I’m quite certain that you would stab someone on your porch. And depending on the context, it would be judged moral or immoral - objectively. If the mailman was trying to strangle you, then it would be moral to stab him. If the mailman was late with the mail, then it would be immoral to stab him.
Is that just my subjective opinion?
You guys are really stuck on that word ‘EVERY’.
What is the basis of inter-subjectivity if everyone is so unique and different? What would a group of people want to share these laws? Why are laws against murder, theft, incest, so common?
That’s why you are answering Socrates’ questions. But why is Socrates talking to you in the first place? What’s his motivation if not to convince you of some truth?
Sounds like what you call objective knowledge in science is narrowing. You seem to be saying that if there is some uncertainty or alternative interpretation then it qualifies as subjective. Even when the underlying mechanisms are objective.
Actually I did not insist on anything… I presented a way to approach a problem. An approach based on objective research.
You did not show that the research wrong but you instead linked to an alternative concept when a human being ‘begins existing’.
Let’s say that I accept your link as being correct. What are the consequences?
Clearly we still think that it is moral to end the existence of human beings under certain circumstances. It is done for comatose patients. So there have to other factors which play a role in determining the morality of the acts. My link, which shows that a fetus less than 22 weeks old cannot survive outside the womb, is such a factor. And it is not incompatible with the definition of humanness.
BTW, if a fetus is a human being at fertilization and that is the only factor to consider, then what should we do about spontaneous abortion? Spontaneous abortion happens to 30 to 40% of fetuses. Should not the women, who spontaneously abort, be charged with murder, manslaughter, assault or child abuse?
How are you going to solve any problem if you are unable or ‘unallowed’ to step out of your shoes and put on another person’s shoes?
The idea that one cannot drop a certain set of assumptions and look from an alternative POV is absurd.
Why do I refuse to bring God into it? Because I want you to drop your assumptions long enough to consider where objectivity of morality might be in the abortion problem. And that means getting down to bare minimums at least temporarily.
I still don’t think that you grasp what I am saying about objectivity. I’m probably not being clear but my only hope of becoming clear is to remove as much muddy water as possible.
The mentally stunted abortion of a child-fagot has been on this website since 2010. Has he been doing anything but tirelessly reasserting his didactic assertions?
Yes, but that would contradict your absurd and insulting statement that; “The retard wants me to accept his premises as true.”.
If that were the case, he’d hardly be ignoring you.
[b]With respect to moral and political value judgments [about which the OP is aimed], my argument [here and now] revolves around 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.
What I am curious about are arguments from others able to poke enough holes in it so that I might be able to reconsider it as perhaps a less than reasonable manner in which to construe the “human condition” sans God.
Instead, I tend to bump into the abstractionists like you and Lyssa and Satyr – scholastic sorts who spew out intellectual contraptions that have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the lives that we live.
All I am trying to do here is to actually engage your words down here. Why in the world is that something you always avoid?
Again, [size=200]you[/size] can pick the topic.[/b]
Even Lyssa [over at KTS] is now willing to scratch the surface in this regard.
There must be a God who will tell him “listen kid, do this, and you go to heaven, or do that, and you go to hell”.
Or if there is no God, then all is permissible.
Moral obligation, he calls it.
He does not understand that when I say that he’s an utter imbecile that does not mean that he is morally obliged to become an intelligent person.
He’s so stupid, for fuck’s sake!
The retard can’t stand social judgment!
He will even listen to me! if I were only convincing enough!
But I am not . . . And why am I not convincing enough?
Because people disagree . . .
He will do what I tell him to do and I’ll go like “good doggy!”
That would make happy.
But then, he will come across this other group of people who will make fun of him for doing what I told him to do . . .
So, in order to be convincing enough, I’d have to take him as my personal slave, lock him in one of my basements, so that he has no contact with other people, and so that the only judge on whether he is a good doggy or not would be ME.
But as an emancipated slave, out in the world of conflicting goods, freed from any kind of singular human authority, he does not find me convincing enough.
I must become popular first.
I must be aired on his big plasma TV.
Songs must be sang about me.
Girls must be crazy about me.
That kind of shit.
Since that’s not the case, I am just an objectivist who’s pretending to be an “alpha male” . . .
I am not saying you are stupid, phoneutria, I believe you are a very smart girl, beside being extremely sexy, of course, just that, I, me, Magnus, do not understand what you’re talking about . . . as usual.
No, I am merely pointing out the obvious. That with respect to the biology of human sexuality leading to a pregnancy leading to an abortion, there there objective truths that transcend dasein.
Facts, in other words, that are not predicated on a subjective interpretation. A man and a woman either engage in sexual copulation or they do not. The woman either becomes pregnant as a result of this or she does not. And if she does become pregnant and chooses an abortion, it is either successful or it is not.
But where is the same either/or denouement with respect to the precise moment when, after conception, a zygote, embryo or fetus becomes a “human being”. Some will even go further and make a distinction between a “human being” and a “human person”. That way they are even able to rationalize infanticide.
Therefore, I surmised that you surmised it is objectively moral to a abort the fetus because the science in the link had objectively established it. Then I provided you with a link that suggested this is not the case at all.
Then I acknowledged here that science does not seem able to establish beyond all doubt when in fact the unborn becomes a human being. Objectively.
I’m not trying to argue here that my point of view is right or that your point of view is wrong. I am only suggesting that it is a point of view that is predicated on certain conflicting assumptions that are made regarding when the unborn become human beings.
And even if that can be decided objectively, we are still stuck living in a world where if all unborn babies are required to be brought to term, then any number of women will be forced to give birth.
In other words, the part about conflicting goods doesn’t just go away.
You should take that up with God. Aren’t these God’s own abortions? And why should the women be held culpable when in most cases they do everything they possible can to secure the birth of their child. In fact, most are devastated when the baby dies.
But then God does work in mysterious ways, right?
But the thrust of the OP revolves precisely around the manner in which certain folks do embrace a particular religious or political narrative/agenda and then claim that moral certitude is derived from the assumption that their God or their Reason is there to back them up.
Now, in that respect, yours either is or is not. And you will either discuss that pertaining to an issue like abortion or you will not.
Come on, Phyllo, we know what the objectivists mean when they assert something like that. They mean that they have already assertained what the “bare minimums” are here and that this almost always revolves around agreeing with them that this is in fact what the bare minimums must be.
