First, I would need you to provide me with your own existential trajectory regarding abortion. After all, my point is that each of us as individuals comes to embrace a particular moral narrative here as a result of the actual experiences embedded in our lives intertwined with our attempts to “think through” the issue rationally, philosophically, scientifically, etc.
That’s not my point though. The distinction I make is between the behaviors any particular individual [as the embodiment of dasein] comes to believe ought to be punished in a certain way, and the capacity of philosophers to establish what behaviors all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to agree on.
Assuming the existence of human autonomy, Jane chooses to compete against both men and other women. But she did not choose unprotected sex. Instead, she is the victim of a faulty contraceptive. Or she was raped and impregnated.
Over and again:
My point is not what you think or feel or say or do here and now in regard to abortion, but, how, given the trajectory of your lived life, you came [existentially] to be predisposed morally and politically to believe one thing rather than another. And that philosophy and science appear unable to pin down what in fact all rational folks are obligated to think, feel, say and do in regard to abortion.
Instead, in my view, what you do is to reconfigure what I construe to be political prejudice derived largely from dasein…
…into a set of – philosophical? – assumptions that you seem convinced is a perfectly rational reaction to abortion. And if others come to conflicting assessments, they must be wrong. Why? Because, unless raped [and for other unspecified reasons], it is irrational [and thus immoral] for women to chose abortion. Then, in my view, it just becomes a matter of the extent to which, as with Kant, you reconfigure this into an actual deontological intellectual assessment.
So, for all practical purposes, what are you saying here? If a woman chooses to have an abortion because giving birth will damage her mental health, what do you say to her?
And situations of this sort do happen. Nothing hypothetical at all about them out in the real world.
Well here of course you would have to deal with one context at a time. And hope that your general description above can be made applicable somehow. The assumption being that you would have acquired the sufficient experiences yourself; and that you are able to judge behaviors as either in sync or out of sync with “character”; and that you are able to properly distinguish between the short term interests of a woman contemplating abortion and her long term interests.
On the other hand, being a man yourself, how many experiences involving an unwanted pregnancy can you fall back on? And, in regard to abortion, one person’s assessment of character and interests [short or long term] is likely to encounter very, very different assessments from others.
Then, for the objectivists, it all configures into “one of us” vs. “one of them”.
First, how is your own assessment of “I” in regard to the is/ought world at odds with my assessment in the thread above? How do you see the choices that you make in a different light?
But these moral laws are embedded historically and culturally and interpersonally in contexts that precipitate many, many, many different individual experiences. At times vastly at odds. Most of which are beyond our own capacity in the modern world to really and truly grasp. And, in the modern world, conflicting goods are everywhere. Which set of “experiences” should we rely on today in regard to establishing a rational assessment of the abortion wars?
As for God, are you invoking Him here?
How does Creation factor in here? What are you able to demonstrate to us are the most important truths embedded in it when confronting an issue like abortion?
Well, my own two cents here revolves around the assumption that your two cents is derived from the manner in which I construe a sense of identity [in regard to an issue like abortion] as an existential contraption embedded in the trajectory of your lived life. Back again to this: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
Thus, what I would appreciate from you is your own rendition of this.
You note that, “with a clean conscience I speak to you of my experience”, without probing the extent to which it is precisely your own unique set of personal experiences [derived from dasein] that predisposed you to embrace one set of moral and political prejudices over another.
Then this part:
You note:
But what does that have to do with addressing my point? This one: That your arguments here and now will encounter new experiences, new relationships, exposure to new information, knowledge and ideas. And in a world ever confronting us with new contingencies precipitating new chances to change.
I have no idea what this has to do with the points I raise above. Perhaps others following the discussion might be willing to assist me here.