iambiguous wrote: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?
Antithesis wrote: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.
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.
Antithesis wrote: Either a potential mother should require the consent of the potential father to abort their unborn, or the responsibility of providing for children should fall squarely on mothers and the state.
Right, like this isn't just your own political prejudices being expressed.
Antithesis wrote: No more than you're just expressing yours.
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.
iambiguous wrote: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.
Antithesis wrote: If abortion is homicide, why're you still prochoice?
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.