recipients. Conservatives may give more overall, MIT says, but that's because they tend to be richer, so they have more money to give and get a larger tax benefit from giving it. (One of the things that makes social scientists skeptical of the benchmark survey Brooks used, in fact, is that it somehow concluded that liberals are richer than conservatives.)
The degree of religious contribution is important, because a 2007 study by Indiana University found that only 10% to 25% of church donations end up being spent on social welfare purposes, of which assistance to the poor is only a subset. In other words, if you think of "giving" as "giving to the poor," a lot of the money donated by conservatives may be missing the target.
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