I think that it's safe to say that we've had more than enough counterexamples to reject this capabilities approach that Banno has put forward. — S
No. If the capabilities approach said otherwise, I would reject it. — Banno
I'm not sure how you define "approach" here other than a definition that works only sometimes. — Hanover
I don't do definitions. Again, what I wish to do with the capabilities approach is to show how shallow the future of value approach is.
Reject the CA, if you see something better. But take on board [that] the FOV is worse. — Banno
I'll accept the CA, but reject your criteria you've offered. I'm fine with accepting the conclusion that we will never define the essential characteristics of a person, but I instead fall back on the idea that I know a conceptus is not a person but that a newborn is. The precise delineating line is unclear, so within the grey area, I give the benefit of doubt to personhood. — Hanover
It is relevant because it s a realistic often occurring result of creating a child.
Creating more children is just going to create more children in that situation and not alleviate the situation.
If child welfare was so high on the anti-abortionist agenda then why are so many children in dire circumstances? Children can only suffer because they are created. — Andrew4Handel
Any discussion on abortion needs to start with some theoretical account of the wrongness of killing.
— Rank Amateur
Why? What is being killed? I think most folks agree that at some point the fetus is essentially a person. I think currently - and in some places for a long time - either viability or quickening is the sign of nascent personhood, viability and quickening being not the same thing. And I think most people agree that aborting then is at least problematic. In any case, these occur after the first trimester. Viability, about 24 weeks. Quickening, 13 to 25 weeks. (That is, quickening as when the mother first feels movement.)
The first trimester is about twelve weeks. Answer: some part of a woman's body is being killed, but not the woman herself. Is a person being killed? Either a person is being killed or a person is not being killed. At the moment the accepted understanding is that a person is not being killed. — tim wood
But why is it wrong to kill people like us?
— Rank Amateur
Irrelevant. No one is considering killing "people like us." — tim wood
— Rank Amateur
If you merely said that killing people harms them, I think most folks would let that pass But you want to build an argument on it. So let's look at it. My point here is that you're a victim being killed only while you're alive. When you're dead, you're a dead victim and you are not and cannot be killed any more. Inasmuch as you're dead, whatever your future was, no part of it was actual. Indeed, no part of your or my future is actual, even while we're alive! How can we be deprived of something we neither have nor can have? — tim wood
And you still have not indicated how it is calculated. From above it appears to be the sum of all the wishful thinking a person might do: — tim wood
Are you here arguing that killing is never justified, cannot ever be justified? — tim wood
We do, though, change people's minds when it comes to moral questions, which means something more is at play than simply emotional reaction. — Hanover
— Rank Amateur
When? Under what circumstances? And the how& etc? If it's the individual, then his FOV gets close to zero and even to negative values the more danger he's in. Or is this all abut unreal, speculative FOVs? What you apparently forget, and that Marquis never apparently even thought about, is that reality governs. FOV is presumably about reality (never mind how). If you're a combat soldier, your real FOV is affected by the combat. In any case, how that soldier's FOV would be calculated is a clear function of the risk he is subject to — tim wood
A long post I know... — Hanover
...but comprehensive I think. — Hanover
I take your subjective emotive position as primitive and undeveloped and rife with problems because it doesn't offer a reason (as it's emotive) for me to accept your position. If you like murder and ice cream, but I don't, I don't know how you're going to convince me of either. We're just dealing with preference under your theory. — Hanover
I'm not denying an immediate intuitive reaction people have when faced with moral issues, like feeling repulsed by murder. This is not an entirely rational reaction I'll admit, but it's not entirely emotive. There are good reasons, after all, for believing murder wrong, as in it would destroy society. Matters of conscience are more complicated than just emotive preference for things, like ice cream. — Hanover
I called your position primitive because I do agree that we start with these intuitive reactions to situations, but we then derive principles for deciphering the morality of hard cases. Utilitarianism and Kantianism are two efforts of providing such principles. I think we all agree that few if any actually keep the categorical imperative in their head at all times and use it to decide right from wrong, but that's not to say it might not describe the process many undertake intuitively. — Hanover
We also have to admit that some often feel emotional repulsion to things that they morally ought not feel such repulsion for (e.g. homosexuality, mixed race marriages) and we must admit that some feel a lack of emotional repulsion when they morally ought to (e.g. child molesters, serial killers). — Hanover
The idea that we can logically convince the moral misguided to change their emotional preference makes as much sense as logically convincing someone to like ice cream who doesn't. We do, though, change people's minds when it comes to moral questions, which means something more is at play than simply emotional reaction. — Hanover
In the examples I gave of people having an inappropriate moral compass, all have a certain underlying principle that is being violated. Namely, each shows a lack of respect for autonomy and deprives people of the power of their own decision making. This principle that drives much of moral theory must therefore be applied consistently throughout other moral decisions. So, for example, if I find homosexuality abhorrent, my mind could be changed by pointing out that my moral rejection requires that I ignore the moral principle of affording people the same autonomy I insist upon providing people in all other situations. Assuming I'm reasonable, I then will reconsider and then take a permissive view on homosexuality, perhaps while even maintaining my emotional repulsion to it. It is the logic, not the emotion, then that drives the final decision. — Hanover
So, back to abortion. If we accept that we must protect individual autonomy at a certain level in order to be moral people, we then must figure out who has the right to this protection. We generally say that people do, and for reason, we must decide who is a person. The fetus is a hard case because it tests our ability to offer a fine tuned definition, but find a definition we must. Throwing our arms up (ala Banno) to the notion of definitions is too easy. We all know the limitations of definitions and we all know the problems of essentialism, but just because we can't figure out an exact and always accurate definition of a cup doesn't suggest we don't know when we have a cup and when we do. My response then is as it was, which is that we have to offer a definition of "person" that liberally protects things that might not entirely be people, simply because the destruction of something that might be a person is so morally wrong. — Hanover
Instead of a judgement based on a precise delineation, which I agree isn't possible, you two make a judgement based on rough categories. Yet some of the key concerns people have, some of the key moral dilemmas people face, about abortion apply outside of your rough category. That's a problem for you, isn't it? Would you just dismiss a person's concerns because it falls outside of your rough category? It's simply not a moral dilemma? They're not thinking about it rightly? That doesn't seem right, and it doesn't seem very ethical to me. It seems callous and misguided.
It's not a problem for me, because my answer is that their concerns relating to the "thing" should be guided by what is judged to be of value, irrespective of categorisation of the "thing". — S
The way I see it, I'm leading the race, followed by you, with Banno in his old banger trailing way behind in the distance, — S
Your point (suffering children) is relevant to abortion only to the extent that a child born because abortion is illegal will suffer. Is this always the case? I don't think so. — TheMadFool
As far as I can tell you're saying that the fetus has value. Ok, so what? I don't think anyone has disagreed with you on that. The disagreement was over whether the value of the fetus is equal to the value of a person's autonomy, and I would agree that a person's autonomy has greater value than a fetus. — Moliere
Many things have value, but we arrange these values into hierarchies or attempt to balance them when they are in conflict. — Moliere
And what both Banno and @Hanover have done is attempt to provide some way of reasoning through that balance between conflicting values. But I'm not sure where you have done so. — Moliere
EDIT: Just to be clear, I pretty much thing it is morally permissible to get an abortion at any time prior to birth. My general argument mirror's Hanover, but my rough criteria make the line of personhood further along in development. — Moliere
If in a freedom there is nothing in it that is free, then it is not freedom. What you're writing about is license, and you're positing something that does not exist, absolute license. This confusion leads you to propositions that sound reasonable, but are not. Recast they may be reasonable. Or, if no one is paying attention they may pass as reasonable, but as to meaning, no.
If I translate, it works out to this, there is no abortion except as we, the people in control, allow it. Any freedom there may be in this has nothing to do with abortion itself. — tim wood
— Rank Amateur
I imagine that he does, but you have kept referring to FOV as a something. I merely point out that on my best understanding of what that something might be, the value of that something might just depend on the probability of its possibility, and that such a probability decreases in the present of material risk. — tim wood
Talking about what other people are disagreeing over isn't necessarily relevant to my position and what I've ended up disagreeing with. You'll have to actually go into what I've said, who I've disagreed with, over what, and why. — S
The one and the other don't have to be of equal value. The fetus just has to be valuable enough to prioritise alternatives to abortion in at least some cases, such as giving birth and keeping the baby, or giving birth and handing over control to social services. — S
I'm all for discouragement of the less advisable route and encouragement of better options. And I never endorsed intervention except in exceptional circumstances, and intervention doesn't necessarily mean strapping the mother down, completely taking away her freedom, and forcing her to give birth. I certainly wouldn't be in favour of that kind of extreme intervention. Intervention can take many forms. I'm talking about some form of intervention in the case of red flags, like grossly irresponsible behaviour.
I raised the problem from the start about the ambiguity in "control", and there's ambiguity in "freedom", too. We would need to break these concepts down. But no one replied to my original comment and everyone else carried on regardless.
Yes, I don't disagree — S
I've been arguing that the outcome should be determined based on a valuation which allows for greater subjectivity than basing it on whether the fetus counts as a person, and then arguing over what criteria to go by. That depersonalises the situation, and makes it about rule following. But it's a very personal situation, and should account for feelings, values, desires, and the like. — S
It's not my view that it is morally acceptable to get an abortion for any reason whatsoever, no matter how irresponsible the reason, and the legislation here in the UK doesn't legally permit that. — S
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