back to the beginning: morality

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I believe what many would construe to be two seemingly conflicting [even contradictory] things:

1] that aborting a human fetus is the killing of an innocent human being
2] that women should be afforded full legal rights to choose abortion

As a result, the first thing many point out is that, regarding this issue, I am insisting women should be permitted legally to kill innocent human beings. And that doing so is in this particular context not immoral.

To which I respond:

“Yes, but…”

But:

Just because I construe the fetus to be an innocent human being does not necessarily [objectively] make it so. On the contrary, there are reasonable arguments prooffered by those who see the fetus as truly human only at birth or at the point of “viability”.

And even if everyone agreed the fetus was an innocent human being from the point of copnception, I would still not construe the killing of it as necessarily immoral. Why? Because out in the world we live in there can be no such thing as true “gender equality” if we forced women to give birth against their wishes.

Abortion then is a human tragedy in my view precisely because, like so many other moral conflagrations, it necessarily involves a conflict of legitimate rights.

Consider:

William Barrett from Irrational Man:

For the choice in…human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the the ultimate outcome and even—or most of all—our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.

[emphasis my own]

In my view, moral dogmas are basically interchangable when expressed as sets of essential [universal] convictions. And that is so because we do not interact socially, politcially or economically in an essential manner; only in an existential manner. Which is to say that our behaviors bear consequences that are perceived differently by different people in different sets of circumstances.

That’s the world we have to live in and not the ones we put together seamlessly in our heads.

2

From Henry Staten’s, Nietzsche’s Voice:

[b]Our moral beliefs did not fall from heaven and neither are there credentials we can flash like a badge to establish our moral probity. Consider all the rest of human history, including most of the planet at the present moment. What are we to say about this overwhelming spectacle of cruelity, stupidity and suffering? What stance is there for us to adopt with respect to history, what judgment can we pass on it?..Christianity attempted to recuperate the suffering of history by projecting a devine plan that assigns it a reason in the here and now and a recompense later, but liberalism is too humane to endorse this explanation. There is no explanation, only the brute fact. But the brute fact we are left with is even harder to stomach than the old explanation. So left liberalism packages it in a new narrative, a moral narrative according to which all those lives gound up in the machinery of history are assigned an intelligble role as victums of oppression and injustice…Only very recently is it possible for someone like Schutte [Ofelia Schutte, who in her book Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks castigates Nietzsche for his authoritarianism.] to write as she does, with so much confidence that the valuations she assumes will be received as a matter of course by an academic audience, just as much as a Christian homilist writing for an audience of the pious. And only within the protective enclosure of this community of belief can there be any satisfaction in the performance of this speech act, any sense that anything worthwhile has been accomplished by this recitation. When this moral community by means of this recitation reassures itself of its belief, it comes aglow as the repository of the meaning of history, as the locus that one may occupy in order to view history and pass judgment on it without merely despairing and covering one’s eyes and ears. There may not be any plan behind history, nor any way to make up their losses to the dead, but we can draw an invisible line of rectitude through history and in this way take power over it. Against the awesome ‘Thus it was’ of history we set an overawing majesty of ‘Thus it ought to have been’.

But our liberalism is something that sprang up yesterday and could be gone tomorrow. The day before yesterday the Founding Fathers kept black slaves. What little sliver of light is this we occupy that despite its contingency, the fraility of its existence, enables us to illuminate all the past and perhaps the future as well? For we want to say that even though our community of belief may cease to exist, this would not effect the validity of those beliefs. The line of rectitude would still traverse history.[/b]

This is more or less the way it is, right? Every day we are confronted with each new numbing rendition of the Human Condition: cruelity, stupidity and suffering. And out in the world are all of these hundreds and hundreds of “moral communities” trying to make sense of it all…trying to put it all in perspective…trying to rationalize it all away in Meaning…in God…in Ideolgy…in Truth. In The Way. Theirs. That they all hopelessly conflict and contradict each other does not mean many, many additional refrains won’t be joining the chorus of “rectitude” in the years to come. Long after we are all gone.

I like the honesty of Staten’s words above. I like the way he refuses to pretend human interaction can be portrayed [realistically] in any other way. It is, after all, something we are not supposed to dwell on. This: that there is no more or less authentic way in which to live. There is only history unfolding in all of its brute naked facticity. A cauldron of cacaphonous contingency. It simply is. And each of us, one by one, will die and then for eternity it will be as though we had never been born at all.

Unless, of course, Staten’s “line of rectitude” above is merely one more self-delusion. But then how in the world would we go about determining that? How would we even begin to do this when we have no real way of figuring out the legitimacy of our own line?

Perhaps, when all is said and done, Schopenhauer wasn’t pessimistic enough.

3

I think for a certain amount of time the foetus should be classified not as an individual but as part of a woman’s body and she should have the choice to abort it. However, I would move the abortion time limit back much further. Have you ever seen a 23 week old aborted foetus? I feel that that is wrong. And that should not be allowed in civilized society. Notice I use the word ‘feel’ not think. It is a purely emotional response. I don’t think a response should be discredited because it is based only on emotion.

4

Well my emotional reaction to your emotional reaction is that your emotional reaction is fucking stupid.

5

That’s fine. We all have a right to our emotions.

6

Yes, that is the opinion you subscribe to here and now. I have my own. And next week or next month your circumstances might change or you might encounter a new point of view and change your mind. As have I.

But that’s my point. Value judgments such as these are embedded in dasein. And dasein is situated out in a particular world. There is no right or wrong point of view about the morality of abortion—only different ones.

Same with all other value judgments.

What I look for is an argument that might make me change my mind about this. Or, perhaps, at the very least, an argument that allows me to grasp how human emotional and psychological reactions can be divorced from such judgments.

7

You’re a relativist. I’m a universalist. I think there is only one view about the morality of abortion that is the right one. And countless ones that are wrong.

Same with all other value judgements.

I view relativism with absolute contempt. I despise relativism as intensely as it is possible for a human being to despise anything.

8

Iambiguous,
You say all we have are different points of view.

i.e. You say women should be afforded full legal rights to abortion. Sam says abortion should be illegal.

You disagree.

Are you and Sam disagreeing about the morality of abortion or the morality of each other’s points of view.

I feel like you have to say one of these things to Sam:

"Sam, I have a different point of view from yours concerning abortion, and:

  1. your point of view is wrong, and abortion is right." (Realism)
  2. we are each correct to say the others’ point of view is wrong, but abortion is right." (Naive Idealism)
  3. neither of our points of view is right or wrong, and abortion itself is not right or wrong." (Relativism)
  4. each of us thinks the other’s point of view is wrong, and abortion is neither right nor wrong." (Skeptical Idealism)
  5. Your point of view could not be wrong, because our point of views are irrelevant, only allegiance to God’s words" (Divine Authority)
  6. I do not believe either of our points of view are right or wrong, and abortion is neither right nor wrong, but I will use the words “right” and “wrong” in order to try and convince you to join my side. (Instrumentalism)
  7. play it again Sam. (Cosmopolitanism)

If you don’t espouse any of those (I imagine any one of them would be an oversimplification of your views), then at least explain whether you think it is our points of view which are neither right nor wrong or abortion itself which is neither right nor wrong.

9

I follow you up to here: “Abortion then is a human tragedy in my view precisely because, like so many other moral conflagrations, it necessarily involves a conflict of legitimate rights.” Legitimate right? Any right is just proclaimed to be some moral persuasion, saying it’s legitimate doesn’t give it any more power. Rights are only provided through law.

10

Since it’s an emotional issue, you’d therefore hold that your emotional response to the matter is the only correct one to have? Or that it’s most likely wrong?

11

I think feeling can lead to the truth as well as thought and that my views are correct.

12

So if someone else feels differently about abortion, they are “feeling wrong”? How do you defend your feeling being closer to the truth than theirs? You both “feel” that you’re right, after all. Maybe due to a lack of self-awareness they even feel it more strongly than you do.

13

Feelings can never be right or wrong. Beliefs are always right or wrong. My feelings about 23 week old aborted foetuses result in the correct belief that it is wrong to kill them.

14

And the correctness of that belief is evidenced by your subjective feelings, and not by any objective measure?

15

There is no objective measure to decide when it is and when it isn’t acceptable to perform an abortion. There are objective measures to find out when the foetus is viable outside the womb and when the foetus becomes conscious of pain, but how much we take these things into account is up to us as human beings to decide. I think the abortion time limit should be 13 weeks. I know that a 13 week old foetus cannot feel pain and is not viable outside the womb, but looking at one makes me feel it is something too human to kill. It has a face. If we allow those organisms to be killed what does that make us? Killing a clump of cells is unfortunate, but different. I arrive at these beliefs through feeling alone. I don’t think beliefs should be dismissed because they are arrived at purely through feeling. I think if humans do that then we are undervaluing our feelings which are a precious resource.

16

I’m not talking about dismissing beliefs. You said you were a universalist and not a relativist, I’m just trying to work out what that means in the context of feeling-based belief.

As far as I can tell, you mean that you think that what you believe to be true really is true; which is really just an obvious detail of what it is to hold a belief as true.

Edit: in addition, you call people fucking idiots for arriving at conclusions about the existence of God based on feelings rather than evidence. Which seems a little hypocritical, if that is your argument.

17

There are no objective measures to decide when it is and isn’t acceptable to kill anyone or not kill anyone, for any reason whatsoever.

18

Okay, tell us the one and only truly rational way in which to view abortion morally.

And I suspect you despise relativism contemptuously because “universalism” is a point of view that allows you to approach everything in an “either/or” frame of mind. In other words, this point of view is, in my opinion, little more than a psychological defense mechanism.

19

First of all, being illegal is, in one respect, very different from being immoral. Regarding the law, a particular behavior either is or is not legal. That can be denoted. In America, for example, abortion is legal under particular sets of circumstances. In other sets of circumstances, however, it is not.

Secondly, some insist that behaviors deemed immoral should be deemed illegal in turn. Often this is predicated on a particular religious or ideological agenda.

Thirdly, however, there is no way in which to demonstrate objectively why one set of moral values regarding abortion is necessarily more rational or ethical than any other.

For instance, Ayn Rand insisted her own moral values here were metaphysically rational. She believed that, objectively, the fetus was only a potential human life. Like an acorn is only a potential oak tree.

That might seem reasonable to some but it is also reasonable to insist that not a single oak tree has ever existed without first having been an acorn. Just as not a single human being has ever been born without first having been a fetus.

In other words, you have two reasonable arguments that come to conflicting conclusions. How do we determine the most reasonable argument? In my view, we can’t.

What I say is this:

The point of view we embrace regarding the morality of abortion is rooted in dasein. In other words, it is rooted in the life we’ve lived. It is rooted in our indoctrination as children [which is rooted, in turn, in ever evolving historical and cultural contexts], in our experiences, in our relationships with others, in the ideas we come into contact with etc…

So the question then becomes:

If this is true to what extent can we engage philosophy here in order to transcend dasein? Can philosophy enable us to determine whether abortion is in fact moral?

No, I don’t think so. It will be useful in enabling us to think more clearly about the issue. But inevitably we will reach junctures where reasonable thinking that is pro-choice collides with reasonable thinking that is anti-choice. Then what? Then we muddle through as best we can.

20

Here we get into the distinctions that are made between something being right, moral, ethical, politically correct, virtuous, legitimate, appropriate etc…

The tragedy of abortion in my view is that from both sides of the issue these words can used interchangably. This is what disturbs equal2u, in my view.

Legality, on the other hand, is more readily demonstrated. And, ultimately, it comes down to who has the power to enforce a particular agenda.