I won’t sink so low as to pretend that I know the motivations and thoughts of (all) objectivists and/or (all) subjectivists and/or (all) relativists.
Okay, imagine those who choose to use a different point along the path from conception to birth to describe the unborn as the embodiment of “personhood”.
What is to stop them from making this very same assertion? Yes, they agree that this can be demonstrated. But it is you who has drawn the line in the wrong spot.
How then would either the philosopher or the scientist then establish objectively who is correct?
No, my point is that in order to become an oak tree you must first have survived beyond just being the acorn.
And in order to become an adult you must have survived beyond just being a zygote.
In other words, a reasonable argument can be made from both sides. And neither side is able to make the other side’s point go away. No, a zygote is not an adult human being. That’s true. But no adult human being ever becomes one if as a zygote he or she is aborted. That’s also true.
And yet many in the pro-choice camp argue that in forcing women to give birth [even those carrying a life that you would construe to be a “person”] precludes political equality in a world where men never, ever have to anguish over an unwanted pregnancy themselves.
I’m not arguing that objective values do not exist. I’m arguing that here and now no one has been able to demonstrate to me that they do. At least not beyond merely constructing an abstract argument “in their head” that they claim to believe is true.
Also, I suggest that those who embrace objective values may one day acquire the political power necessary to enforce those values on/over others. Perhaps by way of a theocratic regime. Or a regime predicated on one or another left wing or right wing ideological agenda.
No, I make the distinction between 1] objective facts that can be demonstrated to be true [Jane either did or did not have an abortion] and 2] our subjective/subjunctive reaction to those facts [Jane’s abortion is said to be moral or immoral…we are supportive or appalled].
The truth does in fact exist regarding the abortion itself. And we are either able to demonstrate this or not. But how is the attempt to convince others that the abortion is either moral or immoral the same or different from that?
Again, this is just an assumption that you make. It is predicated entirely on the manner in which you construe the meaning of a person. Others see the unborn as “in the game” going all the way back to the point of conception itself.
So, how are they not right from their side in the same manner in which you are right from yours? How would philosophers or scientists establish it as either one side or the other?
Well, we can discuss this here in an exchange of arguments. But out in the real world where real unwanted pregnancies occur, there are going to be laws that either permit or prohibit abortion. And if a woman gives birth only to avoid being punished for breaking the law then she is being coerced.
I believe that women should be permitted [legally] to make this decision entirely on their own. But I also believe that at whatever particular point they choose to abort they are killing a human baby.
But, most importantly, I don’t believe that an argument can be made that would actually “settle it” once and for all.
And I don’t believe that they should be charged with murder.
But I also have no illusions that this frame of mind is not in turn still an existential contraption 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.
And that, above all, objectivists are intent on rejecting this point of view as reasonable because once they go down that road they have to acknowledge that it may also be applicable to them.
And, of course, if it is then all the years they spent constructing both a core identity and a set of objective values is then threatened.
In other words [as I see it], they just have too much invested psychologically in one or another rendition of this:
[b][i]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.
2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.
3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.
4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.
5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.
6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.
7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/i][/b]
Seems that there is no way to avoid the cut and paste. 
Aside from putting him on ‘ignore’. 
Iambigious:
Through an analysis of the evidence, as we would when determining who is correct on any other issue.
Are you suggesting that zygote inherits the rights of the person is will one day become, even if it does not ever become that person because it is aborted?
There are many in the pro-choice camp who think all sorts of things. Are you suggesting I should agree with all of them because I agree with them that abortions should be allowed?
Yes they might well do that. Were I to have the power, I would indeed “enforce” that everyone is able to make their own choices and that those choices are not taken away from them by others, for example, murdering or raping them.
I am not interesting in our subjective reaction to the fact of Jane’s abortion, I am interested in the objective fact of its moral quality, if indeed such a fact exists.
Generally their belief that the person is “in the game” is predicated on it having a soul, which we could point out that we have no evidence for, or it being a human, which it is but we could point out is a fallacious argument. It is not an assumption I am making, it is a reasoned conclusion from an analysis of the best information available to me at this time.
I am not intent on rejecting that point of view as reasonable. I think it is reasonable for you to think you can’t come to any moral conclusions. From a discussion with you, I am inclined to agree that this may be an accurate summation of your moral reasoning. What I reject is your assumption that this is what other people are doing. It smacks of the psychological egoist, saying that others must act out of self interest as well because they cannot fathom acting altruistically and then, when faced with cases which conflict with their theory, falling back on unconscious explanations which become unfalsifable
One can’t separate the morality from the goals and intentions of a society.
Take abortion as an example. The goal of sustaining and growing a society is objectively reasonable. If a society is faced with critically declining birth rates, then it will act to stop or slow that trend by making abortion illegal. A fetus will be declared a person or it will be assigned the rights of a person at conception. The evidence used in this case will be statistics on rates of population growth with abortion and without abortion. There is no evidence which states that a fetus can’t have the rights of a person.
Contrast this to a society with a high birth rate and diminishing resources. It will attempt to reduce births. It will make abortion available and even encourage it.
God and soul do not necessarily enter into the argument, although they may be used to rationalize the decisions and actions.
That would be a very stupid form of government, phyllo.
Regarding abortion, unwanted children should be aborted. That’s a no-brainer that is a brainer only for people without a brain (such as Biguous.)
The worth of an action is, or should be, determined based on its effect on the actor. Actions that strengthen their actor are good, actions that weaken their actor are bad.
Moral choices such as that of abortion are no different.
The mistake you are making is you are relating actions not to their actor but to what their actor belongs to, in your case, to society.
That’s degenerate and reminiscent of nihilistic Judeo-Christian morality.
If there is a problem of declining birth rates, then that problem must be addressed in the way any problem should, and that is by identifying the cause.
In many cases, as is the case in modern times, the cause of declining birth rates is inherent immorality of the general populace. This can’t be resolved unless people are somehow inspired or otherwise motivated to restore their natural morals.
You can’t do this by forcing people to adopt state-designed morals. The only effect of this sort of action is that of mummifying a dead body. You do nothing but preserve immorality.
Biguous is just a retard who thinks there is no such a thing as self-destruction.
You are right.
Biguous defines truth as an argument that is more “reasonable” – more convincing, more logically consistent, more seductive – than other arguments.
When arguments are equally “reasonable”, he thinks there is no objective truth.
He takes the superficial element, vague reflection of underlying processes of pattern recognition, to be more fundamental.
He thinks that words are more real than the mental processes they reflect.
That the conscious is more real than the unconscious.
This is why, whenever he encounters words he cannot understand, he assumes there is nothing standing behind them.
This appears, yes, to be the crux of the argument. My point does not negative yours that the subjective-
objective distinction, which are in fact ultimately, X- percentage of the population, as seen through some distinctive exclusionary criteria.
But, rather, the title of the forum suggests the probabilistic retention of some such normative aspects to this and any particular case of abortion at
hand, simply displaying such statistical feasibility, and
such that, the forum’s thesis could be qualified in such a way, as to ascertain for once and for all the absolute truth value of such a possibility.
It is the general framework, rather then specific applications that is proposed to be built up, upon whose framework, the specifications need to be hung.
That’s pure self-interest and it makes all sorts of awful acts ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ - killing, rape, theft, dishonesty, etc.
Morality is about interactions between people. It doesn’t exist without a society. There is no morality for a single person on a deserted island.
I don’t know why people keep writing stuff like this … clearly, Jewish and Christian morality does not satisfy the definition of nihilism.
What natural morals? In modern times, people are already pursuing what they think “strengthens the actor” … the accumulation of money, power and status.
So modern times seem to demonstrate the consequences of a morality of pure self-interest.
No, that’s what folks like I do when folks like you insist that if you think just like they do regarding conflicting value judgments, you too can raise points like that.
Literally in other words.
Well, up on the sky-hooks anyway. 
Really? Okay, was his answer the right one?
Oh, and by the way, I was asking you for your answer.
I have pointed this out to you a number of times in the past.
You will provide us with value judgments in the Society, Government, and Economics discussions but you never connect the dots between those particular political prejudices and the manner in which you construe everything as intertwined in RM/AO and the Real God.
Note to others: Has James ever done this? I’d appreciate any links here.
The problem is that you actually are asking for the one rational action, the one virtuous action, the optimal frame of mind which applies to all, always and forever.
Your philosophy is that is there is not an identified best correct action then there are no correct ones … there is no right and wrong.
ROFL 
See:
In what particular context, James?
Can you cite an example of a “moral obligation” from your own life?
And what if you bump into someone who shares your own assessment regarding the actual existence of an objective morality but insists that it is applicable to her value judgment and not yours?
But my point here is to suggest that, given all of the vast and varied experiences that men and women can come to embody over time historically and across space culturally, what are the odds that we could comprehend any particular individual’s motivations and thoughts? Let alone their feelings and psychological states.
Indeed, even within any particular human community [especially in the modern world] there are so many different possible combinations of variables that make up our day to day interactions with others [and in so many different possible existential contexts], we may never really come to grasp another’s sense of reality.
At best we can note things that overlap for us in the world of either/or and to form a particular political consensus regarding conflicting values in the world of is/ought.
Also, you have God here, don’t you? You never really explain to me how you factor God into your political prejudices, but with God comes omniscience and omnipotence. So you know that one day that transcending font will be there for you and on Judgment Day you can see how close you came to or how far you were from actual Virtue.
Right?
The natural state of being is for the creative element (Dionysian yea-saying, unconscious, body, instinct) to precede the critical element (Apollonian nay-saying, conscious, mind, will.)
The first step is to acknowledge, without judgment, any action, motivation, instinct, impulse or inclination that spontaneously, randomly and unexpectedly arises.
That is the Dionysian life-affirming all-embracing principle of yea-saying.
Then, and only then, do you introduce the critical, limiting, boundary-setting, element of Apollonian nay-saying.
When you do this, you get the perfect unity between regularity and spontaniety.
Because Dionysus is all-embracing he assigns neutral value, one can even say equal value, to every action.
No action is good or bad in itself.
It is only when one relates actions to one’s self – which is what Apollo does – that they acquire value.
At any moment, there is a great many actions that the body is stimulated to perform. They are fired all at the same time, and because only one action can be performed at a time, there must be some organizing principle that will organize these actions by assigning them priorities thus determining their rank in the hierarchy and their place in time. This is what Apollo does.
Good and bad simply describe whether a given action performed by the self is organized or not, whether it is taking place at the right moment in time or not.
Apollo, in this sense, does not fight against Dionysus, but fully affirms him by helping him handle his blind and infinite excitement he would otherwise end up destroying himself with.
When you reverse this relation by placing the critical element in front of the creative element you get Apollonian nihilism.
Both you, Daniel McKay and Biguous appear to belong to this camp, the camp where reason, consciousness and doubt precede instinct, unconscious and confidence.
Socratic Method, Judeo-Christianity and Popper’s critical rationalism also belong to this camp.
What’s wrong with self-interest? Isn’t the very definition of disease the pursuit of that which is against one’s self-interest?
Dionysus says that every action is acceptable – killing, theft, rape and dishonesty included. Apollo agrees but only under the condition that they empower. Apollo refuses everything that weakens.
It’s okay to kill but not your own people. That would be like killing yourself.
It is strange that you imply that social cooperation cannot be in one’s self-interest. Why not?
There is no morality for a single person on a deserted island but there is morality for a single person surrounded by other people.
It does not matter what people think but what they do. Most people nowadays are making themselves weaker not stronger. The pursuit of wealth is not necessarily the pursuit of strength.
You don’t have to know or understand every detail of every (or any) individual. Just as you do not need to know or understand the motion of every molecule in a hydraulic fluid in order to do something useful and valuable with it. Nobody knows the exact motion of every molecule that passes over the wing of an aircraft … they know the principles of fluid flow and they use that to design and operate an aircraft.
What you are suggesting or asking for is entirely unnecessary.
Nothing, unless you make it the be all and end all in everything.
You don’t have a clear definition. This allows you to say that sometimes cooperation is self-interest, sometimes altruism is self-interest, sometimes conflict is self-interest …
Previously you did not define “weaken” or “strengthen” either.
I can’t even say that I agree or disagree with you because your concepts so vague that they could mean anything. Therefore in my response, I assumed the minimum definition of “strengthen” and “weaken” which is personal gain for the “actor” - physical and monetary.
That’s great but that single person surrounded by people is judged based on his actions towards those people. He is judged by those other people. So in the context of society, only his outwards actions are significant.
Again, it’s not clear what you considered empowerment and why. It’s not clear who you consider “your own people”. If you consider “humanity” to be your own people, then killing anyone is wrong. But maybe your own people are only your family or citizens of your nation. 
Again, this assumes that we are able to fully determine that the evidence which you provide regarding that point where “personhood” is reached is necessarily more rational than the evidence of those who choose another point to draw the line.
But: if that evidence was wholly available, would we still have discussions and debates like these: google.com/search?q=when+do … on&ie=&oe=
No, I’m only pointing out that had you been aborted as a zygote you wouldn’t be around today to raise that point. And that’s a fact.
I’m only suggesting this:
1] that your views on abortion today [like theirs] are in part rooted in dasein – in the actual life that you lived and in the manner in which the aggregation of experiences, relationships and sources of knowledge etc., predisposed you existentially [subjectively] to think this rather than that. Here and now. And that a new experience, relationship or source of information etc., might well nudge you into believing something different.
2] that those who argue in favor of abortion make points that those who argue against it are unable to make go away. And vice versa. Conflicting goods. In other words, how can we live in a world such that, if it is deemed objectively moral for women to choose abortion, the unborn won’t die; or if it is deemed objectively moral that “persons” shall be brought to term, that some women won’t be forced [in the face of punishment] to give birth against their will.
3] that however anyone of us might think and feel about the morality abortion, what ultimately counts “out in the world” are those who have the political power to actually enforce a particular set of legal prescriptions and proscriptions.
Sans God in other words.
Again, as though there are not many others who would refuse to accept where you draw the lines here.
And then there are the sociopaths. From their perspective, morality revolves entirely around self-gratification. Thus they can rationalize rape and murder as either gratifying or not gratifying them.
Where then is the philosophical argument here that makes this necessarily irrational and immoral?
Yes, if indeed such a fact exists. But: the objectivists on both sides of the issue will certainly insist that the “facts” are on their side.
What does it mean to speak of having evidence for a soul when the true believers embrace the certainly [the fact] that God gave us one? And that [for many] this soul is imparted at conception. And in my own experience with moral objectivists, a “fallacious argument” is one in which their own set of assumptions is not by the default the starting point.
In my view, they always make their own premises the starting point. Why? Because it leads to a conclusion that allows them to anchor “I” in a sense of certainty that comforts and consoles them psychologically.
Just think about it: You have dozens and dozens of conflicting moral and political factions out there all insisting that their own facts, premises, assumptions etc., lead to the one true conclusion.
That which belongs to “one of us”.
Basically what they share in common [against me] is that there is an objective morality. But that all the other renditions are wrong.
Actually, I’m the first to acknolwedge that my own point of view here is not exempt from my own point of view. There may or may not be arguments more reasonable than my own. All I can note is that for thousands of years now folks have been arguing about the right way and the wrong way to live. About hundreds and hundreds of different behaviors.
Now, are we any closer to actually resolving these conflicted goods?
I don’t think so. So, if an objective morality is “out there” somewhere waiting to be either invented or discovered, it hasn’t surfaced yet. At least not in my opinion.
Instead, we have all of these hopelessly conflicted political factions [from the extreme left to the extreme right] all arguing that they have discovered or invented it.
I’m not sure what in particular you are accusing me of here. I’m merely suggesting that, pertaining to the world of is/ought, “self-interest” is embodied largely in dasein. In this: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
In the case of abortion, where exactly does altruistic behavior end and egotistic behavior begin? If Trumpworld succeeds here in America in making all abortions illegal, and Jane helps Mary to obtain an illegal back-alley abortion, is she being altruistic or egotistic. If a woman you know obtains an illegal abortion and you turn her into the authorities to be proscecuted, how is this sort of behavior to be judged?
Then how do you explain you being around?
Just joshing, my friend.