...subsequently... — Bob Ross

Not sure what "subsequently" is doing here, but I agree that morality is about what we do.

The part that is a load of nonsense (to me) about his theory is that he thinks we can literally intuit the right thing to do based off of a pure intuition of what goodness itself is; which not just totally obscure but also a cop-out. — Bob Ross

Then what basis do you have for deciding if an action is good or not, that is not an intuition? Invisible friends don't count.

Again, why? — Bob Ross

That's been answered, repeatedly. If you think that the cyst is as valuable as Mrs Smith, then there is something extraneous influencing your evaluation.

You OK?

Yes. In fact I am.

I guess I’m not making sense to you.

Hope you are okay too then.

Maybe you are annoyed I keep asking “what” when you want to go in to the motions of “how”.

You told me to fill in “whatever” on what a “person, human, baby, but not a cyst” thing is.

Seems like a hole in any argument based on that just waiting fo open up to me.

I mean “whatever” has as much a definition as any other term, it’s just really broad in practice, so you are pointing to “mere definitions” and “backbone” by pointing to “whatever” anyway. May as well define something more specific. See what “whatever” is really useful and whatever is not. Or maybe you don’t care.

Definitions are the backbone and morality valuations are in the movement of that backbone. (Judgment is in both positions but I digress.)

We all have to play with essences. It’s called having a conversation. A dialogue.

I’m asking the scientific question: if a pregnant woman was considering whether to carry to term or have an abortion, and she asked “Is a human fetus at any stage a full enough thing to be called a person, human being, thing like me, little baby?”

What is your answer? Not how to live morally with ambiguity. We can get to that later. What would you be able to say to her using your reason and experience (since you have been a person all of your life, or maybe not, or maybe you can’t say that either, or…)?

I think the more meta/physical/empirical questions here are way more interesting. Let people figure out what to do about it for themselves.

Neither of us should think we’ve said much if we are trading value judgments without sharing a context, like a basic definition.

Without definitions, we may only be monologuing, and about abortion no less. Painful.

You define stuff all the time here. Come on, play with it a bit. Humor me. What are the essential qualities of a living human being, that we must be able to measure in some way to demonstrate the coming to be of this human being?

REVISED:
And if you were really wondering if I was ok, thanks for asking. I am ok. To give you a more specific answer to whatever “ok” means, I am a bit longing for some actually stimulating conversation, but that’s still within my definition of “ok”. I am being more specific for you answering your question to try to convey something meaningful, so that this might be a conversation. Any definition of a human, person, not a cyst, Mrs Smith thing would be appreciated.

Secondly, the state is in charge of providing, pragmatically, an adequate basis for human flourishing; but there are limitations, and I would say that the individual should be endowed with a certain level of responsibility to figure out how to flourish themselves. I don't think societies that try to give the government full control to legislate morality end up doing to hot: that's why, pragmatically, in terms of applied ethics, I would lean towards giving the individually as much power to make decisions about themselves; instead of entrusting that to the government. However, the laws which are put in place by the state are there to help with incentivizing the human good and barring immoral acts that are severe enough (e.g., marriage, rights, murder, rape, etc.). — Bob Ross

In a representative democracy, legislators are elected to act on behalf of their constituents. Although this system isn’t perfect and representation can feel indirect, the will of the people generally prevails. From my perspective, democracy remains the best framework for enabling the people to flourish. I recognize that you may view this differently, but as we’ve discussed, in the U.S., the prevailing sentiment is a love of freedom and choice. The minority who dissent often base their views on faith: faith in the immortal soul, in God, and, ultimately, in what other mortals convey to them.

Your Neo-Aristotelian schema doesn’t seem to align with any part of this system.

That's been answered, repeatedly. If you think that the cyst is as valuable as Mrs Smith, then there is something extraneous influencing your evaluation.

That we were all cysts is the ineradicable problem of the act. Had any of these worms wiggled their way into any of our mother’s ears we wouldn’t exist. Mrs. Smith was once a cyst, and therefor she (and everyone now living) would have been reduced to the value of a cyst had she been sentenced to death at that time in her development, at least according to your evaluation. Our beginnings mean that much to you. So far, if anyone has reduced her to the value of a cyst in this discussion it has been you.

It’s a huge straw man because, as is explicit in the arguments, everyone you accuse of being morally wrong for reducing Mrs. Smith is in fact trying to elevate the value of the life you dismiss as a mere cyst, while not reducing anyone else’s. You’re the one defending the killing, after all. No one else is using dehumanizing language to describe the victim of this act.

So the moral high-horse doesn’t stand too far from the ground.

...while not reducing anyone else’s. — NOS4A2

That's just bullshit.

Interesting that the libertarians hereabouts are so keen on controlling the very bodily autonomy of others. Women, specifically. Black and poor, predominantly.

Hello Fire,

For the most part that may be correct. Our faculty of reason is not a pair of eyes that is able to detect moral properties, but instead we have to make representations to it - that is, we have to, so to speak, describe to it how things appear to us to be - and then it tells us (or does if it is operating well) what moral features are present and what it would be right or wrong to do in the situation we have described. In this sense, our conscience - which I take just to be the name we give to our reason when it is telling us about moral features - is held hostage to information we provide to it.

But I think it must be admitted by all that our faculty of reason contains important information about reality, otherwise consulting it would tell us nothing about anything.

Imagine there's a guide book to a jungle. This guide book warns about eating certain sorts of berry - perhaps it says to steer clear of eating any yellow berry, or any yellow berry above a certain size. It does not say anything else about the berry, and it does not tell you where specifically these berries are. So one could not use the guide book to find the berries. Nevertheless, if provides one with important information: it warns against eating any such berries one may come across.

It is reasonable to infer from this warning in the guide book that any yellow berries one comes across in the jungle are poisonous, or likely poisonous.

The guide book is analogous to our faculty of reason, the warning is analogous to our reason telling us not to do something, and the poisonousness - or likely poisonousness - of the berries is the fetus's person status. If our faculty of reason - or at least, the faculty of reason of many - warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer from this that the fetus has a mind, as this is the best explanation of why it is warning us against having them if, that is, this is what it does.

On the other hand, if it issues no such warning - or only issues it if one represents the fetus to b a person (which would be equivalent to looking up 'should I eat poisonous berries?' in the guide - a question that it will obviously answer with 'yes' and that tells one nothing about whether the yellow berries are poisonous or not) - then it is reasonable to infer that the fetus is not a person.

I don't think there's a problem with making such an inference. It seems to me no less problematic than inferring that the yellow berries the guide book is warning us against eating are poisonous (given this seems the best explanation of why we are being warned against eating them). And we do still have to provide information to our reason: we have to describe the scenario. And then it delivers its verdict. That's equivalent, as I see it, to seeing some yellow berries and then looking up 'yellow berries' in the guide book and seeing a warning against eating them (and then inferring from this that they are poisonous). But most people aren't doing this, I suspect, and are instead looking up 'poisonous berries' and seeing 'don't eat poisonous berries' or looking up 'non-poisonous berries' and seeing 'it's fine to eat non-poisonous berries'. That is, they are either asking their reason 'is it okay to kill a little person who is inside of one?' or they are asking their reason 'is it okay to destroy a lifeless lump of cells that is inside of one?'. Obviously the reason of the first group says loud and clear 'no', and the reason of the second says equally loudly and clearly 'yes'. And if either side asked the other side's question, they'd get the other side's answer. Hence why the classic debate is deadlocked. Neither side is really wrong, given the questions they're asking. But they seem to me to be going about things in teh wrong way....

The guide book is analogous to our faculty of reason, the warning is analogous to our reason telling us not to do something, and the poisonousness - or likely poisonousness - of the berries is the fetus's person status. — Clearbury

I am following you here.

If our faculty of reason - or at least, the faculty of reason of many - warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer from this that the fetus has a mind, as this is the best explanation of why it is warning us against having them if, that is, this is what it does. — Clearbury

I would say “if our faculty of reason warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer the human fetus is a person.” Likely poisonousness is likely personhood. Why did you jump to “fetus has a mind”? Isn’t that like jumping to “yellow berry has arsenic”. It’s poisonous but we can’t use use reason, without more facts, to infer something specific. Unless to you, human being equals minded being.

On the other hand, if it issues no such warning - or only issues it if one represents the fetus to b a person (which would be equivalent to looking up 'should I eat poisonous berries?' in the guide - a question that it will obviously answer with 'yes' and that tells one nothing about whether the yellow berries are poisonous or not) - then it is reasonable to infer that the fetus is not a person. — Clearbury

That I don’t follow. Can you clarify? I would use your analogy to equate “the berries are poison” with. “the fetus is a human being”. How did you get to “fetus is not a person”? Are you saying if you found a blue berry and didn’t see anything in the book about blueness, you could infer it must not be poisoneess?

Interesting that the libertarians hereabouts are so keen on controlling the very bodily autonomy of others. Women, specifically. Black and poor, predominantly. — Banno

Who said anything about any of that? I could care less what you or anyone does. I don’t need a law for or against abortion or lump flesh surgery or not. I will recognize my own morality and choose accordingly like everyone else has to. Politicians are all idiots like the rest of us. Are the ones who say “a lump of flesh called a human blatocyst is not a whole human life” accurate? Are they just as full of shit as someone saying anyone is controlling anyone else by trying to have a conversation?

My one objection is that meat is flesh-as-food, flesh that we eat. I think we're in trouble when we start viewing other members of our species as food. But otherwise I fully agree.

Not everyone consider meat as food, nor does everyone who eat meat as food consider every kind of meat as food.

note that the act of abortion itself, the act of killing this organism, is rarely mentioned in these discussions from an abortionist standpoint.

Did the mother kill all the zygotes/embryos/fetuses that were miscarriage? Was the mother wrong for having miscarriages since, by your definition, it's the act of killing all those organisms?

everyone you accuse of being morally wrong for reducing Mrs. Smith is in fact trying to elevate the value of the life you dismiss as a mere cyst, while not reducing anyone else’s. You’re the one defending the killing, after all. — NOS4A2

That is exactly right. The question is whether all of Banno’s wonderful concerns for other women apply to people in the earliest moments of their lives.

More specifically for me, the question is simply what is a human being regardless of whatever one might want to do with it at any stage in its life.

I’m just trying to clarify what are the pawns on this game board. Banno’s leaping to game strategy and using it to tell me something can’t be a pawn, but won’t define a pawn.

Did the mother kill all the zygotes/embryos/fetuses that were miscarriage? Was the mother wrong for having miscarriages since, by your definition, it's the act of killing all those organisms? — night912

The question is whether a miscarriage is the end of the short life of a person, or not. Why jump to asking for blame and “wrongness” without addressing the moving pieces of the argument.

If a new person/human being is costs when we have a zygote, then clearly yes, a miscarriage is the death of a person/human being.

I see human beings as bodies - we have the magical power of “mind” or whatever makes us feel so special when we start philosophizing about things as adults, but we remain bodies, bodies that only began growing, living, as a unique organism at conception. Any other moment in the life of the human body asserted as the moment the human comes to be a living human individual, is arbitrary. Waiting and hoping for a better argument or definition of a human being.

And why would a woman be “wrong” for something out of her control like a miscarriage? No one is ever wrong for anything they cannot intend. (This is a tangient conversation about morality generally. If a fetus is not a person, we don’t need to talk about morality, and if a fetus is a person and no one wants to kill it, we don’t need to talk morals either.)

Utter lies, but that seems par for the course.

Did you see my question pages ago about the fertility clinic and the orphanage? Suppose a fire breaks out at an orphanage with a dozen kids and a fertility clinic where a bazillion fertilized eggs are stored. Where do you send the town's only fire truck? The orphanage, of course. It doesn't matter how many zygotes will be destroyed. One child's life is worth more than any number of them, right?

Not everyone consider meat as food, nor does everyone who eat meat as food consider every kind of meat as food.

Show me any definition that states otherwise.

Did the mother kill all the zygotes/embryos/fetuses that were miscarriage? Was the mother wrong for having miscarriages since, by your definition, it's the act of killing all those organisms?

Miscarriages are not the intentional killing of a human life, so no.

What you are describing is a secular view, which removes ethics from politics, as a pragmatic means of allowing people to flourish the best; and I agree with it other than that it doesn't actually completely remove ethics (even though it purports to). There's a difference between normative and applied ethics: I don't trust the government one bit to have the power to ban, e.g., gluttony. Gluttony, e.g., is bad for you; and the idea of banning something because it inhibits the human good is not foreign to America: we've ban, e.g., hard drugs even if those people addicted to them don't harm anyone else.

Your whole argument is that X is immoral because it seems immoral to you: is that actually how you are thinking about Mrs. Smith?

I am evaluating whether not Mrs. Smith has the right to, or should, kill the human being developing in her womb in virtue of what is actually good and how I think that relates to behavior. Viz., what is actually good is what is intrinsically valuable, what is most intrinsically valuable is what is the chief good, the chief good is eudaimonia, being a eudaimon requires one to be just, being just requires one to respect other beings relative to their (teleological) natures, a person has a nature such that they have a rational will, and to respect a rational will is to treat it as an end in itself and never as a mere means.

Do you see how in depth my analysis is, even if you completely disagree with it, about why X is wrong? Whereas your analysis is just "uh, X seems wrong so it must be"? That's my problem with your view. Give me an elaborate explanation like I have of my position so I can actually contend with it.

If we just have a clash of pure intuitions, then I can just intuit the opposite about X and you have no basis to say I am wrong; or, at best, you would appeal the masses and make your view straightforwardly a form of moral anti-realism.

If we just have a clash of pure intuitions, then I can just intuit the opposite about X and you have no basis to say I am wrong; or, at best, you would appeal the masses and make your view straightforwardly a form of moral anti-realism. — Bob Ross

You're trying to remove intuition from ethics. That's impossible. If your ethically theory leads to extreme counter-intuitives (and yours does), it's as good as dead. It doesn't matter how internally consistent it is. Eventually, we're going to reach a point where you say, "no, I won't sacrifice a zygote to stop the trolley car" and the rest of us are going to shake our heads, and the discussion is pretty much over.

Intuitions are a part of ethics: they are not sufficient themselves, as pure intuitions, to justify or annul a position. You are begging the question, and it is impossible for me to change your mind because you lack justification for you view.

Imagine we are debating if it is morally permissible to own slaves; and I say it is and you say it isn't. You bring up all these moral reasons for why it is wrong, and I say "your theory leads to the extreme conclusion that slavery is wrong, so your theory is dead". I have given myself the ultimate cop-out, which is to justify my position I am supposed to be arguing for by intuiting it is right. THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

Either you understand what goodness is and how it relates to the problem of abortion and can justify your position, or you are just ignorant and circularly justifying your position because it seems right to you. It's nonsense.

Another way to put this, is that it is perfectly fine to intuit based off of evidence; but a pure intuition lacks all evidence, and is invalid. Pure intuitions are just cop-outs to justify one's position without actually justifying it, and I can prove anything right through a pure intuition because it is circular.

In ethics, you have to have some sort of concept of what actual goodness is and how it relates to right and wrong behavior; or else you are just acting blindly with these pure intuitions of yours. Like I said, anything can be justified with a pure intuition.

Banno, when I say I am a fundamentalist, I think a better way for me to put it is that I am not suggesting that we can justify anything with a fundamental, pure intuition; but, rather, that there are ideas which are so fundamental that a proof is virtually impossible (such as the law of non-contradiction).

However, if I have to deny being a fundamentalist and sublate my view by saying we must have a proof for everything we say in order to avoid these nonsensical "pure intuitions", then I am perfectly happy to do that. It is nonsense to think that one can say X is wrong because it seems wrong. There has to be some evidence to support claims, otherwise we are acting upon blind faith.

What you are describing is a secular view, which removes ethics from politics, as a pragmatic means of allowing people to flourish the best; and I agree with it other than that it doesn't actually completely remove ethics (even though it purports to). — Bob Ross

The bottom line is that if a Neo-Aristotelian truly values human flourishing they will value choice because:

• The ultimate goal is human flourishing and not some heavenly reward or escape from samsara.
  
• Democracy is the best form of government for the people (and not just the elite) to flourishing.
  
• Democratic societies tend to choose choice.

The orphanage, of course. — RogueAI

Problem solved. All questions answered. No more reason to debate abortion I guess.

Why are people risking their lives to save anything? Are orphans under fire more valuable than firemen?

You can distort the morality all over the place if you don’t define the terms. What is a fertilized egg? Is that a stage in a chicken’s life? Or do you mean something like an acorn that hasn’t hit the dirt yet? Or do you mean a living human organism, like a fireman or an orphan?

Hard to say what I’d do without definitions.

Because us deep thinkers are so squeamish about burning orphans, pregnant victims of rape and all the other emotionally charged aspects of this discussion, no one ever thinks through the problem simply and methodically and using actual empirical evidence and reasoned argument. Maybe a fertility clinic is another name for human trafficking superstore. I don’t really care to judge the good or bad of burning orphans versus burning zygotes. Just wondering if anyone can say why a burning orphan is a burning human being, whereas a burning zygote is not. How do you define an orphan that makes it something other than a human lump of flesh like any other fertilized egg at a fertility clinic?

I don't disagree that republics are the best political system we've got; I am saying that, ideally, allowing people to choose, per se, is not necessarily going to correlate to helping them flourish. E.g., stopping a child from eating too much candy (even though they want to keep enjoying more), stopping people from be able to try hardcore drugs that will ruin their life, etc.

We give people liberties because it is pragmatically the best thing to do; and not because it is ideally the best. See what I mean?

We give people liberties because it is pragmatically the best thing to do; and not because it is ideally the best. See what I mean? — Bob Ross

Yes, exactly.

It seems your version of Neo-Aristotelianism is somehow grounded in idealism rather than practical living and achieving eudaimonia (human flourishing).

Your whole argument is that X is immoral because it seems immoral to you... — Bob Ross

Whereas your whole argument is that X is immoral because it seems immoral to you? Or because you think your invisible friend claims it is immoral?

Perhaps "I am evaluating whether not a cysts has the right to monopolise Mr Smith's womb, in virtue of what is actually good and how I think that relates to behaviour. Viz., what is actually good is what is intrinsically valuable, what is most intrinsically valuable is what is the chief good, the chief good is eudaemonia, being a eudaimon requires one to be just, being just requires one to respect other beings relative to their (teleological) natures, a person has a nature such that they have a rational will, and to respect a rational will is to treat it as an end in itself and never as a mere means"

Your pretence of depth is no more than surface posturing. You readily disvalue Mrs Smith and privilege a cyst over her.

It's worth noticing the slip in your spiel. A person has a rational will. A cysts does not. Consistency, where art though?

You want to engage in an extended debate in order to hide the simple truth that a cysts does not have the same worth as Mrs Smith. You would use sophistry as a distraction from the immoral act of forcing someone to undergo an extended and unnecessary ordeal.

You are getting there, Bob. You still at heart want there to be an "is" from which you can derive moral truths to which all rational folk must agree. Your present thinking is that eudaimonia provides that foundation. But it can't, becasue in the end what counts as flourishing is chosen. You cannot escape the fundamental difference between what is the case and what we choose to make the case.

The flourishing of the cyst is a far less definite thing than that of Mrs Smith. For a start, it is entirely dependent on the flourishing of the mother. Further, the quality of life of Mrs Smith is something that we can ask Mrs Smith about, while that of the cysts is mere supposition.

You would choose the flourishing of a cyst at the expense of the flourishing of Mrs Smith. That is the flaw in your account.

Appeals to eudaemonia do not help your case.

It seems your version of Neo-Aristotelianism is somehow grounded in idealism rather than practical living and achieving eudaimonia (human flourishing). — praxis

Yep.

What counts as a human being and what does not is an issue not of looking around and discovering something that is the case. but of making a choice. The line can be put anywhere we choose. What is clear is that Mrs Smith is a human being. It is clear that she has capabilities, needs, and desires that are beyond a mere cyst. Mrs Smith and the conceptus are very different things.

Your insistence on conception as an absolute partition from which moral considerations apply is quite arbitrary. The conceit that it is based on science is disingenuous.

There is grave danger in treating Mrs Smith as a mere incubator.

I would say “if our faculty of reason warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer the human fetus is a person.” Likely poisonousness is likely personhood. Why did you jump to “fetus has a mind”? Isn’t that like jumping to “yellow berry has arsenic” — Fire Ologist

I take, perhaps mistakenly, being a person and having a mind to be synonymous. I think the best explanation of why it would be wrong to have an abortion - if that is what our reason represents them to be - would be that the developing entity has a mind (and so is a person - something it is something it is like to be). happy to stick with 'person' if it is thought that something can have a mind and not be a person.

That I don’t follow. Can you clarify? I would use your analogy to equate “the berries are poison” with. “the fetus is a human being”. How did you get to “fetus is not a person”? Are you saying if you found a blue berry and didn’t see anything in the book about blueness, you could infer it must not be poisoneess? — Fire Ologist

Yes, if the guide book warns against eating yellow berries, but issues no warning about blue berries, then I think it's reasonable to have as one's working assumption that blue berries are not poisonous.
And yes, if someone assumes that blue berries are poisonous - and then looks up whether it is a good idea to eat poisonous berries - then that's equivalent in my analogy to someone assuming the fetus is a person and then asking their reason whether destroying a person is morally ok.

If this is correct, then what matters is what the guide book says about fetus berries. If it warns against destroying them, then it's reasonable to infer that they are persons, as it's hard to see why else it would be wrong to destroy one. And if it doesn't, then it's reasonable to infer that they're not persons, otherwise there'd likely be a warning against destroying them.

But it doesn't really do anything - doesn't really shed any light on the facts of the matter - either to assume the fetus is a person and conclude on that basis that it is wrong to destroy one, or to assume the fetus is not one and conclude on that basis that there's nothing wrong about it. Yet that, I think, fairly characterizes most - though not all - of the contemporary debate.

I take, perhaps mistakenly, being a person and having a mind to be synonymous. — Clearbury

What evidence is there that a new born baby has a mind? When you say you have a "mind" do you mean certain the thing that seems to coincide with certain brain activity? Or do you mean self-conscious thinking, because I don't see that evidence until we get at least a few weeks or months past birth.

if the guide book warns against eating yellow berries, but issues no warning about blue berries, then I think it's reasonable to have as one's working assumption that blue berries are not poisonous. — Clearbury

That's not good logic. If yellow, than poisonous. Not yellow, so not poisonous? Couldn't it mean the author of the book never saw a blue berry before? And blue berries are more poisonous? Yellow berries are poison berries tells you nothing about blue berries at all.

If mind, then human being. No mind, so no human being. So when a person has an accident and they have no mind, while they live, the thing that lives is not a human being? Though they continue to breath and their heart beats and their cells conduct mitosis, etc., they cease to be a human being and we should call them some other animal? Or is it a human being with a very short life expectancy?

What evidence is there that a new born baby has a mind? — Fire Ologist

The reason of virtually everyone represents it to be wrong to kill a new born baby. So, to extend my jungle guide book analogy, the jungle guide book of virtually everyone warns against destroying this kind of berry. The reasonable inference to make is that this kind of berry is minded.