Right, alive is alive, dead is dead, and half alive/dead is half alive/dead, not alive or dead.
A fetus is alive (period).
Like I said…
Ask adults whether they wish they had never been born. REAL consensual beings. Many will say yes, especially if their mother doesn’t want them here.
That means the ONLY fetuses we are protecting are sociopaths… and we need no more of them in the world.
You’re not defending fetuses, only potential sociopaths.
Let’s not be confused about this.
In your opinion.
A non sociopathic fetus would NEVER be offended that they were aborted !! (It’s impossible)
From my point of view, it’s not what someone believes is true about abortion, but what they can demonstrate to others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
Some [like me] believe that human life begins at conception. Others however believe that as a zygote/embryo the unborn are just “clumps of cells”. Still others believe it revolves around a beating heart or around brain activity or around its capacity to survive outside the womb. While still others insist that a woman has the right to demand an abortion at any point from conception onward. In some sets of circumstances historically and culturally even new borns can be killed. Often revolving around gender or congenital health issues. Or, during the pregnancy, if the mothers physical or emotional health is imperiled.
Okay, different folks, different assumptions. Different assumptions, different conclusions. But how exactly would any of them, including myself, go about demonstrating beyond all doubt in a No God world when in fact a human being is being killed?
Right, like this isn’t just your own political prejudices being expressed. And, even here, my own interest revolves more around how particular individuals [including yourself] come to be predisposed existentially to choose one set of political prejudices over all the others.
For the most part I agree.
Two people can be equally informed about an entity, but still conceptualize and/or value it differently.
Why?
In some cases it may be because one person’s conceptualizations are more internally, and externally consistent with the entity than the other’s, but in other cases, while the entity itself is objective (for the sake of argument), how we conceptualization it isn’t entirely, and how we value the entity, if we value it at all, is entirely subjective (altho some values may still be more sustainable than others, if you catch my drift), and somewhat variable.
Similar subjects will have similar conceptualizations and valuations, conversely different subjects will have different ones.
A lot of it comes down to neurocognition, linguistics, and feelings, which vary somewhat from person to person, as well as (un)conscious agendas, sociopolitical biases.
No more than you’re just expressing yours.
If abortion is homicide, why’re you still prochoice?
Biggie, do you think that the world has an indifferent objective existence?
From my frame of mind, however, this “intellectual assessment” is far removed from an actual set of circumstances in which an actual flesh and blood woman – let’s call her Mary – is pregnant, doesn’t want to be, chooses to abort the baby, and then has to endure the reactions of those who insist that what she did was immoral.
While others are pointing out [in particular jurisdictions] that what she did is also illegal.
And that she must be arrested and tried [along with the abortionist] for murder.
What might Mary’s response be to this “philosophical contraption” of yours? And what about the reactions of all the others involved?
Instead, in my view, sooner or later, such “general descriptions” must be related to a particular context relating to a particular abortion embedded in any number of possible variable interactions out in a particular world.
And this is the part that find’s my own “I” fractured and fragmented. Whereas for the objectivists among us, they experience none of that. They are convinced that, in being in touch with the real me in sync with the right thing to do [re God or Reason, or ideology, or nature] they just know what is true and what is not. And, in knowing this, it comforts and consoles them no matter the actual existential outcome pertaining to any particular abortion.
I agree. Only in recognizing that these prejudices are rooted in dasein confronting conflicting goods out in a particular world understood from a particular subjective/subjunctive perspective, this is precisely what precipitates the fractured and fragmented “I” that the objectivists are immune to.
Or, you could ask someone in the pro-life camp, "if forcing women to give birth gives men an inherent and distinct advantage in social, political and economic interactions, why are you still anti-choice?
This is precisely what being fractured and fragmented entails in a No God world for the moral nihilist. This one [me] in particular. He wants to believe the answer is either this or that, but both sides are able to make arguments that the other side are not able to make go away.
It’s reasonable [to him] to think that allowing women to abort their babies means killing them. But it is also reasonable [to him] that forcing women to give birth undermines their capacity to be treated equally in the political arena.
Or the arguments of the narcissists and sociopaths: what’s in it for me?
But: All I can do is to raise the points that I do. To note the reasons here and now they make sense to me. I am no more able to demonstrate that what I think, others are obligated to think as well. And I recognize that, given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, I may we’ll change my mind.
It’s just that when I suggest in turn that all of this is applicable to the objectivists too, that some refuse to accept that this is possible at all. After all, look at what they have to lose if it is.
I have no idea what you are asking me here.
Again, focus in on a specific set of circumstances out in a particular world [yours] and describe what you think and feel as it relates to any possible social, political and economic consequences of abortion.
Biggie, so we agree that a fetus is alive? Also that abortion is the murder of a fetus, a baby, a life? Our contention lies in a woman’s second choice, not her first choice?
You still haven’t a clue regarding my frame of mind here, do you?
My point is not what either one of us believes about the morality of abortion. Instead, it revolves around the manner in which I construe points of view like this – yours, mine, ours, theirs – as rooted existentially, subjectively, subjunctively in the lives that we live.
Again, in the points I raise on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
Which is just another way of speculating that, using the tools of philosophy, there does not appear – appear to me – to be a way in which, either rationally or empirically or naturally, to encompass anything in the vicinity of a moral obligation to behave as either a good/rational person would or as a bad/irrational person would. In a No God world, in my view, these are basically social constructs rooted out in a particular world seen from a particular point of view.
This part:
Hence the “psychology of objectivism”.
First choice, second choice…tenth choice. There is still only what we are able to pin down as in fact true for all of us objectively and what is deemed to be true by us “in our head” as the embodiment of conflicting goods down through the ages.
And, with abortion, we don’t even have a way in which to pin down once and for all when the unborn itself becomes a “human being”.
How does this work with respect to abortion? :
What’s the difference if abortion is made illegal(or legal) by a dictatorship or a democracy?
The people who want the illegal option are screwed either way.
Biggie wrote
They are not social constructs and that is in part our debate. Don’t give up so easily Biggie, we both might learn something.
So a woman’s first choice is deciding if she wants to become pregnant.
Well, in a dictatorship rooted to one or another political ideology, or in a theocracy rooted to one or another God, right makes might. Certain behaviors are deemed to be necessarily good or evil. Necessarily rational or irrational. Necessarily legal or illegal.
In a democracy, where different objectivist factions compete for power, there is always the possibility that your side can prevail and the laws changed.
Or you can eschew objectivism altogether and embrace one or another more pragmatic approach to the law. Laws that revolve around the assumption that since there is no objective morality in regard to things like abortion, “moderation, negotiation and compromrise” come to be seen as “the best of all possible worlds.”
Or, sure, there is always the possibility that the “law of the jungle” may prevail.
Unbelievable. How are the views regarding abortion in any particular human community [u]not[/u] constructed in large part out of the historical, cultural and experiential factors that revolve around their own unique set of social, political and economic interactions?
Unless of course there is a God or a philosophy-king able to note the vast and varied moral narratives and political agenda down through the ages and is able to pronounce the optimal or the only manner in which all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous are obligated to behave in regard to abortion.
And then this part:
I’m still waiting to assess your own existential trajectory in regard to abortion. The manner in which your experiences and your thinking became intertwined over the years.
My argument here is that you would have to examine the particular reasons that a particular woman chose in regard to pregnancy. How is her choice rooted more in the manner in which I construe human identity as the embodiment of dasein…or more in the manner in which others have come to understand “I” as, instead, the embodiment of the “real me” able to be in sync with “the right thing to do”.
Biggie wrote
Let’s go with a philosopher.
Biggie wrote
You’re moving the goal post. You believe that abortion is murder but also that a woman should be able to abort up until birth with impunity, correct? I am against abortion.
I think there are two major aspects to our disagreement…the pregnancy and the abortion of the pregnancy.
The problem is not in defining abortion as such - for everyone knows what it means - but in determining to what extent it can be described as moral
There is no optimal frame of mind that can do that because anti and pro abortionists cannot fundamentally agree about it from a moral perspective
Abortion actually exists on a moral spectrum ranging from those who think all abortion is immoral to those who think it is perfectly justified at any time
and for any reason and all points of view in between . There is no optimal frame of mind that will find universal consensus across such a diverse spectrum
What I believe is that what I believe about abortion is embodied existentially in this particular sequence in this particular life:
What I then suggest is that this is applicable to you in turn. But you won’t go there.
Unless you can provide me with an argument able to demonstrate that in being against abortion your points are not merely embedded in political prejudices but, instead, in thinking that makes all the points raised by those who are in favor of abortion go away, I just chalk it up to you not getting me more than I’m not getting you.
In being against abortion, what would you do, force all pregnant women to give birth [regardless of the circumstances]? And if they abort the baby instead, arrest them for premeditated first degree murder which if convicted may send them to prison…to death row?
I now recognize the reasoning behind the arguments raised by both sides. I then take my own existential leap to “moderation, negotiation and compromise” in regard to laws that will either reward or punish particular behaviors in particular contexts. But only in recognizing that this part…
…doesn’t go away. I am no less “fractured and fragmented”.
No, from my frame of mind, there is still only one. Your objectivist belief that in regard to aborting the unborn, one can reconfigure one’s political prejudices into just another manifestation of the either/or world; and my belief [no less an existential contraption] that “I” here is the subjective/subjunctive embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
And, then, historically, culturally and experientially, the intersubjective/intersubjunctive embodiment of dasein out in a particular world.
There are plenty of contexts in which homicide is morally justifiable, so just calling abortion homicide doesn’t close the entailment: why is it the kind of homicide that we should punish?
A similar argument goes for the “life begins at conception” framing. Tadpoles are alive. Skin cells are alive. Why is a fertilized egg the kind of life we care about such that we should that we should treat its destruction as morally significant?
Do all agree that there is no god and no souls? I’d be curious to know the life-begins-at-conception argument against abortion if you don’t believe in an immortal soul and a omniscient god who values souls above all else.