Abortion

@Didymos Thomas,

I don't really think it much matters who is in office I like to pretend that it does, but in my heart I really don't think it matters. I don't really care if Obama is a radical, he will be a lame duck if he is too much so. I doubt Obama will be very different from Bill Clinton if he gets in. I doubt McCain will be a big change either, just one joke after another. I don't care much for social issues anyway. I am much more interested by stuff like this: Russia's Nuclear Threat Is More Than Words - WSJ.com and what it might mean.

Bah, in the end I really don't see abortion as a big issue, I tend to ignore such topics and let them go to the one issue voters. I'm pretty tired of this discussion, we aren't going to get anywhere, especially if we make appeal to science, as new developments can allways occur, and when/if we ever work out genetic/mental development entirely, we still have to deal with all of these subjective moral standpoints. We will have utilitarians like Ruthless logic(and on occasion myself) and idealists of all sort on the opposition, and in the end it will still be a compromise that decides the letter of the law.

1 Reply

@Zetetic11235,

Okay, let's be intellectually honest about the inherent constraint of individualism as it pertains to the unborn Human Being. Every single possible ability that I have to measure and observe my Natural World indicates that Human Beings are completely separate individual living creatures (as well as all living species) that experience the decidedly individual processes of being born, as well as the finality of death, and no amount of personal relationship building (during pregnancy or later) will EVER allow the possibility of merging these processes with two or more Human Beings, because the risk of death or life can only be assigned to one individual Human Being at a time. As a side note, Justin likes to espouse the KUM-BY-YA of fellowships within the Human experience and that is fine and healthy for enhancing the living experience, but the constraint of absolute individualism remains in place and obviously serves as a function of diversification so as to limit the risk of extinction to the Species. It is simply the empirical truth that it takes the individualism of a female and a male to produce another empirically consistent individual (the pattern is quite clear).

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@Ruthless Logic,

Aside from restating the birds and the bees for us, how does that inform this discussion?

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Aside from restating the birds and the bees for us, how does that inform this discussion?

Because if we can fully digest the empirical parameters of an individual which forms the foundation for every single legal or moral construct and yet circumvent the recognized concept by providing latitudes (elective abortion) that interject the credibility destroying process of inconsistency. It is not the rigidity of invoking consistent human rights standards that threatens the framework of a modern society, but the duality of dysfunctional societal idealism's that an increasingly enlighten populace tries to reconcile by grinding under the weight of these careless concepts (protect human life on one hand, yet destroy it on the other) derived from the foolishness of immature emotional responses (my humble opinion), rather than the forward evolving process of self-evident consistent articulate thought.

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@Ruthless Logic,

Your definition of "individual" is something you take great pains to characterize as "empirically consistent." If your standard is empirically derived, then your personal definition of the individual cannot be differentiated from a plain old biological definition. And while I like to avoid repeating cliches like "you cannot derive an ought from an is", I'm afraid that is exactly what you're doing. You're contending that our moral imperative somehow consists in our biological identity.

What you're NOT doing is committing to either a moral first principle or a utilitarian calculus. And this makes it hard to make your point of view seem inevitable, rather than arbitrary -- because there is a limitless number of basic biological factoids about us from which we could rationalize whatever moral position we'd like.

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@Aedes,

I don't think anybody is really committing to any theory that can definitely reason for abortion being ok. The best one so far is the will stuff in my opinion. Anyone else agree that it at least has some merit?

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@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

I don't think anybody is really committing to any theory that can definitely reason for abortion being ok. The best one so far is the will stuff in my opinion. Anyone else agree that it at least has some merit?

I fully commit to abortion being completely morally permissible.

I don't consider the fetus to be worthy of moral consideration.

I also consider all competent individuals ends in themselves, and from that moral position I do not feel a woman can be blamed for choosing not to support a fetus at her expense.

Abortion is A-OK.

1 Reply

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401;22520 wrote:

I don't think anybody is really committing to any theory that can definitely reason for abortion being ok. The best one so far is the will stuff in my opinion. Anyone else agree that it at least has some merit?

I responded to this a while back, I don't think you ended up answering my comments.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

Mr. Fight the Power;22538 wrote:

I don't consider the fetus to be worthy of moral consideration.

Do you then have no qualms about a pregnant woman doing cocaine or drinking alcohol during pregnancy, in light of the consequences?

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Do you then have no qualms about a pregnant woman doing cocaine or drinking alcohol during pregnancy, in light of the consequences?

If the pregnancy is simply a medical condition that will be terminated, I have no problem with it.

If the pregnancy is a matter of producing a child, then I do.

In both situations the fetus is not a point of consideration, as in both cases it is affected. The second case, however, is different in that it produces an individual worthy of moral consideration, and that is what creates the blame.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

In all cases there might be a child. Abortion wouldn't be a controversy otherwise.

This is aside from the fact that a human fetus, from a biological point of view, is unquestionably a living thing with a brain and pain sensation, etc, i.e. it has qualities of any other human except for its developmental stage. A newborn baby is STILL completely dependent on its mother, or would be were it not for the invention of formula.

So speaking as someone who is pro-choice, I don't think the argument can come from either a biologic or a moral difference between the unborn fetus and the baby. There are unborn 38-weekers and there are living, ex utero 26-week preemies. So does the biologically / neurologically more advanced 38-week fetus somehow lack moral status that the highly immature 26-week baby merits?

I think that abortion is a pragmatic issue. It's not a matter of taking the morals of a fetus in isolation -- it's a matter of weighing it in the context of womens' autonomy and self-determination in our society. Easy for us boys here on the philosophy forum to neglect that, but we don't really know what it's like.

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

In all cases there might be a child. Abortion wouldn't be a controversy otherwise.

I don't believe that. If a woman doesn't want to bring a pregnancy to fruition and she is free to pursue an abortion, there is no potential for a child.

What does make it controversial is the gray area in between what we know we wish to treat morally as a person and what we know we don't. You are probably right that this should be treated pragmatically.

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Thus, this decision in the end is almost always utilitarian -- not moral (and certainly not some weird marriage between morality and biology).

Why isn't morality utilitarian? And isn't the will concept completely utilitarian?

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Your definition of "individual" is something you take great pains to characterize as "empirically consistent." If your standard is empirically derived, then your personal definition of the individual cannot be differentiated from a plain old biological definition. And while I like to avoid repeating cliches like "you cannot derive an ought from an is", I'm afraid that is exactly what you're doing. You're contending that our moral imperative somehow consists in our biological identity.

What you're NOT doing is committing to either a moral first principle or a utilitarian calculus. And this makes it hard to make your point of view seem inevitable, rather than arbitrary -- because there is a limitless number of basic biological factoids about us from which we could rationalize whatever moral position we'd like.

Please provide an alternate process for developing ANY kind of legal or moral standard(s) or definitions WITHOUT adopting the use of empirically derived measurements or observations?

The only imperative that Human Beings are completely constrained by is the absolute process of the unequivocal pursuit of SELF-INTEREST.

Human Beings will absolutely survive without the parameters of adopted moral or legal constraints, because self-interest (survival) will see to it!

My contention is that if a modern society puts forth the efforts to evolve by installing the parameters (pathway) of accepted legal and moral obligations then at least the requirement dictates the articulation of consistent mandates, and not the carelessness of inconsistent latitudes derived from Attention Deficient individuals who obviously cannot reconcile certain human constraints (females can only become pregnant, but still require the input from a completely independent individual in which the process ironically produces a completely independent individual) by accepting the finality of the circumstance.

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@Ruthless Logic,

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

I don't believe that. If a woman doesn't want to bring a pregnancy to fruition and she is free to pursue an abortion, there is no potential for a child.

There is ALWAYS potential for a child until the pregnancy has been actually terminated.

Holiday20310401 wrote:

Why isn't morality utilitarian?

It is for some -- namely the utilitarians. It's certainly NOT utilitarian to deontologists, people who believe that morals stem from a first principle.

Quote:

And isn't the will concept completely utilitarian?

I don't want to rephrase my original post, but I'm afraid I didn't find much to agree with in your will proposal.

http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-health/528-abortion-20.html#post21716

Ruthless Logic wrote:

Please provide an alternate process for developing ANY kind of legal or moral standard(s) or definitions WITHOUT adopting the use of empirically derived measurements or observations?

Plato and Kant are well known for proposing means of deriving moral standards without empirical considerations. Deontology in general has been a major movement from which moral standards come from rationally (or sometimes theologically) derived principles. So that's one alternate process. And as you know most people who are anti-abortion operate from a principle, not from any empiric observation. The principle is that a human being exists from the moment of conception, and therefore elective termination of a fetus is murder just as it would be for any other human.

The problem I think you can run into when basing moral prescriptions on empirical observations is that you a priori subject your principle to revision -- we can always observe something new, and we can always reinterpret past observations. So the question then becomes are you willing (at least in theory) to reject your stance on abortion based on new science or new observations?

Quote:

The only imperative that Human Beings are completely constrained by is the absolute process of the unequivocal pursuit of SELF-INTEREST.

Well, the pursuit of perceived self-interest, perhaps -- people do a lot of self-destructive things.

Quote:

Human Beings will absolutely survive without the parameters of adopted moral or legal constraints, because self-interest (survival) will see to it!

But is it merely survival that matters? We can survive in a lot of different ways.

Quote:

at least the requirement dictates the articulation of consistent mandates, and not the carelessness of inconsistent latitudes derived from attention deficient individuals who obviously cannot reconcile certain human constraints

Empirical observation would suggest that a fetus is different than an adult human, and empirical observation would suggest that the unborn fetus is markedly different biologically at different points during gestation. So one need only point to these differences to find exceptions to any prescribed "consistent mandates."

Furthermore, empirical observation could easily point out certain societal consequences of prohibiting abortion, and reasonable people in a reasonable society could deem those consequences worse than the implications of abortion itself. That is how laws come about, right? Few laws purely reflect some underlying moral.

Quote:

females can only become pregnant, but still require the input from a completely independent individual

But that independent individual, i.e. the father, only voluntarily bears the consequences of that pregnancy, and speaking from my own very recent experience, even full commitment to fatherhood is STILL nothing compared with what the mother goes through. So the "input from a completely independent individual" may be true, but it's not important -- it's incidental to the issue.

Quote:

in which the process ironically produces a completely independent individual) by accepting the finality of the circumstance.

Yes, that's true. And that's why it's ok to dislike abortion without disallowing it -- because societies with legal abortion have determined that the responsibility for weighing the moral importance of this unborn child should fall on the mother's shoulders, not on society.

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@Aedes,

Plato and Kant are well known for proposing means of deriving moral standards without empirical considerations. (Quote)

How is this even remotely possible? EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE CONSIDERATION CAPIABLE OF ARTICULATION DERIVES FROM THE EMPRICAL COMPONETS OF THE NATURAL WORLD.

Again, please provide an actual process that would not require empirical considerations if you think it is possible? The misrepresentation of great Philosophers is simply not acceptable at any Forum, especially a Philosophy Forum.

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@Ruthless Logic,

Ruthless Logic;22662 wrote:

How is this even remotely possible? EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE CONSIDERATION CAPIABLE OF ARTICULATION DERIVES FROM THE EMPRICAL COMPONETS OF THE NATURAL WORLD.

Their opinions were certainly informed by their experiences in life. However, both famously believed in a metaphysical basis for morals, and their universal application. This may have been unrealistic and idealistic, but it was what it was. You can't read Gorgias and believe that Plato's ethics took empirical factors into account.

Quote:

Again, please provide an actual process that would not require empirical considerations if you think it is possible?

Well, I think it's impossible insofar as we experience before we reason. But that hasn't stopped many if not most moral philosophers from arguing that morals ought to be derived from first principles. I happen to agree more with your approach than theirs, notwithstanding our different conclusions.

Quote:

The misrepresentation of great Philosophers is simply not acceptable at any Forum, especially a Philosophy Forum.

Oh don't be so melodramatic. But feel free to lodge a complaint if you wish.

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@Ruthless Logic,

I think it likely that you have never read any Kant. A quick exerpt from stanford's philosophy encyclopedia with the most pertinent parts in bold:

This allows us to say that a cognition is a posteriori or dependent on sensory impressions just in case it is strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by sensory impressions; but a cognition is a priori or absolutely independent of all sensory impressions just in case it is not strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by sensory impressions and is instead strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by our innate spontaneous cognitive faculties (B2-3). It should be noted that the apriority of a cognition in this sense is perfectly consistent with all sorts of associated sensory impressions and also with the actual presence of sensory matter in that cognition, so long as neither the form nor the semantic content is strictly determined by those sensory impressions. "Pure" a priori cognitions are those that in addition to being a priori or absolutely independent of all sensory impressions, also contain no sensory matter whatsoever (B3). So in other words, some but not all a priori cognitions are pure.
Applying these notions to judgments, it follows that a judgment is a posteriori if and only if either its logical form or its propositional content is strictly determined by sensory impressions; and a judgment is a apriori if and only if neither its logical form nor its propositional content is strictly determined by sensory impressions and both are instead strictly determined by our innate spontaneous cognitive faculties, whether or not that cognition also contains sensory matter. Kant also holds that a judgment is a priori if and only if it is necessarily true (Axv, B3-4, A76/B101). This strong connection between necessity and apriority expresses (i) Kant's view that the contingency of a judgment is bound up with the modal dependence of its semantic content on sensory impressions, i.e., its aposteriority (B3), (ii) his view that necessity is equivalent with strict universality or strenge Allgemeinheit, which he defines in turn as a proposition's lack of any possible counterexamples or falsity-makers (B4), and (iii) his view that necessity entails truth (A75-76/B100-101). Furthermore Kant explicitly holds that not only do a priori judgments really exist in various sciences, including physics and metaphysics, but also that there really are some pure a priori judgments, e.g., in mathematics (B4-5, B14-18).

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@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic, I hope your post wasn't directed at me, as my contention that Kant's ethics were not meant to be empiric agrees with your excerpts.

Incidentally, I was referring only to hisGroundings for the Metaphysics of Morals, which bar none is THE flagship treatise of deontology.

By the way, please don't paste such large quotations. Just link them. This is both a copyright issue and it takes up a lot of space. Thanks.

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@Aedes,

Why would you think that it was directed at you if it only aided your arguement? Anyway, the large quotation is much more useful than the article(which I did indeed link to, but I suppose that is all I should have done, or maybe I should follow MLA standards? That would certainly not be in violation of copyright?) It would have taken half an hour for someone not familiar with Kant to root that out of the overall passage, I merely chose that section for expediency.

I am not sure what I should do here, the work of Kant is public domain, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is available to the public and I credited them and provided a link. If that is not sufficient, what should I do? Since Kant is in public domain should I copy the entire 18 page introduction to Critique of Pure Reason that explains the same at much more length imbeded between and yet dependant upon the other ideas? Ruthless Logic claimed that you were misinterpreting philosophy so I reacted to his imbedded presumption that your claims had no official backing in the world of philosophy, and verily proved him to be in the wrong.

1 Reply

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