A new normative theory and a PhD thesis

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41

Iambigious: I would articulate it by saying that the woman ought to be free to decide what to do with her own body so long as the fetus is not a person, and that in this case, based on the development of human fetuses and the time in which the woman is requesting the abortion (in this hypothetical I am assuming this is an early-term abortion) the fetus has not developed the necessary brain structures to be a person, that it is not conscious yet and that without consciousness it surely cannot be considered a person. My opponents would likely respond with either a) the fetus is genetically human b) the fetus has a soul or c) the fetus will be a person. I would then point out the logical fallacies involved with the first and last of those arguments and the lack of evidence for the second.

I mean that your description of how people come by their moral positions is likely an accurate description of how some people have come by their moral positions, but it seems very odd to conclude that everyone has obtained their positions in this way and that no one ever takes up moral positions based on, for example, philosophical analysis.

A zero-sum game is the kind of thing where for one to win the other must lose. I think you mean it is one rather than it isn’t. But I disagree with the use of zero-sum game here, as well as baby, as it implies that there are two persons involved. I am not advocating abortion where there is a second “player” in the game as it were, but rather when there is the mother, and a fetus that will one day become a person.

42

Okay
, it is you outside the abortion clinic confronting fierce proponents for and fierce opponents against abortion. You point this out to them.

What do you suppose their reaction would be?

And how would you go about making it relevant to the actual lives that they have to live out in a particular world in which lawmakers or courts are hearing
conflicting arguments regarding how our behaviors here should either be prescribed or proscribed.
[/quote]
It’s a no brainer, I would say to those opting for abortions, that you knew how babies are born, and there really isn’t any way to draw the line where the that conception is really a human being, so, you have to bear the responsibility. If you did not know it , you know it now. It is a matter of you should have known it, whereupon, if you didn’t then you are either a retard or living on Venus. In which case, it is the Staye’s responsibility. Closed argument.

43

From my frame of mind this is just one particular subjective leap that you have made based on certain political prejudices that you have come to subscribe to regarding when the unborn becomes a “person”. You have no way of demonstrating that those who ascribe “personhood” to some other point along the trajectory from conception to birth are necessarily wrong.

Nor does it appear that you are able to establish a necessary philosophical argument to coincide with these assumptions. A moral/political agenda such that, whatever women choose to do, they will at least be apprised as to what the rational and virtuous woman is obligated to choose.

Or so it seems to me.

Thus in any particular human community “the law” would come to revolve around “right makes might”. Rather than in the manner in which it is now in most modern states: democratically.

And then there is this: If what you suspect is in fact true what then is the fate of a woman who chooses to abort her baby after it has become a “person”?

Will not some women then be forced to give birth against their will? Or risk punishment? Or risk possible health concerns — either physical and mental?

From my frame of mind, starting at conception, each and every one of us must pass through all of the stages in order to become a “new born baby”. Ayn Rand made that famous distinction between an acorn and an oak. And yet there is not a single oak tree standing that was not at one time an acorn. So, I don’t believe it is realistic to speak of abortion as anything other than the killing of a human being. And yet I support a woman’s right to choose this. And then when some ask me how I can possibly reconcile this I assure them that it can’t be reconciled – not logically, not morally, not philosophically, not politically. But if you do force women to give birth then it is “for all practical purposes” ridiculous to speak of political equality in a world where only women become pregnant.

Again, my point is that both sides can make arguments that are reasonable based on the assumptions that they start out with regarding so-called “natural rights” and “political rights”. And that neither side is able to obviate the points raised by the other side.

Finally, I suggest that, regarding the moral and political objectivists on both sides, what is crucial above all else is that one side or the other is right.

What they hope to avoid at all cost is becoming entangled in this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

My point is that I have not personally come upon a philosophical analysis able to obviate the point I raise regarding dasein or conflicting goods. Sure, you can recognize the extent to which historical, cultural and experiential prejudices become factors in your value judgments, but where is the optimal philosophical argument that makes all this go away.

You have your own analysis above. Others then embrace an analysis in conflict with yours. But where exactly here do the existential factors stop and the “objective analyses” begin? I suspect this is considerably more complex and convoluted than many objectivists are willing to acknowledge.

And yet “for all practical purposes” we can’t live in a world where there are only winners and no losers here. If you permit abortions the unborn dies, if you prohibit abortions, any number of women are forced to give birth against their will.

Then you stumble into particularly ambiguous contexts in which a woman is raped, becomes pregnant and chooses to abort a fetus that to you has already become a “person”. Even though others insist the actual juncture here is somewhere else.

Still, for the objectivists, what seems to count above all else is that this ambiguity finally gives way to right or wrong, good or evil, true or false.

44

You can know how babies are born and still be the victim of a failed contraceptive device…or of rape…or of incest. Or your circumstances can change radically such that while you wanted a baby before, you don’t want a baby now.

And any such argument like this is “closed” only to the extent that objectivists insists that unless you think like they do here, you are wrong. By definition as it were. Thus those on the other side can accumulate their own set of political prejudices in order to “establish” that it is in fact you who are the “retard”.

45

I did not consider exceptional cases, including developmentally disabled mothers, nor victims of rape, nor failed prophylaxis, sine objectivity requires a normative sample.

With these type of human beings, for objective consistencies , the holding to the standard that the embryo, regardless of any expert’s opinion as to what constitutes a human being, the responsibility rests with the state, within which the judicial holding is upheld.

46

Actually he has.

Just because you can’t make up your mind about anything (anything at all), doesn’t mean that everyone else is wrong. All it means is that you personally don’t understand how to be right (and refuse that it is even possible).

47

You misunderstand his position. Iambig does make up his mind about right and wrong but all of it is only applicable to him alone. Everyone else will have his/her own right and wrong. Basically when it comes to values and identity, everyone is standing on his own tower which is constructed of his personal experiences. It’s not possible to say to someone else “your tower is wrong” or “your tower has mistakes” because :

  1. the specific tower construction was forced on a person by circumstances beyond his control.
  2. one person does not have sufficient knowledge of another to make the judgement ( Which is why he refers to the necessity for God to be a transcending font. God can know but humans cannot know what is right and wrong in an absolute sense. )
48

I am afraid this will not do. When you say everyone has the right to make up their mind about their own set of values, this splits into two parts. zone how are such values institutionalize, so that the choices are not even available to make.

Go back 60 some years, when only black market abortions were performed, and they were often illegal acts resulting in criminal indictment, For most people, then, abortion was not a real choice, because most people don’t wish to end up in the slammer. So the so called objective standard has changed we time, to be interpreted in relative terms. That is not to say they have ever been so called subjective, since only extra judicial means of abortion was possible.

This down to earth example , I think, meets iambiguous’ criteria for a non categorical view of this particular moral question, but here is the tickler:

Looking at it existentially, albeit nihilistically, morality becomes a view of a story of imminent, destructured world view, discarding the structural hierarchy, for fear of being attacked categorically, for relapsing into the type of Kantianism, which was taken up earlier, and for which we were reminded of, as unnecessary to the conversation.

In this scene of immense excitement, the transcendent qualities are discarded in absolute terms, and reduced to a non sutuational value judgement, on absolute terms, where, abortion becomes an either/or, either it is right, or wrong; with the exceptional cases mentioned above not taken up for reasons described above.

So what happens in this new search for absolutes? It becomes a matter is pre-Kantian non categorical absolutes clashing in a sort of disqualifying search, where it is treated as if Kant and his structural analysis had never happened. Nihilism does jut that, it disqualifies everything leading up to and from, a schematic attempt at moral continuity, the process by which change really happens. Modern moralists cannot accept this, since then, they would be obliged to deal with relationships based on dielectical concerns. Nihilism is not process , it is the absolute rejection of it, energized by the glow of irrefutable absolutism, which in turn is directly linked to the vain world of the ideal world and ut’s objects.

There is absolutely no way in the modern world to get out of this conondrum, simply, you are with me, or, you are against me. The should do, of a categorical imperative, is nihilized, by a cynical retort as to the unworkability of it, and it is tempered by the modern world’s loss of it.

The debate has long been lost by the advocates of Rousseau’s view of the social contract, viewing man in the image of a noble savage, and has slid to Hobves contrary view of it, that men band together for mutual protection. Such shift, had changed morality to a surgical one, where any concensus gained may not rely on a belief of a prior disposition, hence structural objectivism had been replaced by the subjective view, that it is a woman!s priority to do what she will with her own body. Argument closed, the Dasein is metaphysically closed, it is defined by a haphazard, determinism, ruled by a woman’s own feelings on the matter. Even mature fetuses can be aborted in not particularly abnormal cases, based on flimsy, theoretical excuses. The line had been crossed a long time ago about what constitutes a physical or emotional danger to the health of the mother.

49

You are commenting on and conflating the issue of appropriate judgement. Right and wrong are not about judgement, but rather about truth. Judgement is an issue of what to do about a truth. Different circumstances can easily default to different actions to be taken. But first, truth must be established. So yes, someone really can properly say, “Your tower is wrong” (else Science could not exist at all).

50

I’m not commenting or conflating … I’m describing his point of view in simple terms. I’m doing it purely to avoid his usual cut and paste responses which don’t explain anything. The bottom line, of his philosophy, is pretty simple.

He sees no external truth. All truth is personal in the same way that values and identity are personal.

He says that it is established by each individual and it cannot be challenged by anyone else. “What I think is true, is true because I think that it is.”

That’s why he makes a distinction between value judgement(and identity) and the rest which is based on factual knowledge. He explicitly says that science is not based on dasein and that science is objective.

51

Well, as they say, "There’s another one born every minute."
… can’t save them all.

52

This is meant to imply that by restating his philosophy in simpler, clearer terms, I must have adopted his philosophy. ](*,)

:-k Maybe I’m just fed up with his cut and paste posts which confuse more than clarify.

53

Iambigious:

I do indeed have a way of demonstrating that those who ascribe personhood to other points in human development are wrong, so long as we are talking about the same thing when we use the word “personhood”.

Are you suggesting that we should also call an acorn an oak tree? Because those aren’t the same thing any more than an adult is the same thing as a zygote.

And yes, we should value not killing persons over political equality.

Yes, if you think there are no objective values then this is all an exercise in blabber. I think you are wrong about there not being objective values.

You seem to be conflating finding the truth with convincing others of the truth. The two are not the same.

I wasn’t suggesting there were never losers. I was suggesting that the case doesn’t apply to the kind of abortions I would allow as the fetus, as it were, isn’t a player in the game to begin with.

You keep saying forcing women to give birth as though that is going to convince me of something. Are you suggesting that abortion should be allowable at any point including nine months pregnant? What about during labor? What about halfway through the birthing process? I am going to assume you are not advocating any of these things and point out to you that, if I am right in that assumption, you also favor forcing women to give birth under some circumstances, so we are actually in agreement, it is only at what point you think this should be prohibited that we disagree on (though I will say again that I think that point is best decided in practice by medical professionals)

54

So, are you arguing that his argument above establishes a necessary proof regarding when the unborn becomes a “person”? And, in turn, that it reflects the optimal frame of mind such that any woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy can embrace it in order to be fully informed regarding the most rational and the most virtuous behavior.

Certainly, this may well be the case. My argument is only that he has failed to convince me.

Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of others who do not share his own assumptions here.

But: at least he does take that political leap.

Would you be willing to take one yourself here?

If you were outside that Planned Parenthood clinic confronting those on both sides of this issue, how would you convey to them the manner in which RM/AO [in conjunction with the Real God] allows them to resolve what clearly seem to me to be conflicting goods.

On the contrary, in the world of either/or, I am fully capable of making up my mind about things. Mary either was or was not pregnant. Mary either did or did not have an abortion. Mary either was or was not punished for this.

Now, ought Mary to have been punished if in fact she did have an abortion? And was the baby she aborted a person?

Are you claiming that questions of this sort are in turn a part of the either/or world?

If so, then make a case for it.

55

Okay, but how does any of this not fall within the parameters of my own argument: that conflicts of this sort are rooted existentially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

That any “normative theory” [old or new] will tend to crumble and then crumple once the words used to construct it come into actual contact with particular [and profoundly problematic] contexts ever evolving and changing out in particular worlds historically, culturally and experientially.

56

ROFL :smiley:

57

He already answered that for you.

Yes. He answered that as well.

You might want to spend a little more time seeking what HAS been answered rather than merely constantly seeking a means to pretend that nothing has been answered.

58

And rooted in turn in particular historical and cultural contexts that ever evolve over time in a world of contingency, chance and change.

After all, historians and anthropologists have provided us with any number of conflicting or contradictory narratives regarding any number of human communities.

It is invariably the moral and political objectivists however who then insist that we can transcend this by 1] concocting a deontological intellectual scaffold or 2] insisting there is only one “natural” way in which to understand our interactions out in the world around us.

In other words, as “one of us”.

On the other hand, our personal experiences can be shared. And, in what many see as the best of all possible worlds, democracy and the rule of law, a political consensus can be formed. And, then, through moderation, negotiation and compromise, evolve over time.

Yes, this pertains to the manner in which as children we are taught not only to see the world as it is, but to see it as it ought to be as well.

Indeed, with respect to an issue like abortion, what can I possibly know about your experiences, your relationships, your sources of knowledge and information? We can share this information but there will always be a gap.

And yet doctors who perform abortions can have any number of widely varying experiences, relationships, access to knowledge. They can be Christians or Hindus or Shintos or atheists. They can be men or women…black or brown or yellow…liberal or conservative…heterosexual or homosexual.

As a medical procedure, all that matters is this: can you perform an abortion successfully or not?

Either you can or you can’t.

And, yes, this frame of mind only makes sense [to me] in a world without God. With God comes omniscience and omnipotence.

59

Indeed, that is precisely what the objectivists seek to avoid at all cost: moral ambiguity.

Instead, they have lined up by the thousands over the years hoping to finally clarify once and for all “how one ought to live”.

For example, as they do.

Some with God, some without. Some with manifestos, some without.

And, as always, it’s not which one of them is actually right, but that one of them must be.

Now, I may be right and I may not be. But if I am that would be very, very troubling to the objectivists.

Which, in my opinion, explains many of the hostile reactions I get.

And not just from the huffers and the puffers. :wink:

60

No, they seek to avoid moral obligation by seeking out any excuse.