Comments
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?It seems you have shown that I had understood awry. It's not at all clear what their position is.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?Even if a mother has greater value than her offspring, and all the “qualities” observers prefer, it doesn’t follow that she should kill them — NOS4A2
No one here is, I think, arguing that abortion be made compulsory. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
You have an understanding of the nature of a loaded question. You are asking a loaded question. The aim is rhetorical, to "derailing rational debates... - the recipient of the loaded question is compelled to defend themselves and may appear flustered or on the back foot" (source)You didn't answer my question Banno. Let me try again: DO YOU THINK that the zygote has a right to life? Any right to life at all? If so, then what does that right to life entail in your view? — Bob Ross
Rights are assigned, commissioned, not discovered. Becasue of that they are communal, and not an individual preference. Hence I will make a comparison rather than accepting your demand for an absolute judgement. Whatever rights we might choose to assign to the zygote, the adult human carrying it may veto. Her rights have priority.
That's all the answer I have for you. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?@Tom Storm, @praxis, looks to be some form of essentialism - the idea that things have specifiable characteristics that make them what they are, and that all we need to do is identify those characteristics in order to settle our disputes. Hence the scientism.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?Repeating drivel by avoiding interlocution doesn’t bring new meaning to the drivel. — Fire Ologist
Hmm. I don't think I've sunk so low as that feeble comment - yet.
The bit to about essentialism. It may be that you are an example of this - I don't know what you do of a Sunday. But the world does not always divide up as neatly as you seem to supose. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?These debates seem like interminable time wasters. — Tom Storm
True enough. There'd be a good argument for having a fixed abortion thread, "All abortion arguments go here".
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? — Tom Storm
I doubt if anyone would find this convincing. I suspect that such folk supose there to be something special about a zygote, the supposition being that there is some "mystical" property that enters the cells at the fusion of two haploid cells. They attempt to articulate this in secular terms such as being a person or a human being or the subject of inalienable rights. Each of these attempts to have the zygote count as the equal of Mrs Smith.
The motivation for this is almost always theological. Occasionally it is inveterate essentialism. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?Presumably they do not like the conclusion, that abortion ought be permitted.
Hence they look for arguments to reject what is apparent. They can only do this by positioning the premise as if it were the conclusion. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?Cheers, Oli. Attack me some more. It shows the weakness of your position.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?It is simple, . Whatever right you grant the cyst is outweighed by the right of the woman carrying it.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?Let me see if anyone can follow a simple set of observable, empirical facts and answer a simple question. — Fire Ologist
But that is not what you are doing in that post. You are kidding yourself.
More specifically, it's a living individual organism. You can't call it a part of something else, because it's individuated by having its own functioning set of DNA). — Fire Ologist
If that is so, you should have no objection to it being removed so it can stand on it's own. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?Banno refuses to discuss whether or not a zygote, embryo, or/and fetus have basic human rights; and this thwarts the conversation to a stand-still. — Bob Ross
You say I refuse to talk about rights. Here are the places I talked about rights in this thread.
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. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?The point is you can’t tell. — Fire Ologist
Sure we can.
More backstory:
Here is a person: — Banno
Here is an embryo:
They are not the same.
Again, if you cannot tell the difference, then that is an oddity about you, and an end to further discussion. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
No doubt.You are back to just begging the question. This has been by far the most unproductive conversation I have had in a while. — Bob Ross
Begging the question occurs when an argument's conclusion is assumed in the argument; when X is assumed in order to prove X. So your suggestion is something like that I am assuming that a cyst has less value than Mrs Smith in order to prove that a cyst has less value than Mrs Smith. But that is not what I am doing. I am pointing to the truth that a cysts has less value than Mrs Smith, and using that to show that any argument to the contrary must be in error.
I am not in any way setting out to prove that a cyst has less value than Mrs Smith. So I am not begging the question.
We might at again flip the question you keep asking of me, and ask you why you think that Mrs Smith has only the value of a zygote.
So there's that. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?Not so fast. — Fire Ologist
Not at all. If you can't tell a zygote from Mrs Smith, there is little more to say. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
When you find yourself asking a question such as this, it may be time to reassess your values.Then how is a new born baby any different than a zygote...? — Fire Ologist -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?I'm asking you to tell me what you value about Mrs. Smith. — Fire Ologist
Again, you missed considerable back story...
"AmadeusD: I think I'm still curious as to why you, Banno, think there's such a stark ethical difference between the embryo and the person
Banno: Well, ethics is about what we do. And I'm off to an art exhibit and lunch with friends. Not something that can be done with a zygote. — Banno -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?Again, if you decide that the cyst is of the same value as Mrs Smith, that is about you.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?What a mess. There's little here with which one might work, and that little would require exorbitant effort to clarify.
Cheers. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?BRO….I don’t see how that is a simple truth, let alone true. — Bob Ross
And that is a problem that is about you, not about the difference between Mrs Smith and a cysts. You deny the blatant difference before you. Then you use sophistic argument in an attempt to justify yourself. The cyst is not of the same worth as Mrs Smith. Denying this requires considerable agility. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?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. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?It seems your version of Neo-Aristotelianism is somehow grounded in idealism rather than practical living and achieving eudaimonia (human flourishing). — praxis
Yep. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
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?Your whole argument is that X is immoral because it seems immoral to you... — Bob Ross
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. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
That's just bullshit....while not reducing anyone else’s. — NOS4A2
Interesting that the libertarians hereabouts are so keen on controlling the very bodily autonomy of others. Women, specifically. Black and poor, predominantly. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
Not sure what "subsequently" is doing here, but I agree that morality is about what we do....subsequently... — 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.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
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.Again, why? — Bob Ross -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?More convolute theorising.
So they get to make the decision. No one here is suggesting that we make abortion compulsory.To them, because it's the cyst that will grow into their son or daughter, it's far more valuable than any random Mrs Smith who they probably don't even know. — Herg
Why? The person most directly effected is the one carrying the cyst. If someone values that cyst above the needs of the mother, let them take it and bear it.A cyst isn't yet conscious, so at this stage the answer has to be: everyone else. — Herg
Bit hard, that. So let the one carrying the cyst decide. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?For our purposes here, use whatever you like. That a cyst is not of the same value as Mrs Smith remains true. If you need to call on mere definitions to give your moral theory some backbone, then it's a shit poor theory.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?Wait all you want. What counts as a human being is a decision, not an observation. If your beliefs lead you to count a cyst as of equal worth to Mrs Smith, then your beliefs are heinous.
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Abortion - Why are people pro life?
A foetus was killed.You take a 6 month old human fetus and cut its head off and no one can say what just happened. — Fire Ologist -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?My answer is really simple, as I agree that one has to evaluate the moral theory through some standard beyond it: goodness. Goodness is not within the ethical theory proper (i.e., normative and applied ethical theories which comprise it proper), and is the presupposition for the evaluation of such. — Bob Ross
You claim Moore is "a load of nonsense" then adopt the core of his thinking. Fine.
An odd thing to say. Moral theory is about goodness, and about behaviour, but not directly about what is good? I can't make much sense of that.Morality is about behaviour, and not directly about what is good. — Bob Ross
Ok, I'll go along with that. What is not good is counting a cyst as having the same worth as Mrs Smith.On the contrary, what is good is what is used to determine right and wrong behavior. — Bob Ross
This is unclear. It sounds as if you think we must test the theory and the observation together, but that would be a misunderstanding. That the worth of the cyst is less then the worth of Mrs Smith is what is sometimes called a "basic" claim. It is foundational, in that it is, as you say, "where the buck stops".I would also like point out that your reasoning leads to an infinite regress: for we could ask the same for the standard that is outside of the theory which is being applied, and would have to perform the same steps. — Bob Ross
What you are doing is to attempt to engage ethical and other theories in order to undermine this basic truth. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?I supose the thread is lon enough to forgive your not having read the back story.
Science can tell us how things are. So it can tell us what we can do. And whatever we ought do might best be some subset of what we can do. So science can tell us what we can do but not what we ought do.
My target here are those who think that abortion is impermissible from conception. Within a few hours of conception the conceptus forms a ball of cells that will eventually become the placenta and foetus. That fluid-filled ball is a blastocyst. A cysts is a fluid-filled ball of cells. The conceptus is quite literally a cysts at this stage. I choose this becasue it exhibits the maximum difference between a conceptus and Mrs Smith.
Now Mrs Smith participates in life in innumerable ways that a mere cyst cannot. If you cannot see that Mrs Smith has greater worth than the cyst, then that is about you, not about Mrs Smith or the cyst.
And it is irrelevant whether we are to count he cyst as a human being or not. A ball of cells is not of the same worth as Mrs Smith.
I mentioned that there are those who "becasue they cannot deal with ideas of gradation, needing a definitive point such as conception from which to apply their expositions". This seems to be what you are up to. -
Logical Nihilism, Perhaps you might enjoy Logic and Consciousness. A bit about thought and logic, and some considerations on Frege and Penrose.
It's not a long read.
Tell me what you think fo the notion of "overloading" logic with expectations. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?The whole point of normative ethics is to decipher what is actually wrong and right behavior to then correct or validate moral intuitions that we have — Bob Ross
Let's take such an account seriously.
How will you tell if you have your ethical theory right? After all, it will not do to go to all that effort and get the results wrong.
You will need something against which to compare the theory in order to evaluate it.
And whatever you compare it to will need to be independent of the theory, in order to avoid circularity.
The alternative would be either to compare the theory to itself, or to alternate theories. In the first case you would not be able to tell that the theory was right, but only that it was consistent. In the second, you would not be able to say which theory was correct, but only that they perhaps contradict each other.
This is the process used in the sciences, where theories are compared not just against each other but against how things are. How things are provides a way to assess the worth of a piece of science.
In ethics we compare the theory against how things ought be. That's how ethics differed form science.
A central part of ethics is that how things are never tells us how things ought to be. We have to decide that for ourselves.
So how should things be? Well, for one thing, a bunch of cells ought not be evaluated as of the same worth as Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith has qualities not had by the cyst that qualify her as of greater value. If a theory does not agree with this evaluation, it has gone astray.
Those who think otherwise have generally let extraneous factors influence their thinking. Most often they think that there is some mysterious spiritual entity enshrined in the cyst that gives it preeminent value. Usually this is because they think this is what their invisible friend says is the case. Sometimes it is becasue they cannot deal with ideas of gradation, needing a definitive point such as conception from which to apply their expositions.
But for the rest of us it is clear that they are muddled. A cyst is not of the same worth as Mrs Smith.
So back to your claim. Ethical theory cannot tell us how we want things to be. What it can do is inform us about the consistency and consequences of our behaviour.
We do not want Mrs Smith to be reduced to the same value as a mere cyst.
And those who disagree are in moral error, despite how sophisticated their moral theory.
And notice that those who think that abortion is wrong are in Moral error. They like to think they have the moral high ground, and that those who disagree are not taking a moral stance. But if you look at the comments in this thread, you will see that this is not the case. The reasoning of those who are in favour of abortion is often clear, well-considered and valid. Those against abortion do not have a monopoly on moral theory. Further, it is apparent that they are doing it wrong. -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
So do I. That's one of the reasons I use it. It's mere propaganda, and should leave folk feeling cold.I hate the term pro-life. — Fire Ologist -
Abortion - Why are people pro life?
Why not? Moore, at least, says that they are. And saying that they are not is presenting a particualr moral theory. Argue your case!Moral theories are not analyzed based off of moral intuitions: — Bob Ross
I quite agree! And pro-life views evaluate the behaviour around abortion in an appallingly bad way! They claim that a cyst has more worth than Mrs Smith!Moral theories are evaluated based off of how well they evaluate what is actually good qua (right and wrong) behavior. — Bob Ross
Thanks for making my case! -
I do not pray. Therefore God exists.logic — Banno
Is that much different to or or to ? Looks as if we have broad agreement. Always cause for concern.
We have that if you pray then your prayers will be answered, and that this will occur only if there is a god (leaving @unenlightened aside for a bit). We look to set out the consequence of there not being a god. Our natural language allows "If there is no god then your prayers will not be answered". This seems the same as "If there is no god then if you pray your prayers will not be answered". Then as "If there is no god then it is not the case that if you pray your prayers will be answered". But this last is subtly different, in a way brought out by formalising these last two sentences: ~G→(P→~A) against ~G→~(P→A). On this account the problem is that the English sentence "If there is no god then your prayers will not be answered" has an ambiguity that can lead to two different formalisations. That ability is the result of, as Tones puts it, "the everyday sense allows that a conditional may be false even when its antecedent is false".
Seems to me that if we are to go further with this we need a logic that will bring out the relation between prayer and god, such that @unenlightened is not the answer to our difficulties. Relevant Logic appears to offer such a possibility. Consider the example from that SEP article:
There are similarities to the present puzzle. Quite a valid conclusion, but it seems muddled. Similarly, whether I pray or not seems irrelevant to there being a god, although my prayers being answered is dependent on there being a god.The moon is made of green cheese. Therefore, either it is raining in Ecuador now or it is not.
Can any of you parse the problem into ? Does doing so better show the issue?
And does this offer a way to formalise naive set theory?
Banno
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