I apologize: I was not intending to alter the example to my benefit. I am not following what difference it makes if the tactical bomber cannot retreat. What are you suggesting?

DID YOU READ MY MESSAGE?!? I am losing patience with you, my friend. Literally in the quote you made I addressed that!

Interesting, I guess we will have to see what happens then.

There is no such example: I pull the lever if the one is being sacrificed is substituted for any number of zygotes; and this is not incoherent with my position. Like I said, you don't understand it.

Pouring zygotes on a building to put out a fire (to save a child) is not analogous to pulling a lever to save five by sacrificing N-amount of zygotes, for the zygotes are directly intentionally killed in the former as a means towards the good end whereas they are indirectly intentionally killed in the latter not as a means but rather a bad side effect of using the means to bring about the good end (and, at this point, with my principle of double effect, saving the child is always going to significantly outweigh the bad side effect of killing the zygotes but this is only valid for analyzing side effects NOT means).

I know many Republicans that believe that abortion should be allowed up to a certain point in the pregnancy for any reason. I don't know one Republican that says that if prior birth control (condoms, the pill, etc.) failed that the woman should be forced to carry through with her pregnancy.

I could see that (although I have many examples of Republicans that do not support that at all); because they lack a coherent position.

To me, the issue becomes moral only when the fetus develops a nervous system and is capable of feeling pain. Zygotes do not have nervous systems.

None of this matters; and can be demonstrated as useless considerations simply by observing that you probably eat other animals that can feel pain and have a nervous system much more complex than a fetus’ and your argument here would apply equally to all those animals. Viz., the principles which you are analyzing and committing yourself too, would entail, if granted, veganism.

If someone was raped or the birth control they were using failed,

Also irrelevant. Aborting a child from rape or a failing in contraception is no different than killing an infant born out of wedlock—two wrongs do not make a right.

Traditionally, a rational will; i.e., a sufficiently free will. That is a serious and impactful difference between humans and other species: most, if not all, other species lack the capacity to go against their own nature and inclinations such that they are motivated by pure reason.

Traditionally, a being which has a Telos such that it will have, if not already has, a rational will are called persons (because their nature marks them out to be such); and their will must be respected.

More technically, a being which has a such a "rational Telos" is not necessarily a person but, rather, will be; and their nature marks them out as such; and this is what grounds their rights (and not whether or not they currently are a person).

The argument is pretty clear, and has been stated a few times. Whatever standing the cyst has is negligible in comparison to that had by Mrs Smith.

This is entirely too vague. Do you think the blastocyst has a right to life or not?!? You are purposefully avoiding the question, because you know if you grant it rights then you cannot make this kind of argument that Mrs. Smith has more of a right to bodily autonomy.

They are persons.

Except that the double effect was part of an extended discussion of abortion involving Philippa Foot and Anscombe, the very one in which what 'mercans call the "trolly" problem was first deployed.

What do you mean "except"?

You are confusing the end with the intentions. I can directly intend something which is not the end I am trying to bring about (e.g., start my car to go to the grocery store). A woman who opts-in for an abortion is directly intended to kill an innocent human being as a means towards the end of upholding her own bodily autonomy; because the abortion (1) at least partially (if not totally) facilitates the end and (2) it is a part of the direct intentional flow of the act.

This is entirely different than your example before, as a tactical bomber is directly intending to bomb, e.g., a military base and only indirectly intends to kill innocents (as a statistical certainty) as a side effect of the means of bringing about the end; which is evident from the fact that if there were no innocents that were to die, then the bomber would still perform the same tasks towards the same end. Whereas, with the abortion, if an abortion is not needed then it changes the act itself; for the act's end stays the same but the objects change (which is not true in the tactical bomber scenario).

The most common republican view, although not officially, is that abortion should be illegal except under certain grave circumstances. E.g., https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-party.aspx#:~:text=Views%20on%20Legality%20of%20Abortion%2C%20by%20Party%20ID .

Democrats commonly want it legal in all or most circumstances. You are making it sound like both republicans and democrats see eye-to-eye on abortion....not at all.

You don't understand my position; and have straw manned it time and time again. If you want to understand it,then we need to actually discuss it from the foundation up. Otherwise, you will continue to be confused from your own perspective.

I am assuming that this was a rhetorical question, since you quoted my answer.

Is it never warranted for military officers issue orders that are almost certain to result in the deaths of their innocent men?

Yes (under certain circumstances), and this gets into the principle of double effect; and is not pertinent to the abortion discussion.

Technically, it is always wrong to directly intentionally kill an innocent human being—I usually just shorten it to “don’t kill innocent humans” to keep it simple

I don't think that is true at all. Red states are predominantly conservative; and conservatives are not pro-choice.

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I think I understand now what you are going for, and I agree despite our semantic differences :up: .

Like I said before, I just think it is best to reserve the term 'real', 'actual', etc. for 'it exists'; and 'existence' as 'being'. Otherwise, you end up having to posit that something can not be real but exists or what exists may not be real (depending on how the semantics are hashed out).

Good discussion, Wayfarer!

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?