View Full Version : Debate: - Considering the legal framework for abortion
Banquo's Ghost
10-25-2011, 07:44
Threads addressing issues such as abortion have a tendency to closure for much the same reasons as constructive debate on legislation tends towards failure - entrenched positions. I would like to see if we can revisit the topic in a rational manner and - whilst consensus might prove beyond reach - move towards a proposed legislative framework that the majority might support. I'm not seeking to address right and wrong so much as how we deal with abortion in law.
To set context, I would note that to my understanding, a major battleground for legislative evolution is the United States, where the political framework is failing on so many fronts that require compromise. In this, the Backroom perhaps represents a similar microcosm. There may be other administrations that suffer the same paralysis - it would interesting for contributors from those countries to outline the specific challenges. I shall no doubt, approach the problem from a somewhat Europe-centric point-of-view.
My own personal position is this:
1) I believe that the foetus has rights as a human being from conception and that morally, abortion is wrong. I would like to see the end of abortion as an option for dealing with unwanted pregnancies. This is a position partly rooted in my Catholic upbringing and the Church's teachings, but also my wider belief in human rights derived from a belief in the sanctity of same developed outside any specific religious framework.
2) I believe that a woman has the right to control and choose what happens with her body and that whilst the foetus is resident and dependent on that body and her choices, there exists a potential conflict of rights. Whilst the adult woman is completely responsible for the well-being of any foetus she carries, she is correctly the decision maker in regard to that foetus. No-one else can exercise this choice on her behalf, least of all a government. Whereas from position (1) above, I contend there is a moral responsibility that the woman ought to undertake, my moral viewpoint (particularly as a man) cannot bind her since we are considering an entirely dependent being. I also recognise that throughout history, whether legal or not, if a woman so chooses, an abortion will happen. Indeed, such loss happens spontaneously as well as by deliberate action. Thus there is a pragmatic recognition of the real world that must be taken into any account: A woman has choice whether government grants a legal right or not.
3) I am, by inclination and practice, a conservative (though perhaps not in the modern political sense) and a believer in small government where administrations interfere as little as is practical in the lives of their citizens. Therefore, I have an instinctive aversion to legislation which seeks to enforce social moralities, particularly those that rely on religious grounds as there are so many religions and so much inconsistency in their advocacy. Equally in my book, conservatives are by nature pragmatic and recognisant of both personal responsibilities and those of the wider state should it advocate or impose a position by law. Extreme positions are by definition radical, and thus one should avoid extremist or fundamentalist options.
So, as with the wider debate, there is a conflict between my personal views. In my ideal solution, the starting point is to address unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Appropriate provision of transparent, comprehensive sex education (and wider educational achievement) for all must be a starting point, along with a consistent moral framework from both religious and secular authorities that explains and teaches - but does not hector or demand - the responsibilities inherent in sexual relationships. One cannot legislate human behaviour, but one can inform and set an example. (It goes without saying that I am not a fan of current sexual mores, which I would view as irresponsible at best - but it is not for me to legislate my views, but hope that others might come to agree with me through example and data).
Given that in any society, not everyone is going to adopt a set position, unwanted pregnancies will still occur. I would like to see the state encourage and incentivise adoption, so that more women might choose to go to term knowing that their child will be quickly taken into a new family and given the chance of a good life. I find it insane that we spend so much money on IVF treatments and the like when we also abort many viable children. Adoption should be seen as a great good, and a first choice. A loving, positive choice that women may take - when I take my position as pro-choice, this is one of the choices I should mean. I find it unconscionable that many pro-life proponents tend to portray a great deal of concern for the foetus, but very little commitment to the fate of the child once born. Yes, this probably means state taxes (given that my preferred solution through charities tends not to get a great deal of private funding - which is odd, given the numbers of those who profess pro-life attitudes).
Failing the above, there is no way a civilised society can condemn women to backstreet butchers armed with knitting needles, and therefore a legal method of abortion must be available. As noted above, my proposed compromise to the conflict of morality and pragmatism is viability: abortion should be freely available up to the age of consistent viability plus two weeks (which on current understandings is about 24 weeks I believe). It is at this point that the foetus - now able to survive on its own more often than not - acquires rights that can be guaranteed without the consent or agency of the mother - in other words, it becomes a viable human being. Those rights pertain prior to this point in theory, but are unenforceable, and thus moot. There should be very few cases where the choice to abort the foetus cannot be made within that early period of time, therefore any later term abortions would have to be decided only through the intervention of a judge, and that rarely. The presumption for any later term application for an abortion would be that the child now has the right to life and should be brought to term.
So, to summarise: Legislation should be pro-choice (i.e. the choice resides with the woman and solely with her, with no requirement for her to justify her decision to anyone) with abortions legal until the 24th week. Past that, any application would be granted only on judicial review with the default position that the child has full human rights. Concurrent with this, adoption should be made considerably easier and incentivised through tax allowances for the new parents.
This is not very far from the position taken by most European governments. Roe vs Wade appears to have hamstrung any such approach in the US legislature, as the pro-choice lobby hangs on to the ruling for grim death lest the equally determined pro-life lobby use any movement to outlaw abortion altogether.
I'd be interested in other people's views as to how they resolve the inherent conflicts, preferably without throwaway lines about religious stricture or secular immorality - the right to life is something we should consider very carefully and consistently, whether it be for a foetus, a soldier, a death row inmate, or indeed, for any moment of the human condition.
rory_20_uk
10-25-2011, 10:37
I would agree that 24 weeks is a sensible date at the moment. If survival rates in terms of mortality AND morbidity were to drastically improve this would need to be reviewed. Past this point I agree that it should be a review. I would prefer it were to be undertaken by a panel of experts relevant to the case - be that Psychiatrists, Obstetricians or Gynaecologists etc. Viability of the foetus is something for the panel to decide on - as I would hope that in a lot of these cases the whole point is that there was some massive medical condition meaning that they were a dud - e.g. microcephaly.
Post 24 weeks it can survive more often than not with massive support by a specialist team of experts and a lot of medication and devices. They are far from independent - but then even at term babies would survive hours without their parents providing warmth and sustenance.
There are enough children not being adopted without adding more to the market. I do not think that the state should be there to subsidise this. Adoption should be made easier, however. Same sex couples? Fine. Ones without children? OK. Over 40? Why not.
I note that in your example the father is as always completely excluded from either moral or legal rights. His input isn't even mentioned beyond that of a sperm donor, be that a one night stand or the fact the couple had been trying for children for a length of time. No need to justify her decision to him either. The usual take on equality - all equal, but women have some areas that are of course theirs alone - as is taking a baby to term based upon a failure of contraception from a one night stand. This is one area of conflict that I am afraid I do not have any workable framework for, but I am surprised that you didn't even mention it.
On a completely tangential issue, "the right to life" is a very modern construction which is paid lip-service to by the majority of the world's population. It is inconsistently applied based on time, place, wealth and even ethnicity. I disagree that any organism has the "right to life", and like any other right it is something that is gained and can also be lost.
~:smoking:
here is my position:
1) the fetus is a living human being, this is not under discussion
2) the fetus is only alive because the woman's body is directly sustaining it, therefore, even considering point 1), the woman has the ultimate right to decide she does not wish her body to continue to take part in that situation.
3) nobody is saying that an abortion is a good or desirable thing, but even if it is can be found distasteful by some people that does not invalidate 2)
4) in order to reach a desirable balance point between 2) and 3) abortion by choice of the woman or due to rape should happen as soon as possible, both for medical safety reasons and to avoid harming susceptibilities in the society. (first trimester, 10 weeks...or similar value)
5) an abortion due to health risks to the mother outranks point 4) and can take place at any point in the pregnancy if deemed absolutely necessary in medical terms.
rory_20_uk
10-25-2011, 10:48
Point 5 is a minefield of potential problems. The easiest one is "mother will kill herself due to depression if pregnancy continues". Other one is what is the percentage is 95% chance of mother will die? Or 80%? Or what about not mortality, but morbidity. Loss of a leg OK? One eye? Both? Who draws the line - and can the doctors get sued for all manner of things whichever decision they reach?
~:smoking:
Major Robert Dump
10-25-2011, 10:58
I am very close to this debate personally because my mother tried to abort me but the doctors would not let her because I was 2 years old.
Point 5 is a minefield of potential problems. The easiest one is "mother will kill herself due to depression if pregnancy continues". Other one is what is the percentage is 95% chance of mother will die? Or 80%? Or what about not mortality, but morbidity. Loss of a leg OK? One eye? Both? Who draws the line - and can the doctors get sued for all manner of things whichever decision they reach?
in the US or in non litigiously crazy country? sorry couldn't resist :P
but really, it's kinda true...it's just not a reality I am familiar with....over here "the doctor said the mother would die unless this was done" works just fine.
I note that in your example the father is as always completely excluded from either moral or legal rights. His input isn't even mentioned beyond that of a sperm donor, be that a one night stand or the fact the couple had been trying for children for a length of time. No need to justify her decision to him either. The usual take on equality - all equal, but women have some areas that are of course theirs alone - as is taking a baby to term based upon a failure of contraception from a one night stand. This is one area of conflict that I am afraid I do not have any workable framework for, but I am surprised that you didn't even mention it.
Only a short intervention on this specific issue :bow:
I do not see why there would ever be a dilemma.
At most one could ensure a widely accessible and very simplified legal procedure where the couple would agree on the need for consent of both parties in regards to the fate of an eventual embryo resulting from their relationship.
It is the only possible solution acknowledging a male’s right to safeguard the existence of his potential offspring through his own choice.
Bar this type of pre-emptive legally binding agreement, the male completely waves off any rights by default, even if the father, once the pregnancy is underway, offers to raise the child on his own.
Greyblades
10-25-2011, 16:36
I am very close to this debate personally because my mother tried to abort me but the doctors would not let her because I was 2 years old.
I... was that a joke?
Vladimir
10-25-2011, 16:39
I... was that a joke?
He's deadly serious. His mother was HUGE! That's a longer gestation period than an elephant!
I personally know a couple that faced that 1% situation where the pregnancy really would put the mother's life at risk. Something to do with her anemia, don't know all of the details. Anyway, they're super-devout Catholics, and they tried to get their priest in on the decision. He tagged out, unable to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus. "This is one of those nightmare scenarios," was all he'd say.
In the end they aborted and saved the mother's life, but it's still a tough subject for them.
Their priest is fully aware of the abortion, and still serves them communion. Gotta say that the Catholic Church seems very heterodox about who can and can't get the wafers and wine.
He's deadly serious. His mother was HUGE! That's a longer gestation period than an elephant!
http://www.talkweather.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/rimshot.gif
And that was the comedy stylings of Vladimir, a round of applause please ladies and gentlemen, he will be here all week.
now we will have a short intermission until our next comedian.
please tip the veal and try your waitress!
rory_20_uk
10-25-2011, 16:59
I personally know a couple that faced that 1% situation where the pregnancy really would put the mother's life at risk. Something to do with her anemia, don't know all of the details. Anyway, they're super-devout Catholics, and they tried to get their priest in on the decision. He tagged out, unable to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus. "This is one of those nightmare scenarios," was all he'd say.
In the end they aborted and saved the mother's life, but it's still a tough subject for them.
Their priest is fully aware of the abortion, and still serves them communion. Gotta say that the Catholic Church seems very heterodox about who can and can't get the wafers and wine.
Super-devout? LOL - they're fairweather Catholics. Being religious is easy when it involved eating fish and attending a religiously themed social club. They ditched their beliefs when things got tough, after trying to hand off all responsibility to the Priest.
If the church wants to have hard lines on issues they should stick to them. Ergo, they should have kept the child and accepted God's will should one or both of them die; the Priest too should accept that this is his position on the subject. If he can't do this, he's backing the wrong religion.
~:smoking:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-25-2011, 23:36
I'd like to start by thanking Banquo for an excellent kick off.
Now, in general I agree with our venerable Senior member. A fetus should be given human rights from the moment of conception. I must therefore be explicit in saying that abortion is, I believe, a form of homicide, when you abort a fetus you are ending the life of a human being, no matter how imature. We should not think that simply because the fetus is largely or completely dependent on the mother for sustinence and survival it is any less an individual being. A newborn is only slightly less dependedent, and a child only somewhat less than a newborn. No one would consider that "baby" or "child" denote lesser being than adults, only less developed ones. It follows that the fetus is also a human being, the only reason this is not obvious is because it resides within the skin of another human being, even so it is not "inside" in the sense of being inside the mother any more than it is "inside" a blanket once it is born, it is still a seperate entity, not a mere cancer to be cut out.
If you accept the above premise then the question becomes "is homocide ever morally justifiable"? Clearly some people believe it is, they advocate execution, euthenasia and honour killings. However, I believe it is NOT, under any circumstances ever. This does not mean I would damn a man for killing another man to protect his daughter from rape, or one soldier for killing another in battle, but "forgivable" is not the same as "justifiable". One of the weaknesess in modern Liberal thought is that in the absense of a compassionate God to forgive your sins all thoughts and actions must be permissable if they are to be allowed - if you cannot be forgiven in teh aftermath you must be justified in the action itself. I believe this lack has warped the moral debate in the West, where once we forgave we now seek to excuse, and this shift is particularly damaging with relation to the issue of abortion because women are now required to feel "ok" about an abortion, that it was "the right thing" where once they could have been consoled with "you had no other choice". This goes a long way to explaining the rising number of abortions since it was first legalised in the West, about 50 odd years ago in most places, because if it is "ok" to adopt a child with sever brain damage maybe it can be ok to adopt a child you don't want, and therefore will not love.
It would not be "ok" to kill a newborn because of post-natal depression, it is not ok to abort a fetus because you don't want it, it should not be allowed in most circumstances. Having said this, it is a fact that some women will decide that they do not want to go through a pregnancy, even if the resulting child can be quickly found a loving home, and for the sole reason that they will seek an abortion regardless the procedure should be legal up to a certain date, if only to prevent an influx of butchered women to hospitals after illegal procedures. multiplication of misery and harm is not an acceptable side affect of a policy instituted for moralistic reasons. I dissagree with Banquo that 24 weeks is an acceptable cut off point. If we cannot bear to slaughter animals without stunning, we cannot hunt vermin for the suffering we might inflict we cannot kill a defenceless human being with a functioning nervous system. I therefore submit that the point at which the fetus exhibits basic brain activity is the civilised cut oof, and I further submit that a woman who has not taken the decision to abort after missing three menstruations has in effect already made the decision not to abort and should not be allowed to revisit that decision having made it once. As the situation stands there is far too much scope for sudden abortions motivated by volatile emotions, such as those in a break up, which have nothing to do with the child or the mother's long term feelings. In such cases there is potential for a woman to make a decision she will regret for the rest of her life which can never be undone.
Such decisions are made, and they have tragically predictable emotional consequences.
Forgive me, I have more to say.
I cases where the issue is medical the decision to abort or not should be made by the doctor, based on his estimation of the likely survival of child and mother. No parents, as in Lemur's case, should ever have that decision inflicted upon them. There should be specific legal protection for doctors in this situation.
In other situations the decision should primarily be the mother's, but she should not have sole rights in the case where sex was consensual. When two adults exgage in consentual sexual congress they do so in the full knowledge that their is a posibility of conception, if they did not realise this they would not be competent to give consent. this being so, both man and woman have already decided to chance the posibility of concieving, the woman should subsequently be allowed to make that decision again independantly because the fetus is not solely of her body, it is equal parts the flesh of the father and the mother, and the law should aknowledge this. All the current inequality between fathers and mothers is the result of the law's basic blindness to this simple fact, both man and woman are equally but uniquely necessary for the creation and nourishment of a child at all stages of its development. Reform should begin at conception. In the case of rape, where the woman was prevented from giving here consent this determination does not apply.
To sumarise, abortion for genuine medical reasons should be legal, otherwise selective abortion, subject to exhaustion of all other options, should be legal at a point no later than that at which the fetus can be considered to have rudimentary awareness. The legal recourse to selective abortion should be considered an act of charity to the woman in question, and this should not be inferred to confer a "right" to abort the unborn.
...
Oh come on BQ! Starting a thread like this just as I am going crazy studying for my midterms! Do you want to see me fail my classes? :P
lol, I will exercise self-control, I will exercise self-control, I will...
Rhyfelwyr
10-26-2011, 01:45
Excellent post by PVC, I'll not drag down this side of the debate by posting anything else...
Sasaki Kojiro
10-26-2011, 03:03
We should not think that simply because the fetus is largely or completely dependent on the mother for sustinence and survival it is any less an individual being.
...
I cases where the issue is medical the decision to abort or not should be made by the doctor, based on his estimation of the likely survival of child and mother. No parents, as in Lemur's case, should ever have that decision inflicted upon them. There should be specific legal protection for doctors in this situation.
If I read this right...in a case where there is a choice between:
A) 40% chance of death for the mother. Guaranteed survival of baby.
B) Abortion.
You would say: A? Because they both weigh equally and the 100% > 40%.
I think that's very wrong.
If I read this right...in a case where there is a choice between:
A) 40% chance of death for the mother. Guaranteed survival of baby.
B) Abortion.
You would say: A? Because they both weigh equally and the 100% > 40%.
I think that's very wrong.
Why? Is one person's life worth more than another's?
Honestly, I believe that abortion should be illegal other than in cases where a mother has a 50% or greater chance of dying. In those cases where you have two equally valuable and important lives with an equal chance at life or death, I think it should be the mother's choice to decide what will happen.
Dammit, just when I promised that I would not get involved. :P
Sasaki Kojiro
10-26-2011, 03:30
Why? Is one person's life worth more than another's?
Honestly, I believe that abortion should be illegal other than in cases where a mother has a 50% or greater chance of dying. In those cases where you have two equally valuable and important lives with an equal chance at life or death, I think it should be the mother's choice to decide what will happen.
Dammit, just when I promised that I would not get involved. :P
Is that what you'd want if it was your wife?
If you are sticking with "both lives equal" then you can't make 50% the cut off. At 90%, that's still less than 100%. And at a 100, you flip a coin, because there's no difference? That's nonsense.
Is that what you'd want if it was your wife?
If you are sticking with "both lives equal" then you can't make 50% the cut off. At 90%, that's still less than 100%. And at a 100, you flip a coin, because there's no difference? That's nonsense.
That is what I would want for my child, and that is what I would want for my child if I was a woman carrying it as well. Children are a large responsibility; human life in your care. It is not something that should be entered into lightly or without love. I think most men and women out there would give their life for their children. Is it right to kill a baby who has ~100% chance at life when you have a <50% chance of living as well - to sentence that baby to a 100% chance of death so that you can enjoy a 100% chance at life even though it is likely that you will live? There are always risks with all pregnancies, and with proper medical treatment it is very rare that someone dies giving birth. You have to be aware of the risks when you enter into something like that. You make the choice to take that risk, whereas the child had no say in the matter. She did not choose to be brought into the world or to create a risk for anyone. The long and the short is that a baby is the responsibility of its parents, and parents need to take that responsibility seriously. If they cannot handle the responsibility, then they simply should not go creating life.
EDIT: I was my mother's third baby and her pregnancy had complications. She was warned that keeping me posed a risk to her, but she did it anyway. I came out with an umbilical cord choking me and with my mouth and nose clogged, but I lived because she considered the life she created to be important. If she didn't make that choice, I would not be alive to have this conversation. My mom survived and was mostly none the worse for wear. Maybe that prejudices me; maybe it gives me a stronger appreciation for parental responsibility and respect for life. You cannot just kill a baby whenever there is a possible complication or risk. When your life is in serious danger (like I said 50% or greater), I can understand people making that choice (no matter what they choose I can respect that), but if your chances of living are greater than your chances of dying, it is irresponsible, bordering on immoral to sentence the baby you chose to bring into the world to death.
Samurai Waki
10-26-2011, 05:01
If a fetus has human rights at the moment of conception, then I've half killed more children than there are in this country. I'm pro-Abortion, we've been over this subject enough times that quite frankly I don't really care to rehash it for the millionth time. Yay, you saved the babies life... now let it live a life of being unloved and uncared for. Congratulations for being so moral.
If a fetus has human rights at the moment of conception, then I've half killed more children than there are in this country. I'm pro-Abortion, we've been over this subject enough times that quite frankly I don't really care to rehash it for the millionth time. Yay, you saved the babies life... now let it live a life of being unloved and uncared for. Congratulations for being so moral.
A) You have no right to deny someone life because YOU think their life is not worth living. B) Who is advocating not loving or caring for their children?
Samurai Waki
10-26-2011, 05:17
A.) Quite Frankly, Yes I do. I am talking from a position of personal experience. How dare you enclose people's thoughts, feelings, and situations into a "Yes" or "No" box. It isn't that simple.
B.) Maybe you haven't been to many children's homes.. maybe you should.
ajaxfetish
10-26-2011, 05:24
and that is what I would want for my child if I was a woman carrying it as well.
A rather cavalier statement to make when you are not a woman and have never been pregnant.
Children are a large responsibility; human life in your care. It is not something that should be entered into lightly or without love.
And yet you think a mother should be legally obligated to risk sacrificing her life for the unborn child, meaning it would grow up without a mother to take responsibility and care for it. In situations where there is no father in the picture, this seems particularly inconsistent. Children are a large responsibility . . . which you should just hope someone will accept on your behalf.
I think most men and women out there would give their life for their children. Is it right to kill a baby who has ~100% chance at life when you have a <50% chance of living as well - to sentence that baby to a 100% chance of death so that you can enjoy a 100% chance at life even though it is likely that you will live?
I hope you're right, and that most men and women would be prepared to give their lives for their children. I'm sure that at least a great many are. But should the government tell them that they have to? Is it really a sacrifice if you're forced to do it, anyway? Again, it's very easy for a man, who will never face this risk, to decide that others should be required to give up their lives for the things he cares about.
I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this point at all, Vuk.
Ajax
edit:
You have no right to deny someone life because YOU think their life is not worth living.
As I noted above, that sounds an awful lot like what you yourself are doing, though only on a probabilistic level.
edit 2: As far as other posters' contributions, I find BG's and PVC's arguments both very compelling. I think this is a very tangled and morally difficult question, and I have been unable to fully determine my own thoughts on the matter. I shall definitely be considering your posts as I leave my thoughts on this to continue fermenting.
A.) Quite Frankly, Yes I do. I am talking from a position of personal experience. How dare you enclose people's thoughts, feelings, and situations into a "Yes" or "No" box. It isn't that simple.
B.) Maybe you haven't been to many children's homes.. maybe you should.
How dare I? I'm sorry, I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to disagree with you. Spank me why don't you?
Talking from personal experience? Did you read what I wrote? You having participated in decision making that led to an abortion means you had the power, not the right. Many people can do things they have no right to do.
People come from messed up homes? What the heck else is knew? Does that mean that they are not worthy of life? Some of the greatest (and happiest) people in the world have come from messed up homes. I know a lot of people who have been extensively neglected and abused by their parents, including many of my best friends and my sister-in-law. Ask any of them if they are glad they have life, and can tell you with 100% certainty that their answer will be yes. Who are you to play God and dictate whether someone completely innocent lives or dies?
CrossLOPER
10-26-2011, 05:27
A) You have no right to deny someone life because YOU think their life is not worth living.
No one is saying that.
B) Who is advocating not loving or caring for their children?
No one said that either.
Samurai Waki
10-26-2011, 05:36
How dare I? I'm sorry, I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to disagree with you. Spank me why don't you?
Talking from personal experience? Did you read what I wrote? You having participated in decision making that led to an abortion means you had the power, not the right. Many people can do things they have no right to do.
People come from messed up homes? What the heck else is knew? Does that mean that they are not worthy of life? Some of the greatest (and happiest) people in the world have come from messed up homes. I know a lot of people who have been extensively neglected and abused by their parents, including many of my best friends and my sister-in-law. Ask any of them if they are glad they have life, and can tell you with 100% certainty that their answer will be yes. Who are you to play God and dictate whether someone completely innocent lives or dies?
Whatever man. Maybe you should consider that we're not all cardboard cut-outs, don't ever presume to know others.
I'm out of here.
A rather cavalier statement to make when you are not a woman and have never been pregnant.
And yet you think a mother should be legally obligated to risk sacrificing her life for the unborn child, meaning it would grow up without a mother to take responsibility and care for it. In situations where there is no father in the picture, this seems particularly inconsistent. Children are a large responsibility . . . which you should just hope someone will accept on your behalf.
I hope you're right, and that most men and women would be prepared to give their lives for their children. I'm sure that at least a great many are. But should the government tell them that they have to? Is it really a sacrifice if you're forced to do it, anyway? Again, it's very easy for a man, who will never face this risk, to decide that others should be required to give up their lives for the things he cares about.
I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this point at all, Vuk.
Ajax
edit:
As I noted above, that sounds an awful lot like what you yourself are doing, though only on a probabilistic level.
Because I am not a woman and have never been pregnant I cannot know that I would be willing to risk my life for and sacrifice for someone I love? I have been in situations before where I have had to put my life at considerable risk to save a family member. I can say with certainty that I would put everything on the line for them, and I know for a fact that they would put everything on the line for me. It is not cavalier; it is family. You have a responsibility to your family. You have a responsibility for the safety. My dad died when I was 14 and I had 3 younger brothers and two older sisters who looked up to me in many ways for the security and leadership that he used to provide. I was put in a position where I was largely responsible for the safety of my family if any should happen, and I was committed to fulfilling that responsibility, even if there were risks. I am not saying I am a great person (as I said, I know anyone in my family would put it on the line for anyone else in the family), but simply that I do not have to be a woman to understand what it is like to risk one's safety or one's life for their family.
I had no choice in being born into my family, but still felt a responsibility toward them. If someone doesn't think they can handle that responsibility, they simply do not have to get pregnant!
You would not be forcing people to sacrifice (pregnancies with a high chance of harm or death to a woman are extremely rare), because they would choose to get pregnant or not. You would simply be forcing them to take responsibility for the life they create. To reiterate, if they do not want the responsibility, they do not need to create the life.
No one is saying that.
No one said that either.
Actually, the response I quoted said the first thing, and accused me of saying the second.
Whatever man. Maybe you should consider that we're not all cardboard cut-outs, don't ever presume to know others.
I'm out of here.
I know we are not all the same, but we ARE all born innocent and deserving of life.
Samurai Waki
10-26-2011, 05:53
I know we are not all the same, but we ARE all born innocent and deserving of life.
Life and innocence doesn't preclude Anencephaly.
Life and innocence doesn't preclude Anencephaly.
That is an extremely sad thing that is beyond our control. Is your argument then that because disease indiscriminately kills that humans should become discriminant killers? If not, then I really do not see your point. Adults can get deadly diseases, does that mean then that we have the right to kill whoever we want?
Hello gang :bow:
Honestly, I believe that abortion should be illegal other than in cases where a mother has a 50% or greater chance of dying.
That's nonsense. Even if we'd concede that abortion in the absence of any danger towards the carrier's life should be illegal on moral grounds, accepting the fact that a human being should be forced to risk one's life, even marginally, to save another is preposterous. It is unconscionable to deny personal option in this case.
In other situations the decision should primarily be the mother's, but she should not have sole rights in the case where sex was consensual. When two adults exgage in consentual sexual congress they do so in the full knowledge that their is a posibility of conception, if they did not realise this they would not be competent to give consent. this being so, both man and woman have already decided to chance the posibility of concieving, the woman should subsequently be allowed to make that decision again independantly because the fetus is not solely of her body, it is equal parts the flesh of the father and the mother, and the law should aknowledge this. All the current inequality between fathers and mothers is the result of the law's basic blindness to this simple fact, both man and woman are equally but uniquely necessary for the creation and nourishment of a child at all stages of its development. Reform should begin at conception. In the case of rape, where the woman was prevented from giving here consent this determination does not apply.
A reasoning from the wrong vantage point. Creation and nourishment of a child do involve the father. Getting a pregnancy to term does not, biologically. The female is the sole carrier, with all the physical and mental issues it entails. She is the only one who can award a male rights onto her body. To re-quote a point I made earlier:
At most one could ensure a widely accessible and very simplified legal procedure where the couple would agree on the need for consent of both parties in regards to the fate of an eventual embryo resulting from their relationship.
It is the only possible solution acknowledging a male’s right to safeguard the existence of his potential offspring through his own choice.
Bar this type of pre-emptive legally binding agreement, the male completely waves off any rights by default, even if the father, once the pregnancy is underway, offers to raise the child on his own.
Ironside
10-26-2011, 09:20
Now, in general I agree with our venerable Senior member. A foetus should be given human rights from the moment of conception.
Nope, it should not. Or you'll need to to simply accept that something kills 10-35% of the total population (spontanious abortion/miscarriage). Minor detail, but that's something that happens that's completely unacceptable for any other population group. There is a difference for foetuses.
One of the weaknesess in modern Liberal thought is that in the absense of a compassionate God to forgive your sins all thoughts and actions must be permissable if they are to be allowed - if you cannot be forgiven in teh aftermath you must be justified in the action itself.
OT, but since I red the old testament a bit yesterday. Who is this compassionate God you talk about?
This goes a long way to explaining the rising number of abortions since it was first legalised in the West, about 50 odd years ago in most places, because if it is "ok" to adopt a child with sever brain damage maybe it can be ok to adopt a child you don't want, and therefore will not love.
You should check your data of this "Western world". I can say for certain that it's not true for Sweden nor any other Nordic country.
I therefore submit that the point at which the fetus exhibits basic brain activity is the civilised cut oof, and I further submit that a woman who has not taken the decision to abort after missing three menstruations has in effect already made the decision not to abort and should not be allowed to revisit that decision having made it once.
Since it haven't really been a good discussion about this. What are the reason for the late term abortions? I know that it's relativly uncommon and about half has to do with chromoson/foetus damage.
in your opinion, is this a dead point for where no abortions should be made or when the choise is no longer solely up to the parents?
A) You have no right to deny someone life because YOU think their life is not worth living. B) Who is advocating not loving or caring for their children?
in a general sense you do not have the right to deny someone else their life.
but.
during a pregnancy the fetus is directly dependent and connected to the woman's body, my position comes from the fact that the woman has the right to decide she does not want her body doing that....the fetus death is a consequence yes, but still she has the right to make that choice.
this is a very different situation from normal day to day life, because at no other moment there is no way to have someone physically dependent of another like this.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 12:42
If I read this right...in a case where there is a choice between:
A) 40% chance of death for the mother. Guaranteed survival of baby.
B) Abortion.
You would say: A? Because they both weigh equally and the 100% > 40%.
I think that's very wrong.
Why? You are choosing the certain death of one human being over the possible (not even probable) death of another, when there is a probable outcome that both will survive. In such cases I would have to say that the guiding principle should be to save the most lives.
If a fetus has human rights at the moment of conception, then I've half killed more children than there are in this country. I'm pro-Abortion, we've been over this subject enough times that quite frankly I don't really care to rehash it for the millionth time. Yay, you saved the babies life... now let it live a life of being unloved and uncared for. Congratulations for being so moral.
Half-killed? Is that because you signed off on millions of abortions, or because you masturbate? You shed skin too, those could be used to extract your genetic code and clone you. The fact is, most of the sperm your produce expires before ever even leaving your body, just like all the other types of cells you produce.
A.) Quite Frankly, Yes I do. I am talking from a position of personal experience. How dare you enclose people's thoughts, feelings, and situations into a "Yes" or "No" box. It isn't that simple.
B.) Maybe you haven't been to many children's homes.. maybe you should.
If you believe morality is binary all your moral decisions are yes/no.
As regards children's homes - I've met children who grew up in care, I've met several who were given up for adoption. None of them have expressed a desire to have been aborted, most have expressed dissinterest in their birth parents though. The fact is, all life strives, including children, and to essentially claim that children in care would be better off dead is at best absurd.
Hello gang :bow:
That's nonsense. Even if we'd concede that abortion in the absence of any danger towards the carrier's life should be illegal on moral grounds, accepting the fact that a human being should be forced to risk one's life, even marginally, to save another is preposterous. It is unconscionable to deny personal option in this case.
I submit that the role of the state, and of the law, is to protect the vulnerable, most especially the young, the old and the infirm. Once upon a time in Britain you were considered to have a moral and legal responsibility to risk your safety to save another's life. Pregnancy is inherrently dangerous, I should know because I almost killed my mother a couple of times and she almost killed me, and I believe that a woman has already taken on that responsibility when she engaged in consenual sex, with all its attendant risks. As such, I don't believe she has the right to change her mind just because she regrets her initial decision, not if the result is to cost another human being its life. THAT is unconcionable, just as execution for judicial crime is uncontionable.
A reasoning from the wrong vantage point. Creation and nourishment of a child do involve the father. Getting a pregnancy to term does not, biologically. The female is the sole carrier, with all the physical and mental issues it entails. She is the only one who can award a male rights onto her body. To re-quote a point I made earlier:
At most one could ensure a widely accessible and very simplified legal procedure where the couple would agree on the need for consent of both parties in regards to the fate of an eventual embryo resulting from their relationship.
It is the only possible solution acknowledging a male’s right to safeguard the existence of his potential offspring through his own choice.
Bar this type of pre-emptive legally binding agreement, the male completely waves off any rights by default, even if the father, once the pregnancy is underway, offers to raise the child on his own.
It cannot be a "Right" that you are allowed to execute anonother human being, that would not be a right under any other circumstances and, as noted above, the woman has already made an informed decision and I see no reason why she should have any "right" to make it again when the man does not. A man also has the right to consent to sexual congress, his right to consent can be violated just as a woman's can. You are speaking from a sexist discource based on a fallacious reading of traditional gender roles as popularised by feminist writers. If women have equal rights, so do men, accidents of biology notwithstanding.
in a general sense you do not have the right to deny someone else their life.
but.
during a pregnancy the fetus is directly dependent and connected to the woman's body, my position comes from the fact that the woman has the right to decide she does not want her body doing that....the fetus death is a consequence yes, but still she has the right to make that choice.
this is a very different situation from normal day to day life, because at no other moment there is no way to have someone physically dependent of another like this.
Two things:
1. I do not accept "but" when talking about moral rights, if it is not universal applicable it is not moral or a right. One cannot say, "you have the right to life except when you are old" so one equally cannot say, "you have the right to life except when you are utterly dependant on your mother as a fetus", without modern technology ALL children would die without their mothers shortly after birth, just because we have not succeeded in inventing an artificial womb does not allow us to fudge the moral issue.
2. The woman has already made the decision to have sex, if she cannot bear to be pregnant she should not have had sex.
CrossLOPER
10-26-2011, 12:45
Actually, the response I quoted said the first thing, and accused me of saying the second.
He was pointing out that women do not have an abortion for their own personal amusement or to "abandon responsibility", which you seem to be convinced is the main issue.
rory_20_uk
10-26-2011, 13:17
Women do have abortions as they are feckless. One patient even wanted the morning after pill on repeat prescription! Loads of others repeatedly come in for them as its so easy to get hold of.
~:smoking:
To sumarise, abortion for genuine medical reasons should be legal, otherwise selective abortion, subject to exhaustion of all other options, should be legal at a point no later than that at which the fetus can be considered to have rudimentary awareness. The legal recourse to selective abortion should be considered an act of charity to the woman in question, and this should not be inferred to confer a "right" to abort the unborn.
The thing is, you may have said this as a "Pro-Life" stance, but it is ultimately what the "Pro-Choice" are wanting and want to keep. They don't see it the "choice" as simply to kill a fetus on a whim just for the giggles, far from it, it is viewed as a "necessary evil" in an imperfect world and it isn't something that should never be taken lightly.
An 'Abortion' for selective reasons should occur as soon as possible. If you end up getting raped, you should go and see the doctor where many measures is simply taking a pill to prevent development of the cells and prevent it going any further. As for the medical concerns, they are on a case by case basis depending on what is occurring and again, should be taken at the first opportunity.
There might be some practical reasons why these might occur later but the absolute limit should be before the point the child can survive independently (may be case-by-case). By independently, I mean if the child was removed from the mother and placed in an intensive care unit, they can survive and mature to become a well functioning adult. I believe it was either in this thread or elsewhere some one spoke of a doctor who said about in one room there was an abortion whilst in the other, the doctors are trying to save the child, both of these are the similar period of gestation. Such things are morally wrong if it was simply based on selective choice.
Should abortion be legal? It should, it should be regulated and legal to guarantee the safety of the mother. This should be further accompanied by social-workers and healthcare professionals to help the mother in this difficult time, and make sure it is the choice they want to make and support them through that choice. This is a very hard time for the mother and no matter how some people try to spin it, no abortion is ever so easy.
This also goes into sex education, because there is a responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies from both the males and the females so abortion on any selective basis is kept to an absolute minimum.
For those who are willing to allow their child go for adoption, there should be a framework where the child has easy access to families, even if they are homosexual, older or other criteria which Rory has listed and there should be a support network in place.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 13:56
The thing is, you may have said this as a "Pro-Life" stance, but it is ultimately what the "Pro-Choice" are wanting and want to keep. They don't see it the "choice" as simply to kill a fetus on a whim just for the giggles, far from it, it is viewed as a "necessary evil" in an imperfect world and it isn't something that should never be taken lightly.
Reaching the same legal position as you does not mean we agree, note Rory below:
Women do have abortions as they are feckless. One patient even wanted the morning after pill on repeat prescription! Loads of others repeatedly come in for them as its so easy to get hold of.
~:smoking:
where we differ is in our perspective on moral issues, simply put, abrortion is wrong. If we do not articulate that robustly we end up with Rory refering all thes "feckless" women, which I expect he'd rather not have to deal with in an ideal world even if he doesn't have strong feeling on the issue. One other thing we haven't touched on is the fact that abortion is a medical procedure, and as such caries potential risks - including infertility.
Allthough I certainly understand and even to a certain extent agree with the position of the people opposing abortion, I also feel that we shouldn't blind ourselves for the reality we live in.
There will always be unwanted pregnancies and thus there will always be abortions.
That's why I fully agree with what Banquo wrote in his excellent OP : "there is no way a civilised society can condemn women to backstreet butchers armed with knitting needles, and therefore a legal method of abortion must be available. "
Regardless of how you feel about the matter and what background inspires those feelings, that statement does it for me.
The religious folks can refuse to have an abortion no matter what, if that is what they really want. Allthough, I, for one, don't think you can really know what you're talking about until you're in a situation that actually forces you to think about the option of having an abortion. Like rory said: it's easy to go to church every week and be a member of some religious club and wave some pamflet at a pro-life manifestation, it's something entirely different when you're confronted with a choice like "either mum dies and no absolute guarantee the child will survive, or the child dies". I wonder how many of those pro-life people fanatically waving their pamflets would still stick to their conviction when confronted with such a situation. The term "armchair generals" seems about right here.
And even if they really want to stick to their beliefs, well, they now already have the right to refuse the abortion and thus die, if that's what floats their boat.
A legal framework is necessary. The framework can then be organised as such that the parents (I agree with rory that the father should have a say too; but if it's a life or death situation for the mother, her voice should be decisive) are not left alone and a group of experts helps them with the decision making + an option to have help after the abortion, if that's what's decided, has been done.
The only real thing worthy of discussion in these debates, imo, is until which week of pregnancy can abortion be legal. I think "as soon as the chance of survival outside the womb, given the current state of modern medicine, is, on average, above 75 %" seems reasonable. Of course, exceptions to that rule can always be implemented into legislation (e.g. a serious medical condition that wasn't/couldn't be discovered before the week mentioned in the rule).
rory_20_uk
10-26-2011, 14:15
A Moderator quoted what I wrote twice in one post and agreed with me!!!
Best. Day. Ever.
~:smoking:
I need somebody to write prescriptions for otherwise illegal substances...
1. I do not accept "but" when talking about moral rights, if it is not universal applicable it is not moral or a right. One cannot say, "you have the right to life except when you are old" so one equally cannot say, "you have the right to life except when you are utterly dependant on your mother as a fetus", without modern technology ALL children would die without their mothers shortly after birth, just because we have not succeeded in inventing an artificial womb does not allow us to fudge the moral issue.
about the bold part, that is not the same thing, in that situation the children need someone, anyone can perform that task...like I said above there is no other situation in life were a person a directly and irreparably linked biologically to another...because of this the "rules" cannot be expected to be the same.
I do not believe in "absolute" rules....if the situations change then the rules change also.
about us being able to invent something artificial do "fudge" the issue....the issue is itself created by something artificial......abortion by decision is not a natural process....
2. The woman has already made the decision to have sex, if she cannot bear to be pregnant she should not have had sex.
She made a decision...and then she makes another one...it's a decision...that's the entire point.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 14:59
about the bold part, that is not the same thing, in that situation the children need someone, anyone can perform that task...like I said above there is no other situation in life were a person a directly and irreparably linked biologically to another...because of this the "rules" cannot be expected to be the same.
Baby needs milk, so you need either the mother, or "a" mother, but even then the milk a woman produces immidiately after birth is the most important, so that a newborn who has, say, a wet nurse who gave birth three months ago is at a considerable dissadvantage. The point is that that biological tether is not actually severed at birth, because in the absense of modern medicine you are going to have extrmee trouble keeping a baby alive without its mother.
I do not believe in "absolute" rules....if the situations change then the rules change also.
about us being able to invent something artificial do "fudge" the issue....the issue is itself created by something artificial......abortion by decision is not a natural process....
Well, morality is about absolute rules. Regardless, abortion is an action and actions require justification equal to their consequences, homocide is not generally justified or forgiven on the basis of convenience of the perpetrator, why should it be so with abortion? I submit that abortion is looked at askance, because it is possible to ignore the consequences as we are not generally explicitiely presented with an image which we can interpret in the same way as a small child's corpse. Also, it's status as "a medical procedure" sanitises the act of homocide in this case.
She made a decision...and then she makes another one...it's a decision...that's the entire point.
Yes... and she should not be allowed to make the second decision, given that she has already made the first. She is not allowed to kill the child after it is born, we should she be allowed to kill it before hand?
because in the absense of modern medicine you are going to have extrmee trouble keeping a baby alive without its mother.
you keep trying to jump to a scenario where you don´t have modern medicine.
again, if we don´t have modern medicine we don´t have abortions and so we wouldn´t be having this talk in the first place.
decisions do not exist in a vacuum, modern medicine exits...so our rules have to deal in that reality....if it ever goes away then it's back to the drawing board.
Yes... and she should not be allowed to make the second decision, given that she has already made the first. She is not allowed to kill the child after it is born, we should she be allowed to kill it before hand?
I have already explained before why this is different to me.
when the fetus is still inside her as far as I am concerned the woman has the right to say "I don´t want my body to be taking part in this biological connection".....the fact is that this cannot be done without the fetus dying....well..you can´t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
my position is that it should happen as soon as possible in the pregnancy...this is just to try and reach a balanced position against the possibility of awareness on the fetus part in later parts of the pregnancy.
as soon as the child is not directly biologically linked to the mother the circumstance changes...therefore the rules change.
the rules about homicide are societal rules destined to prevent inter-citizen violence...but when you think about it the society does not consider the fetus a citizen...there is a reason why kids are counted on the census but fetus aren´t.
Hello again :smiley2:
Pregnancy is inherrently dangerous, I should know because I almost killed my mother a couple of times and she almost killed me, and I believe that a woman has already taken on that responsibility when she engaged in consenual sex, with all its attendant risks. As such, I don't believe she has the right to change her mind just because she regrets her initial decision, not if the result is to cost another human being its life.
(...)
the woman has already made an informed decision and I see no reason why she should have any "right" to make it again when the man does not.
Sigh, how can one place oneself on such a shabby footing. First of all, creating a legal obligation to risk your existence for the mere engagement in the most basic life experience of your species grossly ignores the anthropological realities of the species’ community, which was developed around sex as a main social nexus.
Second of all, and more importantly, even if the woman engages in consensual sex with the intention of having a child, pregnancy is a pretty innocuous enterprise in what the mother’s life is concerned for the vast majority of cases. A female legally forced to undergo the process in the presence of a recognized medical risk, when she would be able to repeat it in perfectly safe conditions, is literally endangered by the state.
A man also has the right to consent to sexual congress, his right to consent can be violated just as a woman's can. You are speaking from a sexist discource based on a fallacious reading of traditional gender roles as popularised by feminist writers.
Please, I would have written that a male is the only one who can award a female rights onto his body as well, yet it didn’t describe a real & relevant legal situation. Kind of why in civilised societies adultery is not against the law :2thumbsup: And why the judiciary should never give a gender a default right over the other. That right must be asked for personally, and awarded personally each time, on a case by case basis – before you restate your presumption over what consent to a sexual act entails, do reread the first part of this reply. Oh and fact of life: while genders are socially equal, they are not equivalent from a biological standpoint, and pregnancy is the very unique and clear case in which this inequality is illustrated.
The point is that that biological tether is not actually severed at birth, because in the absense of modern medicine you are going to have extrmee trouble keeping a baby alive without its mother.
Factually untrue for thousands of years now. Mothers commonly died at birth leaving behind offspring who developed normally in pre-industrial societies.
For me, abortion is more of an aesthetic issue rather than a real moral one. It doesn't look pretty, but that does not make it immoral.
Opposing the killing of foetuses that are only a fraction as self-aware as the cow whom I had a piece of included in my breakfast this morning, makes no sense. So, it is aesthetics.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 16:35
you keep trying to jump to a scenario where you don´t have modern medicine.
again, if we don´t have modern medicine we don´t have abortions and so we wouldn´t be having this talk in the first place.
decisions do not exist in a vacuum, modern medicine exits...so our rules have to deal in that reality....if it ever goes away then it's back to the drawing board.
I am of the firm belief that modern technology is essentially irrelevent to morality, factoring such technology is a case of understanding how it relates to moral questions, not reshaping morality around. The fact is, abortions and various versions of the "morning after potion" have been available as long as caesarian section, if not longer (the clue there is in the name) but the advances in modern medicine have greatly increased the chances of survival of both mother and baby, and that is new. Such advances have also reduced the likelyhood of complications in an abortion, but that does not make it right.
I have already explained before why this is different to me.
when the fetus is still inside her as far as I am concerned the woman has the right to say "I don´t want my body to be taking part in this biological connection".....the fact is that this cannot be done without the fetus dying....well..you can´t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
my position is that it should happen as soon as possible in the pregnancy...this is just to try and reach a balanced position against the possibility of awareness on the fetus part in later parts of the pregnancy.
as soon as the child is not directly biologically linked to the mother the circumstance changes...therefore the rules change.
You are still sidestepping the issue though, abortion includes homocide, you are balancing the mother's inconvenience with the child's life and deciding in favour od the mother.
the rules about homicide are societal rules destined to prevent inter-citizen violence...but when you think about it the society does not consider the fetus a citizen...there is a reason why kids are counted on the census but fetus aren´t.
Ah, so you don't believe in moral law, fine then.
Hello again :smiley2:
Sigh, how can one place oneself on such a shabby footing. First of all, creating a legal obligation to risk your existence for the mere engagement in the most basic life experience of your species grossly ignores the anthropological realities of the species’ community, which was developed around sex as a main social nexus.
Maybe because I know, anthropologically speaking, that most societies license and regulate sexual activity because of the consequences in engaging in sexual intercorse. We are one of the most sexuallly unregulated societies ever, and as a result we have large numbers of single women with unwanted pregnancies, selective abortion is plaster on a wound in our society, not a solution. You describe sex as a social aspect of our society, but you ignore the fact that in the West people are increasingly engaging in sexual practices which either have no social dimension (one night stands) or negative ones (people getting together, jumping into bed after a couple of dates and then the woman getting pregnant, not to mention being infected with an STD.)
Second of all, and more importantly, even if the woman engages in consensual sex with the intention of having a child, pregnancy is a pretty innocuous enterprise in what the mother’s life is concerned for the vast majority of cases. A female legally forced to undergo the process in the presence of a recognized medical risk, when she would be able to repeat it in perfectly safe conditions, is literally endangered by the state.
Pregnancy is actually pretty dangerous, it's just that modern antinatal care is so good that most problems are caught before they become life threatening.
Please, I would have written that a male is the only one who can award a female rights onto his body as well, yet it didn’t describe a real & relevant legal situation. Kind of why in civilised societies adultery is not against the law :2thumbsup: And why the judiciary should never give a gender a default right over the other. That right must be asked for personally, and awarded personally each time, on a case by case basis – before you restate your presumption over what consent to a sexual act entails, do reread the first part of this reply. Oh and fact of life: while genders are socially equal, they are not equivalent from a biological standpoint, and pregnancy is the very unique and clear case in which this inequality is illustrated.
The judiciary do give one gender rights over the other though, women have the right to abort the baby which is 50% their sexual partner. If the woman has a "right" over her own body then does the man have a "right" over his own sperm? Those cells only belong 50% to the woman, so how can she legally be allowed to about 100% of the fetus? It's absurd, and it shows up the madness the in pro-elective stance. A teenage girl isn't allowed to cut her own breasts off just because she doesn't like them, the changes a woman's body go through in pregnancy are a part of her maturity, they are not unnatural or actually negative, quite the opposite. I fail to see why a woman, having chosen to initiate a pregnancy should then be allowed to cancel it. This isn't a hotel reservation, it's a new human life and one which, once it comes to term, the woman has only 50% rights over. Why should she have 100% rights in the womb?
Factually untrue for thousands of years now. Mothers commonly died at birth leaving behind offspring who developed normally in pre-industrial societies.
If you were rich enough to aford a wet nurse, otherwise you probably died. It doesn't change the fact that the child and the fetus are both dependants, but we accord one full rights and the other none based purely on the stage of development.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 16:37
For me, abortion is more of an aesthetic issue rather than a real moral one. It doesn't look pretty, but that does not make it immoral.
Opposing the killing of foetuses that are only a fraction as self-aware as the cow whom I had a piece of included in my breakfast this morning, makes no sense. So, it is aesthetics.
It is generally considered imoral to eat people, too. We treat our own species differently from a moral perspective.
Vladimir
10-26-2011, 16:38
For me, abortion is more of an aesthetic issue rather than a real moral one. It doesn't look pretty, but that does not make it immoral.
Opposing the killing of foetuses that are only a fraction as self-aware as the cow whom I had a piece of included in my breakfast this morning, makes no sense. So, it is aesthetics.
Great thread so far but I've never heard someone seriously compare an unborn child to something they would eat for breakfast. I hope that's a translation error.
ajaxfetish
10-26-2011, 16:40
Because I am not a woman and have never been pregnant I cannot know that I would be willing to risk my life for and sacrifice for someone I love?
That's a very bizarre conclusion to come to, since I said nothing of the kind. Your original quote was:
That is what I would want for my child, and that is what I would want for my child if I was a woman carrying it as well.
In context, you said that you would want your wife to risk dying to bear your child, and that if you were a woman in that circumstance, you would want to risk dying yourself. I did not at all claim that you cannot know whether you would be willing to risk your life for someone else, I suggested that you cannot know how you would feel if you were a pregnant woman. Would you want to take the risk? Maybe. But it's awful hard to know how you would react in an extremely emotional and dangerous situation you've never been in, and guesses from the safety of a computer seat might be way off the mark. One way or another, it's not a risk you might ever actually face, and so it's not particularly flattering that you would demand that others face it. It's rather like if I were disabled in such a way that I could never be put into the military, and I argued that our forces should have a no-retreat policy and all be forced to die in a losing battle, because I would want to die for my country rather than run away if I were in their position.
Ajax
We treat our own species differently from a moral perspective.
Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.
Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..
rory_20_uk
10-26-2011, 17:12
When did establishing a legal framework become a chance to throw morals and moralistic blackmail around?
~:smoking:
Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.
Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..
To elaborate: since I find nothing wrong in killing a younger foetus in itself, the limiting aspect would have to be what impact abortion has on society. Thus, disallowing abortion above a certain number of weeks could make sense because abortion may indirectly dehumanise society otherwise.
This is an interesting moral issue and I am grateful to BQ and PVC for thoughtful posts on it. They both seem to start from a common "all or nothing" premise that a fetus is a human being with a right to life from conception. Consideration of practical issues leads them to nonetheless advocate legal abortion up to some point, whether 12 weeks or 24. I find their conclusions attractive, although I am not fully persuaded by their premise, which appears to come from religious doctrine that I don't follow.
From a non-religious ethical perspective, the development of the unborn from conception to birth seems a continuum. At conception, the fertilised egg has the potential to be a person but I do not assign much moral significance to it's existence. It would not grieve me - as a dispassionate moral observer[1] - if for some reason, it was terminated; for example, due to natural abortion. To me, it's just a collection of unfeeling, unthinking cells albeit with tremendous potential. However, at birth, all of us would regard the baby as having the same full rights and importance as other people. And we would regard it as a tragedy if ill befell the newborn. The difficult question for the non-religious is deciding at which point the transition arises. I suspect no hard and fast demarcation can be found - the unborn's development is continuous, not discrete. As such we are dealing with a moral variant of the general philosophical problem of "the paradox of the heap" (when is a pile of grains of sand a heap? not two, but how many exactly?).
Legislation (and BQ in his practical considerations) often looks at viability outside the womb, but this does not seem compelling when determining moral value. The issue is about whether the fetus should be allowed to continue inside the womb, so it is not obvious why a counterfactual of life outside should be relevant. Nor is it obvious that improvements in medical technology mean the same fetus should have greater moral value.
PVC mentions brain activity and this seems to me a more relevant criterion, although given his pro-life premise I suspect he is may partly be using it as a debating point to constrain pro-choice advocates. I think there is an analogy here with the animal rights, another case where we consider the moral value of beings that are not as developed as ourselves in certain respects[2]. Whether a being can feel pain is relevant if we are considering an act that may harm them. The case of using anaesthetic in later abortions seems prima facie overwhelming. But for killing, rather than hurting, I would look at their capability for feeling pleasure and the value of their experiences. I know people talk of the unborn responding to music, their parents' voices and since newborns experience pleasure at feeding, can expect some later fetuses may also enjoy basic pleasures. Consequently, I think one can make case for regarding the unborn, at least beyond some stage of development, as having lives of some moral value that ought to be protected. Quite how many weeks this would be, I don't know but suspect it lies somewhere in the range from PVCs 12 weeks to BGs 24 weeks. Consequently, as I say, I incline to support BG and PVCs conclusions, albeit starting from a very different premise.
[1]I know that as potential parent one might be very grieved by this.
[2]I write that as a vegetarian.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 19:05
Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.
Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..
Well, a newborn has significantly lower mental abilities than a puppy, so I don't think there's a lot of milage in your attampt at analogy I'm afraid.
When did establishing a legal framework become a chance to throw morals and moralistic blackmail around?
~:smoking:
Well, while we should not "legislate morality" in the sense that we should not tell people what to think our legislation should still be morallly robust.
PVC mentions brain activity and this seems to me a more relevant criterion, although given his pro-life premise I suspect he is may partly be using it as a debating point to constrain pro-choice advocates. I think there is an analogy here with the animal rights, another case where we consider the moral value of beings that are not as developed as ourselves in certain respects[2]. Whether a being can feel pain is relevant if we are considering an act that may harm them. The case of using anaesthetic in later abortions seems prima facie overwhelming. But for killing, rather than hurting, I would look at their capability for feeling pleasure and the value of their experiences. I know people talk of the unborn responding to music, their parents' voices and since newborns experience pleasure at feeding, can expect some later fetuses may also enjoy basic pleasures. Consequently, I think one can make case for regarding the unborn, at least beyond some stage of development, as having lives of some moral value that ought to be protected. Quite how many weeks this would be, I don't know but suspect it lies somewhere in the range from PVCs 12 weeks to BGs 24 weeks. Consequently, as I say, I incline to support BG and PVCs conclusions, albeit starting from a very different premise.
[1]I know that as potential parent one might be very grieved by this.
[2]I write that as a vegetarian.
For the record, I am not utterly convinced that it is an "ensouled", to use the Christian term, human being at conception, but as we don't know I would much rather err on the side of extreme caution.
Well, a newborn has significantly lower mental abilities than a puppy, so I don't think there's a lot of milage in your attampt at analogy I'm afraid.
It's a bit more than just an analogy. If animals were robots, we would have no moral responsibilities when it came to them - that would be absurd. The reason why carry moral responsibilities when it comes to animals, is because they have some sort of self-awareness (but how much? who knows).
A humanist point of view might say that all humans regardless of mental state should be granted the exact same rights, because they are humans. But I am by no means any humanist, so I seek no such position (by itself, anyhow; important point to be made)
I am sure you know that killing newborns is not viewed today as it was e.g. a millennium ago, in many (most?) places; so this is a moral view that is highly dependent on culture. Yes, obviously, a newborn would not score high by itself on the moraleometer, but there are other things to consider that could render killing a newborn illegal/immoral, regardless (as I explained wrt. abortion). But that is a different debate - you will for instance find that a newborn is sort of 'fully developed', while a foetus might not even as much as look like a human, depending on how far it has come.
Tellos Athenaios
10-26-2011, 22:17
Maybe because I know, anthropologically speaking, that most societies license and regulate sexual activity because of the consequences in engaging in sexual intercorse. We are one of the most sexuallly unregulated societies ever, and as a result we have large numbers of single women with unwanted pregnancies, selective abortion is plaster on a wound in our society, not a solution. You describe sex as a social aspect of our society, but you ignore the fact that in the West people are increasingly engaging in sexual practices which either have no social dimension (one night stands) or negative ones (people getting together, jumping into bed after a couple of dates and then the woman getting pregnant, not to mention being infected with an STD.)
There's not much “increasing” there, except single women. There used to be practice of reserving virgins in brothels for affluent clients for a reason, precisely because of the prevalence of STDs. HIV & Ebola are new ones, but the point is that this sort of thing is now much more actively campaigned against. Similar to the campaigns of the early and mid 20th century in Western Europe which also brought DDT to the masses.
In any case it is not clear that the legalisation of abortion corresponds to a statistical increase in abortions (according to Viking the opposite appears true for Nordic countries, and you can add the Netherlands to that list as well).
If you were rich enough to aford a wet nurse, otherwise you probably died. It doesn't change the fact that the child and the fetus are both dependants, but we accord one full rights and the other none based purely on the stage of development. True but there remains adoption which is a very common trait among humans. We even frequently adopt the young of other species. It is actually a biological plan B, it is pervasive beyond the human species to the point that human babies can be adopted and raised by other species.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 22:30
There's not much “increasing” there, except single women. There used to be practice of reserving virgins in brothels for affluent clients for a reason, precisely because of the prevalence of STDs. HIV & Ebola are new ones, but the point is that this sort of thing is now much more actively campaigned against. Similar to the campaigns of the early and mid 20th century in Western Europe which also brought DDT to the masses.
In any case it is not clear that the legalisation of abortion corresponds to a statistical increase in abortions (according to Viking the opposite appears true for Nordic countries, and you can add the Netherlands to that list as well).
True but there remains adoption which is a very common trait among humans. We even frequently adopt the young of other species. It is actually a biological plan B, it is pervasive beyond the human species to the point that human babies can be adopted and raised by other species.
Alright - so there were unwanted/unplanned pregnancies in the past, but there were also what you might call "Halbard polearm" rather than abortions. It used to be that faced with an unplanned pregnancy the effective solution was to shrug and prepare for the arrival of the baby, now women go and casually have abortions, and some of them really do do it casually. I don't want to paint us as the most sexually dysfuntional society ever, but you have to admit that the modern Western attitude to sex is pretty unhealthy, it's getting up there with the High Middle Ages, if not with Puritan England yet.
now women go and casually have abortions, and some of them really do do it casually.
I would like some sources for this please. I don't know of any real life examples or experiences which this is ever been the case.
I work with vulnerable adults, I have many links to feminist and female support groups and links to "pro-choice" organisations through various contacts and people I know and I never met a single person who has ever looked lightly upon abortion, with many of them doing the opposite (not having an abortion) and seeking help on where to find support. Those who have chosen to undergo an abortion were all very distraught by the experience, a few even attempting suicide afterwards.
So if you are quoting personal experience, it runs contrary to my own and due to the demographics and social circles I am involved with... such comments sound ignorant to reality.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 22:54
I would like some sources for this please. I don't know of any real life examples or experiences which this is ever been the case, and those who do a lot of things "casually" have numerous kids (who weren't aborted).
Well, Rory has already told you women do it because they are "feckless" and the Torygraph can easily dig up stories of women who acted in haste and repented at leiasure.
Quick look produced this for you: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/7823317/Dozens-of-teenage-girls-have-had-three-abortions-or-more.html
I would have thought you'd be less cavilier after the first abortion, but apparently not in all cases.
Here's the one I wanted: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8727344/The-pregnant-pause.html
Well, Rory has already told you women do it because they are "feckless" and the Torygraph can easily dig up stories of women who acted in haste and repented at leiasure.
Quick look produced this for you: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/7823317/Dozens-of-teenage-girls-have-had-three-abortions-or-more.html
I would have thought you'd be less cavilier after the first abortion, but apparently not in all cases.
Here's the one I wanted: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8727344/The-pregnant-pause.html
The second link is far closer to what I am used to seeing. The example of people like Lucy.
I haven't met any of these three abortions or more teenagers though.
Those who have chosen to undergo an abortion were all very distraught by the experience, a few even attempting suicide afterwards.
Wow, it must be a great thing. :P
Legislation (and BQ in his practical considerations) often looks at viability outside the womb, but this does not seem compelling when determining moral value. The issue is about whether the fetus should be allowed to continue inside the womb
Yet are we not accepting for the debate to build towards a skewed perspective econ? The discussion is moving away from the one fundamental point.
There is the original embryo and subsequent foetus.
And then there is the human carrier.
One does not balance the fate of the first without considering the weight added to the scales by the impact on the pregnant female.
You have to oppose the development of the potential human being to the evolution of the full-grown thought-capable carrier person at all times and to decide which is the primary actor in the process.
We are one of the most sexuallly unregulated societies ever, and as a result we have large numbers of single women with unwanted pregnancies, selective abortion is plaster on a wound in our society, not a solution. You describe sex as a social aspect of our society, but you ignore the fact that in the West people are increasingly engaging in sexual practices which either have no social dimension (one night stands)
You should really give it a go before claiming it lacks social dimension. Perhaps one of your most egregious statements; the liberty to let in and let go of human beings in the vortex of huge metropolitan communities is not only beautiful, but also a building block of self-examination within society.
A “wound on our society”; how prudish – otherwise, a validating, public inclusion is not the desired path for insertion into society sought by many of us; it is oppressive.
Wow, it must be a great thing. :P
I don't believe anyone has been singing songs about abortion or commenting how great it is. Most 'positive' is necessary evil.
I don't believe anyone has been singing songs about abortion or commenting how great it is. Most 'positive' is necessary evil.
Evil? Sure. But millions of human being killed a year...necessary? I don't think so.
I am not saying that is your position (not sure what your position is), but I don't think it is a smart one (not yours, but the necessary evil thing).
Either something is evil or not. There is no such thing as an acceptable or good evil. If it is evil, it should be unacceptable, if not, then it should be acceptable.
I know that is a pretty black and white attitude, but when you are talking about millions of human lives, you need to draw a line.
What are we gonna do 20-40 years from now when we look back and consider what OUR society has done. Hell, we have out done Communist darned Russia when it comes to exterminating unwanted yet innocent life. As a people, as a society, we are disgusting. We really aught to be ashamed of ourselves.
Years from now, if we ever straighten out, our Great8 Grandchildren will look back at us and wonder "How? How could so many people be so evil? Could they really be that ignorant, or did they just want to believe it because it was easy? How could everyone else just stand back and not say anything?"
I am truly ashamed to be part of a society that holds human life so cheap. It is even worse than the Roman Colosseum...at least they were not throwing their babies into the arena...
I am sorry if I worded that a little too strongly, but I've went 41 hours without sleep and am currently jacked up on Oxycodone and Oxycotin, and I don't feel like sugar-coating things.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 23:42
You should really give it a go before claiming it lacks social dimension. Perhaps one of your most egregious statements; the liberty to let in and let go of human beings in the vortex of huge metropolitan communities is not only beautiful, but also a building block of self-examination within society.
A “wound on our society”; how prudish – otherwise, a validating, public inclusion is not the desired path for insertion into society sought by many of us; it is oppressive.
I prefer to build few long term relationships than have numerous brief and (relatively) shallow encounters. I also wouldn't have sex with someone before we had both been tested, there's far too much nasty stuff floating around these days, aside from HIV. I also wouldn't have sex with someone I had just met because, yuh no, she might get pregnant and then I'd either have a child with someone I didn't know and might not really like, or she might get it aborted and I really don't ever want to hate someone that much.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-26-2011, 23:46
Evil? Sure. But millions of human being killed a year...necessary? I don't think so.
I am not saying that is your position (not sure what your position is), but I don't think it is a smart one (not yours, but the necessary evil thing).
Either something is evil or not. There is no such thing as an acceptable or good evil. If it is evil, it should be unacceptable, if not, then it should be acceptable.
I know that is a pretty black and white attitude, but when you are talking about millions of human lives, you need to draw a line.
What are we gonna do 20-40 years from now when we look back and consider what OUR society has done. Hell, we have out done Communist darned Russia when it comes to exterminating unwanted yet innocent life. As a people, as a society, we are disgusting. We really aught to be ashamed of ourselves.
Years from now, if we ever straighten out, our Great8 Grandchildren will look back at us and wonder "How? How could so many people be so evil? Could they really be that ignorant, or did they just want to believe it because it was easy? How could everyone else just stand back and not say anything?"
I am truly ashamed to be part of a society that holds human life so cheap. It is even worse than the Roman Colosseum...at least they were not throwing their babies into the arena...
I am sorry if I worded that a little too strongly, but I've went 41 hours without sleep and am currently jacked up on Oxycodone and Oxycotin, and I don't feel like sugar-coating things.
Actually, abortion was the prefered method of birth control in Russia, so I read.
As to "necessary evil", there is a simple litmus test for this:
Which is worse, murdering Hitler or letting him rule Europe and try to exterminate the Jews? Murdering Hitler is an evil act, but if your alternative is to allow him go on a murderous rampage then you have an even worse option; necessary evil works like that, but it is still evil and "necessary" does not really apply to elective abortion as a form of contraception/birth control.
Actually, abortion was the prefered method of birth control in Russia, so I read.
As to "necessary evil", there is a simple litmus test for this:
Which is worse, murdering Hitler or letting him rule Europe and try to exterminate the Jews? Murdering Hitler is an evil act, but if your alternative is to allow him go on a murderous rampage then you have an even worse option; necessary evil works like that, but it is still evil and "necessary" does not really apply to elective abortion as a form of contraception/birth control.
With respect, you are wrong. Killing Hitler would NOT be an evil act. It is evil to kill and innocent person. Killing an evil person to save innocent people he would kill is not evil.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-27-2011, 00:18
With respect, you are wrong. Killing Hitler would NOT be an evil act. It is evil to kill and innocent person. Killing an evil person to save innocent people he would kill is not evil.
I dissagree, homocide is a deadly sin, you are not excused simply because the person you slay is evil, especially as there are no "innocent" people in the world. The "right" thing to do with Hitler would be to make him see the error of his thinking stop him wanting to kill other people.
I dissagree, homocide is a deadly sin, you are not excused simply because the person you slay is evil, especially as there are no "innocent" people in the world. The "right" thing to do with Hitler would be to make him see the error of his thinking stop him wanting to kill other people.
It is only homocide if he is gay. ~;) Sorry, couldn't resist that.
Seriously though, I have a fundamental disagreement with you on just what homicide is. An innocent person is one who is not trying to harm or murder his fellow-human beings.
Homicide is unjustly killing a person. A bullet in Hitler's head would be nothing but just. You can talk people out of mistakes, but you cannot talk them out of evil. Hitler wanted power. I seriously doubt he even believed half of what he said...he just knew it would help him control people.
Tellos Athenaios
10-27-2011, 03:24
You are confusing homicide with murder.
Major Robert Dump
10-27-2011, 04:34
A lot of people argue that this is a womens-only debate, but I understand why men have such a high stake in the abortion argument, because our role in the process is not one to be taken lightly. Putting your penis inside of a vagina and moving it around for a few seconds is not something that is easy to bring ourselves to do. To think of all that work we do to make the baby, and then all the work we do to avoid paying child support because we didn't want to marry her because she got fat (GROSS!), I mean I am appalled that women think they only have the right to argue this topic.
In a perfect word, Art Garfunkel would be the father of all pregnancies, and us men would not have to waste our precious time arguing this topic.
Ironside
10-27-2011, 10:47
With respect, you are wrong. Killing Hitler would NOT be an evil act. It is evil to kill and innocent person. Killing an evil person to save innocent people he would kill is not evil.
Since Vuk is evil, is it an evil act to kill Vuk?
Now Vuk might disagree with that he's evil, but he's obviously biased and have already chosen such an evil name villingly (it means wolf --> A metaphor for evil men with a lust for power and dishonest gain, as well as a metaphor for Satan preying on innocent God-fearing Christians), that the guilt of his evilness cannot be denied.
Or it other words: Your method gives the person who defines evil all the power.
Evil? Sure. But millions of human being killed a year...necessary? I don't think so.
I am not saying that is your position (not sure what your position is), but I don't think it is a smart one (not yours, but the necessary evil thing).
Either something is evil or not. There is no such thing as an acceptable or good evil. If it is evil, it should be unacceptable, if not, then it should be acceptable.
I know that is a pretty black and white attitude, but when you are talking about millions of human lives, you need to draw a line.
What are we gonna do 20-40 years from now when we look back and consider what OUR society has done.
Humans. Killing their own children since the dawn of time. :book2:
Did you know that the number of abortions were similar in 1930 (when it was completely illegal. It became fully legal in 1975) compared to today in Sweden? Now, I don't know the data for other countries but it's most likely similar there.
Or to summarise, legal abortion is an acceptance of something that's already happening, not some new idea.
Perhaps the future will indeed be different. But don't expect anything during your lifetime.
For the record, I am not utterly convinced that it is an "ensouled", to use the Christian term, human being at conception, but as we don't know I would much rather err on the side of extreme caution.
I'm curious about that. What happens who those who dies unborn according to the ensoulment theory? It's common naturally, so it's has to have answer outside an abortion debate.
I'm curious about that. What happens who those who dies unborn according to the ensoulment theory? It's common naturally, so it's has to have answer outside an abortion debate.
Well, they used to go straight to hell as they were not baptised and had the mothers original sin. To 'solve' this, the concept of purgatory came into play, allowing them to enter Heaven afterall.
Scienter
10-27-2011, 19:42
*rolls up sleeves* I have a lot to say about this topic. Imagine that.
I got auto logged out and most of my post got eaten. I'm limiting my discussion to the US because I'm well read in that area and not so much with the rest of the world. To summarize the part that I lost, I'm pro-choice. Not pro-abortion. But, I agree with a lot of what BG said in his initial post. I don't believe in late-term abortions. But, I also don't believe that life begins at conception. I think that BG was right when he said "There should be very few cases where the choice to abort the foetus cannot be made within that early period of time..." I don't agree with him re: judicial intervention following viability simply because I know how long a judicial proceeding can be dragged out. I don't know what the right answer to the problem is. But I do think that the US needs a framework that would both help prevent as many unintended pregnancies as realistically possible *and* provide support to those women who become pregnant anyway and make the decision to terminate an early pregnancy.
I think that abortion should be the last resort. As a result, I think that contraception in all its varying forms should be made available and affordable (or free) to everyone. I think that there should be proper education on how to use contraception. I know that there is no way to prevent all unwanted pregnancies. Birth control fails. Sometimes the back up method fails too. But, for those who above argued that people should just not have sex, that is a naive and unrealistic view. Regardless of one's personal views on abstinence, the reality of life is that most people do not. There are lots of anecdotes about people who chose to abstain until marriage, but statistically the average age for a first sexual encounter is 17 for a teenage girl in the US. A little younger for a boy. Even among people who abstain into their 20s, a significant majority of people in the US have had sex prior to marriage. This isn't me making a moral argument, it's just a fact. People have sex and making contraception hard to get is just going to cause unwanted pregnancies. And it's not just the woman's responsibility. Every sexually active person is responsible for preventing pregnancy and the transmission of STIs. It's common sense.
2. The woman has already made the decision to have sex, if she cannot bear to be pregnant she should not have had sex.
Preventing pregnancy is not just the woman's responsibility because she's got the womb. It takes two people for a pregnancy to happen. So by your logic is it safe to assume that you believe that all men who choose to have sex should be prepared to pay child support for 18+ years and be active in their hypothetical unwanted child's upbringing?
Abortion isn't just a single woman issue. A lot of women who have abortions are married and already have children. Sometimes, it's a very painful decision.
Also, some women who get pregnant don't choose to have sex. What about rape? 1 in 4 women could definitely tell you all about it. How about reproductive coercion? This form of abuse doesn't get much press because it generally happens among low income families.
Take a look at who has abortions (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html). Some people in this debate seem to think that us lazy sluts just run around having sex with tons of men and stop by the Abortion Store and get our uteri vacuumed out before our next romp in the sack. Because we're too lazy or stupid to take the Pill or use a condom. Feckless? Really? Let's have some biology 101: if a man chooses to have sex with a woman who for some reason is too negligent to use birth control, he is just as responsible for the pregnancy as she is if he also chooses not to use birth control.
Further, the morning after pill is not an abortion. It's contraception. It works the same way as the Pill. In theory it could prevent a fertilized egg from attaching by thinning the uterine lining. But its common function is to suppress ovulation and thicken cervical mucus to make it harder for the sperm to get to the egg in case ovulation has already occurred.
I think that people who argue in favor of legislation against abortion and contraception are somewhat hypocritical because contraception, when used correctly, can prevent unwanted pregnancies. If the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, then supporting use of contraception is a huge step in that direction. Just telling women that they need to not have sex until they are ready to become mothers is a religiously based moral argument that is not representative of the majority of Americans.
Legally, I think that BG is right and there is a place for abortion when it is done early, before viability. But, I don't want a bunch of politicians telling me that I deserve to die if I get a serious medical condition while I'm pregnant and need an abortion to get treatment. I find it terrifying that some people see me as a walking baby incubator who loses bodily autonomy and agency as soon as sperm meets egg. The laws that some extreme anti-abortion and I go so far as to say anti-woman politicians dream up under the guise of being 'pro-life' diminish their own movement's legitimacy.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-27-2011, 23:51
Preventing pregnancy is not just the woman's responsibility because she's got the womb. It takes two people for a pregnancy to happen. So by your logic is it safe to assume that you believe that all men who choose to have sex should be prepared to pay child support for 18+ years and be active in their hypothetical unwanted child's upbringing?
Maybe you think I have a low opinion of women who have casual sex, well I have alower opinion of men. Contrary to popular belief it wasn't in most men's interests to marry, historically, it has always been in the woman's interest, especially in the more sexist societies.
For the record, child support until 18 is getting away with it, child support until your child finishes education. Son wants to do a PhD, needs dad to pay for his flat? Dad should pay. If dad refused I suppose you could lock him up until his child is finished, and make said child a ward of the state and have the state pay in the father's stead. You can even confiscate all said father's assets to pay for it too. Extreme and unworkable, yes, but I have no moral qualms about such a punishment.
Abortion isn't just a single woman issue. A lot of women who have abortions are married and already have children. Sometimes, it's a very painful decision.
As far as I am concerned, if the decision is made for economic reasons, it it obviously wrong. If you genuinely cannot afford to raise said child, you can certainly put it up for adoption, or you can tighten your belt. I refuse to reduce a pregnancy to the status of a luxury commodity like a second car.
Also, some women who get pregnant don't choose to have sex. What about rape? 1 in 4 women could definitely tell you all about it. How about reproductive coercion? This form of abuse doesn't get much press because it generally happens among low income families.
1 in 4? I've heard 1 in 6, and I can just about believe that. I could be persuaded that 1 in 4 were sexually assaulted, but even that brings us back to the old question (which we have argued over before) of how many accusations are malicious or an attempt to save face. Regardless, both Banquo and I covered this in our initial posts. While a woman being denied the initial choice to have sex should not be ignored that does not give her carte blanche to act against the resulting fetus. She should not be allowed, for example, to go through the first six months of a pregnancy and then decide she wants an abortion.
Rhyfelwyr
10-28-2011, 00:12
My 2 cents.
This is an issue where people tend to be very entrenched in their opinions. However, I have also noticed in this thread that there hasn't been a huge gap between those on each side.
Abortion appears to be something that makes both pro-life/pro-choice folk (very?) uncomfortable.* Any attempt to create a cut-off point where a foetus is deemed sufficiently "human" and thus granted the right to life is always going to be arbitrary. As such, there's not a whole lot of point arguing about whether you draw the lines at 12 or 24 weeks etc. Obviously it is a debate that needs to be had, but it might be more productive to focus on other things.
Like, for example, how to prevent abortions from needing to occur in the first place.
My opposition to abortion isn't religious (genuinely, it is not). I oppose it simply because the idea of it really makes me uncomfortable. In this respect I'm no different from any of the pro-choice folk here it seems. As I said its not something where either science (or indeed scripture) gives a clear answer so we know when it is OK, and so the idea of ending any sort of (proto?)human life makes me queasy.
At least though, I will say that pro-life people (and in the past me) have been unhelpful and very unsympathetic in screaming "murder" when women have had abortions under extremely difficult circumstances. I can't pretend to have the slightest clue what its like when a woman has been raped or her life is threatened by the foetus, or if the baby itself has major health complications.
Although I can imagine that if I ever got a girl pregnant and she aborted, that would haunt me for the rest of my life, I honestly think it would be like loosing a child.
So I'm not sure if my views have changed a lot as such, but I recognise now that its not a case of black and white and its maybe time to sit down and talk about things.
In that respect, thanks to BQ for setting the tone so well for this debate. I think people by nature tend to look for clear-cut answers to things and when you have a subject where the controversy lies in the fact that there is apparently no clear-cut answer, it can lead to people making up their own ones (eg Bible doesn't actually say life begins at conception) and then losing all meaningful dialogue with the other side.
Although at the same time I'm wary of temptation to abandon principles and going for compromise for the sake of compromise.
I honestly just don't know with this issue.
*That might change if HoreTore appears since IIRC he makes the point of calling himself "pro-abortion"
Yet are we not accepting for the debate to build towards a skewed perspective econ? The discussion is moving away from the one fundamental point.
There is the original embryo and subsequent foetus.
And then there is the human carrier.
One does not balance the fate of the first without considering the weight added to the scales by the impact on the pregnant female.
You have to oppose the development of the potential human being to the evolution of the full-grown thought-capable carrier person at all times and to decide which is the primary actor in the process.
It is true that my post focussed on the moral status of the embryo/foetus whereas stronger pro-choice approaches would focus on the woman's rights and agency. The woman is certainly the primary actor and I think it is the recognition of this in practice that means even posters like BQ and PVC who start from firmly pro-life ethical positions nonetheless advocate moderately pro-choice legal stances. But from a purely ethical position, I am not persuaded by the stronger pro-choice positions. Yes, as a primary actor you have limited moral obligations to help another, but with abortion we are talking about harm and killing, so some moral constraints on one's freedom to act do seem reasonable.
As for weighing up the value of one life versus the other, I am very much in favour of the primacy of the mother. If the pregnancy was a serious risk to her life (e.g. there was a foreseeable complication), I would have no hesistancy putting her first. But if it's just a matter of her general choice, based on non-medical considerations, I don't see that this automatically trumps the rights of the foetus. I get the sense that a lot of abortion law was passed assuming abortions would be for medical reasons, but in fact, they have turned out to be "on demand".
Another tricky issue is weighing up the interests of the foetus: to life vs to be brought up in less than ideal setting (unwanted, adopted etc.) or even more difficult, disabled etc. I am not sure what I think there. I certainly don't think we have a general obligation to create lots of people, but rather do have an obligation to make those that are created have decent lives. However, again I suspect there is a continuum whereby at a certain point, if the foetus is sufficiently advanced, one has gone too far to ethically justify killing it for almost all reasons except the life of the mother.
Scienter
10-28-2011, 13:56
1 in 4? I've heard 1 in 6, and I can just about believe that. I could be persuaded that 1 in 4 were sexually assaulted, but even that brings us back to the old question (which we have argued over before) of how many accusations are malicious or an attempt to save face. Regardless, both Banquo and I covered this in our initial posts. While a woman being denied the initial choice to have sex should not be ignored that does not give her carte blanche to act against the resulting fetus. She should not be allowed, for example, to go through the first six months of a pregnancy and then decide she wants an abortion.
Without getting into the debate about sexual assault, I agree with you about the six month decision. If someone can't sort out what they want to do before then, an abortion at six months shouldn't be an option.
That said, state and Federal governments shouldn't employ delaying tactics like giving legitimacy to "crisis pregnancy centers" or requiring that state-mandated, scientifically inaccurate scripts be read by doctors to patients seeking abortion, or using zoning regulations to force abortion clinics to close. In some really conservative states like the Dakotas, there are no places where a woman to go to get an abortion. Sometimes, Planned Parenthood will fly one in for a few days, but that's it.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-28-2011, 14:09
Without getting into the debate about sexual assault, I agree with you about the six month decision. If someone can't sort out what they want to do before then, an abortion at six months shouldn't be an option.
That said, state and Federal governments shouldn't employ delaying tactics like giving legitimacy to "crisis pregnancy centers" or requiring that state-mandated, scientifically inaccurate scripts be read by doctors to patients seeking abortion, or using zoning regulations to force abortion clinics to close. In some really conservative states like the Dakotas, there are no places where a woman to go to get an abortion. Sometimes, Planned Parenthood will fly one in for a few days, but that's it.
My only response to that is that abortion has become a political rather than legal or moral issue in the US, like many of the issues we discuss here the US is very polarised at both ends of the debate.
Kralizec
10-29-2011, 15:39
Thought I'd (belatedly) chip in:
Simply put, I don't think that an embryo is a human being in any relevant sense of the word, and doesn't deserve to be protected by the law. For the later stages, somebody here (forgot who) suggested that awareness be a criterium, but that's a bit iffy - I'm not versed in developmental psychology, but IIRC even newborn infants are not even self-aware in the sense that they realize they're independent creatures, distinct from their mother and other humans. I hasten to add that I don't think that self-awareness should be a criterium (otherwise, post-natal abortions would be legal), I'm just pointing out that the mere presence of some neurological activity doesn't necessarily amount to much - I have no idea when the first brain cells begin to develop, but it sounds like an arbitrary criterium. Which is not to say that I have an idea where the cut-off point should be.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on two related subjects:
Wrongful birth: this term refers to legal cases where a pregnant woman consults a doctor, to see if the unborn child is in good health. The child actually has some serious genetic defect or some other health issue, but the doctor (through negligence) fails to detect this. The woman, thinking that everything is allright, gives birth to the child months later and is unpleasantly surprised, to say the least. She sues the doctor; the grounds being that he failed in his duty and the damages being the costs of raising a disabled child and/or emotional damage.
So, thoughts? I imagine that those opposed to abortion in generally would als oppose this one, but since it is legal, should the woman's claims be honoured?
Wrongful life: related to the above. The difference is that the now-mature child, or the parents on behalf of the child, sue the doctor for damages that the child itself has suffered. Usually, this will be the costs of living after reaching maturity, as the child will in all likelyhood never be able to hold a paying job. Such claims have been honoured in a number of countries; personally I think they're absurd. Simplified, the essence of civil torts is the premise that the claimant would have been better off if the defendent had acted in a correct matter. But if that had happened, the claimant (the disabled child) wouldn't have existed at all.
I know of one Dutch case at our supreme court where such a claim was honoured, naturally provoking a storm of controversy. As for the reasoning above (the child's existence versus his non-existence), the supreme court refused to even adress the argument. A similar claim has been accepted in France by their highest court years ago, but since then the French parliament has outlawed claims like this.
Ja'chyra
10-29-2011, 18:13
Got to say something, can't keep it in any longer.
There's a few issues that been mentioned, so I'll go in order to stop me confusing me.....anyway
1. I would say foetus's are human when they can live by themselves, with or without medical support, no different from someone in a coma or after an accident.
2. Abortion should only be legal before this point. Religion should have no input to this at all. In fact before this point I would say it's contraception, not abortion.
3. I totally disagree that abortion is a woman only issue, with the only caveat being if her life is in danger, and I don't mean normal pregnancy danger as it always carries a risk. As most people have pointed out, it takes two, and just because the woman carries the child doesn't mean it only affects her life saying so is offensive and just plain wrong. Finding out that a woman had aborted my child would be devastating, men that feel different shouldn't be allowed to breed.
4. As far as I am concerned rapists have forgone any rights, not just the right to have a say in whether to have an abortion or not.
Oh, and MRD, once again, very funny, keep it up.
a completely inoffensive name
10-30-2011, 11:13
I've been reading this thread carefully since it started, and I find myself still as up in the air as when the last abortion thread came around, when Rhy easily kicked me about. I don't really care for PVC's arguments when he starts bringing up "sins" and whatnot but....I am receptive to some of his descriptions about society.
You should really give it a go before claiming it lacks social dimension. Perhaps one of your most egregious statements; the liberty to let in and let go of human beings in the vortex of huge metropolitan communities is not only beautiful, but also a building block of self-examination within society.
A “wound on our society”; how prudish – otherwise, a validating, public inclusion is not the desired path for insertion into society sought by many of us; it is oppressive.
For the most part, I laugh at arguments that argue for more "traditional" ways of living life, but I really disagree with this. If you are using one night stand to teach yourself how to let in and let go of human beings, that's dysfunctional. Don't try slapping a good lesson to learn from riding a stranger in the night and not seeing him in the morning. It's just fun hedonism, which is perfectly within someones ability to do, no problem here, but putting it on pedestal like that is just silly.
You learn about your place within society from contemplation and from emotional connections with people, not from having a few pumps and saying goodbye. All the people I see at uni who go about screwing anyone they see at parties are usually the ones who know the least about who they are and what they want out of life.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 13:34
It is only homocide if he is gay. ~;) Sorry, couldn't resist that.
Seriously though, I have a fundamental disagreement with you on just what homicide is. An innocent person is one who is not trying to harm or murder his fellow-human beings.
Homicide is unjustly killing a person. A bullet in Hitler's head would be nothing but just. You can talk people out of mistakes, but you cannot talk them out of evil. Hitler wanted power. I seriously doubt he even believed half of what he said...he just knew it would help him control people.
You are confusing homicide with murder.
Yes, quite.
Vuk, unlike you I consider killing another human being to be always wrong, and never justifiable. The simple, and quite terrifying, fact is that neither Hitler nor his supporters believed what they were doing was evil. If they had they would not have acted as they did. Once you recognise that you have to recognise that resorting to homocide to stop them represents a failure on your part, not on theirs.
To put it simply, Jesus didn't kill murderers, prostitutes or tax collectors - he converted them and that is the only "good" way of dealing with "bad" people. More pointedly, he would not have killed late-term abortionists either, as Christians in the US have in the past.
I've been reading this thread carefully since it started, and I find myself still as up in the air as when the last abortion thread came around, when Rhy easily kicked me about. I don't really care for PVC's arguments when he starts bringing up "sins" and whatnot but....I am receptive to some of his descriptions about society.
For the most part, I laugh at arguments that argue for more "traditional" ways of living life, but I really disagree with this. If you are using one night stand to teach yourself how to let in and let go of human beings, that's dysfunctional. Don't try slapping a good lesson to learn from riding a stranger in the night and not seeing him in the morning. It's just fun hedonism, which is perfectly within someones ability to do, no problem here, but putting it on pedestal like that is just silly.
You learn about your place within society from contemplation and from emotional connections with people, not from having a few pumps and saying goodbye. All the people I see at uni who go about screwing anyone they see at parties are usually the ones who know the least about who they are and what they want out of life.
You might find my arguements for palatable it you reflected carefully on how I use words like "sin" and try not to prejudice it too heavily against religious polemic of the past.
TheLastDays
10-30-2011, 19:06
Great, post got eaten... let me try to summarise my thoughts on the matter:
1) My views come from a religious/christian basis and I'll not make a secret of this. Yet I don't think my moral/ethic values and convictions are of less value just because they come from a religious view of life.
2) I believe a foetus is a human being from conception.
3) I think abortion is morally wrong but a necessary evil under certain circumstances.
4) There have to be legal ways and institutions to perform abortions. The income of these institutions has to be completely unrelated as to whether a woman/girl consulting them ends up aborting or giving birth to the child to prevent encouraging abortions out of monetary reasons.
5) I believe that both parents, male and female, have a responsibility for choosing consensual, sexual intercourse and all consequences that may arise. Yes, a boy/man who decides to have sex can, imo, be held responsible to care for the forthcoming child (financially and as a father, although of course the latter is hard to legislate).
6) Therefore abortion should never be taken lightly. It is a last resort option, to be used in medical emergencies or unwanted pregnancies occuring out of non-consensual sex. Even in the latter part I would like to see regulations that favour and encourage adoption, should the mother not want to keep the child (I know of cases where victims of rape still wanted to keep their child). Even in these situations there has to be a limit as to when abortion can happen, I am not sure where to draw that line though.
7) Adoption has to be encouraged and supported more, from the state, both to encourage pregnant girls/women to choose adoption instead of abortion and ways have to be found to encourage more people to adopt children themselves.
For the most part, I laugh at arguments that argue for more "traditional" ways of living life, but I really disagree with this. If you are using one night stand to teach yourself how to let in and let go of human beings, that's dysfunctional. Don't try slapping a good lesson to learn from riding a stranger in the night and not seeing him in the morning. It's just fun hedonism, which is perfectly within someones ability to do, no problem here, but putting it on pedestal like that is just silly.
You learn about your place within society from contemplation and from emotional connections with people, not from having a few pumps and saying goodbye. All the people I see at uni who go about screwing anyone they see at parties are usually the ones who know the least about who they are and what they want out of life.
My intention was to write another reply in this thread at a later date, because the arguments slowly evolve towards a more acceptable common ground, yet since you put me on the spot on this particular issue, probably best to further explain it briefly. First of all, I was replying to this statement:
We are one of the most sexuallly unregulated societies ever, and as a result we have large numbers of single women with unwanted pregnancies, selective abortion is plaster on a wound in our society, not a solution. You describe sex as a social aspect of our society, but you ignore the fact that in the West people are increasingly engaging in sexual practices which either have no social dimension (one night stands) or negative ones (people getting together, jumping into bed after a couple of dates and then the woman getting pregnant, not to mention being infected with an STD.)
I cannot agree with your easily awarded label acin, you're using the concept of dysfunctionality rather contiguously at best, or you allow yourself to be imprecise. Not to put too fine a point on it, you imply a total lack of propitious consequences for one's personality.
For one, lets agree on what the one night stands and negative sexual practices PVC is so horrified of actually are. I know what they mean at your age and I can understand why you would make the mistake of seeing them as some sort of semi-conscious encounter taking place through a haze of alcohol and drugs. While my age doesn’t put me a world apart from you (twenty-six) I can assure you the difference in life perspective and the way you experience sex with another is as big between age twenty and twenty-six as it is between fourteen and twenty. But to clearly express the point, what you are describing is a lot more age-related than sex-related. And the “strangers” you talk of do not necessarily exist in these type of encounters. It is a lot more likely for such an exchange to happen between persons from the same social class, circles, profession and having a similar IQ.
Once one begins a career and advances towards one’s thirties, relationships come into sharp focus. And since this subject can only really be discussed by editorializing, I have to write that personal observation of my own community takes me to completely different conclusions from yours.
In view of the above, persons who engage in brief sexual encounters with peers learn very early on to respect their partner and their privacy, which is one of the things most couples struggle with for years on end.
Moreover, one develops a distinct sense of responsibility for one’s actions and involvement. You make your choices and you deal with the consequences alone. And I would add that one learns to separate the public (or professional) and private aspects of one’s life very strictly, which is a benefit for everyone.
A developing trait in such situations which I find highly amusing is empathy. It’s just a personal observation, yet my friends who opt to only seek out long-term relationships experience great difficulties in seeing reality through their partner’s eyes. I attribute that to the complex process of projection which characterizes such persons and the struggle to negotiate it against the backdrop of their mutual reality. Meanwhile, the ones I know to be open are also very down-to-earth and self-aware of what they represent in their partner’s context.
To be more direct, they define themselves a lot more accurately in relation to the Other (as described by Sartre, not Hegel) and have an equally clear understanding of their own position as Other.
There’s also a well-developed dimension of intellectual honesty which sometimes surfaces from these relationships which has a clear beneficial effect on one’s mentality.
Now, by glancing through the text I just laid out, I realise it seems an apology, or, as you wrote, that I am putting these interactions “on a pedestal”. Which I in fact do not want to do per se. I would not recommend these encounters as some type of training for life or what not at all. I am only making the point that if they sometime exude immaturity or confusion, it is the strict result of the persons involved on a case by case basis and not because persons engaging in such exchanges are more prone to it than long-term couples. Society needed to control the consequences of sexual acts in the past and the solution was marriage; thus society, and especially judeo-christian societies, marred our understanding of short-term sexual relationships. Yet those consequences are nowadays easily avoided and make all the fuss about them a moot point.
I won’t presume you to be blind to the above, but I do think your perspective is skewed by social context. Late teens and early twenties are not ages characterised by a stable emotional period and they coincide of course with the onset of a sexual responsibility which makes a concept like “you’re on your own” to hit one a bit harder than one would expect. Of course many persons crash and burn as a result. Do not mistake this for faults of sexual liberty in general.
I’ll also give you attenuating circumstances for misunderstanding me, seeing as we find ourselves a world apart. And while the pervasive influence of your society onto the world allows me to have a vague idea about the type of neurosis which shrouds the whole matter in your country, Romania never experienced the traumatic effects of your ‘60s sexual revolution. It did not even need this type of awakening . Our social mores of course needed to evolve as well, but our culture was far less prudish than even the much closer German one (especially Viennese) and a lot more closer to mentalities you would find in a country like France.
I can accept PVC’s pining for a less immoral (and here one has to clearly distinguish between the context of immorality, as defined specifically in some Western countries, and amorality) age as a viewpoint, but what he describes as “one of the most sexually unregulated societies ever” does not lead to a lack of social ethics. On the contrary, between persons who’ve reached adulthood not only physically, but also mentally, it brings a whole dimension of intellectual honesty and maturity to society. Unwanted pregnancies and STDs and whatever ills PVC further wishes to list as having been brought about by sexual liberty are purely a matter of one's level of education.
Yet I don't think my moral/ethic values and convictions are of less value just because they come from a religious view of life
Hey you :bow:
How would you ever reach that conclusion? The product of religious moral and ethic values must always be dismissed when it clashes with the secularly established principles at the basis of laws and rights.
TheLastDays
10-30-2011, 19:45
If you say so :tongue:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 20:39
Once one begins a career and advances towards one’s thirties, relationships come into sharp focus. And since this subject can only really be discussed by editorializing, I have to write that personal observation of my own community takes me to completely different conclusions from yours.
In view of the above, persons who engage in brief sexual encounters with peers learn very early on to respect their partner and their privacy, which is one of the things most couples struggle with for years on end.
Moreover, one develops a distinct sense of responsibility for one’s actions and involvement. You make your choices and you deal with the consequences alone. And I would add that one learns to separate the public (or professional) and private aspects of one’s life very strictly, which is a benefit for everyone.
A developing trait in such situations which I find highly amusing is empathy. It’s just a personal observation, yet my friends who opt to only seek out long-term relationships experience great difficulties in seeing reality through their partner’s eyes. I attribute that to the complex process of projection which characterizes such persons and the struggle to negotiate it against the backdrop of their mutual reality. Meanwhile, the ones I know to be open are also very down-to-earth and self-aware of what they represent in their partner’s context.
To be more direct, they define themselves a lot more accurately in relation to the Other (as described by Sartre, not Hegel) and have an equally clear understanding of their own position as Other.
There’s also a well-developed dimension of intellectual honesty which sometimes surfaces from these relationships which has a clear beneficial effect on one’s mentality.
I infer from your description of your scoial context and your learned references you are in possesion of a Higher Degree, if that is so you and I are of aproximately the same age and level of education, I am just shy of my 25th birthday. You clearly occupy a socially elite position in your scoiety, you associate within a select social circle with is composed of mature individuals who are highly educated. If I have read you correctly then I can say that your socio-sexual experience will be decidedly atypical and will not reflect the general population in most countries. Immorality can be most usefully described as knowingly acting in a way which will negatively impact another, amorality might be described as giving no regard to the impact of your actions on others.
One night stand can fall into both catagories.
In most cases where two strangers have sex one is predatory, generally has gone out with the express intention of "picking up" someone. The other is "picked up", various lures and underhand tactics are used, chiefly lieing, misrepresentation and intoxication. If two people meet in a bar and end up in bed, this is the general patter, no matter where they are in the world.
On the other hand, if two academics were to meet at a conference, say, and fall into bed after one gave a particularly passionate and lucid paper on 14th Century poetic lyrics addressed to the Virgin Mary that might conform to the sort of experience you describe, but in my experience such encounters also include an element of infidelity which, even if admitted to beforehand, demonstrated moral degeneracy and a lack of emotional maturity.
I can accept PVC’s pining for a less immoral (and here one has to clearly distinguish between the context of immorality, as defined specifically in some Western countries, and amorality) age as a viewpoint, but what he describes as “one of the most sexually unregulated societies ever” does not lead to a lack of social ethics. On the contrary, between persons who’ve reached adulthood not only physically, but also mentally, it brings a whole dimension of intellectual honesty and maturity to society. Unwanted pregnancies and STDs and whatever ills PVC further wishes to list as having been brought about by sexual liberty are purely a matter of one's level of education.
You are falling into the aristocratic fallacy that the "lower orders" are degenerate due to base stupidity/ignorance, such is not so. Historical degeneracy at the bottom of society tends to follow degeneracy at the top.
But in any case, we are straying off track.
I have to say, if you are expecting significant development in the abortion argument at this point you will probably be mistaken.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 20:40
Hey you :bow:
How would you ever reach that conclusion? The product of religious moral and ethic values must always be dismissed when it clashes with the secularly established principles at the basis of laws and rights.
I missed this.
Interesting.
If ethical and religious values cannot be used to ground law, what can?
Tellos Athenaios
10-30-2011, 21:11
Look a little closer: I think Nowake is of the opinion that religion must not influence (secular) law, and therefore that only secular ethics should be considered.
Yes, quite.
Vuk, unlike you I consider killing another human being to be always wrong, and never justifiable. The simple, and quite terrifying, fact is that neither Hitler nor his supporters believed what they were doing was evil. If they had they would not have acted as they did. Once you recognize that you have to recognize that resorting to homicide to stop them represents a failure on your part, not on theirs.
To put it simply, Jesus didn't kill murderers, prostitutes or tax collectors - he converted them and that is the only "good" way of dealing with "bad" people. More pointedly, he would not have killed late-term abortionists either, as Christians in the US have in the past.
We have a significant disagreement here then PVC. Do you remember Sodom and Gomorrah? That was the same God as Jesus. People like Hitler were evil, they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they did it anyway. Are you honestly telling me that if you could go back in time before Hitler came to power and save the lives of tens of millions, and you had a gun to his head that you would even flinch before pulling that trigger? I certainly would not.
And no, I am not saying we should kill late-term abortionists. We have a legal system, and it needs to be used. We need to outlaw abortion, and make being an abortion doctor a crime that bears a life sentence with no chance for parole and no chance for early release.
You may think it is wrong, but it is my firm belief that there is a difference between killing and murder. What a soldier does to an enemy soldier is killing. What a soldier does to a civilian is murder. Shooting my neighbor because I do not like him is murder. Shooting my neighbor because he is raping his daughter is killing.
Every murderer, every rapist, and anyone found guilty of treason should get ten in the head. Period.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 22:20
We have a significant disagreement here then PVC. Do you remember Sodom and Gomorrah? That was the same God as Jesus.
"the same God" is a debatable point, the historical veracity of that passage is a debatable point AND you have missed the meaning of the story. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah wer utterly unrepentant, their lack of remourse for their sinful lives was seen by God. We are not Gods, we do not see with Godly eyes, that is the difference.
People like Hitler were evil, they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they did it anyway.
Everything we know about Hitler points to his absolute belief in the rightness of what he was doing, as I have said above.
Are you honestly telling me that if you could go back in time before Hitler came to power and save the lives of tens of millions, and you had a gun to his head that you would even flinch before pulling that trigger? I certainly would not.
You mean murder him? No, I would not, I'd try to do something more productive, like use my foreknoledge to get the NAZI party outlawed or prevent Hitler from undertaking the Night of the Long Knives. Killing him in cold blood would be an incredibly crude solution to the problem, and might even make the geopolitical situation worse because without Hitler their would be no buttress against Stalin.
And no, I am not saying we should kill late-term abortionists. We have a legal system, and it needs to be used. We need to outlaw abortion, and make being an abortion doctor a crime that bears a life sentence with no chance for parole and no chance for early release.
Killing the late-term abortionists, or all abortionists, is more efficient. If a doctor knows he will suffer extra-judicial execution for performing an abortion you will have (virtually) no abortions, just like they got people to stop using Opium as an anasthetic in the Renaissance. If an abortionist carries out 3 abortions a week over 30 years that's 3*52*30=4,680 lives saved if you kill him before he even starts. How does that compare to Hitler, where would you draw the line? I don't think Hitler killed even 100 people personally, the "Final Solution" wasn't even his idea, anyway.
You may think it is wrong, but it is my firm belief that there is a difference between killing and murder. What a soldier does to an enemy soldier is killing. What a soldier does to a civilian is murder. Shooting my neighbor because I do not like him is murder. Shooting my neighbor because he is raping his daughter is killing.
What soldiers do in war is self defense, shooting your daughter's rapist is murder, shooting someone to stop them shooting someone else is defense of another.
Every murderer, every rapist, and anyone found guilty of treason should get ten in the head. Period.
Ok, when do you shoot the executioner if he executes a guiltless man.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 22:23
Look a little closer: I think Nowake is of the opinion that religion must not influence (secular) law, and therefore that only secular ethics should be considered.
How do you tell the difference, I can defend my principles based on a largely "secular" model which involves what New Athiests would call "atheist" ethics, but is really Deism, and Humanistic principles, but my actual moral compass is fundamentally Christian. So are my ethics religious, secular?
"the same God" is a debatable point, the historical veracity of that passage is a debatable point AND you have missed the meaning of the story. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly unrepentant, their lack of remorse for their sinful lives was seen by God. We are not Gods, we do not see with Godly eyes, that is the difference.
Everything we know about Hitler points to his absolute belief in the rightness of what he was doing, as I have said above.
You mean murder him? No, I would not, I'd try to do something more productive, like use my foreknowledge to get the NAZI party outlawed or prevent Hitler from undertaking the Night of the Long Knives. Killing him in cold blood would be an incredibly crude solution to the problem, and might even make the geopolitical situation worse because without Hitler their would be no buttress against Stalin.
Killing the late-term abortionists, or all abortionists, is more efficient. If a doctor knows he will suffer extra-judicial execution for performing an abortion you will have (virtually) no abortions, just like they got people to stop using Opium as an anesthetic in the Renaissance. If an abortionist carries out 3 abortions a week over 30 years that's 3*52*30=4,680 lives saved if you kill him before he even starts. How does that compare to Hitler, where would you draw the line? I don't think Hitler killed even 100 people personally, the "Final Solution" wasn't even his idea, anyway.
What soldiers do in war is self defense, shooting your daughter's rapist is murder, shooting someone to stop them shooting someone else is defense of another.
Ok, when do you shoot the executioner if he executes a guiltless man.
Does it matter if they believe in their evil if you cannot persuade them otherwise and they are killing innocent people?
So you think that letting Hitler live if you had the chance to kill him before he was responsible for a single death would have been a good thing? And no, Hitler was not needed as a buttress against Stalin. Stalin would not have been America's ally if they did not have a common enemy.
Ah, so you do have an exception for when killing is justified! Self-defense and the defense of others! As I said, not all killing is murder...I am glad that we agree. So tell me, stopping Hitler's genocide would not be defending the lives of others then?
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-30-2011, 23:43
Does it matter if they believe in their evil if you cannot persuade them otherwise and they are killing innocent people?
So you think that letting Hitler live if you had the chance to kill him before he was responsible for a single death would have been a good thing? And no, Hitler was not needed as a buttress against Stalin. Stalin would not have been America's ally if they did not have a common enemy.
It wasn't America that had to worry about Stalin.
Ah, so you do have an exception for when killing is justified! Self-defense and the defense of others! As I said, not all killing is murder...I am glad that we agree. So tell me, stopping Hitler's genocide would not be defending the lives of others then?
You do not understand my ethical system, which inclines me to think you haven't read my other posts in this thread. Put simply, forgiveable is not "justified" to be "justified" something has to be "right" killing is not right, but in certain situations it is forgiveable and understandable. War is a good example, we should never go to war but if we do then we should fight to protect those we love and their right to live in peace, not to kill our enemies. This is what keeps soldiers going through battle fatigue, love of their comrades, not hatred of their enemies.
This basic philosophy of violence is the one used by the US marines, btw, marines are no longer trained to view the enemy as subhuman because they found that when the marines went home after a tour they started abusing their families, so now they teach them to kill in defence of their comrades.
It wasn't America that had to worry about Stalin.
Ah, so you do have an exception for when killing is justified! Self-defense and the defense of others! As I said, not all killing is murder...I am glad that we agree. So tell me, stopping Hitler's genocide would not be defending the lives of others then?[/QUOTE]
You do not understand my ethical system, which inclines me to think you haven't read my other posts in this thread. Put simply, forgiveable is not "justified" to be "justified" something has to be "right" killing is not right, but in certain situations it is forgiveable and understandable. War is a good example, we should never go to war but if we do then we should fight to protect those we love and their right to live in peace, not to kill our enemies. This is what keeps soldiers going through battle fatigue, love of their comrades, not hatred of their enemies.
This basic philosophy of violence is the one used by the US marines, btw, marines are no longer trained to view the enemy as subhuman because they found that when the marines went home after a tour they started abusing their families, so now they teach them to kill in defence of their comrades.[/QUOTE]
Semantics if you ask me, but I think we have wandered of the course of the thread.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-31-2011, 00:38
Semantics if you ask me, but I think we have wandered of the course of the thread.
Not at all, and we haven't wandered that far, actually.
Should you ever kill?
Answer: No, but in certain situations it can be taken as given that, having exhausted all theoptions available to a reasonable, normal, person you killed because you percieved it to be the lesser of two evils. You still committed an evil act.
In such a situation it still behoves you to feel remorse, and it behoves society to forgive you, the same pertains in rape cases where we should allow abortion.
Hey PVC :2thumbsup:
Immorality can be most usefully described as knowingly acting in a way which will negatively impact another, amorality might be described as giving no regard to the impact of your actions on others.
No, I asked you to differentiate between the two precisely because such views are mistaken. While morality is abstractly presumed good, the fact that good is itself defined by each society means that it simply encompasses the principles of a community, be they righteous or destructive. Since a cohesive group naturally agrees with its own set of morals, being described as a moral person is always accompanied by a misleading positive connotation. In fact, morality goes both ways and being immoral stands only for disagreeing with the community, the value of your impact is irrelevant. I.e. according to the Oxford dictionary, moral, adjective -- concerned with or derived from the code of behaviour that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society -- a woman showing her face publicly in certain Muslim communities is rightfully considered immoral and moral men righteously have the duty to rape her.
Your example:
In most cases where two strangers have sex one is predatory, generally has gone out with the express intention of "picking up" someone. The other is "picked up", various lures and underhand tactics are used, chiefly lieing, misrepresentation and intoxication. If two people meet in a bar and end up in bed, this is the general patter, no matter where they are in the world.
Perfectly concedes the point I made in my previous post (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053392239&viewfull=1#post2053392239). In most cases social pressure towards planning only for long-term relationships leaves people inadequately equipped to asses their own Otherness. They project and subjectively accept any confirmation of their beliefs. At best, they allow themselves to be charmed because social mores leave them no other possibility of living with their choices.
On the other hand, if two academics were to meet at a conference, say, and fall into bed after one gave a particularly passionate and lucid paper on 14th Century poetic lyrics addressed to the Virgin Mary that might conform to the sort of experience you describe, but in my experience such encounters also include an element of infidelity which, even if admitted to beforehand, demonstrated moral degeneracy and a lack of emotional maturity.
Element of infidelity towards whom,
demonstrates moral degeneracy due to which axiological arbiter
and shows a lack emotional maturity because it signifies what?
How do you tell the difference, I can defend my principles based on a largely "secular" model which involves what New Athiests would call "atheist" ethics, but is really Deism, and Humanistic principles, but my actual moral compass is fundamentally Christian. So are my ethics religious, secular?
First of all, TA is correct. Second of all, you are missing the point. The only goal is for you to be able to defend your Christian principles based solely on secular arguments. You may believe what you will, but none of your arguments can exist because “God says so”. Thus, we limit the values you can advance as part of a social agenda strictly to the ones which do not clash with our secular world-view. This thread is case in point, you were unable to allow yourself to justify an argument from a religious vantage point and your only footing amongst us in defining life and its privileges is the secular declaration of Human Rights.
Papewaio
10-31-2011, 08:02
Wouldn't evolution sort out abortions in the long term?
If someone is capable of an action must they do so?
If you are capable of taking a foetus to term must you?
If you are capable of having sex must you?
What is the difference between being forced to have sex and being forced to carry a foetus to term?
Banquo's Ghost
10-31-2011, 08:12
So you think that letting Hitler live if you had the chance to kill him before he was responsible for a single death would have been a good thing?
Fascinating. So if I understand your argument for preventative murder in certain circumstances, you would support the abortion of Hitler as a foetus? Or is it only after he was born that you would murder him? In the latter case, at what age is the deed acceptable?
Tellos Athenaios
10-31-2011, 09:12
How do you tell the difference, I can defend my principles based on a largely "secular" model which involves what New Athiests would call "atheist" ethics, but is really Deism, and Humanistic principles, but my actual moral compass is fundamentally Christian. So are my ethics religious, secular?
It's not easy to separate them and I'm not even sure that a strict “no product of religion in law, at all” works because generally the two overlap and shape each other to such an extent, but it seems quite easy to tell the difference when religion interferes with the secular debate. For instance from a secular point of view we wouldn't be having the discussion about ensoulment, would we?
Major Robert Dump
10-31-2011, 11:39
I wish I could get pregnant, just so I could get an abortion.
Fascinating. So if I understand your argument for preventative murder in certain circumstances, you would support the abortion of Hitler as a foetus? Or is it only after he was born that you would murder him? In the latter case, at what age is the deed acceptable?
That reminds me of a 'joke' article I read years and years ago.
Title: Aborted Babies don't kill people, Unaborted Babies kill people
News flash: Every single murderer, rapist, and terrorist has been an unaborted fetus. Look in a history textbook, you will never find information about an abortion blowing something up, killing a jew, or flying an airplane into a building.
Instead of fighting the Middle East, we could have used all the funding on international pro-choice campaigns. Osama himself would probably have been aborted. If that were the case, September 11th would have never happened and 3000+ people would still be alive, no thanks to you stubborn anti-everything renegades.
More examples of unaborted babies:
1. The Columbine Crew
2. Michael Jackson
3. Beyonce Knowles
Unaborted babies shoot up their school, molest children, and make rubbish music. I don't even see why people want to have babies, it's insane.
Fascinating. So if I understand your argument for preventative murder in certain circumstances, you would support the abortion of Hitler as a foetus? Or is it only after he was born that you would murder him? In the latter case, at what age is the deed acceptable?
We do not know if someone is going to be a raving lunatic, madman murderer until after they commit their acts of murder, so not, you cannot go indiscriminately killing unborn babies saying one may be evil.
That said, if (in the hypothetical scenario I laid out) you could go back in time and knew who Hitler was, of course I wouldn't object to aborting him as a baby. In real life however, people do not have that power, and 'preventative murder' does not exist, because we are not Gods and we do not know what will happen before it happens.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-31-2011, 13:33
No, I asked you to differentiate between the two precisely because such views are mistaken. While morality is abstractly presumed good, the fact that good is itself defined by each society means that it simply encompasses the principles of a community, be they righteous or destructive. Since a cohesive group naturally agrees with its own set of morals, being described as a moral person is always accompanied by a misleading positive connotation. In fact, morality goes both ways and being immoral stands only for disagreeing with the community, the value of your impact is irrelevant. I.e. according to the Oxford dictionary, moral, adjective -- concerned with or derived from the code of behaviour that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society -- a woman showing her face publicly in certain Muslim communities is rightfully considered immoral and moral men righteously have the duty to rape her.
Your example:
You begin by asking me to assent to an essentially Protagorean view of ethics, if I do so I automatically lose the arguement. It therefore goes almost without saying that I do not agree with your extreme epistomological relativism. It is niether self evident, nor provable, that my view of morality is "mistaken". In fact, the inherrent weakness of epistomological relativism is that it is only correct according to your own point of view, but not in general. To say that the only truth is that there are no truths is a logical paradox, and I therefore reject it.
Even so, you have missed my actual point, which refered to effect and regard. I identified imorality as deliberately acting in a way which caused harm to another, rather than a prescriptive version of absolute morality that defines a particular act as inherrently immoral, I could have said, "pre-marital sex cheapens the act of spirtual joining, etc." I didn't.
Perfectly concedes the point I made in my previous post (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053392239&viewfull=1#post2053392239). In most cases social pressure towards planning only for long-term relationships leaves people inadequately equipped to asses their own Otherness. They project and subjectively accept any confirmation of their beliefs. At best, they allow themselves to be charmed because social mores leave them no other possibility of living with their choices.
So you acknowledge the harm? You are essentially arguing here that society should change and conform to the predator, or rather that if we were all predators there would be no prey. Underlying this appears to be the assumption that "social pressure" is artificial rather than organic, this is the same intellectually elite fallacy you deployed before.
Most people ultimately want a family, ergo a long term relationship, ergo society reflects this. This is not a social construction, it reflects our need to procreate efficiently.
Element of infidelity towards whom,
demonstrates moral degeneracy due to which axiological arbiter
and shows a lack emotional maturity because it signifies what?
Infidelity to acknowledged partner
Moral degeneracy due to failure to keep word (often these people are married, or in an aknowledgedly monogomous relationships)
Lack of emotional maturity due to an inability to restrain base urges in view of the impact their actions will have on their significant othe, and/or a willingness to lie to their partner. This also evidences a profound lack of what you identified as the ability to appreciate oneself as Other.
First of all, TA is correct. Second of all, you are missing the point. The only goal is for you to be able to defend your Christian principles based solely on secular arguments. You may believe what you will, but none of your arguments can exist because “God says so”. Thus, we limit the values you can advance as part of a social agenda strictly to the ones which do not clash with our secular world-view. This thread is case in point, you were unable to allow yourself to justify an argument from a religious vantage point and your only footing amongst us in defining life and its privileges is the secular declaration of Human Rights.
Would my metaphysical beliefs in an objective moral reality be permissable, or do I have to subscribe to your relativistic ones? As this is a metaphyisical question you can't prove the issue either way.
It's not easy to separate them and I'm not even sure that a strict “no product of religion in law, at all” works because generally the two overlap and shape each other to such an extent, but it seems quite easy to tell the difference when religion interferes with the secular debate. For instance from a secular point of view we wouldn't be having the discussion about ensoulment, would we?
Well, I can say that the "soul" is out contiousness, and in that sense we can talk about the emerging conciousness in a feotus, and the potential for a conciousness to emerge in an embryo. All that is lacking from that version of a "soul" is its connection to God, the consequences of the argument are exactly the same. Nurtured and protected an embryo will ultimately develop into a unique human being with her own aspirations, beliefs and unique view of the world.
This point can be applied practically when you consider that many great artists and other luminaries were born to poor families. Steve Jobs, for example, was given up for adoption 56 years ago, but today he might be aborted. This is not an argument in itself, but I feel it brings into sharp focus the issue we are discussing, which is ultimately about human lives.
Banquo's Ghost
10-31-2011, 14:26
We do not know if someone is going to be a raving lunatic, madman murderer until after they commit their acts of murder, so not, you cannot go indiscriminately killing unborn babies saying one may be evil.
That said, if (in the hypothetical scenario I laid out) you could go back in time and knew who Hitler was, of course I wouldn't object to aborting him as a baby. In real life however, people do not have that power, and 'preventative murder' does not exist, because we are not Gods and we do not know what will happen before it happens.
Indeed we cannot, but your argument presents an interesting ethical position. Not least from your previous post advocating the execution of those carrying our abortions - this sentence would apply to the person aborting Hitler? (Truly, this is becoming one of the finest Godwin's I have managed to peddle into something approximating a discussion :smile:)
For a related example, there are some circumstances when we know for certain that a genetic condition will cause the newborn immense and swiftly terminal suffering. In your view, is it evil or good to inflict that suffering?
Indeed we cannot, but your argument presents an interesting ethical position. Not least from your previous post advocating the execution of those carrying our abortions - this sentence would apply to the person aborting Hitler? (Truly, this is becoming one of the finest Godwin's I have managed to peddle into something approximating a discussion :smile:)
For a related example, there are some circumstances when we know for certain that a genetic condition will cause the newborn immense and swiftly terminal suffering. In your view, is it evil or good to inflict that suffering?
First of all, I did not advocate the execution of those carrying out abortions. I advocated making it illegal to carry out abortions, and sentencing those who did it to life.
Second of all, abortion is an evil because it is the killing of innocent people. In your Hitler example, you already know that he is not innocent, so it is not murder...simply execution for crimes he already committed.
As far as babies born with terminal illnesses, yes, I believe the parents should be able to choose for certain illnesses whether to abort the baby or not, for the sake of saving it pain and suffering.
That is not why 99.99% of abortions are carried out though. Exceptions can always be made in the law for that and times when the mother would die.
Afternoon PVC
this is the same intellectually elite fallacy you deployed before
You are falling into the aristocratic fallacy that the "lower orders" are degenerate due to base stupidity/ignorance, such is not so. Historical degeneracy at the bottom of society tends to follow degeneracy at the top.
Thank you for reminding me I should’ve replied to this bit before.
Leaving aside your generic portrayal of elites throughout history as an aristocracy a la Ancien Régime, your assertion is demonstrably false. No one has a monopoly on originating “degeneracy”. I.e. unless you would argue the degeneracy of British football hooligans was somehow copied from Oxbridge culture, or the sexual mores hippies displayed at Woodstock were simply a leaf taken the books of North-Eastern WASP families?
Currently, the issues which were on our table, the degeneracy caused by ignorance towards contraceptive methods and prevention of STDs and what not, are disproportionately a problem stemming from the want of knowledge of lower class citizens, not sexual liberty.
So you acknowledge the harm? You are essentially arguing here that society should change and conform to the predator, or rather that if we were all predators there would be no prey. Underlying this appears to be the assumption that "social pressure" is artificial rather than organic, this is the same intellectually elite fallacy you deployed before. (...)
Infidelity to acknowledged partner
Moral degeneracy due to failure to keep word (often these people are married, or in an aknowledgedly monogomous relationships)
Lack of emotional maturity due to an inability to restrain base urges in view of the impact their actions will have on their significant othe, and/or a willingness to lie to their partner. This also evidences a profound lack of what you identified as the ability to appreciate oneself as Other.
Oh not at all, you confuse the actors. There are no predators in cases where consensual sex between unattached adults aware of each other’s social commitments takes place.
As to your answers to my inquiry asking for clarification, you’re clearly adding details to your initial example. You first described a couple of intellectuals consenting to have sex. No mention of the existence of an implicit commitment towards a long-term bond, existing relationships with a third party or negative consequences. Believe it or not, cases such as these abound all over the world, I could not presume you omitted anything on purpose.
Thus, lets try this again, perfectly normal and common consensual sex with an explicit non-binding nature between unattached adults aware of each other’s social commitments takes place, where is the infidelity, moral degeneracy and lack of emotional maturity?
Would my metaphysical beliefs in an objective moral reality be permissable, or do I have to subscribe to your relativistic ones?
I was clear in my explanation from the beginning though. Any belief is permissible, you simply aren’t allowed to argue for its enforcement on the grounds that “it is your belief”, you must use secular principles, which are empathy-based.
You begin by asking me to assent to an essentially Protagorean view of ethics, if I do so I automatically lose the arguement. It therefore goes almost without saying that I do not agree with your extreme epistomological relativism. It is niether self evident, nor provable, that my view of morality is "mistaken". In fact, the inherrent weakness of epistomological relativism is that it is only correct according to your own point of view, but not in general.
But you already lost the argument in the developed world. I am just reigning you in. We can debate opinions PVC, but we cannot argue about facts, things which are either one way or another. The “weakness” you describe is confirmed by the plurality of our race; you are “mistaken” because you’re placing yourself in opposition to reality.
And this whole side-argument began because I wanted to be clear my correct, dictionary validated usage of the term immoral in the phrase:
I can accept PVC’s pining for a less immoral (and here one has to clearly distinguish between the context of immorality, as defined specifically in some Western countries, and amorality) age
is not given the extra-valences one presumes of it nowadays, especially one who is religious.
The only absolute moral principles we can accept are those which can withstand the test of empathy.
Banquo's Ghost
10-31-2011, 16:11
First of all, I did not advocate the execution of those carrying out abortions. I advocated making it illegal to carry out abortions, and sentencing those who did it to life.
My apologies, I conflated a post of PVC's with yours. :embarrassed:
Second of all, abortion is an evil because it is the killing of innocent people. In your Hitler example, you already know that he is not innocent, so it is not murder...simply execution for crimes he already committed.
As far as babies born with terminal illnesses, yes, I believe the parents should be able to choose for certain illnesses whether to abort the baby or not, for the sake of saving it pain and suffering.
That is not why 99.99% of abortions are carried out though. Exceptions can always be made in the law for that and times when the mother would die.
OK, I understand your position more clearly now. Thank you. :bow:
Kralizec
10-31-2011, 20:37
You all need to stick to the topic, and respond to my previous post (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053391815&viewfull=1#post2053391815) :stare:
Most people ultimately want a family, ergo a long term relationship, ergo society reflects this. This is not a social construction, it reflects our need to procreate efficiently.
Infidelity to acknowledged partner
Moral degeneracy due to failure to keep word (often these people are married, or in an aknowledgedly monogomous relationships)
Lack of emotional maturity due to an inability to restrain base urges in view of the impact their actions will have on their significant othe, and/or a willingness to lie to their partner. This also evidences a profound lack of what you identified as the ability to appreciate oneself as Other.
You are deliberately lumping all out-of-marriage sex with borderline rape-cases and adultery. Most of the people who have casual sex with strangers or near-strangers do intend to pick a permanent partner to go forth with and multiply when they're a little older. I fail to see what the problem is as long as there's consent from both sides - having had a moderate amount of alcohol beforehand doesn't invalidate it. Honestly, if your objections here aren't grounded in your religious views then I don't know what to make of it. I do not see how casual sex between strangers, without additional qualifiers, in itself would lead to moral degeneration or a dysfunctional society. Stuff like unwanted pregnancies, rampant STD's and single parent families (note: not saying that there's something wrong with single parents per se; I'm referring to accidental pregnancies where the father bails out) result from poor upbringing, bad education and whatnot - pinning it entirely on "sex" or "sex outside of marriage" is disingenuous.
rory_20_uk
10-31-2011, 20:57
Fathers often bail out as the law is so biased against the father. Some probably think best to start again, rather than fight it through the courts for months. Then they can go back every time there is a problem with the arrangements. For the woman to get her child support takes a couple of weeks and comes straight out of the salary before the man gets it.
~:smoking:
I think this whole idea that abortion is solely a question for the female involved is a self-rigtheous cop-out. It so nicely dodges the question of moral responsibility when it comes to foetuses. There is this slightly yes/no question that sits at the centre of this debate - that is question of the 'rights' of a foetus: does it have any?
I will now pretend that a foetus have the same rights as an adult human (something which I vehemently disagree with in real life). If the foetus did not threaten the life of the mother, it would clearly be murder to abort it. This means, beyond the special case of rape, it would be the moral responsibility of humans not to create unwanted foetuses, because it would be murder to remove them.
This means that if the female would want to maintain full control over her body, she should either a) remain sexually inactive or b) accept the risks that come with sexual activity - in this case: unwanted pregnancy.
This is unfair for the female gender, but such is the world at times. Living comes with responsibilities, and you cannot dodge them by claiming that they are "unfair".
Unwanted pregnancies can be avoided. 100% (rape excluded).
---
Just to reiterate my position: I think it is completely absurd to let a weeks old foetus override the desires of an adult person, and so abortion is typically fine. Foetus =/= human being.
You all need to stick to the topic, and respond to my previous post (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053391815&viewfull=1#post2053391815) :stare:
I am only going to say that I am all for prenatal eugenics, and leave it at that. ~;)
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
10-31-2011, 23:52
Afternoon PVC
Thank you for reminding me I should’ve replied to this bit before.
Leaving aside your generic portrayal of elites throughout history as an aristocracy a la Ancien Régime, your assertion is demonstrably false. No one has a monopoly on originating “degeneracy”. I.e. unless you would argue the degeneracy of British football hooligans was somehow copied from Oxbridge culture, or the sexual mores hippies displayed at Woodstock were simply a leaf taken the books of North-Eastern WASP families?
Ever heard of the Bullingdon club? I can't speak for America and Woodstock but university students in the UK have a long history of Hooliganism, and like the "Buller" the difference between upper class hooligans and lower class ones is that in the former case his Pa might come round the next day and pay for the damages and offer something approaching an apology, if you're lucky. More recently, one of the justifications used for the London riots, which were nothing but criminal destruction, was that if MP's and Bankers can get away with anything why should "ordinary" people obey the law.
Currently, the issues which were on our table, the degeneracy caused by ignorance towards contraceptive methods and prevention of STDs and what not, are disproportionately a problem stemming from the want of knowledge of lower class citizens, not sexual liberty.
High numbers of single teenage mothers are caused by moral degeneracy and poor sexual habits, not ignorance. The people know about condoms and the Pill, often they choose not to use them. What is lacking is the ability and or willingness to take responsibility for ones actions.
Oh not at all, you confuse the actors. There are no predators in cases where consensual sex between unattached adults aware of each other’s social commitments takes place.
This is absurd, because most one night stands happen between strangers who do not know each others' social commitments. If I walk into a bar and I buy a girl a drink and she says, "do you have a girlfriend" and I say "no." she can only take my word for it. Among complete strangers this can be taken even further, in a random bar in London I can put on a talored suit and shiny shoes and call myself a Banker, but I am in fact just a "poor clerk that can getten him no prefferment nor benefice."
As to your answers to my inquiry asking for clarification, you’re clearly adding details to your initial example. You first described a couple of intellectuals consenting to have sex. No mention of the existence of an implicit commitment towards a long-term bond, existing relationships with a third party or negative consequences. Believe it or not, cases such as these abound all over the world, I could not presume you omitted anything on purpose.
Thus, lets try this again, perfectly normal and common consensual sex with an explicit non-binding nature between unattached adults aware of each other’s social commitments takes place, where is the infidelity, moral degeneracy and lack of emotional maturity?
You didn't read what I wrote, I said:
On the other hand, if two academics were to meet at a conference, say, and fall into bed after one gave a particularly passionate and lucid paper on 14th Century poetic lyrics addressed to the Virgin Mary that might conform to the sort of experience you describe, but in my experience such encounters also include an element of infidelity which, even if admitted to beforehand, demonstrated moral degeneracy and a lack of emotional maturity.
Infidelity, that is explicit as to the cause of the immorallity in my example, which is based on reports of actual events.
I was clear in my explanation from the beginning though. Any belief is permissible, you simply aren’t allowed to argue for its enforcement on the grounds that “it is your belief”, you must use secular principles, which are empathy-based.
I think you'll find that "secular" principles are generally based on deductive logic and balance/value judgements, not empathy. A judgement based on "empathy" would see me become a vegetarian because I don't enjoy killing sheep, as I suffer a negative emotional response from the slaughter.
But you already lost the argument in the developed world.
Fashion is ever changing, just because we live in a relativistic period which does not make value or worth judgements does not mean it will always be so. You're wrong anyway, not only is my absolutist view of morality shared by most religious people, it is also shared by many "secularists" and the New Athiests. About the only thing I agree with Richard Dawkins on is that there is good and evil in the world.
I am just reigning you in. We can debate opinions PVC, but we cannot argue about facts, things which are either one way or another. The “weakness” you describe is confirmed by the plurality of our race; you are “mistaken” because you’re placing yourself in opposition to reality.
No, you're just winding me up.
In order for me to be in opposition to reality reality must be objective, but you are an epistomological relativist. AND you have answered my question, I must subscribe to your metaphysics.
I refuse, and I rebuke you ths.
YOU ARE IN OPPOSITION TO REALITY
And this whole side-argument began because I wanted to be clear my correct, dictionary validated usage of the term immoral in the phrase:
I can accept PVC’s pining for a less immoral (and here one has to clearly distinguish between the context of immorality, as defined specifically in some Western countries, and amorality) age
is not given the extra-valences one presumes of it nowadays, especially one who is religious.
The only absolute moral principles we can accept are those which can withstand the test of empathy.
You quoted the OED short definition of "moral" not "immoral". You also quoted selectively, the whole entry from the acual OED reads:
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈmɒrəl/ , /ˈmɒrlˌ/ , U.S. /ˈmɔr(ə)l/ Forms: ME–15 moralle, ME–16 morale, ME–16 morall, ME– moral, 15–16 morrall; Sc. pre-17 morale, pre-17 morall, pre-17 morell, pre-17 morrall, pre-17 17– moral. ... (Show More) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle French moral (late 13th cent. in Old French in phrase vertu morale : see moral virtue n. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/255407#eid11242425); c1370 modifying other nouns; 1403 in philosophie morele ; late 17th cent. in sense ‘founded on opinion, sentiment or belief and not on meticulous facts or reasoning’; mid 18th cent. in sense ‘relating to the soul or spirit, as opposed to the physical’) and their etymon classical Latin mōrālis concerned with ethics, moral < mōr- , mōs custom (plural mōrēs habits, morals (compare mores n. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/122201#eid36065300)); of unknown origin) + -ālis -al suffix1 (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/4478#eid7842024). Classical Latin mōrālis was formed by Cicero ( De Fato ii. i) as a rendering of ancient Greek ἠθικός ethic adj. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/64755#eid5292172) (mōrēs being the accepted Latin equivalent of ἤθη ).Compare Italian morale decent, proper (late 13th cent.; early 14th cent. in sense ‘concerning modes of behaviour’), Spanish moral (c1330), Old Occitan moral (14th cent.), Portuguese moral (1525); also Dutch moreel (1889; < French moral , with alteration of the suffix), German moralisch (16th cent.), Swedish moralisk (17th cent.), Danish moralsk .
In sense 2d (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#eid36033402) after post-classical Latin moralis , from 5th cent. in this sense.
In moral philosophy after classical Latin philosophia mōrālis , Middle French philosophie morele (1403; French philosophie morale ).
In moral philosopher after post-classical Latin philosophus moralis (from early 13th cent. in British sources, of Seneca); compare Middle French philosophes moriaux , plural (late 16th cent., used of the moralists of antiquity).
With moral science compare French science morale (early 17th cent. or earlier; compare Anglo-Norman les sept sciences, qe sount logiciene, naturele, morale, [etc.] , mid 14th cent.).
With moral theology compare French théologie morale (1868 in Littré).... (Show More) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
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a. Of or relating to human character or behaviour considered as good or bad; of or relating to the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, in relation to the actions, desires, or character of responsible human beings; ethical.Recorded earliest in moral virtue n. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/255407#eid11242425)
c1387–95 Chaucer Canterbury Tales Prol. (javascript:void(0)) 307 Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche.
a1402 J. Trevisa tr. R. Fitzralph Defensio Curatorum (javascript:void(0)) (1925) 81 No man may feyne þat the forseide heeste is cerymonial‥For hit is verrey moral, longynge to good þewes.
c1449 R. Pecock Repressor (javascript:void(0)) (1860) 155 Sum vntrewe opinioun of men‥is leding into deedis whiche ben grete moral vicis.
a1500 (1340) R. Rolle Psalter (javascript:void(0)) (Univ. Oxf. 64) (1884) cxviii. 1 Þis psalme‥all shynys of haly lare and morale swetnes.
1593 G. Harvey Pierces Supererogation (javascript:void(0)) 103 An aduauncement‥of that morall, and intellectuall good, that‥so forciblie emprooueth itselfe.
a1616 Shakespeare All's Well that ends Well (javascript:void(0)) (1623) i. ii. 21 Youth, thou bear'st thy Fathers face‥Thy Fathers morall parts Maist thou inherit too.
1675 R. Burthogge Cavsa Dei (javascript:void(0)) 97 Since the Objection doth proceed of Moral, and not of Metaphysical and Abstract Goodness.
1740 D. Hume Treat. Human Nature (javascript:void(0)) III. i. 17 If these moral relations cou'd be apply'd to external objects, it wou'd follow, that even inanimate beings wou'd be susceptible of moral beauty and deformity.
1784 E. Allen Reason (javascript:void(0)) viii. §2. 303 Moral good or evil is mental and personal, which cannot be transferred, changed or altered from one person to another.
1839 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe (javascript:void(0)) IV. iv. 306 The theologians who went no farther than revelation, or at least than the positive law of God, for moral distinctions.
1876 J. B. Mozley Serm. before Univ. Oxf. (javascript:void(0)) iv. 97 It is plain that eloquence, imagination, poetical talent, are no more moral goodness than riches are.
1949 M. Fortes Social Struct. (javascript:void(0)) 60 Its form derives from a paradigm‥sanctioned by‥moral values.
1988 T. L. S. Sprigge Rational Found. Ethics (javascript:void(0)) iv. 93 In identifying moral goodness with benevolence, he [sc. Hutcheson] had seen the goodness of a man as essentially the amount of happiness he produced divided by his opportunities.
c1387-95—1988(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
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b. Of an action: having the property of being right or wrong, or good or evil; voluntary or deliberate and therefore open to ethical appraisal. Of a person, etc.: capable of moral action; able to choose between right and wrong, or good and evil.
1593 R. Hooker Of Lawes Eccl. Politie (javascript:void(0))i. xvi. 93 The axiomes of that lawe‥haue their vse in the morall, yea, euen in the spirituall actions of men.
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (javascript:void(0))ii. xxvii. 157 There is another sort of Relation, which is the Conformity, or Disagreement, Mens voluntary Actions have to a Rule, to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of; which, I think, may be called Moral Relation; as being that which denominates our Moral Actions.
1736 Bp. J. Butler Analogy of Relig. (javascript:void(0))i. iii. 54 That God has given us a moral Nature,‥ a Proof of our being under his moral Government.
1754 J. Edwards Careful Enq. Freedom of Will (javascript:void(0))i. v. 29 A moral Agent is a Being that is capable of those Actions that have a moral Quality.
1802 W. Paley Nat. Theol. (javascript:void(0)) xxvii. 586 The moral and accountable part of his terrestrial creation.
1868 A. Bain Mental & Moral Sci. (javascript:void(0)) 403 Every creature possessing mind is a moral agent.
1910 Encycl. Brit. (javascript:void(0)) I. 766/1 A philosophical term‥for that theory of conduct which regards the good of others as the end of moral action.
1946 Mind (javascript:void(0)) 55 115 A will-less saint would be a sub-moral being, a fine creature perhaps, but not a responsible moral agent.
1980 J. H. Crook Evol. Human Consciousness (javascript:void(0)) ii. 14 In some Christian doctrine the flesh is the source of evil and the soul or mind is elevated as the moral agent with behavioural choice.
1593—1980(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
c. Of knowledge, an opinion, etc.: relating to the nature and application of the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil. Cf. sense 2c (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#eid36033334).
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (javascript:void(0))iv. iv. 284 And hence it follows, that moral Knowledge is as capable of real Certainty, as Mathematicks.
1752 Philos. Trans. 1749–50 (javascript:void(0)) (Royal Soc.) 46 750 The original meaning of the Word Philosophy was rightly applied to moral Wisdom.
1752 Ld. Chesterfield Let. (javascript:void(0)) 6 Jan. (1932) (modernized text) V. 1815 If the religious and moral principles of the Society [sc. the Jesuits] are to be detested.
1817 S. T. Coleridge Biographia Literaria (javascript:void(0)) I. x. 213 My essays contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view.
1883 W. James Let. 23 Jan. in R. B. Perry Thought & Char. W. James (1935) I. 389 Although from a moral point of view your sympathy commands my warmest thanks, from the intellectual point of view, it seems, first, to suppose that I am a bachelor [etc.].
1951 C. Day Lewis Poet's Task 19 As an aesthetic judgement this is so bizarre that one can only take it for a moral judgement.
1988 R. Christiansen Romantic Affinities (javascript:void(0)) ii. 77 He hectored his fiancée Wilhelmine with lists of knotty moral questions: ‘Is it better to do good, or to be good?’
1690—1988(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
d. Of an idea, speech, etc.: involving ethical praise or blame.
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (javascript:void(0)) Contents (heading) Book IV‥Chap. III‥19. Two Things have made moral Ideas thought uncapable of Demonstration. Their Complexedness, and want of sensible Representations.
1845 W. Whewell Elem. Morality (javascript:void(0)) I. 238 The Supreme Standard‥is expressed by the Moral Ideas, Benevolence, Justice, Truth, Purity, and Wisdom.
1865 J. Grote Treat. Moral Ideals (javascript:void(0)) (1876) 108 Those words, like all moral words, by frequent complimentary use‥have lost much of their warmth and force.
1908 E. Westermarck (title) The origin and development of the moral ideas.
1992 Times Higher Educ. Suppl. (javascript:void(0)) 27 Mar. 16/2 Dewey‥tried to modernise liberal political discourse through moral concepts derived from the social sciences.
1690—1992(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
e. Of a feeling: arising from an apprehension or sense of the goodness or badness of an action, character, etc.
1768 L. Sterne Sentimental Journey (javascript:void(0)) I. 134 With what a moral delight will it crown my journey.
1830 M. Donovan Domest. Econ. (javascript:void(0)) II. iii. 45 To those who have got over the moral disgust of such food [sc. human flesh], it‥has recommendatory qualities.
1872 J. Morley Voltaire (javascript:void(0)) i. 7 Perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty,‥drives men to grasp even a crudity with fervour.
1984 ‘J. Gash’ Gondola Scam (javascript:void(0)) (1985) xv. 112 Moral indignation from a Venetian is a scream, seeing they invented Carnival and the cicisbeo, that sissy upper-class version of a gigolo.
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a. Of a literary work, an artistic or dramatic representation, etc.: dealing with the rightness and wrongness of conduct; intended to teach morality or convey a moral; (hence also) having a beneficial moral effect, edifying. In early use also: †allegorical, emblematical ([I]obs.).
c1390 Chaucer Melibeus (javascript:void(0)) 2130 It is a moral tale vertuous.
c1390 Chaucer Pardoner's Tale (javascript:void(0)) 39 Tel vs som moral thyng that we may leere Som wit.
c1443 R. Pecock Reule of Crysten Religioun (javascript:void(0)) (Morgan M 519) 434 Þese now seid persoones wroote þe story of þe new testament and al þe moral documentis of þe same testament.
a1500 (1425) tr. Secreta Secret. (javascript:void(0)) (Lamb.) 48 He made many morales epistels to Aristotel.
1526 Pylgrimage of Perfection (javascript:void(0)) (de Worde) f. 2, They shal haue therby a lyght to perceyue the better all moral matter, that they shall here preched or taught.
1568 (1505) R. Henryson tr. Æsop Fables (Bannatyne) 1401, I pray Vndir the figure of sum brutall beist, A morall fable ȝe wald dedene to say.
a1616 Shakespeare Timon of Athens (javascript:void(0)) (1623) i. i. 91 A thousand morall Paintings I can shew, That shall demonstrate these quicke blowes of Fortunes, More pregnantly then words.
1660 F. Brooke tr. V. Le Blanc World Surveyed (javascript:void(0)) 272 We had the pleasure there to see a morall representation of the Magdalens conversion.
1671 Milton Samson Agonistes (javascript:void(0)) Pref. 3 Tragedy‥hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems.
1726 Swift Gulliver (javascript:void(0)) I. ii. vii. 134 From this way of Reasoning the Author drew several moral Applications useful in the Conduct of Life.
1744 Pope Wks. (1755) III. 105 (title) Moral Essays, in four epistles to Several Persons.
1789 H. L. Thrale Observ. Journey France (javascript:void(0)) I. 115 To what purpose then‥the moral dances, as they call them now? One word of solid instruction to the ear, conveys more knowledge to the mind at last, than all these marionettes presented to the eye.
1811 R. Hunter (title) The schoolmistress, a moral tale for young ladies.
1873 R. Browning Red Cotton Night-cap Country (javascript:void(0))iii. 171 The late death-chamber, tricked with‥Skulls, cross-bones, and such moral broidery.
1919 W. S. Maugham Moon & Sixpence (javascript:void(0)) ii. 10 Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets.
1987 G. Phelps Short Guide to World Novel (javascript:void(0)) (1988) 141 Catherine the Great‥wrote a number of moral fables.
c1390—1987(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
†b. Of a person, esp. a writer: expounding moral precepts (in early use applied to allegorists). Also in extended use. Obs.
a1425 (1385) Chaucer Troilus & Criseyde (javascript:void(0)) (1987) v. 1856 O moral Gower, this book I directe To the.
a1450 (1421) Lydgate Siege Thebes (javascript:void(0)) (Arun.) 995 A Tragedye of Moral Senyk.
c1460 Lydgate Minor Poems (javascript:void(0)) (1934) ii. 784 The tragedyes‥Of moral Senek.
1508 W. Dunbar Goldyn Targe (Chepman & Myllar) in Poems (javascript:void(0)) (1998) 192 O morall Gower and Ludgate laureate.
1582 T. Watson In Commend. Aucthor in G. Whetstone Heptameron Ciuill Disc. (javascript:void(0)) sig. ¶, Euen as the fruictfull Bee, doth‥Sweet Honie draine, & layes it vp,‥So, Morall Whetstone, to his Countrey doth impart, A Worke of worth.
1600 Shakespeare Much Ado about Nothing (javascript:void(0))v. i. 30 Tis all mens office, to speake patience To those that wring vnder the loade of sorrow But no mans vertue nor sufficiencie To be so morall, when he shall endure The like himselfe.
1718 M. Prior Picture Seneca Dying in Poems Several Occasions (javascript:void(0)) 8 While cruel Nero only drains The moral Spaniard's ebbing Veins.
1742 E. Young Complaint (javascript:void(0))ix. 534 The moral muse has shadow'd out a sketch.
a1425—1742(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
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c. Treating of or concerned with the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, or the rules of right conduct, as a subject of study.
c1443 R. Pecock Reule of Crysten Religioun (javascript:void(0)) (Morgan M 519) 334 Leernyd men in logik, in natural philosophie and moral philosophie and in diuinite.
1656 T. Hobbes Elements Philos. (javascript:void(0))i. i. 7 From the want of Morall science proceed Civill warres, and the greatest calamities of mankind.
1741 I. Watts Improvem. Mind (javascript:void(0))i. xvii. 269 Fabellus would never learn any Moral Lessons till they were moulded into the Form of some‥Fable.
1791 Bp. G. Horne Charge to Clergy 14 Morality‥hath four chief virtues, which moral writers have well explained.
a1866 J. Grote Exam. Utilit. Philos. (javascript:void(0)) (1870) iv. 61 A description as complete and beautiful, I think, as is to be found in any moral writings.
1878 J. P. Hopps (title) Religious and moral lectures.
1990 R. McCormick & M. James Curriculum Eval. in Schools 51 Other subjects‥included:‥history and geography; moral education; health education [etc.].
c1443—1990(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
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d. Designating or relating to an interpretation of a biblical passage which treats the events described as typifying something in the life of the reader; = tropological adj. 2 (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/206722#eid17645948). Later also in extended use.In quot. 1529 (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#eid36033446) used adverbially.
a1450 (1397) Prol. Old Test. in Bible (Wycliffite, L.V.) (javascript:void(0))(Harl. 1666) (1850) 3 To the literal vndirstonding it [sc. Jerusalem] singnefieth an erthly citee‥to allegorie it singnefieth hooly chirche in erthe‥to moral vndirstondinge it singnefieth a cristen soule [etc.].
c1475 (1445) R. Pecock Donet (javascript:void(0)) 107 Such a moral vndirstonding or an allegorie or an anogogie of holi scripture.
1503 S. Hawes Example of Vertu (javascript:void(0)) ix. 10, I‥lykened the wyldernes by morall scence Vnto worldely trouble by good experyence.
1529 T. More Supplyc. Soulys (javascript:void(0))ii. f. xxx, Bycause some doctours do conster those wordys of thappostle in dyuerse other sensys,‥sometyme after the letter, somtyme morall and somtyme other wyse.
1572 J. Higgins Huloets Dict. (javascript:void(0)) (new ed.) (at cited word), The morall sence of a fable, epimythium.
1600 Shakespeare Much Ado about Nothing (javascript:void(0))iii. iv. 74 Morall? no by my troth I haue no morall meaning, I meant plaine holy thissel.
1609 Bible (Douay) (javascript:void(0))I. Gen. i. 1 Comm., There are three spiritual senses besides the literal‥: Allegorical‥Moral‥and Anagogical.
1794 R. J. Sulivan View Nature (javascript:void(0)) II, There is a grammatical and an anagogetical or moral sense.
1884 Expositor (javascript:void(0)) Jan. 45 The three traditional divisions of the mystic sense into allegoric, tropologic or moral, and anagogic or spiritual.
1952 Yale French Stud. 9 62 Old desires must be clarified and the lovers must grow in understanding. This is the final tropological or moral sense of the poem.
a1450—1952(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
3.
a. Of, relating to, or concerned with the morals or morality of a person or group of people.
a1393 Gower Confessio Amantis (javascript:void(0)) (Fairf.) vii. 1650 Hou that a king himself schal reule Of his moral condicion With worthi disposicion Of good livinge in his persone.
1670 R. G. Preston (title) Angliæ speculum morale; the moral state of England.
1794 W. Paley View Evidences Christianity (javascript:void(0)) I. i. v. 119 The phrases which the same writer employs to describe the moral condition of Christians, compared with their condition before they became Christians.
1818 H. Hallam View Europe Middle Ages (javascript:void(0)) II. ix. 602/2 His standard is taken, not from Avignon, but from Edinburgh,‥where the moral barometer stands at a very different altitude.
1848 W. K. Kelly tr. L. Blanc Hist. Ten Years (javascript:void(0)) I. 382 The moral interests of society seemed still more compromised than the material.
1874 J. R. Green Short Hist. Eng. People (javascript:void(0)) vii. §5. 393 The moral and religious change which was passing over the country through the progress of Puritanism.
1914 Observer (javascript:void(0)) 16 Aug. 4/6 That means an immense moral change. All modern Germany has been brought up to adore the myth which attributed to them alone the secret of some unapproachable military efficiency.
1993 Lancaster Diocesan Catholic Voice Apr. 2 Much debate has evolved as to the moral state of our nation and of our young people in particular.
a1393—1993(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
b. Relating to, affecting, or having influence on a person's character or conduct, as distinguished from his or her intellectual or physical nature.
1597 R. Hooker Of Lawes Eccl. Politie (javascript:void(0))v. lvii.128 Sacraments‥are not physicall but morall instruments of saluation, duties of seruice and worship.
1600 Shakespeare Much Ado about Nothing (javascript:void(0))i. iii. 11, I wonder that thou‥goest about to apply a morall medicine, to a mortifying mischiefe.
1659 H. Thorndike Epil. Trag. Church of Eng.i. 186, I acknowledg the Scriptures to be an Instrument of God, though a Moral Instrument.
1728 E. Chambers Cycl. (javascript:void(0)) at Necessity, The Schools distinguish a Physical Necessity, and a Moral Necessity.‥ Moral Necessity‥is only a great Difficulty, such as that arising from a Long Habitude, a strong Inclination, or violent Passion.
1742 E. Young Complaint (javascript:void(0))v. 284 I'll‥gather ev'ry thought of sov'reign power To chace the moral maladies of man.
1780 W. Cowper Progress of Error (javascript:void(0)) 272 'Tis not alone the grape's enticing juice Unnerves the moral pow'rs, and mars their use.
1823 W. Cobbett Rural Rides in Weekly Reg. (javascript:void(0)) 6 Sept. 602 There is now very little moral hold which the latter [sc. the clergy] possess.
1841 H. D. Thoreau Jrnl. 19 Feb. (1981) I. 269 It is a moral force as well as he.
1851 Edinb. Rev. (javascript:void(0)) Jan. 225 The only effect produced was a kind of amicable splitting of the repeal party into two co-operative factions,—the moral-force men and the physical-force men.
1868 A. Bain Mental & Moral Sci. (javascript:void(0)) 395 Moral Inability expresses the insufficiency of ordinary motives, but not of all motives.
1913 Act 3 & 4 Geo. V (javascript:void(0)) c. 28 §1 Moral imbeciles; that is to say, persons who from an early age display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities.
1951 R. Firth Elem. Social Organization (javascript:void(0)) vi. 213 It is in the capacity to generate and adapt moral force that man derives one of the most potent springs to social action.
1968 Listener (javascript:void(0)) 26 Sept. 408/1 ‘Moral insanity’ was superseded by ‘moral imbecility’; this in turn gave way to ‘psychopathic personality’ (which had developed out of ‘constitutional psychopathic inferiority’).
1986 J. Huxley Leaves of Tulip Tree (javascript:void(0)) (1987) iv. 78 Julian was not a physical but a moral invalid, absent from himself, indifferent to everything.
1597—1986(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
c. Modifying a noun: having those qualities (i.e. those of the noun) metaphorically in respect of moral character or condition.
1692 R. L'Estrange Fables (javascript:void(0)) cccxxviii. 286 If all our Moral Wolves in Sheeps-Cloathing, were but Serv'd as This Hypocritical Wolfe was in the Fiction.
1813 Shelley Queen Mab (javascript:void(0))ii. 25 Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desart now.
1821 Scott Kenilworth (javascript:void(0)) III. v. 78 Varney was one of the few—the very few moral monsters, who contrive to lull to sleep the remorse of their own bosoms.
1852 G. C. Mundy Our Antipodes (javascript:void(0)) I. iii. 93 Sufferers for the sins of their fathers, moral bastards.
1894 W. E. Gladstone in Times (javascript:void(0)) 9 Nov. 7/5 In my opinion‥an undenominational system of religion, framed by or under the authority of the State, is a moral monster.
1964 S. M. Willhelm in I. L. Horowitz New Sociol. 184 The scientific ideology simply places the scientist in a moral vacuum.
1992 J. Torrington Swing Hammer Swing! (javascript:void(0)) xxii. 190 Let's face some home truths, Clay; you're a moral skunk.
1692—1992(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
d. Designating the incidental effect of an action or event (e.g. a victory or defeat) in producing confidence or discouragement, sympathy or hostility, etc. Cf. sense 8 (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#eid36034651).
1835 A. Alison Hist. Europe (javascript:void(0)) IV. xxx. 261 The loss to the contending parties was nearly equal,‥but all the moral advantages of a victory were on their [sc. the French] side.
1860 J. S. Mill Considerations Representative Govt. (javascript:void(0)) (1865) 61 The instructed minority would, in the actual voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they would count for much more.
1883 C. J. Wills In Land of Lion & Sun (javascript:void(0)) 111 Armenian‥scowls staggering along in secure insolence, confident in the moral protection given him by the presence of the Englishman.
1888 Times (javascript:void(0)) 13 June 6/1 His idea was that the moral effect of artillery fire was greater than the positive.
1901 Dict. National Biogr. (javascript:void(0)) at Victoria, Both the material and moral advantages that England derived from her intervention were long questioned.
1995 New Yorker (javascript:void(0)) 27 Mar. 62/1 Opposition to affirmative action has a second great advantage in today's political culture: it feeds that powerful hunger for the moral prestige and political spoils of victimhood.
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a. Of a person, a person's conduct, etc.: morally good, virtuous; conforming to standards of morality.
c1443 R. Pecock Reule of Crysten Religioun (javascript:void(0)) (Morgan M 519) 211 Þou [sc. Christ] lividist a moral, holy lijf after lawe of kinde.
c1475 (1445) R. Pecock Donet (javascript:void(0)) 118/24 Alle þe dedis‥bi wordis writen in þo x comaundementis ben pure moral ech oon.
1582 R. Mulcaster 1st Pt. Elementarie (javascript:void(0)) xi. 55 Then will I set down som other well pikt discourse, which shall concern morall behauior.
1638 T. Herbert Some Yeares Trav. (javascript:void(0)) (rev. ed.) 233 Morall men they are, and humane in language and garbe.
1697 Dryden Ded. Æneis in tr. Virgil Wks. (javascript:void(0)) sig. a3, Your Essay of Poetry‥I read over and over with much delight,‥and, without flattering you, or making my self more Moral than I am, not without some Envy.
1700 Dryden Fables (javascript:void(0)) Pref. sig. *Cv, My Enemies‥will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a Moral Man.
1782 W. Cowper Conversation in Poems (javascript:void(0)) 222 A moral, sensible and well-bred man Will not affront me.
1841–8 F. Myers Catholic Thoughts (javascript:void(0)) II. iv. §23. 293 A man may be Moral without being Religious, but he cannot be Religious without being Moral.
1868 J. Ruskin Arrows of Chace (javascript:void(0)) (1880) II. 199 A man taught to plough, row or steer well‥ already educated in many essential moral habits.
1921 D. O. Stewart Parody Outl. of Hist. (javascript:void(0)) iv. 87 The Mayflower‥had landed its precious cargo of pious Right Thinkers, moral Gentlemen of God, and—Priscilla.
1990 D. Peterson Dress Gray (javascript:void(0)) Introd. 2, I just wanted to attend West Point:‥to live in a moral, disciplined environment under an internalized Honor code.
c1443—1990(Hide quotations) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/#)
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†b.[I]spec. Characterized by virtues other than specifically religious ones. See moral virtue n. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/255407#eid11242425) Obs.
1620 J. Ford Line of Life (javascript:void(0)) sig. Fv, Socrates‥a good man, if a meere morrall man may be termed so.
a1686 T. Watson Body Pract. Divinity (javascript:void(0)) (1692) 979 A Moral Man doth as much hate Holiness as he doth Vice.
1824 J. Hogg Private Mem. Justified Sinner (javascript:void(0)) 197 A Mr. Blanchard, who was reckoned a worthy, pious divine, but quite of the moral cast.
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c. Virtuous with regard to sexual conduct; showing sexual morality. Freq. in moral restraint.
1803 T. R. Malthus Ess. Princ. Population (javascript:void(0)) (new ed.) iv. v. 523 The increase of vice which might contingently follow an attempt to inculcate the duty of moral restraint.
1806 T. R. Malthus Ess. Princ. Population (javascript:void(0)) (ed. 3) I. i. i. 19 By moral restraint I‥mean a restraint from marriage, from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral.
1820 Shelley Œdipus Tyrannus (javascript:void(0))i. 74 Spay those Sows That load the earth with Pigs‥Moral restraint I see has no effect.
1879 ‘G. Eliot’ Theophrastus Such (javascript:void(0)) xvi. 283 Sir Gavial‥is a thoroughly moral man.‥ Very different from Mr. Barabbas, whose life‥is most objectionable, with actresses and that sort of thing.
1951 V. Nabokov Let. 12 Oct. in Sel. Lett. (javascript:void(0)) (1989) 128, I am engaged in the composition of a novel, which deals with the problems of a very moral middle-aged gentleman who falls very immorally in love with his stepdaughter, a girl of thirteen.
1991 S. Walker Rom. Art (javascript:void(0)) 33 The stola, a traditional female garment deliberately revived by Augustus as an expression of his policy of moral restraint upon members of the aristocracy.
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a. Designating the body of requirements to which an action must conform in order to be right or virtuous; (also) designating a particular requirement of this kind. Freq. in moral law.When applied to laws often contrasted with ‘positive’ or ‘instituted’ laws, the obligation of which depends solely on the fact that they have been imposed by a rightful authority (cf. natural law n. (https://forums.totalwar.org/view/Entry/255255#eid11226575)). In early use chiefly applied to those parts of the Mosaic Law which enunciate moral rather than ceremonial or juridical precepts and principles.
c1449 R. Pecock Repressor (javascript:void(0)) (1860) 13 Doom of natural resoun‥is clepid ‘moral law of kinde’.
a1450 (1397) Prol. Old Test. in Bible (Wycliffite, L.V.) (javascript:void(0))(Harl. 1666) (1850) 3 The old testament is departid‥in to moral comaundementis, iudicials, and cerimonyals.
1551 T. Wilson Rule of Reason (javascript:void(0)) sig. Eijv, The morall law standeth for euer,‥The Iudiciall law is next, the which‥we be not bound to obserue as the Israelites ware.
1609 Shakespeare Troilus & Cressida (javascript:void(0))ii. ii. 183 If Helen then be wife to Sparta's King‥these morall lawes Of nature and of nations, speake alowd To haue her back returnd.
1640 W. Prynne Ld. Bishops (javascript:void(0)) viii. sig. Hiijv, If the Prelates shall pronounce the 4th Commandement not to be Morall for the sanctifying of a Seventh day.
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (javascript:void(0))i. iii. 15, I think it will be hard to instance any one moral Rule.
1736 Bp. J. Butler Analogy of Relig. (javascript:void(0))ii. i. 157 The moral Law is‥interwoven into our very Nature.
1784 E. Allen Reason (javascript:void(0)) v. §2. 193 Nor is it possible that the Jews, who adhere to the law of Moses, should be under greater obligation to the moral law, than the Japannese; or the Christians than the Chinese.
1819 R. Hall Wks. (javascript:void(0)) (1841) V. 327 The laws given to the Israelites were of three kinds—ceremonial, judicial, and moral.
1876 L. Stephen Hist. Eng. Thought 18th Cent. (javascript:void(0)) II. ix. 5 Hobbes‥audaciously identified the moral with the positive law.
1927 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. (javascript:void(0)) 32 736 The same forces which co-operate to create the characteristic social organization and the accepted moral order of a given society or social group determine at the same time‥the character of the individuals who compose that society.
1951 R. Firth Elem. Social Organization (javascript:void(0)) vi. 185 The effective standard of judgement‥has appeared to be the recognition of offences against a moral code of behaviour.
1994 N.Y. Rev. Bks. (javascript:void(0)) 12 May 16/2 There is an engaging search for a specific historic link to the followers of the seventeenth-century Ranter Ludowick Muggleton, with their‥furious rejections of the Mosaic Moral Law.
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b. Of a right, obligation, responsibility, etc.: founded on moral law; valid according to the principles of morality. Freq. contrasted with legal.
1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (javascript:void(0))ii. xxvii. 156 Sometimes the foundation of considering Things, with reference to one another, is some act whereby any one comes by a Moral, Right, Power, or Obligation to do something.
1736 Bp. J. Butler Analogy of Relig. (javascript:void(0))ii. Concl. 290 Our Obligation to attend to His Voice, is, surely, moral in all Cases.
1882 J. Morley Cobden (1902) xix. 71/1 Cobden thus strove to diffuse the sense of moral responsibility in connexion with the use of capital.
1924 R. W. Seton-Watson New Slovakia (javascript:void(0)) vi. 104 Such international opinion as regards the ‘Minority rights’ provided for by the Peace Treaties, as a moral obligation assumed by all members of the League of Nations.
1971 Universe 15 Oct. 19/3 [Where a legal right may be questionable] what cannot be denied is that he has a moral right—in fact a moral duty—to do so.
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†6. Of or relating to manners and customs. Obs.
1604 E. G. tr. J. de Acosta (title) The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies [Sp. Historia natural y moral de las Indias 1590].
1647 O. Cromwell in C. H. Firth Clarke Papers (javascript:void(0)) (1992) 370 If you make the best of itt, if you should change the Government to the best of itt, itt is but a morall thinge.
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7. Of evidence, argument, etc.: based on a knowledge of the general tendencies of human nature, or of a particular person's character; probable rather than demonstrative, sufficient to justify practical certainty. Of a belief: held as practically certain. Freq. in moral certainty n. a degree of probability so great as to admit of no reasonable doubt; a practical certainty on the basis of moral evidence.The distinction between different degrees of certainty is made by Aristotle, who points out that moral philosophy cannot be discussed with the same insistence on proof as mathematics ( Nicomachaean Ethics 1094 b13), and is taken up in scholastic thought, e.g. by St Thomas Aquinas, who argues that a degree of certainty less than the highest is adequate for the conduct of human affairs ( Summa Theologica 1a 2ae. 96, 1). Although post-classical Latin moralis, moraliter have the sense ‘in or according to common usage’ as early as the 11th cent., they do not usually seem to be used of certainty in medieval authors. However, by the end of the 16th cent., if not earlier, the bases for assent to a truth could be classified as metaphysica, physica, or moralia, as they are by Francisco Suárez SJ ( Metaphysicae Disputationes 29, 3, 34–6), and post-classical Latin certitudo moralis is opposed to certitudo absoluta a1626 (A. Gazet, in Cassian's Collations xx. vii, in Cassian's Opera Omnia). Descartes uses Fr. moralement impossible to refer to a morally certain but not strictly demonstrable impossibility in the Discours de la Methode (1637), and refers to the arguments of the Principia as moraliter certa in the Latin text of 1644 (iv. §205), using French certitude morale at the corresponding point in the French text of 1647. From the mid 17th cent. onwards, the concept of moral certainty was applied to evidence in law and natural science as well as religion, and was defined with various degrees of precision, e.g. as a probability of at least 0.999 in Jakob Bernouilli's Ars Conjectandi (1713).
1637 W. Chillingworth Relig. Protestants iv. 224 It is impossible for any man (according to the grounds of your Religion) to know himselfe, much lesse another to be a true Pope, or a true Priest; nay to have a Morall certainty of it, because these things are obnoxious to innumerable secret and undiscernable nullities.
a1644 W. Chillingworth in R. R. Orr Reason & Authority (1967) iii. 51 The schools distinguish of two kinds of certainty; Metaphysical, whereby we know that a thing is so‥and Moral, whereby we are assured a thing is so.‥ Moral certainty, is begott in us, by presumption and probabilities.
1646 J. Maxwell Burden of Issachar in Phenix (javascript:void(0)) (1708) II. 276 That this is truth, I am as much assur'd of, as moral Certainty can assure any Man of moral Truth.
1660 Bp. J. Taylor Ductor Dubitantium (javascript:void(0)) I. i. v. 175 The Negative doubt is either Metaphysical or Moral, or it is onely a Suspicion.
a1676 M. Hale Primitive Originat. Mankind (javascript:void(0)) (1677) ii. i. 128 Though the evidence be still in its own nature but moral, and not simply demonstrative or infallible.
1685 tr. P. Nicole & A. Arnauld Logic (javascript:void(0))lv. xv. 237 We ought to be satisfy'd with a moral assurance, in things not capable of Metaphysical certainty.
1692 R. L'Estrange Fables (javascript:void(0)) ccxci. 254 He‥so Parts with a Moral Certainty in Possession, for a Wild and a Remote Possibility in Reversion.
1725 I. Watts Logick (javascript:void(0))ii. ii. §9 In Matters of Faith, an exceeding great Probability is called a moral Certainty.
1728 E. Chambers Cycl. (javascript:void(0)) at Universality, Moral Universality, is that which admits of some exception.‥ In such-like propositions, 'tis enough that the thing be ordinarily so.
1743 H. Fielding Ess. Convers. in Misc. (javascript:void(0)) I. 137 When your Guest offers to go, there should be no Solicitations to stay‥farther than to give him a moral Assurance of his being welcome so to do.
1864 F. C. Bowen Treat. Logic (javascript:void(0)) xii. 378 The inference is rightly said to rest upon moral, or probable, evidence.
1868 E. A. Freeman Hist. Norman Conquest (javascript:void(0)) II. ix. 421 Was the succession of Harold merely a probability, a moral certainty it may be?
1911 Catholic Encycl. (javascript:void(0)) XII. 445/1 The only way efficiently to bring our actions into perfect harmony with objective morality is to follow the safe opinion, so long as the less safe opinion has not acquired moral certainty.
1994 Fellowship Catholic Scholars Newslet. (javascript:void(0)) Dec. 52/1 It enjoys moral certainty and consequently has a normative role in the formation of Christian conscience.
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†8. Of or relating to morale. Obs. rare.
1834 W. F. P. Napier Hist. War Peninsula (javascript:void(0)) IV. xvi. ii. 372 By this method lord Fitzroy acquired an exact knowledge of the true moral state of each regiment.
1889 D. Hannay Life F. Marryat (javascript:void(0)) 38 The squadron was in an indifferent moral condition, divided by sour professional factions, and impatient of its Admiral.
1834—1889
It's all about the metaphysics. If you believe in right and wrong then morality has nothing to do with empathy at all, it is about value, how it is assigned and what it's nature is, whether good or evil.
Oi mister :2thumbsup:
I think you'll find that "secular" principles are generally based on deductive logic and balance/value judgements, not empathy.
If you believe in right and wrong then morality has nothing to do with empathy at all.
You're wrong anyway, not only is my absolutist view of morality shared by most religious people, it is also shared by many "secularists" and the New Athiests. About the only thing I agree with Richard Dawkins on is that there is good and evil in the world.
Again, you let your contempt get the better of you. Empathy is the one which allows secular principles to evolve their inchoate form into morality. Deductive logic then permits us to infer the behaviour of others based on our empathic experience of their feelings. Interestingly enough, the only category of people medically (and thus secularly) assessed as evil, sociopaths, are the only ones from whom empathy is absent; in fact, it is the absence of empathy which qualifies them as sociopaths in the first place.
As to your absolutist view of morality being shared by secularists and New Atheists as Dawkins, yet again a fact demonstrably false. Your reading of Dawkins is incomplete or superficial.
Dawkins on morality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=qCL63d66frs)
2:05-2:22 Dawkins: As social animals, we worked out that we wouldn’t want to live in a society where it was acceptable to rape, murder or steal. We have a moral conscience a mutual empathy and it is constantly evolving.
4:05-4:25 Ian McEwan: We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own. And this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.
Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you.
Ever heard of the Bullingdon club? I can't speak for America and Woodstock but university students in the UK have a long history of Hooliganism, and like the "Buller" the difference between upper class hooligans and lower class ones is that in the former case his Pa might come round the next day and pay for the damages and offer something approaching an apology, if you're lucky.
Only incidental accounts, but what I heard was confirmed through internet search just now. So, on the one side, a small rich boys’ club whose excesses limit themselves to smashing windows and china during dinners for which they rent the locale full-time and for which they pay themselves on the spot in full and often in cash – financial capacity and the assuming of responsibility to pay for any potential damage being a requirement for joining the club. On the other, we have the often racist skinheads of the 70s which evolve into Burberry chavs, in large numbers part of the Ultra subculture now and whose destruction of public property is only a minor issue in comparison with other accomplishments such as murder (sometimes racially motivated), street-fighting and massive intimidation of their communities. Obviously, the later are totally revendicating themselves from the former.
I am not addressing our degeneracy-caused-by-casual-sex argument further, the reaction of other readers leads me to believe my point about what sexual liberty actually stands for has been made a few posts ago. Repeating it when it cannot be made any clearer only serves to annoy the both of us :bow:
Sasaki Kojiro
11-01-2011, 16:04
2:05-2:22 Dawkins: As social animals, we worked out that we wouldn’t want to live in a society where it was acceptable to rape, murder or steal. We have a moral conscience a mutual empathy and it is constantly evolving.
4:05-4:25 Ian McEwan: We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own. And this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.
Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you.
This is a very bizarre conversation :dizzy2:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-01-2011, 23:06
Oi mister :2thumbsup:
If you find my so dissagreeable you should stop adding ironic smilies, shouldn't you?
Again, you let your contempt get the better of you.
Insulting your interlocutor is a sign that you are either losing the argument or intellectually dishonest, and you just enjoy harrassing others.
Empathy is the one which allows secular principles to evolve their inchoate form into morality. Deductive logic then permits us to infer the behaviour of others based on our empathic experience of their feelings. Interestingly enough, the only category of people medically (and thus secularly) assessed as evil, sociopaths, are the only ones from whom empathy is absent; in fact, it is the absence of empathy which qualifies them as sociopaths in the first place.
This is a demostrably flawed premise. Without arbitary values assigned to entities and actions morality collapses, and your "empathetic" system fails on a practical front anyway. For example, from a purely utilitarian point of view you have no inherrent value other than that assigned to you be society at large, our empathy for you matters only so far as we care about you to begin with and your life and death can be happily decided without consequence if you are simply and profoundly unpopular. If no one likes you, most people will be happy you are dead and killing you will therefore upset fewer people than letting you live. In fact, if "empathy" is my moral guide and everyone hates you it behoves me to murder you for the good of society, or just dissapear you and cover it up so no one has to confront the fact I killed you.
Utterly absurd, but I can defend it logically, because the individual's happinness is worth less than the group, the only counter argument is that each human life is of equal worth (a logically indefensible claim without recourse to some arbitary non-realists definition of worth) and that each is counted individually, not collectively on a balance scale - such a claim would require an external "counter".
As to your absolutist view of morality being shared by secularists and New Atheists as Dawkins, yet again a fact demonstrably false. Your reading of Dawkins is incomplete or superficial.
Dawkins' reading of Dawkins is superficial, not withstanding a logical justification for morality based on natural philosophy, he believes in Good and Evil as absolutes, he says "thank goodnesss" instead of "thank God" because he believes there is goodness in the world. In fact, his continued opposition to all forms of religion is proof of this, because he persists in the face of evidence that religion is of net benefit.
Dawkins on morality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=qCL63d66frs)
2:05-2:22 Dawkins: As social animals, we worked out that we wouldn’t want to live in a society where it was acceptable to rape, murder or steal. We have a moral conscience a mutual empathy and it is constantly evolving.
4:05-4:25 Ian McEwan: We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own. And this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.
Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you.
This is natural philosphy, not science, and it completely sidesteps the human capacity for violence (especially sexual) and the fact that we commit these acts because we have empathy. The purpose of cruetly is to cause suffereing and perfectly ordinary, sane, people can be extremely cruel under the right circumstances. Further, he is incorrect about the nature of "society", his charactarisation holds only in Christendom, where successive religious edicts sought to curb pagan practices. In many societies rape, murder and theft are perfectly acceptable. Ancient Sparta encouraged the young to steal, but not get caught; India included murderous cults to Shiva the destroyer; and in modern South Africa gang rape is used to punish Lesbians.
Empathy is morally neutral, the ability to employ empathy is a useful social tool, nothing more. It is utterly useless, for example, in this abortion debate because none of us can remember what it felt like to be a feotus.
Only incidental accounts, but what I heard was confirmed through internet search just now. So, on the one side, a small rich boys’ club whose excesses limit themselves to smashing windows and china during dinners for which they rent the locale full-time and for which they pay themselves on the spot in full and often in cash – financial capacity and the assuming of responsibility to pay for any potential damage being a requirement for joining the club. On the other, we have the often racist skinheads of the 70s which evolve into Burberry chavs, in large numbers part of the Ultra subculture now and whose destruction of public property is only a minor issue in comparison with other accomplishments such as murder (sometimes racially motivated), street-fighting and massive intimidation of their communities. Obviously, the later are totally revendicating themselves from the former.
Well, Chavs have nothing to do with Skinheads, and the Bullers only pay for the physical damage they cause, they don't even consider the emotional or phychological damage, which is the same as hooligans.
I am not addressing our degeneracy-caused-by-casual-sex argument further, the reaction of other readers leads me to believe my point about what sexual liberty actually stands for has been made a few posts ago. Repeating it when it cannot be made any clearer only serves to annoy the both of us :bow:
In other words, you can't demonstrate that your one night stands haven't been with persons who were already in relationships, but you're too proud to admit you might be the dirty secret in someone else's marriage?
Oi mister :2thumbsup:
If you find my so dissagreeable you should stop adding ironic smilies, shouldn't you? (...)
Insulting your interlocutor is a sign that you are either losing the argument or intellectually dishonest, and you just enjoy harrassing others. (...)
In other words, you can't demonstrate that your one night stands haven't been with persons who were already in relationships, but you're too proud to admit you might be the dirty secret in someone else's marriage?Now hold your horses PVC; if you think I crossed a line by debating your views and my replies are harassing you, I honestly apologise. I do not find you disagreeable, I simply disagree with you. If you request my personal impression of you, I can at most say I find you a tad backward, but certainly I do not dislike you.
Moreover, the emoticons I add to my introductions are never, ever ironic. I greeted you and then gave you the ok sign, it was a polite and friendly way to start.
Writing that you show contempt is not an insult PVC, you do hold moral relativists in contempt, you have done everything but use the exact word to show it. I was simply stating that your passionate contempt towards them is leading you to bias, which was my impression.
Your last remark is though very personal. How do those chaps who like to fancy themselves as cultured debaters without having ever read Rhetoric in school never fail to polish it? Ad hominem I think. I forgive the rudeness, but it shows lack of character and such a feeble attempt at showing a grasp of basic psychology that I am now suspecting you do, in fact, have profound empathy issues.
And to clarify, I am not continuing that specific line of the debate because this is a thread on a gaming forum. Its subject was mildly controversial and I had an opinion about it, hence I wanted to state it. Once I feel I’ve done a thorough job of expressing myself, I have to stop because you are not paying me for these lectures and I cannot simply write essays upon essays for rested minds who wish to “win” an argument.
You’re a Christian who thinks sexual liberty is sinful. I’d be in the same situation if I’d try to convince a Muslim about the existence of the female soul. I’ve never wanted to cause you to stray from your path, I simply wanted to insert a different viewpoint in the thread. The merits of which are to be decided by our readers, towards whom I’ve already done my utmost to be understood.
It must be said that claiming to understand Richard Dawkin’s points of view better than himself is really taking it to the next level. Simply stating that he believes goodness exists in the world does not imply that he does not think goodness is developed from empathy. It is what he actually says in those quotes I provided you with after all.
This is natural philosphy, not science, and it completely sidesteps the human capacity for violence (especially sexual) and the fact that we commit these acts because we have empathy. The purpose of cruetly is to cause suffereing and perfectly ordinary, sane, people can be extremely cruel under the right circumstances.Well we were talking about Richard Dawkins’ views, and those of the New Atheists. You claimed they understood good and evil in the same way you did. At no point were we discussing their scientific positions, but their opinions on morality, I was showing you that they place themselves on the complete opposite side.
Cruelty can be displayed by ordinary people and empathy helps you understand pain and thus, how to cause it. And then, which is the absolutely mind-reconstructing & society-defining action which empathy sears into our brains as a seething need? Justification. Empathy forces us to justify ourselves; to explain to ourselves why we’ve acted as we did, because we know, we understand intimately the pain we’ve caused and cannot live with it without reasoning it as part of a Moral standpoint. Croatian ustashas threw Serbian two-year olds in the air and caught them in their knives before hitting the ground in front of their mothers, but they would’ve first blown their brains out before doing that to a random Italian family. The Serbs were Orthodox. Blasphemers. You had to torture them for their sins against your God. Justification. Empathy requires it before suppressing your humanity. And when this rationalisation creates an entire System of Justifications, we have Morality. We draw a straight line.
Further, he is incorrect about the nature of "society", his charactarisation holds only in Christendom, where successive religious edicts sought to curb pagan practices. In many societies rape, murder and theft are perfectly acceptable.
Odd to see you agreeing with my previous point where I stated that:
While morality is abstractly presumed good, the fact that good is itself defined by each society means that it simply encompasses the principles of a community, be they righteous or destructive. Since a cohesive group naturally agrees with its own set of morals, being described as a moral person is always accompanied by a misleading positive connotation. In fact, morality goes both ways and being immoral stands only for disagreeing with the community, the value of your impact is irrelevant.
Finally, I got something right according to you as well, societies do define their own good and evil after all.
I know I know, while you agree on that, you also think that there is some actually genuine notion of good and evil out there which is the only one worth being adopted by human beings.
Yes. There is. I've never disputed that. I just think we are able to sometimes grasp what it truly means to be Good due to the mind-altering effects of empathy which haunts us to justify in any way, even by deluding ourselves, actions we’d be horrified to experience ourselves. It leads us to develop secular principles. You just think that’s God.
The amusing part is that those good-and-evil-defining-societies combine our viewpoints marvellously: their delusion is that their empathy is to be suppressed because that woman's rape is justified by God. Opposing the rape thus makes you immoral, a point I was making in an earlier reply.
Empathy is morally neutral, the ability to employ empathy is a useful social tool, nothing more. It is utterly useless, for example, in this abortion debate because none of us can remember what it felt like to be a feotus.
Uhmm empathy is a lot more complex. It does not only employ emotional recognition, it creates self-reflective perspectives through imagination. It’s a fairly well researched phenomenon.
But that was merely to address your inaccuracy when presuming that one needs to have previously experienced an emotion in order to understand it. What bothers is that you think empathy is irrelevant because it doesn’t explain the foetus. It does explain to us the gravida.
Bullers only pay for the physical damage they cause, they don't even consider the emotional or phychological damage, which is the same as hooligans.Really? The emotional and psychological damage they provoke to the owners of the vandalised joints who willingly rent them to them beforehand while fully aware of the club’s reputation? Hmm, nice touch there.
Very similar emotional and psychological damage to the one lower-class english hooligans inflicted upon the Italian spectators on the Heysel Stadium when their attack caused 39 people to be crushed to death.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-02-2011, 13:46
Now hold your horses PVC; if you think I crossed a line by debating your views and my replies are harassing you, I honestly apologise. I do not find you disagreeable, I simply disagree with you. If you request my personal impression of you, I can at most say I find you a tad backward, but certainly I do not dislike you.
Moreover, the emoticons I add to my introductions are never, ever ironic. I greeted you and then gave you the ok sign, it was a polite and friendly way to start.
Writing that you show contempt is not an insult PVC, you do hold moral relativists in contempt, you have done everything but use the exact word to show it. I was simply stating that your passionate contempt towards them is leading you to bias, which was my impression.
Telling me I show contempt is one thing, you said I have contempt. You are not qualified to say that, because you aren't inside my head. I find your view of morality disagreeable, and I think you use it to justify a type of behaviour I find distasteful, but that does not mean I hold moral relativists in contempt. It is simply the fact that I believe you are profoundly wrong and therefore I resist you profoundly.
Your last remark is though very personal. How do those chaps who like to fancy themselves as cultured debaters without having ever read Rhetoric in school never fail to polish it? Ad hominem I think. I forgive the rudeness, but it shows lack of character and such a feeble attempt at showing a grasp of basic psychology that I am now suspecting you do, in fact, have profound empathy issues.
You have included two Ad Hominems here, that I am uneducated and that I may be a sociopath. The worst that I have said of you is that you are refusing to engage with my point that if you have a one night stand you cannot know the other person's social situation other than by their report. You are obviously an intelligent and educated man, so you must realise this. Accusing you of a deliberate lack of self reflection is, admittedly, an Ad Hominem but a very mild one. I am not accusing you of a genuine failure of character.
On the other hand, accusing me of a lack empathy - I can now accuse you of a lack of empathy, and we can go around and around until I get on a plane to Romania, or you get on to one to England and we end up with someone skewered on the end of a rapier; but I'd rather not, and not because the flight is expensive.
As regards education in rhetoric, Cicero is one of my favourite Latin authors.
You’re a Christian who thinks sexual liberty is sinful.
Did I say that? I think you'll find I said that I was opposed to casual sex between strangers because it was irresponsible.
I'm not Saint Augustine, I'm actually ok with sex.
I’d be in the same situation if I’d try to convince a Muslim about the existence of the female soul. I’ve never wanted to cause you to stray from your path, I simply wanted to insert a different viewpoint in the thread. The merits of which are to be decided by our readers, towards whom I’ve already done my utmost to be understood.
I do not understand the concept of debating as a spectator sport, and I do not, generally, play to the crowd.
It must be said that claiming to understand Richard Dawkin’s points of view better than himself is really taking it to the next level. Simply stating that he believes goodness exists in the world does not imply that he does not think goodness is developed from empathy. It is what he actually says in those quotes I provided you with after all.
If you read Dawkins carefully you will see that he often, if not always, refers to "good and evil" in the abstract, this is not a matter of his personal opinion only, it is very clearly something he believes to be embedded in reality.
Well we were talking about Richard Dawkins’ views, and those of the New Atheists. You claimed they understood good and evil in the same way you did. At no point were we discussing their scientific positions, but their opinions on morality, I was showing you that they place themselves on the complete opposite side.
The problem is that this view is presented as "scientific", but it is really a blending of natural and moral philosophy. Read Dawkins and you see that he believes everything stems from our genes, but he consistently make imaginative leaps to try and connect his, essentially quite duelistic philosophy, to his monistic scientific realism. For example, he has claimed that belief in God is an inherited survival trait independent of any deity, but he also claims we have now outgrown this belief - we can transcend our genetics. On the one hand man is as he should be, because he follows his deterministic genes, on the other he should be more than he currently is and change his nature, in contravention of his genes.
There is a logical and philosophical canyon there.
Cruelty can be displayed by ordinary people and empathy helps you understand pain and thus, how to cause it. And then, which is the absolutely mind-reconstructing & society-defining action which empathy sears into our brains as a seething need? Justification. Empathy forces us to justify ourselves; to explain to ourselves why we’ve acted as we did, because we know, we understand intimately the pain we’ve caused and cannot live with it without reasoning it as part of a Moral standpoint. Croatian ustashas threw Serbian two-year olds in the air and caught them in their knives before hitting the ground in front of their mothers, but they would’ve first blown their brains out before doing that to a random Italian family. The Serbs were Orthodox. Blasphemers. You had to torture them for their sins against your God. Justification. Empathy requires it before suppressing your humanity. And when this rationalisation creates an entire System of Justifications, we have Morality. We draw a straight line.
So your morality can be used to justify causing suffering? Mine can't. To be clear, if you justify something you are say it is good. I do not agree that vicious cruelty requires the "suppression" of humanity, that implies a transcendent quality to human nature that is at odds with an avowedly secular and realist worldview. I sounds like nothing so much as the sort of thin a religious man says about his God-given conscience.
It is also generally true that the decision comes before the rationalization. Croatians kills Serbs because they hate them, they justify that hate on religious grounds, but it is obvious that Romans and Greeks can coexist, and generally have across history. The fact is, our capacity for empathy is not a "moral" faculty, it is merely something we use to justify some of the decisions we make - it represents out affective preferences, how we feel, and in that sense it is no more a justification for action than Divine Edict, which claims to be God's preference.
Odd to see you agreeing with my previous point where I stated that:
While morality is abstractly presumed good, the fact that good is itself defined by each society means that it simply encompasses the principles of a community, be they righteous or destructive. Since a cohesive group naturally agrees with its own set of morals, being described as a moral person is always accompanied by a misleading positive connotation. In fact, morality goes both ways and being immoral stands only for disagreeing with the community, the value of your impact is irrelevant.
That different societies have different moral codes is not in dispute, their relative value is.
Finally, I got something right according to you as well, societies do define their own good and evil after all.
I know I know, while you agree on that, you also think that there is some actually genuine notion of good and evil out there which is the only one worth being adopted by human beings.
Yes. There is. I've never disputed that. I just think we are able to sometimes grasp what it truly means to be Good due to the mind-altering effects of empathy which haunts us to justify in any way, even by deluding ourselves, actions we’d be horrified to experience ourselves. It leads us to develop secular principles.
OK, you have completely lost me. Objective values require a valuator. To say that:
You just think that’s God.
Just indicates that you have not considered what "God" is, philosophically speaking. Further more, to argue for objective values invalidates your argument viz empathy because an empathetic moral system requires that at least one person in a society to apprehend the objective moral good before empathy can operate on the given question. For example, if everyone thinks infanticide if fine there is not empathetic element to whether or not it is moral. Infanticide first has to upset someone before empathy can be used as a justification for not killing babies, because it upsets their parents.
The amusing part is that those good-and-evil-defining-societies combine our viewpoints marvellously: their delusion is that their empathy is to be suppressed because that woman's rape is justified by God. Opposing the rape thus makes you immoral, a point I was making in an earlier reply.
This implies they don't want to rape the woman, I contend that they do want to rape her because she threatens their masculinity; the hatred is a result of their emotional response and using "Divine Will" to justify it is just a sideshow. The point is that human being are inherently capable of cruelty, and their empathy alone does not prevent them acting out their malicious desires. In order for empathy to come into play those men must first acknowledge that the woman is of equal value, and not sub-human because only then will they empathize with her.
Her value must be recognised.
Uhmm empathy is a lot more complex. It does not only employ emotional recognition, it creates self-reflective perspectives through imagination. It’s a fairly well researched phenomenon.
But that was merely to address your inaccuracy when presuming that one needs to have previously experienced an emotion in order to understand it. What bothers is that you think empathy is irrelevant because it doesn’t explain the foetus. It does explain to us the gravida.
What you are really talking about, then, is empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the understanding of another's emotions, sympathy is sharing them. Empathy is the tool you use to engage sympathetically, one can have one without the other, both ways.
Really? The emotional and psychological damage they provoke to the owners of the vandalised joints who willingly rent them to them beforehand while fully aware of the club’s reputation? Hmm, nice touch there.
Very similar emotional and psychological damage to the one lower-class english hooligans inflicted upon the Italian spectators on the Heysel Stadium when their attack caused 39 people to be crushed to death.
This is a rationalisation of the Bullers, they do vandalise randomly as well. In any case, they are just a more recent manifestation of the callous young aristocrat, the lord's son you rape the farmer's daughter and then pays the father for the "whore".
Papewaio
11-02-2011, 22:17
I do not understand the concept of debating as a spectator sport, and I do not, generally, play to the crowd.
Wasn't rhetoric developed for debates with spectators?
Why teach one when you can teach many. Also if you wish to see your viewpoint prosper surely having spectators helps. Last point PMs are for one on one conversations so you have implicitly acknowledged that you are debating infront of spectators.
=][=
As for genes and moral/ethical systems one just has to consider emergent systems. Genes are a starting point but once a system emerges that can self program you get a whole sleuth of consequences that include stepping beyond mere instinct.
Scienter
11-03-2011, 14:02
High numbers of single teenage mothers are caused by moral degeneracy and poor sexual habits, not ignorance. The people know about condoms and the Pill, often they choose not to use them. What is lacking is the ability and or willingness to take responsibility for ones actions.
Don't you mean "teenage parents?"
Also, while you are right that some people have poor habits when it comes to safe sex, there is a great deal of ignorance and also lack of access to contraception. Many abstinence-based sex education programs convey inaccurate facts about the efficacy of condoms such that a lot of teens get the message that using it is a pointless exercise. Or they don't teach about birth control at all. Then, it's up to the parents to teach it, and they choose not to. So, in some places there are groups of teens who are either ill-informed about safe sex.
There are also problems with access to contraception. In very conservative areas, or for teens with conservative parents, it's not an option for a girl to ask her parents if she can go on the Pill, or for a teen of either gender to ask for condoms. If a teen's family's attitude about premarital sex is shame-based, they're going to be a lot more reluctant to go into a store to buy condoms, especially if they are behind the counter and they have to ask for them.
a completely inoffensive name
11-03-2011, 18:56
Don't you mean "teenage parents?" Also, while you are right that some people have poor habits when it comes to safe sex, there is a great deal of ignorance and also lack of access to contraception. Many abstinence-based sex education programs convey inaccurate facts about the efficacy of condoms such that a lot of teens get the message that using it is a pointless exercise. Or they don't teach about birth control at all. Then, it's up to the parents to teach it, and they choose not to. So, in some places there are groups of teens who are either ill-informed about safe sex. There are also problems with access to contraception. In very conservative areas, or for teens with conservative parents, it's not an option for a girl to ask her parents if she can go on the Pill, or for a teen of either gender to ask for condoms. If a teen's family's attitude about premarital sex is shame-based, they're going to be a lot more reluctant to go into a store to buy condoms, especially if they are behind the counter and they have to ask for them. What you said is 100% true for the US, but I wasn't under the impression that the UK did such backwards abstinence only policies since they are more liberal in general. Maybe someone can correct my ignorance, are the chavs being taught that crap?
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-03-2011, 23:23
Don't you mean "teenage parents?"
While it takes two to tango in a lot of cases the mothers don't idetify the fathers after the fact and in all practical and legal senses they are not aknowledged to exist. So in this country we have teenage mothers.
Also, while you are right that some people have poor habits when it comes to safe sex, there is a great deal of ignorance and also lack of access to contraception. Many abstinence-based sex education programs convey inaccurate facts about the efficacy of condoms such that a lot of teens get the message that using it is a pointless exercise. Or they don't teach about birth control at all. Then, it's up to the parents to teach it, and they choose not to. So, in some places there are groups of teens who are either ill-informed about safe sex.
There are also problems with access to contraception. In very conservative areas, or for teens with conservative parents, it's not an option for a girl to ask her parents if she can go on the Pill, or for a teen of either gender to ask for condoms. If a teen's family's attitude about premarital sex is shame-based, they're going to be a lot more reluctant to go into a store to buy condoms, especially if they are behind the counter and they have to ask for them.
This is adaquately answered by this:
What you said is 100% true for the US, but I wasn't under the impression that the UK did such backwards abstinence only policies since they are more liberal in general. Maybe someone can correct my ignorance, are the chavs being taught that crap?
We have the NHS, and our national socialised healthcare provides free condoms at all family planning clinics and I'm pretty sure a fgirl over the age of 16 can go on the pill, on the NHS, free without her parents knowing. Yes, we have religious abstinence-only people but they have no effect on national policy and they are only concentrated in very small numbers. You won't find a town utterly without free contraception in the UK, and you can also get condoms in every high street chemist and pub toilet. Accidents may happen, but you don't have any excuse for being completely stupid over here.
:curtain: Hello gang
Yay, I have not missed much!
A small request PVC, you lately tend to forget to address the main point of the passage you quote and engage a lengthy reply on some vague side-issue I am not necessarily disputing. Please, for the sake of brevity and format, lets pace ourselves a bit, we can’t get everything in if we want this to remain readable. And apropos of readers, lets start with:
I do not understand the concept of debating as a spectator sport, and I do not, generally, play to the crowd.
That’s a novel argument. I have to ask at this point if you ever thought why this place is called a Forum? It always was the declared goal to imitate the ancient public squares dedicated to popular assemblies.
As a personal observation, if you are not writing this for the audience and if you are not, hopefully, writing pages upon pages just to develop some atrophied debating skills, are you actually dedicating all this time to me? In all honesty, I’d feel rather guilty. I admit, almost none of my comments on your views were meant for you, but rather for the handful of undecided readers who follow the thread. That is how you affect opinion after all; you rarely can approach people after they commit themselves to a cause; you show the flaws to those with an open mind.
If you read Dawkins carefully you will see that he often, if not always, refers to "good and evil" in the abstract, this is not a matter of his personal opinion only, it is very clearly something he believes to be embedded in reality. (...)
I have to recapitulate this argument for you because you’ve completely lost track.
First you defined yourself as a moral absolutist. You then claimed persons such as Richard Dawkins and movements such as the New Atheists share your moral absolutism because they believe in the existence of good and evil. Thinking you knew what moral absolutism means, I voiced my disagreement on their adherence to moral absolutism and argued that we do not debate the existence of good and evil when I wrote:
I know I know, while you agree on that, you also think that there is some actually genuine notion of good and evil out there which is the only one worth being adopted by human beings.
Yes. There is. I've never disputed that. I just think we are able to sometimes grasp what it truly means to be Good due to the mind-altering effects of empathy which haunts us to justify in any way, even by deluding ourselves, actions we’d be horrified to experience ourselves. It leads us to develop secular principles.
But then Dawkins is considering good and evil to be discoveries made by our empathic brain – for which I provided a crystal clear quote.
At this point, you continue to argue your initial position through: “[Dawkins] refers to "good and evil" in the abstract, this is not a matter of his personal opinion only, it is very clearly something he believes to be embedded in reality.” which is such a total non sequitur to all I have written.
To conclude, you simply do not understand that believing in the existence of good and evil does-not-a-moral-absolutist-make. The nuance you fail to recognize lies in the fact that Dawkins believes good and evil to be free of social mores, but not free of the empathy-dictated understanding of one’s action’s impact. Or, if you want the taxonomy laid out, you are a moral absolutist, while he, the New Atheists and I are moral objectivists. Please stop and at least ask for clarifications instead of just typing away the same reply.
I don’t know how this could be explained more clearly. But for example, if Dawkins would read that appalling side-debate you had with Vuk over the righteousness of having Hitler murdered, he would never side with you. Both he and Vuk would consider the context changes the valuation of Hitler’s murder as an evil act, making them moral objectivists.
The problem is that this view is presented as "scientific", but it is really a blending of natural and moral philosophy. Read Dawkins and you see that he believes everything stems from our genes, but he consistently make imaginative leaps to try and connect his, essentially quite duelistic philosophy, to his monistic scientific realism. For example, he has claimed that belief in God is an inherited survival trait independent of any deity, but he also claims we have now outgrown this belief - we can transcend our genetics. On the one hand man is as he should be, because he follows his deterministic genes, on the other he should be more than he currently is and change his nature, in contravention of his genes.
For this I direct you to Pape’s reply (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053393276&viewfull=1#post2053393276), he did a much better job of presenting the same argument than I would’ve, as my pedantry for explanations would’ve prevented me from being as terse as he was.
Uhmm empathy is a lot more complex. It does not only employ emotional recognition, it creates self-reflective perspectives through imagination. It’s a fairly well researched phenomenon.
But that was merely to address your inaccuracy when presuming that one needs to have previously experienced an emotion in order to understand it. What bothers is that you think empathy is irrelevant because it doesn’t explain the foetus. It does explain to us the gravida.
What you are really talking about, then, is empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the understanding of another's emotions, sympathy is sharing them. Empathy is the tool you use to engage sympathetically, one can have one without the other, both ways.
No, I’m really not talking about that PVC. We are again having to return to definitions. Case in which I find it impossible to confuse employing imagination to create self-reflective perspectives with sympathy. Perspective-taking is re-creation. It’s also known as cognitive empathy and it is the farthest component (of empathy) from sympathy. It is, if you like, the empathy you demonize as cruelty-inducing and morally neutral, and yet, at the same time, it is the side of empathy enhancing our brain’s imagination the most; it is perspective-taking which allows us to establish good and evil jointly with emotional empathy , and thus a lot more than a useful social tool.
In other words, you can't demonstrate that your one night stands haven't been with persons who were already in relationships, but you're too proud to admit you might be the dirty secret in someone else's marriage? (...)
Ulterior reply: The worst that I have said of you is that you are refusing to engage with my point that if you have a one night stand you cannot know the other person's social situation other than by their report. You are obviously an intelligent and educated man, so you must realise this. Accusing you of a deliberate lack of self reflection is, admittedly, an Ad Hominem but a very mild one. I am not accusing you of a genuine failure of character. (...)
As regards education in rhetoric, Cicero is one of my favourite Latin authors.
I don’t know PVC, is that the worst you have said of me? Because your first phrase really makes some rather creepy allegations about my sexual conduct and asks me to justify choices which could only be explained by delving into personal details that are none of your business. A rather vulgar approach. Your ulterior spin shows a lack of will to assume responsibility for your own words, rather a pity, you were passing for such a cerebral chap.
To clarify my Ad hominem remark, I discovered the Internet to be a trove for berks exercising petty forms of sciolism. These sciolists relish in slamming Ad Hominem all over the place; since I find them a tad repulsive, the term now shares the taint in my head, yet it was very fitting on this occasion so I grudgingly used it without being able to help myself to grumble on the side. Thus the comment itself did not target you.
Really? The emotional and psychological damage they provoke to the owners of the vandalised joints who willingly rent them to them beforehand while fully aware of the club’s reputation? Hmm, nice touch there.
Very similar emotional and psychological damage to the one lower-class English hooligans inflicted upon the Italian spectators on the Heysel Stadium when their attack caused 39 people to be crushed to death.
This is a rationalisation of the Bullers, they do vandalise randomly as well. In any case, they are just a more recent manifestation of the callous young aristocrat, the lord's son you rape the farmer's daughter and then pays the father for the "whore".
So modern lower-class English hooligans were now brought about by the rapist son of the lord. Hey, nicely done though, it takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to be able to deny any Skinhead heritage to the Chavs while considering the House of Lords to have fathered the English ultras. Tallyho bruv?!
Rhyfelwyr
11-04-2011, 12:26
it takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to be able to deny any Skinhead heritage to the Chavs
What does chav even mean? A lower-class person?
How can you compare them to a violent subculture like Skinheads?
rory_20_uk
11-04-2011, 12:55
Skinheads have made a concious decision to dress and act in a certain way, however distasteful that is.
Chavs are more of a branch of human evolution which hopefully is a dead end. It requires heavy intake of genotoxic substance throughout pregnancy, usually ethanol, although methanol, propanol or butanol will also suffice. Keeping the foetus in a chronically hypoxic state also helps arrest development of the cerebral cortexes which is usually achieved using cigarettes, which generally continues post partum. Coupled with large families, absence of families and an an inability of the mother to care for in even a rudimentary way are the final steps in honing a Chav.
After sinking like a stone to the bottom of society, they will remain there generally on benefits with no dreams higher than narcotics and casual sex to ensure that more chavs are created. One can only help that sterilisation occurs from a combination of chronic STDs and ethanol and cigarettes.
~:smoking:
Do not confuse neo-nazi skinheads with the original British skinheads. For lack of a better definition to be found at a moment's notice, lets settle for this:
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian (specifically Jamaican) rude boys and British mods, in terms of fashion, music and lifestyle. Originally, the skinhead subculture was primarily based on those elements, not politics or race. Since then, however, attitudes toward race and politics have become factors by which some skinheads align themselves. The political spectrum within the skinhead scene ranges from the far right to the far left, although many skinheads are apolitical. Fashion-wise, skinheads range from a clean-cut 1960s mod-influenced style to less-strict punk- and hardcore-influenced styles.
A chav is a stereotype of certain people in the United Kingdom. Also known as a charver in Yorkshire and North East England, "chavs" are said to be aggressive and arrogant teenagers and young adults, of underclass background, who repeatedly engage in anti-social behaviour such as street drinking, drug abuse and rowdiness, or other forms of juvenile delinquency.
Beside the point however, the egregious assertion that still remains to be demonstrated is the blaming of all moral degeneracy amongst the lower-class on the social elites, as PVC stated.
What does chav even mean? A lower-class person?
Chav's by definition are the underclass, the "non-working class". Opposed to members of the community which respect eachother, work and attempt to make a good life for themselves, chav's are those who somehow circumvented the entire system generally failing to emotionally and intellectually mature. Their only means of income is through abuse of the welfare system and having as many children as possible to increase the contribution. They come from generations that haven't worked and 'sponged' from the state.
Due to their lack of maturity, they are very aggressive in their behaviour, preferring to use fists and pocket knives to solve any issues, requiring on more base conceptions such as territory. They also have no respect for any authority, including the police, seeing enforcers as a 'hindrance' to them having run.
Some people argue that this is a neo-classism to paint the 'working class' in a degrading new light. This isn't the case at all as it refers to an underclass which doesn't even work.
Some other people have used the term also on a very superficial level referring to anyone in a "Hoodie, tracky bottoms and socks overthetop of their pants and trainers" as being a 'Chav', since this seems to be the current fashion trend of those happen to be part of this underclass. Unfortunately, some peoples lack of fashion sense or taste makes sure they get branded this way as well, however it is inappropriate since it refers more to the socio-economical attitude of the underclass members, not their poor fashion tastes.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-04-2011, 14:50
A small request PVC, you lately tend to forget to address the main point of the passage you quote and engage a lengthy reply on some vague side-issue I am not necessarily disputing. Please, for the sake of brevity and format, lets pace ourselves a bit, we can’t get everything in if we want this to remain readable. And apropos of readers, lets start with:
I address my point to what I feel is relevent, this may or may not be the primary text of your reply.
That’s a novel argument. I have to ask at this point if you ever thought why this place is called a Forum? It always was the declared goal to imitate the ancient public squares dedicated to popular assemblies.
Having a crowd to judge the debate does not mean that the debate is for the crowd. It's not a very novel idea to engage in disputation in order to resolve a philosophical question; it is the foundation of the medieval university system and the principle survives today. Playing to the crowd is demegoggy.
As a personal observation
, if you are not writing this for the audience and if you are not, hopefully, writing pages upon pages just to develop some atrophied debating skills, are you actually dedicating all this time to me? In all honesty, I’d feel rather guilty. I admit, almost none of my comments on your views were meant for you, but rather for the handful of undecided readers who follow the thread. That is how you affect opinion after all; you rarely can approach people after they commit themselves to a cause; you show the flaws to those with an open mind.
Atrophied debating skills? And you're complaining about other using Ad Hominem, seriously? If your comments on my views, and my writing style, are meant for the rest of the Backroom and not me then you are engaging in an extended attampt at character assassination, aren't you?
we might as well have a penis measuring contest.
To extend one of our favourite sayings here: Play the ball, not the man or the audience.
I have to recapitulate this argument for you because you’ve completely lost track.
First you defined yourself as a moral absolutist. You then claimed persons such as Richard Dawkins and movements such as the New Atheists share your moral absolutism because they believe in the existence of good and evil. Thinking you knew what moral absolutism means, I voiced my disagreement on their adherence to moral absolutism and argued that we do not debate the existence of good and evil when I wrote:
I know I know, while you agree on that, you also think that there is some actually genuine notion of good and evil out there which is the only one worth being adopted by human beings.
Yes. There is. I've never disputed that. I just think we are able to sometimes grasp what it truly means to be Good due to the mind-altering effects of empathy which haunts us to justify in any way, even by deluding ourselves, actions we’d be horrified to experience ourselves. It leads us to develop secular principles.
But then Dawkins is considering good and evil to be discoveries made by our empathic brain – for which I provided a crystal clear quote.
At this point, you continue to argue your initial position through: “[Dawkins] refers to "good and evil" in the abstract, this is not a matter of his personal opinion only, it is very clearly something he believes to be embedded in reality.” which is such a total non sequitur to all I have written.
To conclude, you simply do not understand that believing in the existence of good and evil does-not-a-moral-absolutist-make. The nuance you fail to recognize lies in the fact that Dawkins believes good and evil to be free of social mores, but not free of the empathy-dictated understanding of one’s action’s impact. Or, if you want the taxonomy laid out, you are a moral absolutist, while he, the New Atheists and I are moral objectivists. Please stop and at least ask for clarifications instead of just typing away the same reply.
I don’t know how this could be explained more clearly. But for example, if Dawkins would read that appalling side-debate you had with Vuk over the righteousness of having Hitler murdered, he would never side with you. Both he and Vuk would consider the context changes the valuation of Hitler’s murder as an evil act, making them moral objectivists.
For this I direct you to Pape’s reply (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?138716-Considering-the-legal-framework-for-abortion&p=2053393276&viewfull=1#post2053393276), he did a much better job of presenting the same argument than I would’ve, as my pedantry for explanations would’ve prevented me from being as terse as he was.
Obviously, I read Dawkins differently to you. Regardless of the label you wish to apply, my point remains valid, that an objective morality includes arbitary "goods" and "evils" and this requires an arbiter, which leads one to some form Deism and is not compatable with Atheism, which is what modern "secularism". That is modern seculaism abmits no religious or philosophical position beyond the use of deductive logic.
No, I’m really not talking about that PVC. We are again having to return to definitions. Case in which I find it impossible to confuse employing imagination to create self-reflective perspectives with sympathy. Perspective-taking is re-creation. It’s also known as cognitive empathy and it is the farthest component (of empathy) from sympathy. It is, if you like, the empathy you demonize as cruelty-inducing and morally neutral, and yet, at the same time, it is the side of empathy enhancing our brain’s imagination the most; it is perspective-taking which allows us to establish good and evil jointly with emotional empathy , and thus a lot more than a useful social tool.
That's just a thought process then. What actually affects you is the sympathetic sharing of emotion, you do not merely understand what someone else feels, you share the experience with them and therfore you are able to share, to internalise that emotion as your own. Most of this can be included in a general definition of "empathy". If I read back what you wrote I see no difference between the affective responise of a normal person and the intellectual working-out that we see in psychopaths. A psychopaths are capable of understanding someone's emotional respose intellectually and "re-creating" it logically, what they lack is the ability to internalise affectively, to actually share a feeling.
I don’t know PVC, is that the worst you have said of me?
Yes. You still refuse to self-reflect on your sexual activities, for all that you quoted me.
Because your first phrase really makes some rather creepy allegations about my sexual conduct and asks me to justify choices which could only be explained by delving into personal details that are none of your business.
You are the one who valourised casual sexual experience, and then tried to sidestep the example I gave of why I find such activities distasteful, namely that in my experience one party is married or otherwise unavailable. As you repeatedly failed to engage with that, and tried to sidestep the issue in the example I provided (that it was immoral because of infidelity) I accused you of a lack of self reflection due to evasion. If you had just said, "yes, it is immoral to have casual sex when you are already in a monogomous relationship" the debate would have gone in a different direction.
I then would have said, "how do you know your partners are not being unfaithful even if you aren't?" and you might have replyed something like, "because I know who they are, even if I don't have a personal relationship with them."
Then I would point out that they aren't exactly "strangers" and this is a different social arrangement to the casual bedhopping many people engage in, which is where we started. I would also point out that these sorts of liasons are profoundly atypical outside small exclusive communities.
Or some such.
A rather vulgar approach. Your ulterior spin shows a lack of will to assume responsibility for your own words, rather a pity, you were passing for such a cerebral chap.
It's quite possible to be both a deeply dissagreeable person and highly cerebral, but a Berk is a fool. There is no ulterior spin in my point, and I'll quite happily be explicit:
The more one night stands you have with people (I'm assuming women, but I don't know) whose social situation you do not actually know, the more likely who have slept with someone's partner. The only way you could avoid this it by only sleeping with people whose social situation you know by independant report. That implies an unusual social situation though, and a comparatively small community - cocktail part vs nightclub, really.
If you want more agrrable discourse you might refrain from phrases such as, "rather a pity, you were passing for such a cerebral chap." I do not respond well to condecension.
To clarify my Ad hominem remark, I discovered the Internet to be a trove for berks exercising petty forms of sciolism. These sciolists relish in slamming Ad Hominem all over the place; since I find them a tad repulsive, the term now shares the taint in my head, yet it was very fitting on this occasion so I grudgingly used it without being able to help myself to grumble on the side. Thus the comment itself did not target you.
You cannot accuse me of Ad Hominem and then say the comment is "not directed at" me, it obviously is.
So modern lower-class English hooligans were now brought about by the rapist son of the lord. Hey, nicely done though, it takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to be able to deny any Skinhead heritage to the Chavs while considering the House of Lords to have fathered the English ultras. Tallyho bruv?!
Not what I said, I said moral corruption tends to percolate down the social strata because it makes it easier for the lower class to justify behavious if the upper class are already doing it. As to Chavs and skinheads, I'm not saying they have nothing in common, but skinheads are not inherrently anti-social, nor do they form an underclass. Like Mods and Rockers Skinheads were a youth movement - Chavs are a social strata all their own, it denotes a way of living not a concious lifestyle choice.
Hello hello
I address my point to what I feel is relevent, this may or may not be the primary text of your reply.
Well, when the main point of my reply contradicts your statements and you choose to not answer it, we’re not really debating anymore are we, we’re just talking past each other.
Having a crowd to judge the debate does not mean that the debate is for the crowd. It's not a very novel idea to engage in disputation in order to resolve a philosophical question; it is the foundation of the medieval university system and the principle survives today. Playing to the crowd is demegoggy. (...)
If your comments on my views, and my writing style, are meant for the rest of the Backroom and not me then you are engaging in an extended attampt at character assassination, aren't you?
I am not sure you realise that debates were always resolved by the amount of support coaxed by each party; ultimately, it can lead to gaining your interlocutor’s support; I simply stated I was not having illusions about that final part here.
But demagogy? How do you get there? Simply aiming your arguments towards an independent third party does not equate to playing on that party’s prejudice.
And hold on with that moaning about character assassination PVC, I am engaging in an extended attempt to expose your views to be wrong on a few particular subjects, I am not trying to destroy your reputation as a human being.
I have to recapitulate this argument for you because you’ve completely lost track.
First you defined yourself as a moral absolutist. You then claimed persons such as Richard Dawkins and movements such as the New Atheists share your moral absolutism because they believe in the existence of good and evil. Thinking you knew what moral absolutism means, I voiced my disagreement on their adherence to moral absolutism and argued that we do not debate the existence of good and evil when I wrote:
I know I know, while you agree on that, you also think that there is some actually genuine notion of good and evil out there which is the only one worth being adopted by human beings.
Yes. There is. I've never disputed that. I just think we are able to sometimes grasp what it truly means to be Good due to the mind-altering effects of empathy which haunts us to justify in any way, even by deluding ourselves, actions we’d be horrified to experience ourselves. It leads us to develop secular principles.
But then Dawkins is considering good and evil to be discoveries made by our empathic brain – for which I provided a crystal clear quote.
At this point, you continue to argue your initial position through: “[Dawkins] refers to "good and evil" in the abstract, this is not a matter of his personal opinion only, it is very clearly something he believes to be embedded in reality.” which is such a total non sequitur to all I have written.
To conclude, you simply do not understand that believing in the existence of good and evil does-not-a-moral-absolutist-make. The nuance you fail to recognize lies in the fact that Dawkins believes good and evil to be free of social mores, but not free of the empathy-dictated understanding of one’s action’s impact. Or, if you want the taxonomy laid out, you are a moral absolutist, while he, the New Atheists and I are moral objectivists. Please stop and at least ask for clarifications instead of just typing away the same reply.
I don’t know how this could be explained more clearly. But for example, if Dawkins would read that appalling side-debate you had with Vuk over the righteousness of having Hitler murdered, he would never side with you. Both he and Vuk would consider the context changes the valuation of Hitler’s murder as an evil act, making them moral objectivists.
Obviously, I read Dawkins differently to you. Regardless of the label you wish to apply, my point remains valid, that an objective morality includes arbitary "goods" and "evils" and this requires an arbiter, which leads one to some form Deism and is not compatable with Atheism, which is what modern "secularism". That is modern seculaism abmits no religious or philosophical position beyond the use of deductive logic.
Well that moral arbiter is in ourselves, that was what Dawkins and the rest of us are saying, and it is developed through empathic processes. Any normal person can reach the same moral truths about good and evil through introspection, their intellectual and emotional capacity allowing. We don’t need an abstract arbiter.
Or some such.
Yes, or some such, it is all very confusing, a lot simpler to require everyone to obtain sex-permits and breeding-licenses right? That’s a joke, I cannot quote you on that yet :happy: But it’s so awfully "unregulated", I believe that was your term right?
To clarify my Ad hominem remark, I discovered the Internet to be a trove for berks exercising petty forms of sciolism. These sciolists relish in slamming Ad Hominem all over the place; since I find them a tad repulsive, the term now shares the taint in my head, yet it was very fitting on this occasion so I grudgingly used it without being able to help myself to grumble on the side. Thus the comment itself did not target you.You cannot accuse me of Ad Hominem and then say the comment is "not directed at" me, it obviously is.
I don’t know, you’re a Brit and my English is not that bad, it’s crazy I can’t get even this simple point to you. So, again, I hate using the term Ad hominem, because it is associated in my head with sciolists who use it extensively, as I wrote above. Thus, when I used the term, I apologised for using such a construction which nowadays is almost under monopoly by those berks. It was merely a vocabulary conundrum of mine and did not include you, you had not even used the term.
Not what I said, I said moral corruption tends to percolate down the social strata because it makes it easier for the lower class to justify behavious if the upper class are already doing it.
My argument was that, in this particular case – abortions and moral irresponsibility – the lower class is simply short-sighted, to which you replied:
You are falling into the aristocratic fallacy that the "lower orders" are degenerate due to base stupidity/ignorance, such is not so. Historical degeneracy at the bottom of society tends to follow degeneracy at the top.
And the whole exchange unravelled into my demonstration that social elites cannot be blamed for this case in the same way they cannot be blamed for a few particular others, British football hooligans chiefly among them, which you acerbically dispute every step of the way.
We should figure out a way to bring this debate back to its original subject by the by, the word “abortion” was not used once on this page.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-04-2011, 21:49
Well, when the main point of my reply contradicts your statements and you choose to not answer it, we’re not really debating anymore are we, we’re just talking past each other.
In that case you may wish to state it more plainly. I am having to wade through long posts which use what I would have to call unnecessary figures and words. However, you are still ignoring my point about casual one night stands, and my experience that at least one party is not free to engage in such liasons.
I am not sure you realise that debates were always resolved by the amount of support coaxed by each party; ultimately, it can lead to gaining your interlocutor’s support; I simply stated I was not having illusions about that final part here.
But demagogy? How do you get there? Simply aiming your arguments towards an independent third party does not equate to playing on that party’s prejudice.
You can be sure I am aware. If you like I could write an essay on theological arguments delivered in the medieval university, or political ones in the Roman Senate - but short of that you should have picked up the references I have dropped.
Regardless, debate for support is political. Debate with an interlocutor is philosophical.
And hold on with that moaning about character assassination PVC, I am engaging in an extended attempt to expose your views to be wrong on a few particular subjects, I am not trying to destroy your reputation as a human being.
Then be more careful what you write. Accusing me of "moaning" is not going to engender greater affection on my part, is it? Nor while questiong my mental factulties or calling my remarks "creepy".
Well that moral arbiter is in ourselves, that was what Dawkins and the rest of us are saying, and it is developed through empathic processes. Any normal person can reach the same moral truths about good and evil through introspection, their intellectual and emotional capacity allowing. We don’t need an abstract arbiter.
I dissagree, the "arbiter" cannot be just "ouselves" either singly or collectively. In order for their to be a "right" and "wrong" answer to a question the arbiter has to be independant of you or I and our preferences. Otherwise you can believe one thing, me another and we can both be right. That doesn't work, and it's not what New Atheists believe anyway. In order to have objective morality the most that we can be allowed to do is recognise the correct choice, but that choice has already been decided independant of our judgement and what we are doing is bringing our thinking into harmony with the "right" choice.
Anything less and moral objectivity collapses, because thew only way moral objectivity can work is if we are all the object and none of us the subject.
Yes, or some such, it is all very confusing, a lot simpler to require everyone to obtain sex-permits and breeding-licenses right? That’s a joke, I cannot quote you on that yet :happy: But it’s so awfully "unregulated", I believe that was your term right?
Ideally we would all meet the "right person" and get married before we felt the need for more casual human contact. A marriage is really just a "sex liscence", so you are basically correct there. However, finding that person is actually quite difficult, and in view of that I'm quite happy for people to have sex with partners they have not made a lifelong commitment to. That is not an endorsement of casual sex, I ferverently believe you should be in a relationship before engaging in bedroom gymnastics.
I don’t know, you’re a Brit and my English is not that bad, it’s crazy I can’t get even this simple point to you. So, again, I hate using the term Ad hominem, because it is associated in my head with sciolists who use it extensively, as I wrote above. Thus, when I used the term, I apologised for using such a construction which nowadays is almost under monopoly by those berks. It was merely a vocabulary conundrum of mine and did not include you, you had not even used the term.
Reading your last post in the context of this statement I believe what you should have written was, "the accusation 'Ad Hominem'", or simply put "Ad Hominem" in quotation marks, without that context the more direct reading is that you dislike people who make Ad Hominem attacks, which is what you accused me of.
My argument was that, in this particular case – abortions and moral irresponsibility – the lower class is simply short-sighted, to which you replied:
And the whole exchange unravelled into my demonstration that social elites cannot be blamed for this case in the same way they cannot be blamed for a few particular others, British football hooligans chiefly among them, which you acerbically dispute every step of the way.
My contention is that moral degeneracy in the elite encourages moral degeneracy in those below them. In this case "elite" should be understood to be those either in charge or in influencial positions. The link is this: If a rich banker is seen to "steal" or or legally hoodwink investors or to extort money from debters then less wealthy people conclude that if he can steal millions using clever accounting they can shimy up a ladder and nick the lead off the Church roof, especially if the bishop lives in a big house and therefor looks rich. Put another way, when you percieve that your rulers do not uphold good standards of personnal behaviour you have no external motivation to do better yourself.
With regards hooligans, their immoral behaviour is mainly rioting and drinking; two things rich students are historically known for. The Bullers are just a formalised example of a ancient tradition.
We should figure out a way to bring this debate back to its original subject by the by, the word “abortion” was not used once on this page.
Establishing a frame of moral reference is important for this sort of debate.
Hallo :wink2:
In that case you may wish to state it more plainly. I am having to wade through long posts which use what I would have to call unnecessary figures and words. However, you are still ignoring my point about casual one night stands, and my experience that at least one party is not free to engage in such liasons. (...)
You can be sure I am aware. If you like I could write an essay on theological arguments delivered in the medieval university, or political ones in the Roman Senate - but short of that you should have picked up the references I have dropped.
Regardless, debate for support is political. Debate with an interlocutor is philosophical.
I’m sorry PVC, I was not aware wading through these posts tires your mental faculties to such a degree that you’ve become unable to reply punctually. Our talk on one night stands was resolved; I explained over and over that casual sex can be had perfectly safe and morally sound; hence, if a person decides to be negligent when engaging in casual sex by going for a really random one night stand, that is not the fault of sexual liberty anymore and it is not a reason to curtail it.
I am glad you recognized your mistake in utilizing the term demagogy and have now dropped it, it really was misleading. As to your observations on debates, they’re neither here nor there :uneasy:
I dissagree, the "arbiter" cannot be just "ouselves" either singly or collectively. In order for their to be a "right" and "wrong" answer to a question the arbiter has to be independant of you or I and our preferences. Otherwise you can believe one thing, me another and we can both be right. That doesn't work, and it's not what New Atheists believe anyway. In order to have objective morality the most that we can be allowed to do is recognise the correct choice, but that choice has already been decided independant of our judgement and what we are doing is bringing our thinking into harmony with the "right" choice.
Oh boy, here we go again. Look, any normal person is capable, in the absence of judgement impairing trauma and other psychological issues, of utilizing empathy in order to identify the one situation in which their actions have the least negative impact on another human being. You write:
“that choice has already been decided independant (sic) of our judgement”
as if that would imply an abstract authority, when in fact you are describing the very mundane realization that there’s always an optimal solution to a certain problem. You don’t go about talking about the technological arbiter and how our brain is bringing our thinking into harmony with the “right” technological choice, do you? It would just be an utterly redundant way of asserting that there’s always a best outcome for a given set of parameters. The empathic function of identifying the best moral outcome is our moral arbiter, and normal persons may be more or less proficient at searching it within themselves. Reaching different moral conclusions in this case does not mean both persons are right, it means one’s emotional intelligence (which can be increased through education a lot) is more developed than another’s.
My contention is that moral degeneracy in the elite encourages moral degeneracy in those below them. In this case "elite" should be understood to be those either in charge or in influencial positions. The link is this: If a rich banker is seen to "steal" or or legally hoodwink investors or to extort money from debters then less wealthy people conclude that if he can steal millions using clever accounting they can shimy up a ladder and nick the lead off the Church roof, especially if the bishop lives in a big house and therefor looks rich. Put another way, when you percieve that your rulers do not uphold good standards of personnal behaviour you have no external motivation to do better yourself.
Yes PVC, I perfectly know what your argument was. Almost all our points by now have gone through several exchanges in which you pretty much repeat the same statement or write answers which do not reply directly to my assertions. While I have become inured to it by now, it would be kind if you’d be a good sport and employ a tad more creativity.
Yes, both ultras and bullers drink and both ultras and bullers break glass (though bullers do it in a controlled environment and pay for it). Ultras also riot and kill citizens, while you still have to mention one case in which bullers have done such a thing. Point made. But lets reboot.
You believe the current predicament of the lower class, i.e. the increase in the rate of abortions, is caused by a moral degeneracy inspired by the social elite. Please, to resume ourselves to our specific case, the onus is on you, go ahead.
Establishing a frame of moral reference is important for this sort of debate.
Oh I think it a safe bet to say everyone has figured you out already PVC :bow:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-05-2011, 13:30
Hallo :wink2:
I’m sorry PVC, I was not aware wading through these posts tires your mental faculties to such a degree that you’ve become unable to reply punctually.
Trying to decipher your grammar is what tries my mental faculties.
Our talk on one night stands was resolved; I explained over and over that casual sex can be had perfectly safe and morally sound; hence, if a person decides to be negligent when engaging in casual sex by going for a really random one night stand, that is not the fault of sexual liberty anymore and it is not a reason to curtail it.
I don't see that as resolved - unless you want a special dispensation for a particular lifestyle practiced by a small number od people in a particular social context - it remains true that most people are "negligent" and not "safe" or especially "moral". If most people are "abusing" sexual liberty you have to look at the idea and wonder if, really, the kind of sexual discourse we have is really healthy.
I am glad you recognized your mistake in utilizing the term demagogy and have now dropped it, it really was misleading. As to your observations on debates, they’re neither here nor there :uneasy:
You're stretching the meaning of what I wrote - demagogy is playing to the crowd. If that's your primary objective you're still culpable.
Oh boy, here we go again. Look, any normal person is capable, in the absence of judgement impairing trauma and other psychological issues, of utilizing empathy in order to identify the one situation in which their actions have the least negative impact on another human being. You write:
“that choice has already been decided independant (sic) of our judgement”
as if that would imply an abstract authority, when in fact you are describing the very mundane realization that there’s always an optimal solution to a certain problem. You don’t go about talking about the technological arbiter and how our brain is bringing our thinking into harmony with the “right” technological choice, do you? It would just be an utterly redundant way of asserting that there’s always a best outcome for a given set of parameters. The empathic function of identifying the best moral outcome is our moral arbiter, and normal persons may be more or less proficient at searching it within themselves. Reaching different moral conclusions in this case does not mean both persons are right, it means one’s emotional intelligence (which can be increased through education a lot) is more developed than another’s.
What you are describing is intellectual process, but not the meta-ethics behind ethical decision making. Further, you are conflating the realm of ethics with that of the physical sciences - this makes a certain amount of sense in a metaphysical model which is monistic, but it is at odds with concepts such as "good" and "evil". You are just describing Utilitarianism, that's not morality in terms of "good and "evil", just "most benefit". In which case you are not talking about the "best" in an objective sense just the "preffered" in a mean or modal sense accross the population.
That is at odds with New Atheist rhetoric, and you just can't have it both ways.
Yes PVC, I perfectly know what your argument was. Almost all our points by now have gone through several exchanges in which you pretty much repeat the same statement or write answers which do not reply directly to my assertions. While I have become inured to it by now, it would be kind if you’d be a good sport and employ a tad more creativity.
Yes, both ultras and bullers drink and both ultras and bullers break glass (though bullers do it in a controlled environment and pay for it). Ultras also riot and kill citizens, while you still have to mention one case in which bullers have done such a thing. Point made. But lets reboot.
So the difference is that Ultras kill people? Surely that's just a result of critical mass in the mob and the herd instinct magnifying the actions pf the individual.
You believe the current predicament of the lower class, i.e. the increase in the rate of abortions, is caused by a moral degeneracy inspired by the social elite. Please, to resume ourselves to our specific case, the onus is on you, go ahead.
Easy. Violent student riots in which shops were smashed and public monuments decicrated were follwed by popular riots in whichs hops wer smashed up and stuff nicked. In both case initially peaceful protest degenerated into random wanton violence and the students came first. Subsequently, it was discovered that many of these students were from wealthy upper class families who would not be practically affected by the rise in student fees.
Oh I think it a safe bet to say everyone has figured you out already PVC :bow:
Please, don't be coy. Tell the audience exactly what you think of me.
Hello people :2thumbsup:
Trying to decipher your grammar is what tries my mental faculties. (...)
I don't see that as resolved - unless you want a special dispensation for a particular lifestyle practiced by a small number od people in a particular social context - it remains true that most people are "negligent" and not "safe" or especially "moral". If most people are "abusing" sexual liberty you have to look at the idea and wonder if, really, the kind of sexual discourse we have is really healthy. (...)
You're stretching the meaning of what I wrote - demagogy is playing to the crowd. If that's your primary objective you're still culpable.
I already remarked that you do not know the meaning of your own words, because, as I wrote before, simply aiming your arguments towards an independent third party does not equate to playing on that party’s prejudice. The dictionary definition of demagogy: the art and practice of gaining power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people. Could you point out how I have aroused the emotions, passions and prejudices of our readers?
I’d be glad to improve my grammar if you could point the flaws for me PVC, please. I am by no means claiming to be proficient, so I’d welcome your input.
Now, onto sexual liberty, your assertion about which group constitutes the majority still remains to be demonstrated. Secondly, and this should be an inescapable truth, the only path one can rightfully take in addressing the poor understanding of sexual liberty is to work on providing the best environment for its correct development. Upon reaching that point, you have to allow humans their agency. I suppose we are reaching here a negative versus positive liberty argument, with foreseeable results sadly.
I have to quote Isaiah Berlin though because, the fact of the matter is, sexual liberty is part of one’s fundamentally private sphere.
Hobbes, and those who agreed with him, especially conservative or reactionary thinkers, argued that if men were to be prevented from destroying one another, and making social life a jungle or a wilderness, greater safeguards must be instituted to keep them in their places, and wished correspondingly to increase the area of centralized control, and decrease that of the individual. But both sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control. To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism.
Lets define the following as Freedom from:
‘All the errors which a man is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem is good.’ To threaten a man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his own to live.
And the next as Freedom to:
what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational, and as wise as I, and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity – their latent rational will, or their ‘true’ purpose – and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their ‘real’ self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account.
Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, fulfilment of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom – the free choice of his ‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self.
Oh boy, here we go again. Look, any normal person is capable, in the absence of judgement impairing trauma and other psychological issues, of utilizing empathy in order to identify the one situation in which their actions have the least negative impact on another human being. You write:
“that choice has already been decided independant (sic) of our judgement”
as if that would imply an abstract authority, when in fact you are describing the very mundane realization that there’s always an optimal solution to a certain problem. You don’t go about talking about the technological arbiter and how our brain is bringing our thinking into harmony with the “right” technological choice, do you? It would just be an utterly redundant way of asserting that there’s always a best outcome for a given set of parameters. The empathic function of identifying the best moral outcome is our moral arbiter, and normal persons may be more or less proficient at searching it within themselves. Reaching different moral conclusions in this case does not mean both persons are right, it means one’s emotional intelligence (which can be increased through education a lot) is more developed than another’s.
What you are describing is intellectual process, but not the meta-ethics behind ethical decision making. Further, you are conflating the realm of ethics with that of the physical sciences - this makes a certain amount of sense in a metaphysical model which is monistic, but it is at odds with concepts such as "good" and "evil". You are just describing Utilitarianism, that's not morality in terms of "good and "evil", just "most benefit". In which case you are not talking about the "best" in an objective sense just the "preffered" in a mean or modal sense accross the population.
That is at odds with New Atheist rhetoric, and you just can't have it both ways.
You are wrapping yourself in words mister. And you are not doing a very good job at it. First of all, I did not describe a purely cognitive intellectual process and I clearly mentioned we are referring to one’s emotional intelligence. The best moral outcome, the best empathic outcome, does not equate to the most benefit, so any hint of utilitarianism is out of the picture. The moral outcome is always empathy conditioned and it can very well contradict the overall benefit. Also, to quote Paul Zak: “We’re social creatures, so we share the emotions of others. So if I do something that hurts you, I feel that pain, so I tend to avoid that. If I do something that makes you happy, I get to share your joy, so I tend to do that thing.”, referring to the common emotional development of people. And please provide some sort of sources on that New Atheist rhetoric that so agrees with you.
So the difference is that Ultras kill people? Surely that's just a result of critical mass in the mob and the herd instinct magnifying the actions pf the individual. (...)
You believe the current predicament of the lower class, i.e. the increase in the rate of abortions, is caused by a moral degeneracy inspired by the social elite. Please, to resume ourselves to our specific case, the onus is on you, go ahead.
Easy. Violent student riots in which shops were smashed and public monuments decicrated were follwed by popular riots in whichs hops wer smashed up and stuff nicked. In both case initially peaceful protest degenerated into random wanton violence and the students came first. Subsequently, it was discovered that many of these students were from wealthy upper class families who would not be practically affected by the rise in student fees.
Please provide evidence for the implicit allegation that bullers would also cause murders during their private parties should their numbers reach a critical mass.
And before we engage in another pointless side-debate, how does your last paragraph prove the way in which the rate of abortions rose amongst the lower class due to the moral degeneracy of the social elite? You are side-stepping the issue.
And I pose it to you now because I am tired of waiting for a cogent argument, that it would be a lot more logical, considering the history of the movement, to observe how in the past the widespread use of abortion amongst a lower class desperate to avoid poverty, morally desensitised by war and urban uprooting and ignorant of the plethora and efficiency of contraceptive methods (as many were in the ‘50s to ‘90s) actually influenced the young social elite into accepting abortion as norm even though they had the means to secure the upbringing of their children.
Please, don't be coy. Tell the audience exactly what you think of me.
Personally, that you are a textbook case of a person who was not yet seriously confronted by reality. This, of course, I presume and my opinion is subjective. I believe your frame of reference was established with your first post. No one denies that your argument needs to be dismissed only on factual grounds, but you should not be that worried the readers do not understand your Judeo-Christian cultural baggage :bow:
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-05-2011, 18:00
Hello people :2thumbsup:
I already remarked that you do not know the meaning of your own words, because, as I wrote before, simply aiming your arguments towards an independent third party does not equate to playing on that party’s prejudice. The dictionary definition of demagogy: the art and practice of gaining power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people. Could you point out how I have aroused the emotions, passions and prejudices of our readers?
Trying is not succeeding, personally I feel that the way you play to the crowd and the little sniping comments are are directed at me, and not my arguments.
I’d be glad to improve my grammar if you could point the flaws for me PVC, please. I am by no means claiming to be proficient, so I’d welcome your input.
I already have, once.
Now, onto sexual liberty, your assertion about which group constitutes the majority still remains to be demonstrated.
I would have thought that would be taken as a given, really, one only has to spend a few evenings in a university town to see the sort of liaisons most people engage in. Of an evening the majority of people who go out go to clubs, the largest clubs have the most people and they are invariably environments where people are intoxicated and the majority of people don't know each other.
Secondly, and this should be an inescapable truth, the only path one can rightfully take in addressing the poor understanding of sexual liberty is to work on providing the best environment for its correct development. Upon reaching that point, you have to allow humans their agency. I suppose we are reaching here a negative versus positive liberty argument, with foreseeable results sadly.
Underlying this is the assumption that "liberty" should be equated with freedom of action, and that freedom is exercised by action. Am I sexually oppressed if I choose not to have sex? I exercise my sexual freedom by not having sex and choosing to be discriminating in my associations.
I'm sorry, but I do not equate "liberty" with "action", otherwise I would conclude that we are all slaves because there are almost no instances in which our actions are not constrained.
I have to quote Isaiah Berlin though because, the fact of the matter is, sexual liberty is part of one’s fundamentally private sphere.
Hobbes, and those who agreed with him, especially conservative or reactionary thinkers, argued that if men were to be prevented from destroying one another, and making social life a jungle or a wilderness, greater safeguards must be instituted to keep them in their places, and wished correspondingly to increase the area of centralized control, and decrease that of the individual. But both sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control. To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism.
Lets define the following as Freedom from:
‘All the errors which a man is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem is good.’ To threaten a man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his own to live.
And the next as Freedom to:
what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational, and as wise as I, and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity – their latent rational will, or their ‘true’ purpose – and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their ‘real’ self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account.
Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, fulfilment of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom – the free choice of his ‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self.
I'm sorry, but who (or what) you choose to have sex with can and does have profound effects on your community and your family. It is one thing to say that what one does behind closed doors is your own private matter, and quite another to say that who you choose to bring into your bedroom is. The former is clearly the business of those two people, the latter is not.
You are wrapping yourself in words mister. And you are not doing a very good job at it. First of all, I did not describe a purely cognitive intellectual process and I clearly mentioned we are referring to one’s emotional intelligence. The best moral outcome, the best empathic outcome, does not equate to the most benefit, so any hint of utilitarianism is out of the picture. The moral outcome is always empathy conditioned and it can very well contradict the overall benefit. Also, to quote Paul Zak: “We’re social creatures, so we share the emotions of others. So if I do something that hurts you, I feel that pain, so I tend to avoid that. If I do something that makes you happy, I get to share your joy, so I tend to do that thing.”, referring to the common emotional development of people. And please provide some sort of sources on that New Atheist rhetoric that so agrees with you.
"Benefit" does not have to be purely practical, in this case "benefit" might be the decision that sits well with the greatest number of people, given that we are all what you call "empathetic". You've actually proved this by quoting Paul Zak, according to him he does things that make him feel better, i.e. for his own benefit.
In any case, how is "emotional intelligence" not a cognitive process? It's just something your brain does, right?
Please provide evidence for the implicit allegation that bullers would also cause murders during their private parties should their numbers reach a critical mass.
What sort of evidence would you like? It's obvious that the more men who have in a riot the more likely the violence will escalate, and the more people in a protest the more likely it will become a riot. I'm not making an implicit allegation about the Bullers, because 1000 Bullers are somewhat impractical, but one only has to look at previous student riots to see that rioters are more violent the more of them there are. The point is not that the Bullers might cause a riot, but that the sort of person who enjoys being a Buller might enjoy rioting.
You're trying to create a straw man, you want me to claim the upper class is murderous and that's why the lower class is murderous. Sorry, I'm not pushing the point that far. For one thing, the Upper Class today are clever enough to know what fingerprints and CCTV is, well with a few notable exceptions this Summer.
And before we engage in another pointless side-debate, how does your last paragraph prove the way in which the rate of abortions rose amongst the lower class due to the moral degeneracy of the social elite?
I don't believe I said that. In fact I'm sure I didn't, I pointed to sexual immorality, but in this country abortion is, and has historically been, quite middle class. This is particularly true today, were it not we would not have anywhere near as many poor single teenage mothers, would we?
You are side-stepping the issue.
You are constantly moving the issue.
And I pose it to you now because I am tired of waiting for a cogent argument, that it would be a lot more logical, considering the history of the movement, to observe how in the past the widespread use of abortion amongst a lower class desperate to avoid poverty, morally desensitised by war and urban uprooting and ignorant of the plethora and efficiency of contraceptive methods (as many were in the ‘50s to ‘90s) actually influenced the young social elite into accepting abortion as norm even though they had the means to secure the upbringing of their children.
As I said, I don't see it as a lower class phenomenon and I don't recognise "morally desensitised by war and urban uprooting" as a particularly lower class penomenon either, at least in the UK.
Personally, that you are a textbook case of a person who was not yet seriously confronted by reality. This, of course, I presume and my opinion is subjective. I believe your frame of reference was established with your first post. No one denies that your argument needs to be dismissed only on factual grounds, but you should not be that worried the readers do not understand your Judeo-Christian cultural baggage :bow:
Just because I am a Christian does not mean I have "Judeo-Christian" baggage", whatever that means anyway; it's not like I have Augustinian sexual hangups or worry about my foreskin. I wasn't exactly raised Christian, after all.
As far as, "not yet seriously confronted by reality" that's rich coming from someone who is claims to be young and well educated from a foundation level, and probably had wealthy parents given that he was taught rhetoric in school.
I'm fed up now, so I'm going to go away and pray for forgiveness.
I'm fed up now, so I'm going to go away and pray for forgiveness.
NO! Come back to us, we have cookies :wacko:
Now where were we *shuffle shuffle* ah yes, Kralizec's post, he was pretty upset for a lack of feedback.
Simply put, I don't think that an embryo is a human being in any relevant sense of the word, and doesn't deserve to be protected by the law. For the later stages, somebody here (forgot who) suggested that awareness be a criterium, but that's a bit iffy - I'm not versed in developmental psychology, but IIRC even newborn infants are not even self-aware in the sense that they realize they're independent creatures, distinct from their mother and other humans. I hasten to add that I don't think that self-awareness should be a criterium (otherwise, post-natal abortions would be legal), I'm just pointing out that the mere presence of some neurological activity doesn't necessarily amount to much - I have no idea when the first brain cells begin to develop, but it sounds like an arbitrary criterium. Which is not to say that I have an idea where the cut-off point should be.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on two related subjects:
Wrongful birth: this term refers to legal cases where a pregnant woman consults a doctor, to see if the unborn child is in good health. The child actually has some serious genetic defect or some other health issue, but the doctor (through negligence) fails to detect this. The woman, thinking that everything is allright, gives birth to the child months later and is unpleasantly surprised, to say the least. She sues the doctor; the grounds being that he failed in his duty and the damages being the costs of raising a disabled child and/or emotional damage.
So, thoughts? I imagine that those opposed to abortion in generally would als oppose this one, but since it is legal, should the woman's claims be honoured?
Wrongful life: related to the above. The difference is that the now-mature child, or the parents on behalf of the child, sue the doctor for damages that the child itself has suffered. Usually, this will be the costs of living after reaching maturity, as the child will in all likelyhood never be able to hold a paying job. Such claims have been honoured in a number of countries; personally I think they're absurd. Simplified, the essence of civil torts is the premise that the claimant would have been better off if the defendent had acted in a correct matter. But if that had happened, the claimant (the disabled child) wouldn't have existed at all.
I know of one Dutch case at our supreme court where such a claim was honoured, naturally provoking a storm of controversy. As for the reasoning above (the child's existence versus his non-existence), the supreme court refused to even adress the argument. A similar claim has been accepted in France by their highest court years ago, but since then the French parliament has outlawed claims like this.
Yet I agree with your premise, so as you correctly point out, the first definitely presents grounds for trial.
The second is ethically problematic. Professionally, I would opine that it should be litigated under the argument that the child is simply a patient harmed by the medic's actions. However, the optimal solution, or at least the one preventing headaches, would be to my mind to always attempt to fold the case into the parents' wrongful birth lawsuit and basically demand for their damages to be calculated by taking into account the full life span of the human being they brought to life, seeing as it will always remain in their care.
More from Mississippi, for the ones who still have to catch up:
The next front in the abortion wars: Birth control (http://life.salon.com/2011/10/26/the_next_front_in_the_abortion_wars_birth_control/singleton)
Mississippi debates a "Personhood" initiative that could ban the pill -- but ultimately aims at Roe v. Wade
Dr. Freda Bush has a warm, motherly smile. In her office just outside Jackson, Miss., she smiles as she hands me a brochure that calls abortion the genocide of African-Americans, and again, sweetly, as she explains why an abortion ban should not include exceptions for rape or incest victims. The smile turns into a chuckle as she recounts what the daughter of one rape victim told her: “My momma says I’m a blessing. Now, she still don’t care for the guy who raped her! But she’s glad she let me live.”
Bush is smiling, too, in the video (http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/30219/) she made to support as restrictive an abortion ban as any state has voted on, Initiative 26, or the Personhood Amendment, which faces Mississippi voters on Nov. 8. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, black or white, or even if your father was a rapist!” she trills. But Initiative 26, which would change the definition of “person” in the Mississippi state Constitution to “include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof,” is more than just an absolute ban on abortion and a barely veiled shot at Roe v. Wade — although it is both. By its own logic, the initiative would almost certainly ban common forms of birth control like the IUD and the morning-after pill, call into question the legality of the common birth-control pill, and even open the door to investigating women who have suffered miscarriages.
Personhood amendments were once considered too radical for the mainstream pro-life movement, but in the most conservative state in the country, with an energized, church-mobilized grass roots, Mississippi could well be the first state to pass one. Initiative 26 even has the state’s top Democrats behind it.
And in Bush, it even has a respectable medical face. Last month, Bush led a press conference of fellow gynecologists to try to refute the “scare tactics” of the opposition, which includes even the solidly conservative Mississippi State Medical Association. (The group feared 26 would “place in jeopardy a physician who tries to save a woman’s life.”) In one of several “Yes on 26″ videos in which she stars, Bush says unequivocally, “Amendment 26 will not ban contraception.”
But when we spoke, Bush was far less sure. And if her smiling face carries the day, the debate over even basic access to birth control could be heading to similar votes in every state legislature, and extremists have their dream case to take to a Supreme Court where the Roe majority teeters precariously.
- – - – - – - – - -
That’s partly because the Personhood movement hopes to do nothing less than reclassify everyday, routine birth control as abortion. The medical definition of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg successfully implants in the uterine wall. If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-06-20/news/0506200177_1_emergency-contraception-morning-after-pill-regular-birth-control-pills) hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.
Indeed, at least one pro-Personhood doctor in Mississippi, Beverly McMillan, refused to prescribe the pill before retiring last year, writing (http://www.prolife.com/BIRTHCNT.html), “I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions.” Bush does prescribe the pill, but says, “There’s good science on both sides … I think there’s more science to support conception not occurring.” Given that the Personhood Amendment is so vague, I asked her, what would stop the alleged “good science” on one side from prevailing and banning even the pill?
Bush paused. “I could say that is not the intent,” she said. “I don’t have an answer for that particular [case], how it would be settled, but I do know this is simple.” Which part is simple? “The amendment is simple,” she said. “You can play the ‘what if’ game, but if you keep it simple, this is a person who deserves life.” What about the IUD, which she refuses to prescribe for moral reasons, and which McMillan told me the Personhood Amendment would ban? “I’m not the authority on what would and would not be banned.” No – Bush simply plays one on TV. And if her amendment passes, only condoms, diaphragms and natural family planning — the rhythm method – would be guaranteed in Mississippi.
Bush also says in the commercial that the amendment wouldn’t “criminalize mothers and investigate them when they have miscarriages.” And yet if the willful destruction of an embryo is a murder, then that makes a miscarried woman’s body a potential crime scene or child welfare investigation. What about women whose miscarriages were suspected to be deliberate or due to their own negligence? One Personhood opponent, Michelle Johansen, told me she wondered whether she could have been investigated for miscarrying a wanted, five-week pregnancy, because she rode a roller coaster. (Her doctor ultimately told her they were unrelated.)
The boilerplate Personhood response, echoed by both McMillan and Bush, is that no woman was prosecuted for miscarriage before Roe v. Wade, so why start now? Of course, there was no Personhood amendment at the time, nor much knowledge of embryonic development. And in countries with absolute abortion bans, like El Salvador, women are regularly investigated and jailed (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.html?pagewanted=all) when found to have induced miscarriages.
Pressed, Bush said, “Look at the numbers of women who were injuring themselves [pre-Roe] in an attempt to have an abortion. It was not 53 million,” the estimated number of abortions since Roe v. Wade.
“I don’t have all the answers,” she said, “but those questions that are there do not justify allowing nine out of 10 of the abortions that are being done that are not for the hard cases,” she said.
But a Colorado-based Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, is more than willing to publicly take things to their logical conclusion. He wrote on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page that after abortion is banned, “the penalties have to be the same [for a women as well as doctors], as they would have to intentionally commit a known felony in order to kill their child. Society isn’t comfortable with this yet because abortion has been ‘normalized’ — as the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”
- – - – - – - – - -
Personhood represents an unapologetic and arguably more ideologically consistent form of the anti-choice movement. It aims squarely for Roe v. Wade by seizing on language from former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun – the author of the Roe decision — during the hearings that the case would “collapse” if “this suggestion of personhood is established … for the fetus.”
Similar ballot measures have failed twice in Colorado, where an evangelical pastor and a Catholic lawyer started the Personhood movement, but Mississippi is no Colorado. It’s the most conservative state (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125066/State-States.aspx) in the nation. Planned Parenthood (which doesn’t even provide abortions in its one clinic here) and the ACLU are dirty words. Where there were once seven abortion clinics in the state, the one remaining flies in a doctor from out of state. As for supporting life, Mississippi’s infant mortality rate is the worst of any state in the nation. It also has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy nationwide, alongside a child welfare system that remains dangerously broken (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/haley-barbours-child-welfare-debacle).)
Even so, if Initiative 26 passes, it would embolden similar efforts in Ohio, South Dakota, Florida and other states, currently trying to get a Personhood amendment on the ballot in 2012. And though there have been no reliable public polls, insiders on both sides believe it is headed for approval. “This thing will pass if people don’t understand what it really means,” says Oxford-based attorney and Initiative 26 opponent Forrest Jenkins. The Personhood movement “can either convince people that birth control is abortion or they can convince people that it’s not really true and we’re just being silly.” (Indeed, when I asked one college student who described himself as pro-life about the birth-control implications, he said, “I thought that was just gossip.”) Unfortunately for opponents, talking about sweeping and nuanced implications takes a lot more words than “stop killing babies.”
Mindful of anti-abortion sentiment in the state, even the local pro-choice opposition has taken to referring to all these implications – like banning birth-control pills — as “unintended consequences” of the initiative. But as my conversations in Mississippi with pro-Initiative 26 doctors made clear, for many Personhood supporters, these effects are anything but unintended. They’re part of the plan.
- – - – - – - – - -
I had barely arrived in Mississippi when I was declared a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” by the grass-roots wing of the movement. Les Riley, the self-described (http://archive.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=1662) “tractor salesman with 10 kids and no money” who got Personhood on the ballot, stopped responding to my messages, so I’d posted interview requests on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page, disclosing that I was pro-choice but committed to giving them a fair hearing.
“This is just a reminder of some of the ‘Neutral and Fair’ mainstream media that are trying to lure us into debate, argument, and confrontation,” Wiley S. Pinkerton wrote on the same page, not long after. “They are coming to this site hoping to catch us without the full armor of God.”
Of course, even if I’d wanted to, the chances of catching any of them without “the armor of God” seemed remote. The Personhood movement in Mississippi is openly theocratic. Riley has written (http://archive.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=1684) that “for years, the pro-life movement and the religious right has allowed the charge [of being “religiously motivated”] to make them run for cover. I think we should embrace it.” Riley, in fact, had already enthusiastically embraced Christian secessionist and neo-Confederate groups as part of his coalition. (The national media play (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/abortion-mississippi-les-riley) his personal history received by the time of my visit this month might explain some of the hostility to the press.)
Last summer, a more mainstream face, Brad Prewitt – a lobbyist and former high-level staffer for U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran – took over the campaign at the request of the American Family Association, which, like Prewitt, is based in Tupelo. (Riley continues to actively campaign, though he isn’t listed on the official Yes on 26 site. Prewitt promised an interview several times, but never came through.) Prewitt, too, publicly described the conceptual origin of Personhood being “the Bible, Genesis,” and declared, “Mississippi is still a God-fearing state.”
At several public forums organized by the secretary of state to discuss ballot initiatives, resident Scott Murray’s statement was typical: “I know there is an issue with pregnancies, unmarried pregnancies, but I tell you the greatest prevention is God, and we’ve got to return to God.” So was Stephen Hannabass’ assertion that “we’ve got to repent. We’ve got to come before God and beg for mercy for our state and for our country.”
There are women in the Personhood movement too, of course. In Tupelo, two of them thanked the men who were “created to be protectors” and who “are to speak out for the women and children.” Another, who said she wished the law had protected her from her own choice to have an abortion at 18, took a more practical tack: “Yes, it’s going to cost us money, but you know what? Have we thought about the cost it’s already costing the state from the ladies who are hurting themselves and the babies and the hurts?”
- – - – - – - – - -
But is there mercy for women facing life-threatening pregnancies – specifically ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable and can seriously threaten a woman’s life? In countries with absolute abortion bans and in many Catholic hospitals, doctors often have to wait to operate until fetal death or until there is a rupture, increasing the risks to the mother and baby.
As for cases where a woman has to choose between pursuing treatment for a life-threatening illness and her pregnancy, McMillan said, “I like to think about them as a graph. You have health going up and down, you have time nine months going this way. Here’s the mother’s health going down, down, down over those nine months of pregnancy. Here’s the baby’s chance of survival going up, up, up over that nine months. What I pray to recognize is that when those two lines intersect. That’s not the time for an abortion but for a planned early delivery.” I pointed out that, say, cancer tended to involve far less predictability than she described. “It’s a medical wisdom thing. You try your best,” the doctor replied.
The Yes on 26 site speaks of “saving both lives” as if it’s an unequivocal setup in which doctors can just pick both. “You can’t write a law that takes into account all of the amazing range within pregnancies,” responds Randall Hines, a Jackson doctor who opposes the initiative. “That’s why physicians have to counsel patients given the best evidence that they have.”
Prewitt has also frequently proclaimed that in-vitro fertilization, which gave him his two sons, won’t be banned under the measure. But Hines, one of only three doctors who do IVF in the state, told me, “It’s conceivable that with this same amendment, some IVF practices would be illegal,” adding, “I’ve heard a variety of opinions and they all sound bad.”
This, too, is seen as simple by the Personhood crowd, whose understanding of the actual science is, well, simplistic. Alex Strahan, who described himself as Personhood’s Southern field director (he’s not currently listed on the site), said at the Tupelo hearing, “If you harvest 10 eggs and you implant three and you throw away the other seven, you’re aborting seven children. You’re aborting seven humans. You’re killing seven humans. So do it the right way and don’t kill children.”
The best chance of an in-vitro pregnancy involves a winnowing process, starting with harvesting eggs and ideally ending in a fertilized egg implanting, and embryos are usually frozen in the process. Using all of the fertilized eggs at once could result in a dangerous multiple pregnancy, or if fewer are used, a very low chance of success. Some Personhood people even want to do away with freezing embryos, because roughly half of the embryos don’t survive it. Hines says of these strategies, “We would lower the overall pregnancy rate and we would often fail.” He says several patients have called frantically asking what to do about their frozen embryos. “These people who say that they’re all about the sanctity of life are creating great anxiety for women who are already desperate to have children,” Hines says. Personhood advocates, including Prewitt, have also suggested couples give leftover embryos, if there are any, up for “adoption” by another family.
- – - – - – - – - -
So how did something so radical get on the ballot in a state where such initiatives are rare? Prewitt has admitted that he didn’t even sign the initial petition to get Personhood on the ballot, which was filed in February. That’s not particularly surprising; until Riley got close to, then exceeded, the 90,000 needed signatures, his cause was considered marginal and dangerous by many mainstream pro-lifers.
Personhood hadn’t just failed in Colorado; it had also helped elect a pro-choice Democrat to the Senate, according (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/128009-women-voters-were-bucks-downfall-in-colorado) to that state’s Republican Party chair. (Michael Bennet had run ads (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/17/michael-bennet-ad-hits-ke_n_721415.html) saying opponent and Personhood supporter Ken Buck wanted to ban birth control, and by the time Buck backed off it was too late; Bennet won by dint of independent women.) Florida’s Catholic bishops opposed (http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue7121.html) it as strategically unsound. (Mississippi’s Catholic brass followed (http://www.jacksondiocese.org/diocese/files/Personhood statement.pdf).) And it was just plain weird – there was its Coloradan leader (who also declined comment), darkly warning (http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20111009/NEWS/110090349/Weighing-Personhood-Initiative-s-effects-could-profound) of a future of human-animal and human-robot hybrids unless Personhood amendments were broadly accepted.
It was the American Family Association endorsement that put media muscle behind the movement in Mississippi, with email blasts, radio PSAs and interviews, promotions on its own website, and combined with the grass-roots energy, the state’s anti-choice groups took notice. Suddenly, people who had previously focused on incremental change – parental consent laws, waiting periods, ultrasound laws – were ecstatically heralding an end of the “murders.” Mike Huckabee keynoted (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/huckabee-lauds-personhood-mississippi-slams-avaricious-abortion-industry) a fundraiser and even presumed GOP front-runner Mitt Romney to endorse the concept on his show. (It’s unclear if Romney knew what he was getting into.)
The state’s tiny pro-choice contingent was stunned by Personhood’s success. It didn’t help that a legal challenge mounted, and eventually lost, by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood delayed the official opposition. The Personhood coalition had been busy organizing – getting churches on board, showing up at every gun show, county fair and flea market telling people it would save babies — for months. But the opposition coalition, known as Mississippi for Healthy Families, waited until a state Supreme Court decision a month ago kept the initiative on the ballot. Before that, says Stan Flint, the managing partner of Southern Strategies who’s advising them, “People wouldn’t pull out a checkbook.”
They could expect no help from local Democrats. The party’s current candidate for governor, Johnny Dupree, who would be the first black statewide official since Reconstruction, supports Personhood. (Republican candidate Phil Bryant embraced Personhood early on, and co-chairs Yes on 26.) Only one of Mississippi’s legislators, Deborah Dawkins, has come out against the measure, telling (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/mississippi-abortion-personhood_n_976872.html) the Huffington Post that her fellow Democrats “are at a different place in their life, they’ve got to have a job.”
Just how much Personhood has succeeded in moving the goalposts was clear at a recent gubernatorial debate. Dupree said he had concerns about rape and incest victims and the impact on birth control. “But I’m answering the question and voting on the question based on what was asked in the initiative,” he said. “That initiative says, ‘Where do you believe life begins?’ I believe life begins at conception.”
Cristen Hemmins, an anti-26 activist and survivor of a brutal carjacking, rape and shooting, told me she’d gotten a call from Dupree after repeatedly contacting his office. Dupree reiterated that he opposes abortion but thought there should be some provisions for rape and incest victims. Moreover, he said, his daughter had had an ectopic pregnancy and eventually had a child through IVF, both situations potentially impacted by Personhood.
“I said, ‘I don’t understand, if you’re for all these things … why are you voting yes?’” Hemmins recalled. “[Dupree] said, ‘I’m starting to see that there are issues …I’ve said I’m going to vote yes and it’s too late to go back on it now. It’d destroy me politically.’”
I tried to confirm those quotes with Dupree; he did not return calls to his cellphone.
But Democratic candidates aren’t the only ones who are scared. As one anti-Personhood woman angrily put it in a community forum in Cleveland, Miss., I attended last week, “They are counting on us being so afraid of being ostracized in our communities.”
Personhood advocates say all these ambiguities can be hashed out later by the Legislature – quite the small government line, leaving some room for the opposition to use conservative rhetoric.
“We feel it’s the greatest invasion of government into private family matters in the nation’s history,” says Flint. “We’re in a half a billion dollar budget hole. We don’t need ludicrous lawsuits about dangerously extreme constitutional amendments.” Anti-26 phone bankers have cited the possibility of higher taxes to pay for all of those lawsuits, criminal enforcements and presumed new additions to the Medicaid rolls.
Internal polling showed the initiative had overwhelming support among the state’s voters – until they heard the opposition messaging. “It’s the largest movement on numbers I’ve seen, in terms of the undecideds. It reverses the position,” says Flint. A straightforward abortion ban, he said, would have been tougher to beat. “They’ve given us all the ammunition we need to defeat it.”
Personhood could represent the most audaciously successful reframing of the national abortion debate yet – in which pro-choicers have to fight over whether forms of birth control are abortion, as opposed to ensuring a woman’s right and access to reproductive choice. But even in Mississippi, allowing the fringe to drive the antiabortion movement could represent the point where it overplays its hand.
If it’s the latter, the best hope for defeating Personhood in Mississippi lies in the hands of people like the stammering middle-aged man I saw rise at the same community forum. The room was full of indignant pro-choicers, but he described himself as a minister opposed to abortion. “I’m disturbed by this initiative,” he volunteered. “In the name of something that pro-life people like myself think is good – stopping abortions – we’ve designed this thing that is horrible, or has the potential to be horrible.
“I do have a concern about the broadness of this and the way that it says things,” he went on. “And I tell you, it’s almost like it’s not true. It’s like they come in — I don’t like people coming through back doors. And I think I’m more honest than that as a preacher. I hope I am.”
Mississippi, Personhood and the future of the anti-abortion movement (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/mississippi-personhood-and-the-future-of-the-anti-abortion-movement/2011/10/28/gIQANrsMQM_blog.html)
A burgeoning effort among anti-abortion advocates to amend state constitutions to define life as beginning at conception. Such an amendment could outlaw abortion and may hinder access to birth control or in vitro fertilization.
So far though, no personhood amendment has gotten very close to becoming law. Many don’t get enough signatures to land a ballot initiative, and those that do have failed by double-digit margins. But Carmon thinks that may change when Mississippi votes on a new personhood amendment, Initiative 26, next week. “In the most conservative state in the country, with an energized, church-mobilized grass roots, Mississippi could well be the first state to pass one,” she writes.One key thing Carmon picked up on in her piece is the relatively fringe role the idea of personhood has played within the anti-abortion movement. I covered the personhood movement for Newsweek in 2008, when Colorado was the first-ever state to vote on such an amendment. The whole campaign was organized by an energetic 21-year-old named Kristi Burton. The anti-abortion establishment, however, was none too thrilled with it. Here’s whatI wrote (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/10/30/roe-v-wade-v-kristi.html) back then:
Burton has not received much support for Amendment 48 from her most natural allies—the country's major pro-life groups. Heavyweights like National Right to Life and Americans United for Life are not backing it. "There are other ways to protect human life that we focus on because we believe they are the most effective," says Clark Forsythe, president of Americans United for Life. Although pro-life leaders generally agree with Burton that life begins at fertilization, they fear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade would ultimately be slapped down by the Supreme Court—still at least one vote shy of an anti-Roe majority—setting back the movement. "The established pro-life movement feels … we should stop trying to overturn Roe because the time isn't right," says Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative public-interest firm that has advised Amendment 48. "Then there is this huge grassroots movement saying it's immoral not to try and save innocent lives."
The Colorado ballot initiative went on to fail by a 40-point margin (http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Colorado_Fetal_Personhood,_Amendment_62_(2010)), but similar initiatives began popping up in other states (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/11/02/i-am-zygote-hear-me-roar.html). And when Carmon traveled to Mississippi, she found much greater enthusiasm for personhood activism, noting that some Democrats there had come to endorse it. Perhaps an even more telling sign of personhood tiptoeing into the mainstream is its recent endorsement by presidential contender Mitt Romney. He told told Fox News he would “absolutely (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/10/03/334190/mitt-romeny-constitutional-amendment-abortioneption/)” support a constitutional amendment defining life as beginning at conception.Still, its hard to argue that personhood has become part of the mainstream anti-abortion agenda. Most major groups in the movement are still skittish about the strategy. When I attended the National Right to Life Committee’s state strategy conference this year, there was no mention of personhood: The group was more focused (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46330_Page2.html) on late-term abortion bans and ending insurance coverage for the procedure. Americans United for Life, the country’s oldest anti-abortion group, provides states advocates with dozens of model laws to use in their legislatures. But it has not written a model law to define life as beginning at conception.The Mississippi vote next week will be a key one to watch for the personhood movement. If it passes, it could very well draw a Supreme Court challenge on the issue while forcing anti-abortion advocates to figure out where it fits into their movement. But if a personhood amendment can’t pass in Mississippi, it could draw more questions about whether this could succeed anywhere.
classical_hero
11-08-2011, 22:05
There is no legal framework to be considered under international law. The is no "right" for abortion under international law.
http://www.sanjosearticles.com/
Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.
Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.
Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.
Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights. This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.
Article 5. There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law. No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion.
Article 6. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion. These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion.
Treaty monitoring bodies have no authority, either under the treaties that created them or under general international law, to interpret these treaties in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties.
Accordingly, any such body that interprets a treaty to include a right to abortion acts beyond its authority and contrary to its mandate. Suchultra vires acts do not create any legal obligations for states parties to the treaty, nor should states accept them as contributing to the formation of new customary international law.
Article 7. Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected.
There is no international legal obligation to provide access to abortion based on any ground, including but not limited to health, privacy or sexual autonomy, or non-discrimination.
Article 8. Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion.
Article 9. Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion.
Treaty monitoring bodies, United Nations agencies and officers, regional and national courts, and others should desist from implicit or explicit assertions of a right to abortion based upon international law.
When such false assertions are made, or pressures exerted, member states should demand accountability from the United Nations system.
Providers of development aid should not promote or fund abortions. They should not make aid conditional on a recipient’s acceptance of abortion.
International maternal and child health care funding and programs should ensure a healthy outcome of pregnancy for both mother and child and should help mothers welcome new life in all circumstances.
We — human rights lawyers and advocates, scholars, elected officials, diplomats, and medical and international policy experts — hereby affirm these Articles.
San Jose, Costa Rica
March 25, 2011
a completely inoffensive name
11-09-2011, 00:06
There is no legal framework to be considered under international law. The is no "right" for abortion under international law.
http://www.sanjosearticles.com/
Because we all need to listen to Costa Rica?
Papewaio
11-09-2011, 01:22
I'm not even sure of the validity of Article 1 let alone the rest. Seems to overstep a few sovereignty issues on the rest of the articles as most countries core laws trump treaty obligations ie Consitution equivalent.
The so called scientific consensus must be very narrowly defined to a subset of science in both type, geographic location and meme embedded background. Because I'm pretty sure in most first world secular countries it is quite far from being a consensus.
Sasaki Kojiro
11-09-2011, 02:20
It's not a question of whether life begins at conception, it's what kind of life it is.
Oh boy, I was wondering when this would surface. I will admit we were just talking the other day about its quality; we would’ve loved to have pitched for this PR contract.
However, linking to it is perhaps the most egregious demonstration of naiveté one could display.
What I mean is, this campaign / manifesto was put together in a hurry as a reaction to UN Women’s stand during the meeting of the Third Committee of the General Assembly at the United Nations, in its 66th session, to discuss Item 28 (a,b) concerning the Advancement of Women internationally.
In the executive summary of the document UN Women presented, it is expressly stated that 61 countries still restrict women’s access to abortion and also highlights an obscure Colombian Constitutional Court Decision in 2006 that overturned the country’s abortion laws as a flagship decision that should be used a model for future advocacy.
The only point UN women actually made:
“We have devoted significant efforts to positioning UN-Women as a catalyst for change. We are focusing on building partnerships, cutting edge analysis, strategic presence and high level advocacy and leadership. We chose to focus our first flagship report on the important subject of women’s access to justice because we recognize that effective systems of justice are a foundation for gender equality and women’s full enjoyment of their human rights. Reforms to bring legislation into compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are a key step. And so are policy measures to close gaps in the justice chain when women seek to obtain redress.”
That aside, I understand why these so-called Articles daze some people so easily. The List of Signatories (http://www.sanjosearticles.com/?page_id=44) seems so very, very impressive. It is nothing but a carefully redacted PR effort, totally covering most names in their most secular titles, when in fact the list consists exclusively of nothing but a bunch of crackpots, Christians, Christian crackpots and crackpot Christians.
:bow:
Take Douglas Sylva, listed only as Delegate to the U.N. General Assembly; whose delegate though? Oh! Holy See delegate to the U.N. General Assembly!
Take Christine Boutin, a French Christian politican who stated that Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks; just a “former Cabinet Minister of France” on the list.
Take Francisco Tatad, under his shiny title of ex Majority leader of the Phillipine Senate, who is nothing but a jumped up ex journalist who argued that “moral corruption is the global problem hounding mankind nowadays”.
Take Martha Lorena de Casco, head of the Pro-Life Committee in Honduras, but presented as just a “member of Parliament”.
Take Susan Yoshihara, listed only as “Director, International Organizations Research Group”, but who also is C-FAM (The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute) Senior Vice President for Research.
These are not even the most amusing examples. We can do better! Took me almost half an hour but hey, I like to enjoy my morning coffee and muffin when I have the time so it was no biggie to sip it a tad more slowly today :2thumbsup:
Below you have their name and title as Listed on http://www.sanjosearticles.com (http://www.sanjosearticles.com/) and then a short paragraph I added to explain who they really are. I changed the order here and there to group a few persons who are connected by a mutual organisation. There are a few names for whom I could not find information in English that I could copy paste (Guiseppe Benagiano, Javier Borrego, Luca Volonte, Elard Koch, Jakob Cornides). However, I can read both Spanish and Italian and I can confirm their ties to anti-abortion or conservative Christian organisations.
Lord David Alton, House of Lords, Great Britain
In 1987 he resigned as chief whip to campaign for his unsuccessful private members' bill which aimed to stop late abortions.
The Liberal Party merged in 1988 with the SDP, and from 1988 to 1997 he served as a Liberal Democrat MP, but had difficult relations with parts of the party, especially over attempts to make the party adopt a pro-choice position on abortion.
He is known for his strongly Pro-Life position on abortion, which went against the pro-choice politics of some in his party. In 1992, he announced that he would not stand again as a Liberal Democrat after the Party made support for abortion a party policy for the first time.
Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus
As supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, Carl A. Anderson is the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the world’s largest Catholic family fraternal service organization, which has more than 1.8 million members.
Patrick Kelly, Vice President for Public Policy, Knights of Columbus
Knights of Columbus agenda explained above.
Christine Boutin, former Cabinet Minister – Government of France, current president Christian Democratic Party
Is a French politician and a major Christian democratic figure in France.
In a November 2006 interview, published in 2007, Boutin stated that George W. Bush might have been behind the 11 September 2001 attacks. When asked if she believed that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks, Boutin replied:
"I think that it's possible... I think it is possible. I think it more especially as I know that the sites that speak of this problem are the sites that have the greatest numbers of visits.... And so, I tell myself, I who am extremely sensitive ... to the new techniques of information and communication, that this expression of the mass of the people cannot be without any truth. I'm not telling you that I adhere to that position, but let's say that, nevertheless, I'm questioning myself a bit on this question.”
Benjamin Bull, Chief Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
Serves as executive vice-president and chief counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund at its Team Resource Center in Scottsdale.
“No person – anywhere – should be punished simply for holding to Christian beliefs. Receiving special consultative status at the U.N. is a major advancement for ADF and our global legal efforts to protect and preserve religious freedom, said ADF Director of Global Activities and Strategic Alliances .”
Hon. Martha De Casco, Member of Parliament, Honduras
Is the founder and president of the Pro-Life Committee in Honduras, and member of the Latin American Alliance for the Family and the World Council for Life and Family. She has worked as broadcasting assistant for CBS, and produced educational programs for Honduran Children's Television.
Hon. Tom Coburn M.D., Member, United States Senate
Is an American politician, medical doctor, and Southern Baptist deacon. A member of the Republican Party. He supports gun rights and opposes gay marriage. Coburn opposes abortion. On the issue, Coburn sparked controversy with his remark, "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."
Professor John Finnis, Oxford University, University of Notre Dame Is an Australian legal scholar and philosopher. Finnis argues that the state should deter public approval of homosexual behavior while refusing to persecute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation, basing this position not on the claim that homosexual sex is unnatural but on the idea that it cannot involve the union of procreation and emotional commitment that heterosexual sex can, and is therefore an assault on heterosexual union.
Professor Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, former member of the President’s Council on Bioethics
George has been called America's "most influential conservative Christian thinker."
Professor John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
Is a leading Scottish philosopher, commentator and broadcaster. He is a Papal Adviser to the Vatican.
Professor Santiago Legarre, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina
Self-explanatory.
Leonard Leo, Former Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission
Former Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission. Mr. Leo is active in the affairs of the Catholic Church, serving as a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a member of the board of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
Yuri Mantilla, Director, International Government Affairs, Focus on the Family
Is Focus on the Family’s director for International Government Affairs. His work focuses on communicating Focus’ pro-life/pro-family perspective to government, church and business leaders in foreign nations and the Hispanic community in the United States.
Before joining Focus on the Family, Yuri Mantilla worked at the Family Research Council in Washington D.C.
Hon. Elizabeth Montfort, former Member of the European Parliamant
Member of the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats).
Anna Zaborska, Member of the European Parliament
Member of the of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats).
Cristobal Orrego, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of the Andes (Chile) PVC would have this guy’s babies.
" (...) The third controversy relates to the usefulness of ‘rights-talk’ to guide moral, political and legal reasoning. Some think it very useful because in our culture, which is a culture of rights and of demands made by individuals against other individuals or against the state, to frame a problem in terms of ‘rights’ implies giving it real importance. For instance, if I say that children ought to be born within marriage, I am imposing a duty on adults, a duty which may be the object of argument. But if I say children have a right to have a father and a mother united in a long-term commitment, the issue changes: now I am speaking about protecting children, not just about the duties of adult people as to how they should organise their lives. Similar examples may be adduced in relation to other personal rights.
But, while rights-talk is a means to put significant moral force on one side, so also the other side of the argument may be framed in terms of rights. For example, one might claim that having sexual relations outside marriage does not automatically imply an intention to violate the rights of possible children, and that this corresponds to a right to sexual autonomy. When using this rights-talk we tend to create a ‘clash’ of rights, one against another, in the attempt to drive home our political and legal reasoning. (...) "
Gregor Puppinck, Executive Director, European Center for Law and Justice
For the past ten years, Puppinck has extensively worked on religious freedom cases and political discussions within the international institutions primarily before the European Court of Human Rights. Those cases cover all areas of religious freedom, including tax issues, the autonomy of the church, church legal recognition, religious symbols, conscientious objection, family educational rights and employment. He also participated in litigation before the International Criminal Court. In the recent years he has developed advocacy and support for religious-based asylum seekers.
Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor
He is also a former legislative aide to Representative Christopher H. Smith, a Republican from Trenton, New Jersey, the leader of antiabortion forces in the U.S. House. Rees shares Smith's antiabortion position.
Austin Ruse, President, C-FAM
Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
Susan Yoshihara, Director, International Organizations Research Group
Is also C-FAM (The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute) Senior Vice President for Research.
William Saunders, Human Right Lawyer, Senior Vice President, Americans United for Life, former delegate to the UN General Assembly
Mr. Saunders is Chairman of the Religious Liberties Group for the Federalist Society. He is Vice President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Right to Life Federation, the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the Christian Institute on Disability, and the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. Mr. Saunders is a founding member of Do No Harm: the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.
Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is a conservative Christian nonprofit organization with the stated goal of "defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation." ADF was founded in 1994 by the late Bill Bright (founder, Campus Crusade for Christ), the late Larry Burkett (founder, Crown Financial Ministries), James Dobson (founder, Focus on the Family), the late D. James Kennedy (founder, Coral Ridge Ministries), the late Marlin Maddoux (president, International Christian Media), and Donald Wildmon (founder, American Family Association), along with the leadership of over thirty other conservative Christian organizations.
Marie Smith, President, Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues
Has made it her mission to identify, unite, and strategize with pro-life groups, lawmakers, and religious leaders to advance respect for life in law and policy. In her work with PNCI, a non-partisan global outreach of Gospel of Life Ministries, she has worked to protect children in the womb and their mothers from the violence of abortion.
Professor Carter Snead, Member, International Bioethics Committee, UNESCO and former U.S. Permanent Observer to the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics, University of Notre Dame School of Law
His research and scholarship explore the possibility, wisdom, and mechanisms of the governance of biomedical science, medicine, and technology according to ethical principles. He was the principal drafter of the President's Council on Bioethics' 2004 report, “Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies,” a controversial assessment of the governance (both public and private) of the activities at the intersection of assisted reproduction, human embryo research, and genetics.
Douglas Sylva, Delegate to the UN General Assembly
[B]“The world cannot afford to be without the Holy See [the Church] at the United Nations. The Church has been the custodian of universal social truths, among them that all humans possess dignity and equality. We derive our rights from natural law, which is unchanging. We can understand the full nature of those rights through reason," said Douglas Sylva, Ph.D., Holy See delegate to the U.N. General Assembly.
Hon. Francisco Tatad, former Majority Leader, Philippine Senate
Tatad practiced journalism as a wire service reporter for the Agence France-Presse (AFP). Tatad opposes reproductive rights and gay rights, and argues that moral corruption is the global problem hounding mankind nowadays. Tatad noted that the Philippines is only one of three countries (Malta and the Vatican City were the other two) in the world where divorce, contraception, euthanasia and same-sex marriage are not allowed. He said that one does not have to be a Catholic or Christian to recognize the fiction behind these immoral acts. “
Lord Nicholas Windsor, Member of the Royal Family of the United Kingdom
In a private ceremony in 2001 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore forfeited his right of succession to the British throne. In 2011 Lord Nicholas was appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life. He is a Trustee of the Catholic National Library and The Right to Life Charitable Trust, an educational body whose goal is the full protection of the unborn child.
Kralizec
11-09-2011, 16:56
I wasn't really upset or anything, just curious about everyone's thoughts on the subject. I referred to my post in case anyone missed it.
Yet I agree with your premise, so as you correctly point out, the first definitely presents grounds for trial.
The second is ethically problematic. Professionally, I would opine that it should be litigated under the argument that the child is simply a patient harmed by the medic's actions. However, the optimal solution, or at least the one preventing headaches, would be to my mind to always attempt to fold the case into the parents' wrongful birth lawsuit and basically demand for their damages to be calculated by taking into account the full life span of the human being they brought to life, seeing as it will always remain in their care.
I have no issues with the first case (wrongful birth). My objections against the second (wrongful life) have more to do with the way the decisions are framed than ethics (allthough the implied reasoning is ethically unsound). I suspect that the real reasoning in the Dutch precedent is that, as you say, parents will feel emotionally obligated to care for these disabled children long after they've reached maturity. The courts thus seek to reimburse the parents' costs and efforts which are to be made. However, the claim was made on behalf of the child, and therefore the discussion is about wether the child can be said to have suffered because of the doctor's mistake.
Clearly the only logical way you can argue that the child has suffered because of the mistake is to argue that, for the child, non-existance is preferable to the life he has. The Dutch courts refused to go this route and simply evaded the issue by using bogus reasoning. However, if I recall correctly, France specifically banned "wrongful life" claims because the unspoken reason is implied in the verdict - that is, honouring damage claims on behalf of the child implies that said child would have been better off if he had never existed, no matter how much the courts may deny this reasoning. Another factor the French parliament took into account before they decided on the matter was that France (and western democracies in general) have social services which can give disabled people like this the care they need. I've never actually read the French literature on the subject directly, maybe I'll dig it up when I have the time.
Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.
Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.
Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.
Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights. This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.
There's no logical link between points 1-3 and point 4. "Human being" in the biological sense of the word is not necessarily the same concept as "human" (as in, an individual) in various treaties.
As the site mentions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says in article 6 that every human being has an inherent right to life. I've seen it been used by pro-lifers to argue that abortion is illegal under international law before. However, if you read the entire article, it's clear that the article was aimed at the death penalty, which it explicitly mentions. It says something about (not) executing pregnant women, but nothing about abortion as such. If it had, lots of countries would simply have refused to sign it.
1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
2. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.
3. When deprivation of life constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
4. Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence. Amnesty, pardon or commutation of the sentence of death may be granted in all cases.
5. Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women.
6. Nothing in this article shall be invoked to delay or to prevent the abolition of capital punishment by any State Party to the present Covenant.
Sasaki Kojiro
11-09-2011, 18:04
Ball is in your court hiro de classico :laugh4:
Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.
Talk to any biologist and you will see how utterly wrong this statement is. "Life" is a slippery term. Is a virus alive? If so, why? Is a fire alive? If not, why? Fire shares many characteristics of "life" as we understand it, and I think you will find excluding fire from the list of living organisms a very tricky bit of business.
Biology does not care, because biology is not political. Scientists recognize that the border between alive/not-alive is broad, gray, and difficult. Politicians and partisans want a nice, clear line that does not exist in science. So your article, which appeals to authority, is appealing in an incorrect and deceptive manner.
a completely inoffensive name
11-09-2011, 19:55
Talk to any biologist and you will see how utterly wrong this statement is. "Life" is a slippery term. Is a virus alive? If so, why? Is a fire alive? If not, why? Fire shares many characteristics of "life" as we understand it, and I think you will find excluding fire from the list of living organisms a very tricky bit of business.Biology does not care, because biology is not political. Scientists recognize that the border between alive/not-alive is broad, gray, and difficult. Politicians and partisans want a nice, clear line that does not exist in science. So your article, which appeals to authority, is appealing in an incorrect and deceptive manner. I just want to say thank you Lemur for saying what I wanted to say but in a much better way than I could have.
I just want to say thank you Lemur
Meh, anybody who has taken biology should know this stuff, and I'm hardly the first person to point this out.
What's funny is that the extremes are easy. A zebra is definitely alive. A rock is definitely not. But a virus is missing something like five of the seven markers of "life," and a fire has most of the characteristics. And yet we generally agree that a virus is alive and a fire is not.
As for a developing human, I'd say it's "alive" when it has a chance of surviving outside the womb. But that, like most hard lines, is arbitrary.
For extra credit we could try to pin down what it means to be "conscious." That would take up a whole 'nother thread.
Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
11-10-2011, 00:17
As for a developing human, I'd say it's "alive" when it has a chance of surviving outside the womb. But that, like most hard lines, is arbitrary.
For extra credit we could try to pin down what it means to be "conscious." That would take up a whole 'nother thread.
When the brain begins to spark.
Mainly because, if we do have a soul that's when it wakes up, and if we don't that's when abortion will begin to cause what we recognise as suffering.
a completely inoffensive name
11-10-2011, 00:25
Meh, anybody who has taken biology should know this stuff, and I'm hardly the first person to point this out.Yes, but obviously many people must have slept in biology class since this is a point that has to be made repeatedly to many people. I doubt that hero has not taken a biology class yet...
Sasaki Kojiro
11-10-2011, 00:53
I'm bewildered by the idea that it's difficult to exclude fire from the list of living organisms. It's hard to define words precisely, yeah, but the reason we know it's hard is because our best attempts at a definition include things that are obviously excluded. So it isn't difficult to exclude fire.
Anyway, the human cells at conception are obviously alive so what's the debate here? :dizzy2:
The misconception from the bit classical said was with "individual member of the human species" which is language we use for fully formed people, not a couple living cells.
a completely inoffensive name
11-10-2011, 01:06
I'm bewildered by the idea that it's difficult to exclude fire from the list of living organisms. It's hard to define words precisely, yeah, but the reason we know it's hard is because our best attempts at a definition include things that are obviously excluded. So it isn't difficult to exclude fire.Anyway, the human cells at conception are obviously alive so what's the debate here? :dizzy2: The misconception from the bit classical said was with "individual member of the human species" which is language we use for fully formed people, not a couple living cells. I thought the point was being made about *human* life (just like the more general term "life") being vague and not well defined.
It's hard to define words precisely, yeah, but the reason we know it's hard is because our best attempts at a definition include things that are obviously excluded. So it isn't difficult to exclude fire.
Spoken like an English major. The question of life, as I posed it, had almost nothing to do with "defining words precisely," but rather distinguishing a state of being.
Fire consumes fuel, just like a living thing. Fire generates its own heat. It has a lifespan. It can reproduce itself. Like I said, it has a lot of the hallmarks of a living thing. A virus, on the other hand, is missing most of the markers we generally associate with life. But it can reproduce itself, so we classify it as "alive." Sometimes.
If we draw an arbitrary line at the fertilization of an egg as the starting point for life, all kinds of problems emerge. IUDs are murder, as is the Catholic-approved rhythm method, since its mechanism is spontaneous abortion of the blastocyst.
Why stop at conception, SK? Why not define individual sperm and eggs as alive? Because they won't form a child left to their own devices? But -- here's the thing -- neither will a blastocyst, embryo or early-stage fetus. They need very specific circumstances to make good on their potential of human life. Twitch any of the variables even slightly, and they're gone.
Viability is problematic as a line as well, but it makes a little more practical sense.
Sasaki Kojiro
11-10-2011, 05:38
They are alive!!!
And it does have to do with defining words precisely. You are saying things about lifespan, can reproduce, all the different hallmarks. That's an attempt at precision. And we find that attempt unsatisfactory when it points to things that obviously aren't alive. If an attempt at a definition includes something that we don't think fits under the definition, then that's an indicator that the definition is faulty.
Murder does not mean "killing anything that's alive". It's a kind of killing of a person. An embryo is not a person. Saying "human life starts at conception, therefore the embryo is a human life" is the equivocation that the pro-life people try to pull, but it's wrong.
But this is all basics about how people try to bolster their arguments by wording things a certain way.
I thought the point was being made about *human* life (just like the more general term "life") being vague and not well defined.
How much more well defined does it need to be?
Ironside
11-10-2011, 11:14
They are alive!!!
And it does have to do with defining words precisely. You are saying things about lifespan, can reproduce, all the different hallmarks. That's an attempt at precision. And we find that attempt unsatisfactory when it points to things that obviously aren't alive. If an attempt at a definition includes something that we don't think fits under the definition, then that's an indicator that the definition is faulty.
Fire falls on a few of the markers, even if it covers most. Thing is, there is no such thing as a perfect definition, so then you'll need to make those kind of lists, because what you want most as a scientist is predicatabillity. The abillity to find something new, look at the list and say, with everyone agreeing: This is alive (or simply self replicating matter). That's why Pluto (and Ceres a long time ago) lost their planetary status.
How much more well defined does it need to be?
That's the question isn't it? Since murder is killing a person, you'll need to define personhood. Enough brain functions for a personality?
Papewaio
11-11-2011, 00:57
When the brain begins to spark.
Mainly because, if we do have a soul that's when it wakes up, and if we don't that's when abortion will begin to cause what we recognise as suffering.
Actually it takes a fair bit more then brain activity to be concious let alone self aware.
It's the difference between having a BIOS, an OS and ability to see 127.0.0.1 is separate from but part of 0.0.0.0/0
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