A rewritten version of this post has been published by Secular Pro-Life under their paid blogging program.
The below comments were comments on the original version. Since they are mostly still applicable to the linked-to revised version, I have not deleted them. But reading them, one should remember that they were not made in response to that linked-to version exactly.
You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.
Some future posts:
Life Panels
A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature
Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party
The Motivations of Aborting Parents
Why Remorse Comes Too Late
The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill
Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation
The Woman as Slave?
Abortion and the Map of the World
On another website, Anon Y Mous made some points. In my reply I referred him to this post. For technical reasons my reply will be delayed appearing there, so I’m putting it here:
Anon Y Mous, this is a partial reply to your November 23, 2013 at 2:46 am and November 23, 2013 at 10:02 am posts.
====================================
Acy:
1. A person is defined as any organism that belongs to the species Homo sapiens and that contains or may possibly contain the full genetic information necessary to be or become a born Homo sapiens with >0 brain function, AND THAT BIOLOGICALLY OTHERWISE ALSO HAS SUCH POTENTIAL. The possession of full genetic information is understood to start at conception.
AYM:
“in Nature there is no such thing as a Potential that MUST be fulfilled.”
Acy:
“Did I say there was [such a thing as a potential that must be fulfilled]? (And would we even use the word “potential” for something like that?)”
AYM:
You, along with all other abortion opponents, have implied it. The very insistence that an unborn human must not be aborted is exactly equivalent to an insistence that it must be allowed an opportunity to fulfill its potential (even if that turns out to be a miscarriage instead of an abortion).
=================================================
Oh, I see. You are using MUST in the human-ethical sense that my 1 is preparing to get at. When you had said “in Nature,” I had taken it as “in a state of Nature” (before human influence), so I had taken your MUST as referring to natural laws.
Now you’ve made it clear that your MUST is a human-ethical MUST. But that being clear, you seem to be saying, “Within natural laws there is no human-ethical MUST.” Well, of course not, but that does not mean that there are no human-ethical MUST’s at all. Or am I missing something in what you’re trying to say?
==================================================
“Do you mean that I defined “person” as a mindless human body? I don’t think I did that.”
You defined person as an organism possessing a certain potential. And I specifically stated that a regeneration vat would allow a headless body the opportunity to grow a new head –which therefore means that the mindless body still has potential, and, therefore, under your definition, it qualifies as much as a person as does a zygote.
My Question, however, was about saving the person who became decapitated. And THAT person is most certainly not the mindless/headless body. Not to mention that the scenario once more points out the irrationality of your definition, since before the decapitation accident only one person was describe-able, but afterward, two are describe-able (the bodiless head and the headless body), per your definition.
. . .
“I’ve never met an abortion opponent who equates “person” with a decapitated human body.”
Please do not ignore the CONTEXT, by leaving out “potential”. As stated above, the scenario specifically indicates that the headless human body still has the potential to grow a head. That makes it equivalent in some respects to a zygote (which is lacking rather more than just a head). So, if you NOW want to claim that the headless human body cannot qualify a person, how can you possibly claim that the zygote does qualify as a person?
And so, once again, it is revealed that it is irrational to invoke the concept of “potential” when defining “person”.
===================================================
Actually, I had thought that somewhere in your “. . . mindless human body is just a non-person” and your “basically FALSE to equate ‘person’ with ‘human body’” sentences you had probably made a mistake, and I figured, why try to understand this thought experiment now, let me first inquire about those sentences and confirm the thought experiment.
Now you have made your meaning more accessible. Is it this — “If Acyutananda replies ‘head,’ that will prove to him that he defines personhood mostly in terms of mind, which will prove to him that a zygote is not a person” — ?
If so, the thought experiment does not achieve its aim, because if we have one zygote, then we do not have 2 organisms to choose between. So if we value mind, our only hope is to keep that zygote alive till it develops a mind.
“So, if you NOW want to claim that the headless human body cannot qualify a person, how can you possibly claim that the zygote does qualify as a person?”
Now that you have replied to my questions and I have taken the time to digest the experiment, I have more respect for the headless human body than I did before. I wouldn’t be extremely averse to calling it a person. But purely for the purpose of my staying consistent with my 1 and the rest of my legal framework, it’s not necessary for me to call it a person. Because my legal framework does not demand the use of elaborate technology to preserve the unborn.
“And so, once again, it is revealed that it is irrational to invoke the concept of “potential” when defining “person”.”
Your “And so” means “Since a decapitated body is not a person in spite of its potential” — right? But as is clear now, I don’t necessarily maintain that the decapitated body of your experiment is not a person, or if I do, I show how the analogy with a zygote is not perfect. So now I’m free to go on invoking “potential,” right?
My “till it develops a mind” argument depends on “potential.” Later you will make some other objections about “potential,” which I will reply to later. Meanwhile, for a fuller treatment of that subject than I’ve offered you before, see http://www.NoTerminationWithoutRepresentation.org, “Too Young for Rights?”
Incidentally, purely in terms of your thought experiment, you didn’t exclude the possibility that a new head would be identical to the old head, in which case there would be no difference between your two options. In terms of your experiment, either or both would do.
“Carbon-based life” includes dolphins, parrots, octopuses, monkeys (who all deserve some degree of protection against violence, by the way, and whose embryos deserve the same degree of protection) and plants. It means life as we know it, as distinguished from the kind of life that any imaginable robot might be claimed to represent.
“But you also are not being very precise, since you appear to be synonymizing ‘awareness’ and ‘consciousness’. We know they are two different things, thanks to people in comas –even with no observable consciousness they possess a degree of awareness, because some that woke up told us about it!”
I do synonymize them. Here —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN5Fs6_O2mY
— neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says at 8:24 “. . . we have to start by being honest . . . consciousness cannot be formally defined . . . [she explains in some detail why it can’t]”
The Wikipedia says:
“Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.”
So I’m free to define those words as suits my purposes, though I should make my def. clear (as I’ve been trying to do). Now please make your mind, as regards how Acyutananda defines “consciousness/awareness/ability to experience,” a blank slate, and I’ll copy here a few approaches that I once used with someone:
“. . . getting back to straightforward attempts to define ‘consciousness,’ a word that might help is ‘witness.’ The witness of a crime only sees without being involved.
“In a previous message I said ‘consciousness is power-to-perceive strictly distinguished from the perceived.’
“Try remembering an experience of love or sorrow or anger. The emotion you remember was a mental phenomenon, and MOREOVER, at the time you were having that emotion, you KNEW it was going on inside you. The ability to know an emotion (& know other phenomena) is your consciousness.
“Here is maybe the nearest to a foolproof definition of consciousness: Consciousness is the ‘I know’ of the statement ‘I know that I exist.’ Of course that first ‘I’ can know stuff besides ‘I exist’ alone, but if you can locate the ‘I’ in you that knows that you exist, then you’re not likely to be confused about how I’m using ‘consciousness.’ (And subjectivity is the position of that ‘I’ as opposed to its power to know. And in this example the thought ‘I exist’ is the mental phenomenon.)”
I won’t be able to get back to this for a few days, especially if I search for and read all your references.
“in Nature there is no such thing as a Potential that MUST be fulfilled.”
….
Oh, I see. You are using MUST in the human-ethical sense that my 1 is preparing to get at. When you had said “in Nature,” I had taken it as “in a state of Nature” (before human influence), so I had taken your MUST as referring to natural laws.
Now you’ve made it clear that your MUST is a human-ethical MUST. But that being clear, you seem to be saying, “Within natural laws there is no human-ethical MUST.” Well, of course not, but that does not mean that there are no human-ethical MUST’s at all. Or am I missing something in what you’re trying to say?
————————————————————————————
You basically have it right. However, to then state “that does not mean that there are no human-ethical MUSTs at all” is to bring Human Opinion into the overall situation. Remember when slavery was considered ethical? Remember that the Vikings considered it ethical to do all sorts of horrible things to non-Vikings, while having strict rules against doing most of those to other Vikings? You should not expect any human-ethical “must” to be widely accepted unless it can be included within natural law –but that is impossible, since there is no such thing as a human-ethical must within natural law.
And so in some places abortion is illegal, and in others it is legal, and the Debate rages on, because different humans often start with different data and end up with differing opinions. (Logical Solution: get all humans to be working with the SAME data, and then get the experts in Logic to use that to End the Debate once and for all. But, based on all of the data that I personally have been working with, far more complete than I’ve ever seen Abortion Opponents using (see fightforsense.wordpress.com), the outcome is fore-gone, that Abortion Opponents Will Lose, so obviously they wouldn’t want that sort of Solution.)
=================================================
“You defined person as an organism possessing a certain potential. And I specifically stated that a regeneration vat would allow a headless body the opportunity to grow a new head –which therefore means that the mindless body still has potential, and, therefore, under your definition, it qualifies as much as a person as does a zygote.”
“My Question, however, was about saving the person who became decapitated. And THAT person is most certainly not the mindless/headless body. Not to mention that the scenario once more points out the irrationality of your definition, since before the decapitation accident only one person was describe-able, but afterward, two are describe-able (the bodiless head and the headless body), per your definition.”
….
Actually, I had thought that somewhere in your “. . . mindless human body is just a non-person” and your “basically FALSE to equate ‘person’ with ‘human body’” sentences [not quoted] you had probably made a mistake, and I figured, why try to understand this thought experiment now, let me first inquire about those sentences and confirm the thought experiment.
Now you have made your meaning more accessible. Is it this — “If Acyutananda replies ‘head,’ that will prove to him that he defines personhood mostly in terms of mind, which will prove to him that a zygote is not a person” — ?
If so, the thought experiment does not achieve its aim, because if we have one zygote, then we do not have 2 organisms to choose between. So if we value mind, our only hope is to keep that zygote alive till it develops a mind.
————————————————————————————
Nice try, but no cigar, and for multiple reasons. See if you can find a TV documentary called either “I Am My Own Twin” or “The Twin Inside Me”. It is quite possible for two separate blastocysts, which initially were two separately-fertilized ova, leading to two zygotes and two morulas, to merge together to form just one human body with just one mind. Basically, Nature does not care one whit about any human desire for each zygote to develop its own mind. (Not to mention that Nature allows something like 50% of conceptions to fail to become confirmed pregnancies, and Nature allows 1/6 to 1/7 of all confirmed pregnancies to miscarry –AND, after birth, Nature has for most of human history allowed about 50% of youngsters to die by age 2 or 3.) Humans might rail-against Nature all they want, but all it does is prove that humans can be egotistical and stupid about their place in Nature.
(Did you know that the Earth’s planetary orbit around the sun is very near the inside-edge of the “habitable zone”? In perhaps 300 million years the Sun’s Natural brightening with time –already up about 30% since the formation of the Solar System– will cause the Earth to start broiling like Venus. Are humans doing anything to save themselves from that? Hah! Instead all the energy we have produced in order to support the Population Explosion has had the side-effect of starting a Global Warming process that would tend to cause that long-term disaster to arrive sooner instead of later! And Abortion Opponents, of course, act like they stupidly want to help things get worse! Too Much Of ANY Good Thing (“minds” in this case, since we can’t have them without also having bodies that need support) Is ALWAYS A Bad Thing!)
Next, zygotes are easy to make. See the Population Explosion for proof. The phrase you used, “if we value mind”, is an assumption that doesn’t withstand scrutiny, because… while a zygote has the potential to produce a valuable mind –perhaps an Einstein– it ALSO has the potential to produce an anti-valuable Hitler mind, instead. The two aspects of “potential” cancel each other out. making this anti-abortion argument Neutral, so nobody should ever use it, on either side of the Overall Debate.
The preceding leads to the facts about Relative Value and “investment”. The biological resources invested in constructing a new-born human are much greater than the biological resources invested in constructing a zygote, and that is a major reason why zygotes need not be assigned much value. If Person A wants an abortion early in a pregnancy, when only a small quantity of biological resources have been invested, while Person B claims that the unborn organism is too valuable to be destroyed, why should Person A believe Person B? Can Person B provide any EVIDENCE supporting their claim? So far as I’ve ever seen, NOT EVER.
Next, regarding having 2 organisms to choose between –that was ONLY about saving a decapitated Person. If you equate “potential” with “actual”, then your definition of Person REQUIRES that both organisms be saved after a decapitation accident (or even after many lesser accident-types, such as a finger-amputation, because in a regeneration vat, the finger can grow an attached body, see?). The actual overall goal of the thought-experiment was to show, once again, that “potential” and “actual” are two DIFFERENT things that can be treated differently.
=================================================
Now that you have replied to my questions and I have taken the time to digest the experiment, I have more respect for the headless human body than I did before. I wouldn’t be extremely averse to calling it a person. But purely for the purpose of my staying consistent with my 1 and the rest of my legal framework, it’s not necessary for me to call it a person. Because my legal framework does not demand the use of elaborate technology to preserve the unborn.
“And so, once again, it is revealed that it is irrational to invoke the concept of “potential” when defining “person”.”
Your “And so” means “Since a decapitated body is not a person in spite of its potential” — right? But as is clear now, I don’t necessarily maintain that the decapitated body of your experiment is not a person, or if I do, I show how the analogy with a zygote is not perfect. So now I’m free to go on invoking “potential,” right?
My “till it develops a mind” argument depends on “potential.” Later you will make some other objections about “potential,” which I will reply to later. Meanwhile, for a fuller treatment of that subject than I’ve offered you before, see http://www.NoTerminationWithoutRepresentation.org, “Too Young for Rights?”
————————————————————————————
The US Constitution gives you complete Liberty to be as deluded as you like, about equating “potential” and “actual”. But don’t expect others to be convinced that equating them is rational. Did you ever hear this quote before? “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” (Robert A. Heinlein) You are rationalizing, not being rational.
Also, as I’ve stated elsewhere, you cannot expect YOUR “legal framework” to be adopted without adjustments –and proposed Legal Adjustments tend to include requirements based on available technology. You must be aware that various doctors have already performed certain operations on unborn humans that had been detected to be in danger of dying before or shortly after birth. Such a thing would never have been contemplated 200 years ago, but modern technologies have enabled it, and so, Logically, in any place where the Law MIGHT be written to insist that such an operation be done, you can expect to see such Laws be eventually written. The beginnings of such laws already exist in many places; I quote from an on-line legal dictionary: “Malpractice is a special type of legal negligence which takes place when certain types of professionals have a specific duty to act, they fail to act in accordance …”
Next, you have actually failed to show that the analogy between a headless body and a zygote is not perfect, because you are failing to properly appreciate the word “potential”. Its definition does not care in the least whether or not technology is required for a potential to be fulfilled, and so a “potential person” is a potential person, always, regardless of whether it be a zygote or a headless human body or a detached finger or a yet-to-be-activated white-blood-cell (which could become a totipotent cell, equivalent to a zygote). Any time you ever experienced a cut that bled, potential persons died as white blood cells leaked out (along with irrelevant red cells and platelets that lack DNA). If the cut was your fault, then you are guilty of multiple cases of homicide, all because YOU choose to equate “potential” with “actual”!
——————————————————————————————
“Incidentally, purely in terms of your thought experiment, you didn’t exclude the possibility that a new head would be identical to the old head, in which case there would be no difference between your two options. In terms of your experiment, either or both would do.”
—————————————————————————————–
The possibility CAN be excluded. The new head will be a twin of the original, but not any more identical than the heads of ordinary identical twins. And the new mind won’t be identical, either, simply because of wildly different experiences during growth, compared to the original head.
=================================================
In this segment I’ll say a few things about that “Too Young for Rights” article –but even before looking at it, I suspect that you will have made the same errors you did at the start of the “Personhood and Citizenship” article, and which I pointed out in my reply. Until the FOUNDATIONS of your arguments, the starting points, are solid and irrefutable, any structure you might build upon them is worthless, every time.
So let me see….
Yup, the emotionally charged and faulty buzz-phrase “unborn baby” is used (or, rather, mis-used, in the 7th paragraph). Tsk, tsk.
Ah, here is something new, a sort of Challenge that I don’t mind at all taking on:
“[pro-choice folks] are rarely prepared, for instance, to state the reasons for their opening assumption that a fully-developed human being has rights.”
My rationale has been posted elsewhere under another “handle”, so I simply copy it here, almost unedited. It is an oddball viewpoint, but entirely Factual:
——————-
My handy paperback dictionary has quite a few definitions for the word “right”, but these two seem relevant:
“in accordance with truth, justice, or propriety” (a bit less relevant)
“that to which one has a moral or legal claim” (the most relevant)
The actual most important key word is “claim”. Rights basically exist because some people claim them, and others let them get away with it. (There’s more to it than just that, so please hold off for a minute, on any knee-jerk reaction.)
Like I said [in an earlier post at that site], “rights” are a human invention.
There is this Grand Thing sometimes called “The Social Contract”. It is a thing that each society creates as it experiments with various “social mores” and discovers what works to benefit that society, and what doesn’t work. A lot of human cultures have concluded that something very workable involves getting everyone in the culture to agree on various statements like this one: “I will accept your claim that you have a right to life, provided you do the same for me.” (See? Every individual can make the claim, and everyone else lets him or her get away with it! ) Obviously rights to Liberty and Property and other things can begin to exist in that culture via extremely similar statements. In one respect the US Constitution [plus Amendments] is our Nation’s Social Contract; surely you must have encountered statements such as, “If you don’t like our rules, you are free to move to some other country.” –there is an assumption that everyone raised in the USA will automatically accept the Constitution (and everyone who immigrates to become a citizen is required to accept it). That assumption is probably a mistake, because even though most born citizens do accept it, there are always a few who don’t, and make trouble.
Anyway, the Logic here is, because the Constitution (plus Amendments) spells out various rights, and because the People accept that overall document, therefore do those rights exist in the USA. No other rationale need apply!
—————
You also wrote:
“It is important to make clear the reasons for a developed human’s rights, if someone is to make the claim that a less-developed human has less rights or no rights.”
Fine. Because it is equally important to note that it takes a certain degree of mental ability to understand the Social Contract, and then agree or disagree with it. Unborn humans most certainly lack that degree of mental ability, so there is no Objective reason to act as if they had agreed with it, any more than there is Objective reason to act as spiders had agreed with it. (Abortion opponents have various Subjective reasons, but they can all be discounted because they are indeed Subjective, not Objective.)
Next error-possibly-in-progress:
“realization of at least some persons’ potential is, in and of itself, a value — it is good.”
The error will come from conflating “person” and “potential”. That is, elsewhere you have talked about “potential person”, and here you are talking about “person with potential” –two different things that I am momentarily expecting (as I read the article) you to begin pretending are equal.
Well, here is Something Unexpected:
“The point is that the only basis we have so far found for “rights” is the basis of the future realization of potential”
Hah!! Obviously you could be mistaken there! In fact, due to the Facts and Logic copied above from that other site, I feel entirely comfortable saying that You Are Mistaken. Therefore, any argument you might make, with that Mistake at its Foundation, is ultimately flawed, which gives me a reason to stop. GIGO, remember?
But here, just because I happened to see it before stopping, is one other error:
“the justification for any action by a post-natal person always refers to people’s potential and to the future.”
That statement is false because an entirely different justification for abortion is possible, based on the fact that the fundamental biology of an unborn human is “parasitic”. I do not confuse “parasite”, a particular type of organism, with “parasitic actions”, which can be performed by a much broader group of organisms. A justification for abortion, therefore, CAN simply be this: “I do not wish my body to continue to enable parasitic actions. I want the present drain upon my biological resources STOPPED.”
While I’m aware that you might now point out that the abortion then allows a particular potential to be fulfilled, regarding day-to-day living without that biological drain upon it, this rationale for abortion does not NEED to reference that potential. IT IS ALL ABOUT AN UNACCEPTABLE PRESENT. (Whenever pro-choicers equate abortion opponents with “slavers”, it is because the abortion opponents are insisting that the free will of a pregnant woman is irrelevant, that an unacceptable-to-her present must be tolerated.)
=================================================
““Carbon-based life” includes dolphins, parrots, octopuses, monkeys (who all deserve some degree of protection against violence, by the way, and whose embryos deserve the same degree of protection) and plants. It means life as we know it, as distinguished from the kind of life that any imaginable robot might be claimed to represent.”
————————————————————————————
You’ve made two mistakes there, but I shall assume both are related to ignorance (not a sin). First, the octopus is an “R-strategist”. Each adult female typically produces 20,000-100,000 embryos and then dies, leaving them to fend for themselves (most become food for other organisms), typical for the “R-strategy” of reproduction. Please consider just how crowded the oceans would be with octopuses, if all of those embryos –multiplied by the total number of adult female octopuses that produced embryos each breeding season– were given protection. Once again the focus on “potential” leads to an irrational result (irrational because it denies the Natural Facts about R-strategy reproduction).
Second, you need to be aware that “molecular biology” can be called “natural nanotechnology”. To a great extent it is about key-in-lock MACHINERY, even if all the pieces of that machinery happen to be to be made of carbon-rich molecules. Therefore there really is no fundamental difference between carbon-based life and steel-machine-based life. So, if you read through the “fightforsense.wordpress.com” article on abortion arguments, you will find a lot of references to a proposed “small growing electronic machine”. I recommend you search for the word “growing” and read all the contexts in which it appears near the word “machine”. But even before reading that, you might look up a science fiction novel, “Code of the Life Maker”, by James P. Hogan. “Life as we know it” is HARDLY a limitation on potential minds! (For one of the wilder ones, see “Dragon’s Egg” by Dr. Robert L. Forward, which imagines life on the surface of a neutron star –including intelligent life, of course– in which nuclear reactions substitute for the chemical reactions of Earthly biology….)
=================================================
“I do synonymize them [consciousness and awareness].”
————————————————————————————
Well, that means I expect you to want to extend protection to praying mantises (another R-strategist species), since you elsewhere agreed that they were aware. Also mice and rats (despite their depredations against human food supplies) and likely just about all other mammals –tigers could no longer be allowed to kill deer! (yet tigers are pure carnivores; their biology is adapted for ONLY eating meat).
If a frog can extend a tongue and catch a fly, then it must have some degree of awareness, too. Ditto for certain lizards. So add most amphibians and reptiles to your “give it protection” List. Fish obviously have some awareness, also. They don’t form well-coordinated “schools” blindly, after all!
I might mention an anecdote I read about many years ago, in which one person bet another that “trees could talk” –and won the bet. While I won’t comment on the validity of the anecdote, it does open the mind to begin thinking about just how common Awareness might be in Nature….
After which the association of awareness and consciousness leads to a bind. Is there ANYTHING humans can eat that doesn’t destroy some organism’s awareness? Seeds, maybe…. :)
The appropriate final statement to this segment appears to be: “reductio ad absurdum”.
=================================================
“Consciousness is the ‘I know’ of the statement ‘I know that I exist.’”
————————————————————————————
This reminds me of a famous Biblical statement, “I am that I am.” It is not a super-clear statement, but PERHAPS that is a consequence of “translation”. For example, it might be be a short way of saying, “I am that which is able to state, ‘I am’.” Is your average lizard able to make such a claim, even in some sort of modest lizard-language (like using gestures)? Seems doubt-able….
Yet such statements, including yours, also seem to insert a divider between consciousness and awareness, breaking their synonymity. Awareness need not have anything to do with an “I”, after all. In fact if we consider the “awareness” built into a loaded mouse-trap, there certainly is no “I’ involved, even though when the mouse steps on the trigger, the trap snaps into action. This is the reason I have used the phrase “stimulus/response machine” in various places. Plenty of living things do not exhibit any traits beyond that of mere stimulus/response machines, biological though their machinery may be.
Thus the praying mantis, despite its awareness, is just a biological stimulus/response machine. Ditto with fish and amphibians and reptiles and most mammals and most mollusks. An octopus is able to recognize itself in a mirror; that strongly implies it has an “I”. Ditto with dolphins and monkeys (and the Great Apes, chimps, baboons, gorillas, orangutans) and some birds. Did you know that most cats and dogs FAIL the mirror test (also known as the “rouge test”)?
By the way, young humans fail the rouge test, too, until they are perhaps a year old. Unborn humans are CERTAINLY mere biological stimulus/response machines.
Thank you. I may need a few days to reply; will particularly need time if I check out the documentary. When I reply, would you like an email notification?
Meanwhile, where did I say “potential person”?
Thanks for your comment. It will be some time yet before I am able to reply fully, but since you indicated the especial importance of this —
“Next, you have actually failed to show that the analogy between a headless body and a zygote is not perfect, because you are failing to properly appreciate the word ‘potential’. Its definition does not care in the least whether or not technology is required for a potential to be fulfilled, and so a ‘potential person’ is a potential person, always, regardless of whether it be a zygote or a headless human body or a detached finger or a yet-to-be-activated white-blood-cell (which could become a totipotent cell, equivalent to a zygote). Any time you ever experienced a cut that bled, potential persons died as white blood cells leaked out (along with irrelevant red cells and platelets that lack DNA). If the cut was your fault, then you are guilty of multiple cases of homicide, all because YOU choose to equate ‘potential’ with ‘actual’!”
— it gives me a place to start.
This reply will also be a reply to some lines of yours at prolifehumanists.org (“A Secular Case” page) —
“Well, since every cell in the human body that has human DNA (about 100 trillion of them) is POTENTIALLY a totipotent stem cell, each of which could yield a complete human body, that means, as soon as the technology to do it is perfected, someone like yourself must be chopped up into individual human DNA-possessing cells, each of which must be then implanted into perhaps-artificial wombs, and allowed to grow into 100 trillion more human bodies. –Except that each one of THEM ALSO has to be chopped up, because of their POTENTIAL, to become 100-trillion-squared organisms growing in wombs….”
Elsewhere on the “A Secular Case” page, you yourself pointed out a key distinction —
“The main difference is simply that the zygote IS a totipotent stem cell, and the white blood cell needs to be ‘activated’ to become one.”
That difference, if no other, calls for different ethical treatment of the two cells.
You went on —
“But the word ‘potential’ doesn’t specify one iota of value regarding that difference. So, whenever someone cuts self while shaving (whether chin or underarms or legs), pro-lifers should decry the lost potential as scores of white blood cells bleed out and die…”
The difference itself calls for different ethical treatment, so what you are pointing out is something that the word “potential” doesn’t specify.
At most I may need to tweak my word “potential,” in order to specify.
Nice try, but NO cigar. If a white blood cell needs to be activated in order for its potential to be fulfilled, this is insignificantly different from saying “a white blood cell needs help in order for its potential to be fulfilled.” A headless body needs the help of a regeneration vat for its potential to be fulfilled. So does a bodiless finger need help for its potential to be fulfilled. So do all the about-100-trillion human cells of an average adult human body need help, in order for their potential to be fulfilled. AND SO DOES A ZYGOTE NEED HELP (normally that of a womb), for its potential to be fulfilled. Even an about-to-be-born human fetus needs help (muscular efforts by a woman’s body, or perhaps a C-section) for its potential to be fulfilled.
You would like to make a distinction such that in some cases help need not be offered, to fulfill potential, while in other cases help must be offered (legally-required type of “must”). You are attempting to value “potential” differently based on “degree of barrier” between a potential and its fulfillment.
But like I previously wrote, the actual definition of “potential” does not make ANY such distinctions. Potential to fall down a long staircase and break one’s neck is ALWAYS that, whenever one is at the top of a long staircase, regardless of whether or not there is nothing, or a railing, or a closed gate, or even a locked gate, between the one who might fall and the staircase. Barriers to the fulfillment of potential do not affect the fact that potential exists, not by one whit. (Else we might as well as abandon the efforts to tame nuclear fusion for power plants –those efforts are ALL about overcoming certain barriers between the potential and the actual, see?)
(p.s. I knew I made a mistake in HOW I posted my Nov 26 message below. Please delete it?)
Anon Y Mous, over 6 weeks ago I replied partially to your November 25, 2013 at 6:13 pm post, writing “It will be some time yet before I am able to reply fully.” I did intend to write some more soon, but I found that “way leads on to way.”
Now Timothy Griffy has said something about “Too Young for Rights?” I’d like to reply to a little more of your post, and also reply to him.
AYM: Rights basically exist because some people claim them, and others let them get away with it.
No Termination without Representation (Acyutananda): After saying that, you went on to criticize my —
“The point is that the only basis we have so far found for ‘rights’ is the basis of the future realization of potential”
— on the grounds that you had provided another basis for rights.
And it is true you had. But I had meant “the only moral basis,” whereas you are talking about a realpolitik basis.
NTwR in “Too Young for Rights?”: the justification for any action by a post-natal person always refers to people’s potential and to the future.
AYM: That statement is false because an entirely different justification for abortion is possible, based on the fact that the fundamental biology of an unborn human is “parasitic”. I do not confuse “parasite”, a particular type of organism, with “parasitic actions”, which can be performed by a much broader group of organisms. A justification for abortion, therefore, CAN simply be this: “I do not wish my body to continue to enable parasitic actions. I want the present drain upon my biological resources STOPPED.”
NTwR: After saying that, you anticipated what I would reply to you. You said —
“While I’m aware that you might now point out that the abortion then allows a particular potential to be fulfilled, regarding day-to-day living without that biological drain upon it,”
— but then objected —
“this rationale for abortion does not NEED to reference that potential. IT IS ALL ABOUT AN UNACCEPTABLE PRESENT.”
NTwR: “Unacceptable” is only meaningful in relation to some damage or suffering. But as I explained in the post, “the present has no duration — it is just the dividing line between past and future. Harm and good of no duration have no value, positive or negative.”
[Edit: As I hope this makes it clear, you may be thinking of “potential” in too narrow a sense. Anything in the future is potential.]
Now Timothy Griffy has said (as a comment under “Personhood,” but referring to “Too Young for Rights?”):
TG: I prioritize the actual over the potential. If there is a conflict, the rights and well-being of the actual person of the mother outweigh the rights and well-being of the potential person of the fetus.
NTwR: I then referred him to “Too Young for Rights?,” saying: “However, ‘Would interfere with education’ is all about the mother as a potential person, not as an actual person. My post ‘Too Young for Rights?’ is all about what I consider to be, morally, a false distinction.”
TG: Though I do agree with Ginsburg that reproductive rights (which are not as narrowly construed as you put it in the article) are essential if women in particular are to reach their full potential, my prioritization has little to do with the woman developing her potential per se. It is about the actual, here and now, person asserting her rights, here and now, regardless of the future.”
NTwR: She has rights now, but she should not have those rights unless there is some meaningful moral basis for the rights. Is there any meaningful basis? Yes, it is the well-being or suffering she may experience in the future. (Or the deprivation of any experience, that is, the elimination of the chance for any experience, if she dies.)
The unborn baby also stands to experience well-being or suffering in the future (or deprivation of any experience, which would be the result of abortion).
In a moment of no duration, there cannot be any meaningful well-being or suffering. There is nothing at stake that would justify rights. “Rights, here and now, regardless of the future” is not a meaningful concept. You are concerned about the woman’s future, her potential. [Edit: She does have rights here and now, but they cannot be regardless of the future.]
So as I said in the post:
“when an abortion-rights advocate says that the unborn baby is ‘only a person in potential,’ or does not have rights ‘yet,’ essentially what they are saying is:
“1. the potential of a woman should be taken into account, and therefore she has a right to kill her unborn child
“2. it’s okay to kill an unborn child, because its potential should not be taken into account.”
AYM: Rights basically exist because some people claim them, and others let them get away with it.
No Termination without Representation (Acyutananda): After saying that, you went on to criticize my –
“The point is that the only basis we have so far found for ‘rights’ is the basis of the future realization of potential”
– on the grounds that you had provided another basis for rights.
And it is true you had. But I had meant “the only moral basis,” whereas you are talking about a realpolitik basis.
TG: AYM took a different approach in his response, but I have to add that you are wrong that he didn’t come up with a moral basis for rights. The moral basis for his approach is the Golden Rule. The Social Contract is really the Golden Rule writ large. If I claim a right for myself, then the Golden Rule demands I grant the same to you. Why I claim a right is irrelevant–it might have reference to developing my potential, it might not. The point is that I claim them here and now, and therefore I must grant them to you here and now. Potential is irrelevant.
Let’s take another look then at what actually happens if you are going to die a split second from now anyway. If I killed you, I would still be charged with murder, and the fact that you were going to die a split second later anyway is not a defense. So-called Angel of Mercy killers are prosecuted even though many, if not most, of their victims are at the end stages of life. The morality and laws regarding murder hold whether you only have a split second or an eternity of life left to you. The point is that at the point you were murdered, you are dead when you would not have been dead otherwise.
Likewise, serving you a cappuccino would be a kindness in and of itself regardless of how long you have to live. Indeed, it all you have left is a split second, then to have the last thing done to you be an act of kindness would be a great good. Look at how some people feel extreme guilt if the last time they say someone they had an argument. The whole idea behind hospice care is that a person at the end stages of life will die with as little pain and as much dignity as possible. Yet under your argument, no good was done for someone in hospice care because they were dying anyway. I’m sure my grandfather would have disagreed with you.
AYM: That statement is false because an entirely different justification for abortion is possible, based on the fact that the fundamental biology of an unborn human is “parasitic”. I do not confuse “parasite”, a particular type of organism, with “parasitic actions”, which can be performed by a much broader group of organisms. A justification for abortion, therefore, CAN simply be this: “I do not wish my body to continue to enable parasitic actions. I want the present drain upon my biological resources STOPPED.”
NTwR: After saying that, you anticipated what I would reply to you. You said –
“While I’m aware that you might now point out that the abortion then allows a particular potential to be fulfilled, regarding day-to-day living without that biological drain upon it,”
– but then objected –
“this rationale for abortion does not NEED to reference that potential. IT IS ALL ABOUT AN UNACCEPTABLE PRESENT.”
NTwR: “Unacceptable” is only meaningful in relation to some damage or suffering. But as I explained in the post, “the present has no duration — it is just the dividing line between past and future. Harm and good of no duration have no value, positive or negative.”
[Edit: As I hope this makes it clear, you may be thinking of “potential” in too narrow a sense. Anything in the future is potential.]
TG: Again, I am going to take a different track than AYM here. Here, you do not need reference to either to a potential future or comparison to a known past. All you need is the here and now, because pregnancy does have duration. The fetus is taking parasitic actions here and now for the entire duration of pregnancy, draining the woman’s biological resources here and now for the entire duration of pregnancy, causing damage or suffering here and now for the entire duration of pregnancy. A pregnant woman only ever has need for recourse to the here and now to demand a stop the fetus’ parasitic actions, a stop the drain on her biological resources, a stop to the damage and suffering.
TG previous: I prioritize the actual over the potential. If there is a conflict, the rights and well-being of the actual person of the mother outweigh the rights and well-being of the potential person of the fetus.
NTwR: I then referred him to “Too Young for Rights?,” saying: “However, ‘Would interfere with education’ is all about the mother as a potential person, not as an actual person. My post ‘Too Young for Rights?’ is all about what I consider to be, morally, a false distinction.”
TG: For the record, I should modify my previous statement to say “the rights of and well-being of the actual person of the mother *normally* outweigh the rights and well-being of the potential person of the fetus.” I would hope that “normally” was understood in the overall context, but in case it wasn’t, I don’t want to leave any misunderstanding.
In any case, you may feel that the distinction between an actual and a potential person is a false distinction, but as of now, that remains an unproven assertion. Meanwhile, in any other context, the distinction is, in fact, recognized and we would never confuse the potential for the actual. Perhaps you are right that “would interfere with education” is about the mother as a potential person, but I’m sure that neither one of us would deny that with or without an education, the mother is a person here and now.
NTwR: She has rights now, but she should not have those rights unless there is some meaningful moral basis for the rights. Is there any meaningful basis? Yes, it is the well-being or suffering she may experience in the future. (Or the deprivation of any experience, that is, the elimination of the chance for any experience, if she dies.)
The unborn baby also stands to experience well-being or suffering in the future (or deprivation of any experience, which would be the result of abortion).
In a moment of no duration, there cannot be any meaningful well-being or suffering. There is nothing at stake that would justify rights. “Rights, here and now, regardless of the future” is not a meaningful concept. You are concerned about the woman’s future, her potential. [Edit: She does have rights here and now, but they cannot be regardless of the future.]
TG: The problem here is that you are wrong that rights are only about what someone may or may not experience in the future. Yes, that is a consideration. Rights are essential if we are to fully develop our potential. Indeed, some rights (such the right to education) are precisely about “the full development of the human personality” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26, Section 2). No denying that. However, reference to the future is neither a necessary nor sufficient moral basis for rights.
You did well to ask the question “What does it mean to say we have rights?” You were wrong, however, to say that the Declaration of Independence only said that rights are self-evident without saying why it should be so. Actually, the Declaration of Independence that human rights are endowed by their Creator. Essentially, God is the source of human rights, and to violate them is to violate the Divine Will. It is the violation of the will of God that, in the terms of the Declaration of Independence, justifies the people in instituting a new government that will recognize their rights.
Notably, in their justification for rebelling against the British empire, the Continental Congress did not talk about the well-being or suffering the States might experience in the future. They talked about past depredations that were continuing into the present as of the time they voted for independence. Those depredations had come to the point where it was insufferable now, and that it was therefore “their right … their duty” to throw off the government now. It became their right and their duty to do so regardless the future prospect of success. And don’t forget, the odds were against them. “Rights, here and now, regardless of the future” certainly was a meaningful concept to the members of the Continental Congress.
In fact, almost any time we talk about rights, our reference is to the here and now. “I know my rights!” we declare to the cops when they are doing something we perceive as a violation of our rights. “It’s my body!” is an assertion of a claim to bodily integrity in the here and now. I’ve defined rights as the base standards which one cannot normally cross, because violating them causes harm in itself, not because future harm may result. This is partly why I insisted that you address the bodily autonomy argument directly instead of offering the red herring of the handicapped man.
I gave a morally meaningful justification for rights without regard to the future above, so I won’t repeat myself. Whatever it is that justifies rights, they are indeed a meaningful concept here and now. As the violation of a right is a harm in itself, what is at stake are the rights themselves.
NTwR: So as I said in the post:
“when an abortion-rights advocate says that the unborn baby is ‘only a person in potential,’ or does not have rights ‘yet,’ essentially what they are saying is:
“1. the potential of a woman should be taken into account, and therefore she has a right to kill her unborn child
“2. it’s okay to kill an unborn child, because its potential should not be taken into account.”
TG: This argument is precisely why I said that this article doesn’t seem to apply to the potential personhood argument I constructed in the “Personhood” comment section. As applied to that argument, this post is erecting a strawman. In my arguments, the woman’s potential, if mentioned at all, were secondary to the consideration of her rights here and now. I never at any point said the woman has a right to kill the fetus. In fact, I outright denied that she did. Right from the beginning of our discussion at “My Abortion” article, I said that because a fetus is a potential person, “a decision to abort a pregnancy must be weighed very carefully.” Partly as a result of this discussion, I have been refining my views somewhat. But, at least at the moral level, I have always maintained that a fetus’ potential should be taken into account. So on at least two counts, I’ve said precisely the opposite of what you are now trying to attribute to me.
AYM a long time ago: Rights basically exist because some people claim them, and others let them get away with it. . . . “I will accept your claim that you have a right to life, provided you do the same for me.”
NTwR: The mere thought “What’s in it for me?” is a primary source of human suffering.
TG: The moral basis for AYM’s approach is the Golden Rule. The Social Contract is really the Golden Rule writ large. If I claim a right for myself, then the Golden Rule demands I grant the same to you.
NTwR: I have never understood the Golden Rule in that way. I have never understood it to mean that if one does unto others as one would have them do to oneself, they will necessarily reciprocate. I have always understood it to mean that doing unto others as one would have them do to oneself is its own reward.
A fundamental problem in this discussion is that neither of you has understood that by “present” I mean “present” and by “future” I mean “future.” I won’t dispute the fact that colloquially people may sometimes call “the entire duration of pregnancy” “the present” (as TG did), or may call “continuing to experience an unacceptable present” (part of the pregancy period) “the present” (as AYM did), but you are both capable of thinking literally and precisely, and the precise distinctions I’m making are not unscientific or illogical, so if there is some flaw in my argument, you should be able to show me the flaw without changing my terms/concepts.
The real issue is this: Why do you both think that the well-being or suffering of the baby which may start a few months in the future should NOT be taken into account (TG please see below for small nuance), whereas you base all your ideas of the woman’s rights on the well-being or suffering of the woman which may start one day in the future (after she recovers from the abortion and starts reaping the benefits of relief from that drain) OR may start years in the future (after she starts reaping the benefits of her education, or whatever she chose over her baby’s life)?
——————-
The simplest answer to your question is to compare the unborn human to some other animal, and ask the same question: “Why do you both think that the well-being of suffering of a cockroach which may start a few months in the future should NOT be taken into account …?” Basically, we very often don’t put a lot of effort in to worrying about the future suffering of mere animal organisms. It is upon anyone who makes the Positive Claim, “Unborn humans are persons right now!” to Prove it. Without such proof, the unborn can continue to be treated like mere animals.
Which of course brings right back to the “potential-person problem”. Yet it has a Resolution, and I’ve pointed it out. Potentials can be fulfilled either nicely or badly, so they cancel out. Potential is not something that must be considered to any greater extent than that.
=======================
TG: But, at least at the moral level, I have always maintained that a fetus’ potential should be taken into account.
———–
Obviously I would disagree with that, as just indicated above, without even needing to mention the worthlessness of arbitrary “moral” stuff.
==============
NTwR: ONLY on the moral level, and only to the extent that you would consider it “disturbing” to abort for the most trivial reason I could think of.
You have said: “A fetus’ potential should be taken into account.” “I prioritize the actual over the potential.”
In terms of a moral basis for rights, it is only potential that can be taken into account,
————–
Irrelevant! so long as morals are arbitrary, and a superior non-arbitrary basis for rights can exist.
=================
but what you mean is that you prioritize the woman over the fetus.
————
YES. The woman is an actual person, and the unborn human is an actual mere animal.
=============
I’m not very impressed by the fact that you only partially dehumanize the fetus (except in legal terms, where you do so fully).
————
UTTERLY FALSE. From the zygote stage onward, an unborn human is 100% a human organism. But it is not a person in any manner that Science could use to Objectively and Generically distinguish any possible type of person, anywhere in the Universe, from a mere animal. “Person” and “human” are not automatically the same thing!
I can interpret what you wrote as “depersonize the fetus” instead of “dehumanize the fetus” —except that it has to first be a person before it can be depersonized!!!
================
I wonder if you could quantify the dehumanization. Is an unborn person worth 1/4 of a born person, 1/3? Perhaps at the single-cell stage, 1/32?
—————
An unborn human, at every stage of development, is 0% a person, according to both the Law and the Science. Even a newborn human is 0% a person, according to the Science, if not the Law. In terms of only the Science and how many months after birth a human remains 0% a person, the answer is tricky, mostly because of premature infants in incubators, that can wildly skew the range. However, if we counted “from conception” instead of “from birth”, I’m pretty sure the Science could say that most humans are still 0% persons as of 15 months after conception. That’s roughly time when most humans, different from each other, begin acquiring different traits of personhood at different rates. By 45 months after conception, the Science indicates that most humans have acquired all the generic traits of personhood.
===================
TG: I never at any point said the woman has a right to kill the fetus.
NTwR: What, not even legally?
TG: I’ve said precisely the opposite of what you are now trying to attribute to me.
NTwR: Hardly precisely the opposite. In legal terms you said exactly what I attribute to you (and said you’re willing to tolerate moral abuses for the sake of your legal position). And in moral terms (which are no consolation to the baby even to the small extent you do support it) you’ve said 2/3 of what I attribute to you — or 3/4, or 31/32 (I’m waiting for clarification about this).
—————-
I think the above segment doesn’t apply to me. So long as abortion is legal, it can be equated with a “right to kill a fetus”. That’s Obvious Logic.
==============
And AYM, you said –
“Nice try, but NO cigar. If what you claim about Time and Suffering is correct, then every single zero-duration instant you sat in that chair would be associated with zero suffering. So, EITHER you are wrong to have made that claim, OR you should be willing to accept the invitation!”
NTwR: It is true that all those moments will be present once I get there, but that will happen in the future. If it were otherwise, there would be no meaning in “planning for the future” or “hoping for a better future.” The meaningfulness of “rights to protect one’s future” is based on the same reality as “planning for the future” or “hoping for a better future”
——————-
You are still missing the Logic. If suffering cannot actually be experienced in the Present, due to your zero-duration hypothesis, then there is nothing in the Future that need be feared. Because eventually Future possibilities become real Present things that are NOT experienced!
But because your hypothesis is erroneous, people do suffer in the Present, and therefore they also have reason to fear future sufferings.
===================
This was clear enough in your mind when you were talking about the physics of time, but not when it became inconvenient for your argument.
———–
I’m pretty sure I have not been inconsistent in what I’ve written. It is possible to state that the Present is worse than the Past, and to therefore want the Present changed.
===============
AYM: I . . . notice you changed the picture you had at the top of pages of this site. . . . Perhaps if the image had some text-labels added, such as “fetus” and “placenta” and “the complete organism”?}
NTwR: What appears around the baby is the amniotic sac. Here is a nice picture of another baby, with text-labels added: http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php?title=Placenta_-_Membranes
—————
Nice. Since it is on a public-domain wiki site, perhaps you could copy it and change the label underneath it all, to “A complete unborn human is not just an embryo”.
AYM: If suffering cannot actually be experienced in the Present, due to your zero-duration hypothesis, then there is nothing in the Future that need be feared.
NTwR: I can’t speak in terms of the quantum mechanics you spoke of earlier, but it seems to me that in the above you are speaking in a framework that is subjectively meaningful to us as humans, and I think it will be enough if I use the same framework to explain how I see it:
Suffering never takes place in the exact present, which is just a dividing line between past and future and has no duration. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take place at all. Experiences do take place. We could say for instance, “An experience has been taking place and will continue taking place in what we perceive as the present.” What we experience as the present is a sequence of nanoseconds occurring before and after the exact present. Each of those nanoseconds is either past or future to the exact present. Just how we have the EXPERIENCE “I’m in pain in the present” is a question of neuroscience (maybe it’s part of binding?), but it’s not because “I’m in pain in the present” is scientifically what is happening.
You may have the experience “I, Anon Y Mous, really exist and I’m located half an inch behind my eyes.” But that doesn’t mean there really is a self, “yours” or anyone’s, much less that it’s located anywhere. You could call yourself “Non Ex Ist Ent,” instead of “Anon Y Mous,” and it would be equally true.
So rights have to be based either on the future or the past, and it would be meaningless to base them on the past.
So “It is true that all those [perceived] moments will be present [and will be painful] once I get there, but that will happen in the future [from where I stand now]”. So I will stand on what are my legitimate (future-based) rights and decline your torture invitation.
I said, “What we experience as the present is a sequence of nanoseconds.” It might be — I don’t know — just a million of them; or if you really think someone can experience an entire pregnancy as “the present,” it might be 1 billion x 60 x 60 x 24 x 31 x 9 of them.
AYM: There are some recent sociological studies involving unwanted children and the crime rate –the evidence suggests that while abortions in the past have obviously reduced the former, they have also led to the successful reduction of the latter. Therefore, to the extent those studies proved valid, we now have a GENERIC nonpersonal justification, FROM THE PAST, to continue to allow abortions in the present.
NTwR: First of all, it would be interesting to see some more detail about this. What are their crimes — downloading unlicensed .mp3’s? And what are the probabilities — should we try, and execute, people in advance if they are 2% more likely to become criminals than are wanted babies, or only if it’s 4%?
But I would rather focus on this question: If you’re going to take this approach to reducing crime, well, no one will become a criminal till they’re about six or seven, will they? Why not let them live six or seven years — partly on the possibility that they may become wanted in time to set them on the right path, partly just to allow them to enjoy six or seven years of harmless life? Let them watch some clouds go by, feel the sun and wind, maybe have a few birthday parties — and then kill them before they can start stealing Anon Y Mous’s cellphone?
AYM: If suffering cannot actually be experienced in the Present, due to your zero-duration hypothesis, then there is nothing in the Future that need be feared.
NTwR: I can’t speak in terms of the quantum mechanics you spoke of earlier, but it seems to me that in the above you are speaking in a framework that is subjectively meaningful to us as humans, and I think it will be enough if I use the same framework to explain how I see it:
Suffering never takes place in the exact present, which is just a dividing line between past and future and has no duration. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take place at all. Experiences do take place. We could say for instance, “An experience has been taking place and will continue taking place in what we perceive as the present.” What we experience as the present is a sequence of nanoseconds occurring before and after the exact present. Each of those nanoseconds is either past or future to the exact present. Just how we have the EXPERIENCE “I’m in pain in the present” is a question of neuroscience (maybe it’s part of binding?), but it’s not because “I’m in pain in the present” is scientifically what is happening.
—————–
Well, I see what you are saying, and one known neurological phenomenon, with respect to at least one of the senses, could possily apply to the others, and explain the connection between past and future: “persistence of vision”. On the other hand, that same persistence thing means that the “present”, as experienced is not identical to the zero-time interval that you are calling “the present”. That is, the Reality of Experience does not align with the Theory. And which is more relevant to human choices: reality, or theory?
=============
You may have the experience “I, Anon Y Mous, really exist and I’m located half an inch behind my eyes.” But that doesn’t mean there really is a self, “yours” or anyone’s, much less that it’s located anywhere. You could call yourself “Non Ex Ist Ent,” instead of “Anon Y Mous,” and it would be equally true.
———–
Well, talking about the “experiencer” is not the same as talking about “experiences“. The first reacts to the latter usually in the present, and this is true even if the first is just a bacterium.
==============
So rights have to be based either on the future or the past, and it would be meaningless to base them on the past.
————-
FALSE, because more-complex organisms can remember the past, and make comparisons not just between different past points, but also between any past point and the present. One result of such comparisons can be, “Hmmm, these are the consequences if a particular right, liberty, didn’t exist, and those are the consequences if liberty did exist. So, do I want that right to exist, or not?”
Now imagine two different entities making the preceding analysis.
One is a slave.
The other is a slave-owner.
Are they likely to agree with each other, regarding wanting liberty to exist as a right?
=================
So “It is true that all those [perceived] moments will be present [and will be painful] once I get there,
————–
THAT ALONE is all you need, to decline the invitation, the acknowledgement that the present can be a bad experience.
==============
but that will happen in the future [from where I stand now]“. So I will stand on what are my legitimate (future-based) rights and decline your torture invitation.
—————–
I wasn’t expecting you to accept. I was merely expecting you to acknowledge that the present can be a bad experience –which you did– thereby tacitly admitting that your Theory is irrelevant to Reality.
==================
I said, “What we experience as the present is a sequence of nanoseconds.” It might be — I don’t know — just a million of them; or if you really think someone can experience an entire pregnancy as “the present,” it might be 1 billion x 60 x 60 x 24 x 31 x 9 of them.
————
The “time slice” of human vision is something like 24 “frames” per second. We probably have a larger number associated with sonic time-slices. If you touch a hot surface, not knowing in advance that it was hot, your sudden reaction, to break that contact, is controlled by nerves in the spinal column (not the brain), and your reaction time is roughly a few hundredths of a second. It seems unlikely that most of the human body can interact with the world on a time scale as small as a thousandth of a second (millisecond), to say nothing about millionths or billionths of a second (microseconds and nanoseconds, respectively). (About the only parts that surpass the millisecond scale are the vocal chords, which have to vibrate a few thousand times per second in order to make speech-type noises, and the cochlea of the ear, able to detect sounds up to about 20,000 cycles per second.)
==============
AYM: There are some recent sociological studies involving unwanted children and the crime rate –the evidence suggests that while abortions in the past have obviously reduced the former, they have also led to the successful reduction of the latter. Therefore, to the extent those studies proved valid, we now have a GENERIC nonpersonal justification, FROM THE PAST, to continue to allow abortions in the present.
NTwR: First of all, it would be interesting to see some more detail about this. What are their crimes — downloading unlicensed .mp3′s? And what are the probabilities — should we try, and execute, people in advance if they are 2% more likely to become criminals than are wanted babies, or only if it’s 4%?
—————-
Obviously abortion opponents don’t want to think that there can be any sort of Good Thing associated with abortion. And so the studies are controversial and more data is needed (perhaps from other countries).
Here are a couple links (prepend only the http to either): scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/99_0927_crimerate_bw.pdf and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect
===============
But I would rather focus on this question: If you’re going to take this approach to reducing crime, well, no one will become a criminal till they’re about six or seven, will they?
————
You are missing the point. It is the unwanted children who appear to be at greater risk for becoming criminals. So, what you really need to do is find ways to convert unwanted pregnancies into wanted pregnancies. Simplest suggested answer: YOU pay all the costs of pre-natal care, birthing, nanny-care, food, clothing, shelter, education, toys, etc., until they become legal adults.
Which leads me again to a thing I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out before, but here I will directly ask it of you as a Formal Question. Why should other people pay for what you want?
====================
Why not let them live six or seven years — partly on the possibility that they may become wanted in time to set them on the right path, partly just to allow them to enjoy six or seven years of harmless life? Let them watch some clouds go by, feel the sun and wind, maybe have a few birthday parties — and then kill them before they can start stealing Anon Y Mous’s cellphone?
—————–
Short answer: You will have wasted significant resources on them. You do know, don’t you, that a major reason why many people go to the trouble of raising kids is because they hope those kids, when they grow up, can care for their parents in old age? But if abortions are done, the wastage is minimized.
TG: But, at least at the moral level, I have always maintained that a fetus’ potential should be taken into account.
———–
AYM: Obviously I would disagree with that, as just indicated above, without even needing to mention the worthlessness of arbitrary “moral” stuff.
TG: Disagreement noted. But since neither Acyutanada nor I regard morals as either worthless or arbitrary, a discussion on that level is still a worthwhile endeavor.
===================
TG: I never at any point said the woman has a right to kill the fetus.
NTwR: What, not even legally?
TG: I’ve said precisely the opposite of what you are now trying to attribute to me.
NTwR: Hardly precisely the opposite. In legal terms you said exactly what I attribute to you (and said you’re willing to tolerate moral abuses for the sake of your legal position). And in moral terms (which are no consolation to the baby even to the small extent you do support it) you’ve said 2/3 of what I attribute to you — or 3/4, or 31/32 (I’m waiting for clarification about this).
—————-
AYM: I think the above segment doesn’t apply to me. So long as abortion is legal, it can be equated with a “right to kill a fetus”. That’s Obvious Logic.
==============
Acyutanada was directing the statement as me. While abortion *can* be equated with the right to kill a fetus, it isn’t obviously logical that it *is.* Consider JethroElfman’s statement on the “Personhood” entry:
“A couple years ago, they handed out forms to have our DNA recorded to the bone-marrow registry. I refused. Donating bone marrow is painful, requires a hospital stay, and a far longer recovery than blood donation. I absolutely do not want to know that someone out there has been matched to me, and is going to die shortly with the only hope being that I will submit to this procedure. That’s their tough luck, not mine.”
Of course, it is perfectly legal for him to refuse to donate bone marrow. Without that marrow, that someone will almost certainly die. However, that does not equate to the right to kill him. Roughly the same thing could be said of abortion. The woman does not wish to use her body to gestate the fetus, and it is perfectly legal for her to have it removed. The fetus will almost certainly die as a result. However, that does not equate to the right to kill it.
Just because you regard “morals” as non-arbitrary, that doesn’t mean you can prove the claim. Try!
A major reason why I’m perfectly willing to dismiss morals is because non-arbitrary “ethics” can adequately take its place. I’m not aware of any major and unprejudiced “moral” rule that can’t have an equivalent “ethics” rule. I’m not sure why such simple logic gets ignored by afficionados of “morals”.
OK, I can accept a distinction between “legally allowed killing” and “a right to kill”. Nevertheless, we can approach the notion of a “right” by thinking about other animal organisms. Do you have the right to kill a fly or mosquito or a cockroach or a rat or even a fox-that-raids-a-henhouse? In one way or another, all of them are competitors with humans for resources.
An unborn human is in the same generic category, competing for a woman’s resources. She can Naturally “win” that competition if fetal resorption happens, or if she miscarries. On the other hand, she has Free Will, and so might choose to not see herself as being in a competition with an unborn human, for her body’s resources. She can choose to be a source of biological gifts, instead.
Abortion opponents want to take that Free Choice away from pregnant women, and force them to be victimized by unborn humans. I propose that every man who opposes abortion be required to subjugate themselves to pregnancy (prepend only the http):
academic.csuohio.edu/neuendorf_ka/com370/370_male_pregnancy.pdf
AYM: Just because you regard “morals” as non-arbitrary, that doesn’t mean you can prove the claim. Try!
TG: For the purpose of my discussion with Acyutanada, proving morals are non-arbitrary is unnecessary. We both accept they are (though we may have disagreements on what morals apply to what situations), and that is enough. I would only need to try proving such a claim were it my purpose to proselyte my views, and it is not.
AYM: A major reason why I’m perfectly willing to dismiss morals is because non-arbitrary “ethics” can adequately take its place. I’m not aware of any major and unprejudiced “moral” rule that can’t have an equivalent “ethics” rule. I’m not sure why such simple logic gets ignored by afficionados of “morals”.
TG: I see no practical difference between “morals” and “ethics,” and therefore would use either depending on the context. The only real distinction that I see is that “morals” usually have a religion-based connotation while “ethics” usually have a secular-based connotation. But unless the discussion is about the distinction, I almost always use “moral” and “ethical” synonymously.
If I were inclined to try proving morals are non-arbitrary, I would probably start out with the fact that you already pointed out: most of the major moral rules have equivalent ethical rules. Indeed, in the “Personhood” comments, I said one way to identify a moral absolute was that the rule is upheld by a number of different standards, both religious and secular.
AYM: OK, I can accept a distinction between “legally allowed killing” and “a right to kill”. Nevertheless, we can approach the notion of a “right” by thinking about other animal organisms. Do you have the right to kill a fly or mosquito or a cockroach or a rat or even a fox-that-raids-a-henhouse? In one way or another, all of them are competitors with humans for resources.
TG: I would answer that we do not have a right to kill the fly, mosquito, cockroach, rat, or fox, though doing so would be justified when they are acting in direct competition with humans for resources. I don’t know if distinguishing an action as a “right” or as “justified” would be making a distinction without a difference for you, but for me there is a clear line. Focusing on the fox, there is a difference between killing a fox raiding a hen house and hunting that same fox for “sport.” That we have moral/ethical injunctions against animal cruelty strong enough to enact laws about it suggests there is some basis for my position.
AYM: Abortion opponents want to take that Free Choice away from pregnant women, and force them to be victimized by unborn humans. I propose that every man who opposes abortion be required to subjugate themselves to pregnancy
TG: I have no substantial argument with you here. Though I don’t make it a major part of my arguments, I do agree that it is pretty hypocritical for men to forbid abortion considering they never have to worry about pregnancy. I am reminded of the bumper sticker maxim that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. Acyutanada has proposed that everyone could be forced to endure the equivalent suffering of pregnancy to keep a second-party alive, but until he actually fleshes out that argument, there really isn’t anything to analyze.
However, this proposal obviously would not apply to women who have already gone through pregnancy.
If I were inclined to try proving morals are non-arbitrary, I would probably start out with the fact that you already pointed out: most of the major moral rules have equivalent ethical rules. Indeed, in the “Personhood” comments, I said one way to identify a moral absolute was that the rule is upheld by a number of different standards, both religious and secular.
————–
Not good enough. All it does is show Subjective Agreement, not Objective Reality.
============
TG: I would answer that we do not have a right to kill the fly, mosquito, cockroach, rat, or fox, though doing so would be justified when they are acting in direct competition with humans for resources. I don’t know if distinguishing an action as a “right” or as “justified” would be making a distinction without a difference for you, but for me there is a clear line. Focusing on the fox, there is a difference between killing a fox raiding a hen house and hunting that same fox for “sport.” That we have moral/ethical injunctions against animal cruelty strong enough to enact laws about it suggests there is some basis for my position.
—————-
It probably all comes down to the definition of “rights”. I’ve taken the “realpolitik” position that they basically exist because some people claim them, and everyone else lets them get away with it. (Search for the first occurrence of “claim them” on this page for more details.)
Certainly the concept of “rights” is entirely an invention. It is a very useful invention. If you want to assume there is “more to” the concept than that, let’s see some evidence!
TG previous: If I were inclined to try proving morals are non-arbitrary, I would probably start out with the fact that you already pointed out: most of the major moral rules have equivalent ethical rules. Indeed, in the “Personhood” comments, I said one way to identify a moral absolute was that the rule is upheld by a number of different standards, both religious and secular.
————–
AYM: Not good enough. All it does is show Subjective Agreement, not Objective Reality.
TG: You didn’t ask about objective reality. You asked about arbitrariness. You distinguished “arbitrary” morals from “non-arbitrary” ethics. But if “moral” rules have equivalent “ethical” rules, that would certainly be an indication that “morals” aren’t (entirely) arbitrary.
AYM: It probably all comes down to the definition of “rights”. I’ve taken the “realpolitik” position that they basically exist because some people claim them, and everyone else lets them get away with it. (Search for the first occurrence of “claim them” on this page for more details.)
Certainly the concept of “rights” is entirely an invention. It is a very useful invention. If you want to assume there is “more to” the concept than that, let’s see some evidence!
TG: You’re right that it does come down to the definition of “rights,” which is why I allowed that I could be making a distinction without a difference for you. If it was, then we’d just have to go through the process of coming to a mutually agreed definition before continuing that conversation.
On the other hand, I can assume whatever I please without having to provide evidence for it, so long as I’m not trying to press that assumption on anyone else. Whether or not there is “more to” the concept of rights other than its utility, we are agreed that the concept is useful. I’m quite comfortable working within that framework, so why get into needless arguments if you don’t need to?
To my knowledge, the word “arbitrary” indicates a “break” with Objective Reality. I’ve specifically indicated that it might be possible to link ethics with Objective Reality, and therefore can be non-arbitrary. Meanwhile, morals are arbitrary, and if you try to link them to ethics to “prove” non-arbitrariness, without providing an Objective foundation, then all you are really doing is, in essence, deriving morals from ethics. In which case you might as throw out morals and just stick with ethics.
Regarding “rights”, well, then if we agree on their utility, then why can’t someone claim to have a right to kill flies, mosquitoes, etc.?
AYM: To my knowledge, the word “arbitrary” indicates a “break” with Objective Reality. I’ve specifically indicated that it might be possible to link ethics with Objective Reality, and therefore can be non-arbitrary. Meanwhile, morals are arbitrary, and if you try to link them to ethics to “prove” non-arbitrariness, without providing an Objective foundation, then all you are really doing is, in essence, deriving morals from ethics. In which case you might as throw out morals and just stick with ethics.
TG: To my knowledge, “arbitrary” usually means being based on random choice or purely personal whim. That may also indicate a break with objective reality, but the key point is that there is no rational reason to it.
It might be useful if I had a definition of “morals” and “ethics” that amounts to something more than “morals are arbitrary, ethics are not” to work with. As I said previously, I see no practical difference between them.
AYM: Regarding “rights”, well, then if we agree on their utility, then why can’t someone claim to have a right to kill flies, mosquitoes, etc.?
TG: In terms of your “realpolitik,” it’s because I won’t let them get away with it.
It might be useful if I had a definition of “morals” and “ethics” that amounts to something more than “morals are arbitrary, ethics are not” to work with. As I said previously, I see no practical difference between them.
————
What? You make all these claims about how morals are non-arbitrary, but can’t even provide a definition? What more evidence than that do we need, to show they actually are arbitrary???
============
AYM: Regarding “rights”, well, then if we agree on their utility, then why can’t someone claim to have a right to kill flies, mosquitoes, etc.?
TG: In terms of your “realpolitik,” it’s because I won’t let them get away with it.
————–
And your basis for that is … what? Arbitrariness equivalent to that of the person wanting to claim the right to kill flies, etc?
:)
AYM: What? You make all these claims about how morals are non-arbitrary, but can’t even provide a definition? What more evidence than that do we need, to show they actually are arbitrary???
TG: I’m sorry. I intended to inquire about what you thought the difference between “morals” and “ethics” are. If you have a definition beyond “morals are arbitrary, ethics are not,” then I would at least know what I’m working with. If there is nothing more to your definition than that, then there is really nothing more that can be done to agree to disagree.
AYM previous: Regarding “rights”, well, then if we agree on their utility, then why can’t someone claim to have a right to kill flies, mosquitoes, etc.?
TG previous: In terms of your “realpolitik,” it’s because I won’t let them get away with it.
————–
AYM: And your basis for that is … what? Arbitrariness equivalent to that of the person wanting to claim the right to kill flies, etc?
:)
TG: In terms of “realpolitik,” that would be all that is needed, right?
If I really had to justify it, I’d point out that the indifference to animal life inherent in the claim of a right to kill them is a good indicator of indifference to human life. So denying the right to kill flies, etc., would be a form of self-protection.
I intended to inquire about what you thought the difference between “morals” and “ethics” are. If you have a definition beyond “morals are arbitrary, ethics are not,” then I would at least know what I’m working with. If there is nothing more to your definition than that, then there is really nothing more that can be done to agree to disagree.
————-
I didn’t specify that ethics are not arbitrary; I specified that ethics had a chance of being non-arbitrary. But this is only because the notion is much more recent than “morals”.
We might consider an “original” set of morals to be the Ten Commandments. The way they were introduced in the Bible had nothing to do with an Objective foundation. They are simply made-up (even if it was God that made them up). And therefore they are arbitrary.
So far as I know, all sets of morals were equally made-up/arbitrary.
================
TG previous: In terms of your “realpolitik,” it’s because I won’t let them get away with it.
————–
AYM: And your basis for that is … what? Arbitrariness equivalent to that of the person wanting to claim the right to kill flies, etc?
:)
TG: In terms of “realpolitik,” that would be all that is needed, right?
————
Perhaps. But are you sure that there cannot be an Objective rationale for wanting to claim the right to kill flies, etc.? (more on this below)
====================
If I really had to justify it, I’d point out that the indifference to animal life inherent in the claim of a right to kill them is a good indicator of indifference to human life. So denying the right to kill flies, etc., would be a form of self-protection.
————-
If you took that and extended it, you would have to refrain even from killing food-animals.
Meanwhile, regarding the particular animals I originally listed, a fly or a mosquito or a cockroach or a rat or even a fox-that-raids-a-henhouse, all but the last are known significant disease-carriers. An Objective association between human health and numbers of disease-carriers could be used as a basis to claim a right to kill those creatures, if not the fox.
There is also something else, going back to the proposed Objective basis for ethics, that persons need to get along with each other. Non-persons can be generally excluded so long as they are they are fundamentally unable to participate in getting-along with persons.
I’ve tried to phrase that carefully, because there is a wide intermediate group of non-persons, such as horses, dogs, cats, cows, … which usually can be trained to get-along with persons.
Do note, however, that what you wrote about “a good indicator of indifference to human life” doesn’t really apply when persons are raised/educated about the importance of getting-along with persons.
So now we can consider the fox, which by raiding the henhouse is not getting-along with persons. It is completely in direct competition with the resources of persons, even if it can be potentially trained to get along with persons. Remember, like all life-forms, it’s biological goal is to obtain enough resources to successfully reproduce –which in the case of foxes means even more competition with persons for resources.
Does it now make sense to be able to claim a right to kill the fox? If nothing else, it certainly explains a great many killings of foxes that had raided henhouses!
TG previous: The moral basis for AYM’s approach is the Golden Rule. The Social Contract is really the Golden Rule writ large. If I claim a right for myself, then the Golden Rule demands I grant the same to you.
NTwR: I have never understood the Golden Rule in that way. I have never understood it to mean that if one does unto others as one would have them do to oneself, they will necessarily reciprocate. I have always understood it to mean that doing unto others as one would have them do to oneself is its own reward.
TG: It is its own reward, but that is beside the point. The Social Contract formalizes the approach, as it were.
I mostly agree with the assessment, that The Social Contract basically formalizes The Golden Rule, such that anyone agreeing to the Contract is basically required to reciprocate appropriately.
However there are a couple minor points to make. The Golden Rule is very generic, and has a weakness. If a sado-masochist interacts with someone who isn’t, almost certainly one of the two will be disappointed in the way the interaction proceeds. Meanwhile, The Social Contract can be more specific, focusing on a list of things like “right to life, liberty, property”… and thereby avoid the weakness of being too-generic.
Your point was “The moral basis for AYM’s approach is the Golden Rule.” What makes the Golden Rule moral, as I understand it, is the selflessness it advocates. (“Selflessness” doesn’t mean no reward at all, but the reward is not in worldly currency.) If the Golden Rule were the moral basis for the social contract, the social contract would reflect the selflessness, but it doesn’t.
The only way to formalize the Golden Rule that I can think of would be to sign a statement committing oneself to be selfless.
What makes the Golden Rule moral is that it requires and/or proscribes actions we can/can’t take toward others. True, to a certain extent, it does advocate selflessness. ALL moral codes do this. That does not mean morality is only about selflessness. To the extent that the Golden Rule is formalized in the Social Contract, it need not reflect only selflessness either.
It appears I left a thing or two out of my previous post. One is that, by specifying a Social Contract in terms of a list, it has the potential weakness of being too-incomplete, the opposite problem of being too-generic. Obviously care must be taken when constructing such a Contract.
Second is that while such a Contract might formalize things related to the Golden Rule, that does not automatically mean that the Contract is based on the Golden Rule. As I’ve tried to indicate elsewhere, an appropriate Objective Basis for ethics can, as a logical consequence, yield many things which are quite equivalent to moral strictures. When a particular stricture is violated, what is the most reasonable penalty? The “eye for an eye” thing has a long history, and of course the purpose of such punishment is more related to “deterrent” than to “punishment for its own sake”. What the Golden Rule is, is simply a way to encourage folks to pay attention to the potential punishment, before deciding to carry out an action that might violate a stricture (and whether that stricture is derived from morals or ethics doesn’t matter).
AYM: I didn’t specify that ethics are not arbitrary; I specified that ethics had a chance of being non-arbitrary. But this is only because the notion is much more recent than “morals”.
We might consider an “original” set of morals to be the Ten Commandments. The way they were introduced in the Bible had nothing to do with an Objective foundation. They are simply made-up (even if it was God that made them up). And therefore they are arbitrary.
So far as I know, all sets of morals were equally made-up/arbitrary.
TG: Forgive me, but at first glance it looks like you are committing some kind of genetic fallacy here. “Morals” are ancient and therefore arbitrary, while “ethics” are modern and therefore may or may not be arbitrary. This ignores the possibility that “morals” could be based on what you call objective reality (at least, as it was then known), though the reasons have been lost in time. But so we can be absolutely clear, are you saying the difference between “morals” and “ethics” is precisely that one is ancient and the other is modern?
In any case, let us consider the Ten Commandments. For this purpose, I’m going to have the enumeration of Exodus 20 as my primary reference, with quotations coming from the New Revised Standard Version. We can go two ways with this: 1) God made them up or 2) they were written by a priest/prophet from a God’s eye point of view. In neither case are we talking about something that is necessarily arbitrary.
If God is anything, then he is a rational creature. Thus, he probably isn’t going to say to himself, “What can I do now just to show I’m in charge? I know, I’ll prohibit murder!” Moreover, if God is the creator of human beings, then he would have an intimate knowledge of what humans are capable of, much in the same way an inventor knows the capabilities of her invention and the uses it can be put to. Thus, God knows that humans have an “evil inclination” (yetzer hara) that needs to be controlled. This will be the source of the Mishpatim, the self-evident commandments that in modern legal codes we would call malum in se prohibitions. That covers the second half of the Ten Commandments (from “Honor your father and your mother” to “You shall not covet”) Without them, there would be no such thing as human society.
[Note: I realize that I may be committing an anachronism by applying concepts peculiar to rabbinic Judaism onto Israelite religion. I am willing to take that risk because if there is one thing that is universally recognized, it is that human beings are quite capable of great evil. That is what makes moral/ethical/legal codes necessary. God may not be thinking specifically in rabbinic terms, but something like it is certainly plausible.]
Then you have the prohibitions against having “other gods before me” [Note: There is some debate over whether this commandment required strict monotheism, but that debate is largely irrelevant to this discussion.], prohibiting idolatry and making “wrongful use of the name.” These commandments may well have a note of arbitrariness to them, but they are not totally lacking in reason, either. They are part of the social obligations the Israelites demanded by Yahweh in return for his promise of protection against enemies, disease, bad weather, etc. These commandments are part of a mutually-agreed-upon contract between Yahweh and the Israelites. This may be considered as somewhat akin to a marriage contract (and note the earliest biblical writer, Hosea, explicitly made that connection and was more or less followed by other prophets). The demands made on the parties may well be arbitrary, but so long as the benefits are at least equal to the obligations, we still consider it a good deal.
That just leaves “Remember the sabbath day.” In rabbinic Judaism, this is considered an Edot commandment, a commandment that is to be kept as a testimony to some other event. In Exodus 20, the Sabbath commemorates the creation week; in Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is meant to keep the Israelites former status as slaves in mind. The Sabbath itself is arbitrary, but the principle behind it is not. I think we all realize the need for rest and leisure, so much so that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects rest and leisure time as a right (Article 24). Again, as the creator, God would also know this is something human beings need, and thus provided for it.
That’s the Ten Commandments. They don’t contain a pure instance of a Chukim commandment (equivalent to what we would call malum prohibitum laws) that has no known rationale. Torah has a number of them. However, to say we don’t know why God commanded them is not the same thing as saying they are arbitrary. I suspect that most Chukim originally did have a purpose, but I don’t know and can’t imagine how that rationale would work in God’s mind.
When we look at the Ten Commandments from the perspective of the priest/prophet (and assuming he was “making them up” from scratch), we have to take into account reality as he knew it. And in his reality, he has hundreds, if not thousands of years of history to look back on. He already knows the disasters that can happen if the commandments are not observed for both human beings in general and the Israelites in particular. As you said yourself, you only need to look at the past to conclude that certain situations are unacceptable. All that remains is to figure out what it would take to make the situation better in the present, if not the future.
TG previous: In terms of “realpolitik,” that would be all that is needed, right?
————
AYM: Perhaps. But are you sure that there cannot be an Objective rationale for wanting to claim the right to kill flies, etc.? (more on this below)
TG: Sure, as in 100% certain there is no objective rationale for claiming that right? No, of course not. Sure, as in distinguishing between a “right to kill” flies, etc., versus “it may be justifiable” to do so? Maybe not 100% certain, but close enough that I won’t let them get away with making a claim to such a right.
AYM: If you took that and extended it, you would have to refrain even from killing food-animals.
Meanwhile, regarding the particular animals I originally listed, a fly or a mosquito or a cockroach or a rat or even a fox-that-raids-a-henhouse, all but the last are known significant disease-carriers. An Objective association between human health and numbers of disease-carriers could be used as a basis to claim a right to kill those creatures, if not the fox.
There is also something else, going back to the proposed Objective basis for ethics, that persons need to get along with each other. Non-persons can be generally excluded so long as they are they are fundamentally unable to participate in getting-along with persons.
I’ve tried to phrase that carefully, because there is a wide intermediate group of non-persons, such as horses, dogs, cats, cows, … which usually can be trained to get-along with persons.
Do note, however, that what you wrote about “a good indicator of indifference to human life” doesn’t really apply when persons are raised/educated about the importance of getting-along with persons.
So now we can consider the fox, which by raiding the henhouse is not getting-along with persons. It is completely in direct competition with the resources of persons, even if it can be potentially trained to get along with persons. Remember, like all life-forms, it’s biological goal is to obtain enough resources to successfully reproduce –which in the case of foxes means even more competition with persons for resources.
Does it now make sense to be able to claim a right to kill the fox? If nothing else, it certainly explains a great many killings of foxes that had raided henhouses!
TG: Again, I realize that “right to kill” and “justified in killing” may well be a distinction without a difference. But I will point out that killing food-animals, disease vectors, and foxes raiding henhouses are all instances of justified killing. You’ll note I’ve already discussed the difference between killing the fox for raiding the henhouse and hunting that same fox for “sport.” The former falls under the category of “justified,” while the latter can only fall under the category of claiming a “right to kill.” You’re beating on a strawman here.
Keeping in mind your phrasing, a fly, mosquito, cockroach or a rat out in the middle of nowhere poses no direct competition for resources. Though they are disease vectors, they would pose no threat to humans. “Right to kill” would mean going out of one’s way to kill them is ethically permissible even though there is no threat. “Justified in killing” would not permit that.
Finally, I would point out that sociopaths are indifferent to human life (other than their own, of course) regardless of how they are raised/educated (in fact, animal cruelty is a key diagnostic criterion of anti-social personality disorder). Sure, some sociopaths become Ted Bundys and others become Paul Ryans. Either way, we cannot assume education will cure indifference to human life, as opposed to keeping that indifference in check. Leaving aside pure pyschopaths, we can also point to the role of animal cruelty in domestic abuse (my dog is such a survivor), the ecological devastation caused by assuming a right to kill animals, and so forth.
So, yes, I will stand by my claim that the right to kill animals (as opposed to being justified in killing them in some cases) should be denied.
AYM: I mostly agree with the assessment, that The Social Contract basically formalizes The Golden Rule, such that anyone agreeing to the Contract is basically required to reciprocate appropriately.
However there are a couple minor points to make. The Golden Rule is very generic, and has a weakness. If a sado-masochist interacts with someone who isn’t, almost certainly one of the two will be disappointed in the way the interaction proceeds. Meanwhile, The Social Contract can be more specific, focusing on a list of things like “right to life, liberty, property”… and thereby avoid the weakness of being too-generic.
TG: There is also the objection that applying the Golden Rule to the modern notion of human rights at best applies contemporary thinking to an ancient concept (committing the fallacy of presentism). But something similar could be said of trying to apply the Constitution (ratified in 1789) to contemporary issues its writers never even contemplated. I don’t regard that as a particularly strong objection because that is something that we must do.
You’re sado-masochist example would fall under how the Golden Rule is to be understood. If we are talking about what you specifically want others to do to you, then there will certainly be a clash between the sadist and the non-masochist. If we are talking about guiding your behavior in the same general ways you would want others to (i.e., accounting for differences in values and tastes), then no such conflict exists. Under this understanding, the sadist would be obligated to seek out a masochist under the Golden Rule.
AYM: It appears I left a thing or two out of my previous post. One is that, by specifying a Social Contract in terms of a list, it has the potential weakness of being too-incomplete, the opposite problem of being too-generic. Obviously care must be taken when constructing such a Contract.
TG: So much for what I’d already written about rights and the Social Contract before I got to this post! You are right about the different weaknesses of the Social Contract and the Golden Rule.
AYM: Second is that while such a Contract might formalize things related to the Golden Rule, that does not automatically mean that the Contract is based on the Golden Rule. As I’ve tried to indicate elsewhere, an appropriate Objective Basis for ethics can, as a logical consequence, yield many things which are quite equivalent to moral strictures. When a particular stricture is violated, what is the most reasonable penalty? The “eye for an eye” thing has a long history, and of course the purpose of such punishment is more related to “deterrent” than to “punishment for its own sake”. What the Golden Rule is, is simply a way to encourage folks to pay attention to the potential punishment, before deciding to carry out an action that might violate a stricture (and whether that stricture is derived from morals or ethics doesn’t matter).
TG: No, it would not automatically mean the Social Contract is based on the Golden Rule. The formalization of things related to the Golden Rule is what I mean when I say the Social Contract is really the Golden Rule writ large. However, note that in one formulation of the Golden Rule, R. Hillel precisely connected the Golden Rule with what we would now call the Social Contract when he told the heathen inquirer “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a). Teasing out the precise connections between the Golden Rule and the Social Contract is a matter for debate. That they are somehow connected is less debatable.
I would disagree, however, that lex talionis (even assuming the “eye for an eye” thing was carried out literally, which it probably was not) has deterrence as its primary purpose. Rather, its purpose was seeking out, as you say, the most reasonable penalty for violating a particular stricture. That is a process that is still ongoing.
I would have to go through the different formulations and their contexts to determine whether the Golden Rule is simply a matter of encouraging people to pay attention to potential punishments. This might arguably be the case with R. Hillel, though that is unclear (i.e., it has to be argued, not assumed). In Jesus’ formulation, the rule appears to be about unqualified altruism rather than strict reciprocity.
But so we can be absolutely clear, are you saying the difference between “morals” and “ethics” is precisely that one is ancient and the other is modern?
————–
No, I’m saying morals are arbitrary because there is no presentation of any rationale/basis for them, while ethics always starts with a rationale/basis, and even recognizes the importance of Objectivity in choosing a rationale/basis. I won’t deny the possibility that morals might have had a rationale/basis, but the failure to present it implies that it could not have been as important as the list of morals!
That is, we could assume a Subjective rationale/basis, and it is very easy to speculate about such. For example, suppose a pig farmer and a chicken farmer were enemies, but the chicken farmer had an “in” with the local High Preacher. The next thing you know, there is a proclamation that eating pork is immoral! (And yes, I’m certainly aware of other possible and more-Objective rationales for that particular “moral”. But since we are never told about the actual basis used….)
============
If God is anything, then he is a rational creature. …
———-
I might dispute the use of the word “he” above, but, hey, it is traditional, even if it makes no sense for a non-physical entity to have a gender.
One of the things that God knows about humans is that humans can be rational, too. Logically, it should be very sensible to provide humans with a reason for accepting a Commandment of any sort, other than “Do it or else!”
===============
These commandments are part of a mutually-agreed-upon contract between Yahweh and the Israelites.
———–
I’m not sure I ever heard them described like that before. I do acknowledge, however, that in the realm of “contracts”, the concepts of Objective and Subjective don’t really matter. All that matters is “agreement to be bound by the contract”. One thing that can be noted, however, is that if each person has Free Will, then no-one can bind his or her descendants, not yet able to exhibit Free Will, to a Contract. Each person must individually be given the opportunity to accept or decline it. Which again means providing the basis/rationale (like explaining the pluses and minuses of a Contract)!
===============
Sure, as in distinguishing between a “right to kill” flies, etc., versus “it may be justifiable” to do so? Maybe not 100% certain, but close enough that I won’t let them get away with making a claim to such a right.
—————
Are you indicating that if a suitable Objective rationale was presented, you could accept the claim of a right to kill flies, while a Subjective rationale would be an inadequate excuse? Does this not connect to other stuff regarding moral dictums and the absence of a presented rationale?
=====================
I realize that “right to kill” and “justified in killing” may well be a distinction without a difference. But I will point out that killing food-animals, disease vectors, and foxes raiding henhouses are all instances of justified killing. You’ll note I’ve already discussed the difference between killing the fox for raiding the henhouse and hunting that same fox for “sport.” The former falls under the category of “justified,” while the latter can only fall under the category of claiming a “right to kill.” You’re beating on a strawman here.
————–
Not necessarily. In the Bigger Picture, “killing” is not limited to animals. We kill plants for food, too. We can’t survive without our bodies’ immune systems constantly killing invading bacteria. To claim a “right to life” is to simultaneously claim a “right to kill” in order to continue to survive. In Nature a tiger is a “pure carnivore” –it gets all its nutrition from killing other animals. Does that not mean Nature has in-essence given it a right to kill?
In a different Natural scenario, it can be noted that when two animals of the same species fight to control some territory, usually the victor lets the loser slink away to seek some other territory. But when two animals of different species fight to control some territory, that fight is almost always to-the-death. (In this preference of a species for itself over others, which obviously promotes species-survival, we can see a biological origin for “prejudice”.) Is Nature again granting either species the right to kill the other?
I suppose the preceding could support your initial sentence quoted above, that “right to kill” and “justified in killing” may be a distinction without an actual difference.
==================
Keeping in mind your phrasing, a fly, mosquito, cockroach or a rat out in the middle of nowhere poses no direct competition for resources. Though they are disease vectors, they would pose no threat to humans. “Right to kill” would mean going out of one’s way to kill them is ethically permissible even though there is no threat. “Justified in killing” would not permit that.
——————
There is such a thing as “preparing the way”. For example, when the French tried to build the Panama Canal, they were basically stopped by mosquitoes and malaria. When the link was discovered and the USA took over the project, one of the first things done was to go into the jungles and do everything possible to eliminate as many mosquitoes as possible.
Well, when we consider the overall Human Population Explosion, and the fact that humans are encroaching every piece of terrain on the planet, it logically follows that there eventually isn’t going to be any pristine place where disease-carriers can be left alone. So perhaps instead of a discussing whether or not humans have a “right to kill other creatures” we should be asking whether or not humans have a “right to breed explosively”…because apparently lots of humans think they do have such a “right”, without paying any attention whatsoever to the logical consequences!
====================
Finally, I would point out that sociopaths are indifferent to human life (other than their own, of course) regardless of how they are raised/educated (in fact, animal cruelty is a key diagnostic criterion of anti-social personality disorder). Sure, some sociopaths become Ted Bundys and others become Paul Ryans. Either way, we cannot assume education will cure indifference to human life, as opposed to keeping that indifference in check.
————–
I would argue that the type of education matters, although I admit it is possible that in at least some cases a human bad-guy might have a fundamental biological problem at the root of the apparent psychological problem. Per Murphy’s Law, and the known fact that humans are extremely complex organisms. Nevertheless, education typically includes tests and scores. Where are the widespread tests, in which the scores might reveal such problems early?
=====================
Leaving aside pure pyschopaths, we can also point to the role of animal cruelty in domestic abuse (my dog is such a survivor), the ecological devastation caused by assuming a right to kill animals, and so forth.
——————
The first of those things is another that should be detectable with appropriate tests. The other can be either the result of greed, or the result of overpopulation –or even both (see arguments about the “Pebble Mine” project). I suspect we will never be able to control greed if we fail to control population. After all, Logically, the more people in the world, the more total greed there also is….
=====================
You’re sado-masochist example would fall under how the Golden Rule is to be understood. If we are talking about what you specifically want others to do to you, then there will certainly be a clash between the sadist and the non-masochist. If we are talking about guiding your behavior in the same general ways you would want others to (i.e., accounting for differences in values and tastes), then no such conflict exists. Under this understanding, the sadist would be obligated to seek out a masochist under the Golden Rule.
———–
What you are suggesting is basically that the Golden Rule needs to be modified for greater clarity (and thereby become less generic). I might mention I’ve encountered a particular suggested variant of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” –but this can have its own interpretation problems, such as if what the other guy wants you to do is give him a million dollars. So obviously that version needs some refinement, also! Perhaps, “Do unto another at least that which the other considers to be a minimally positive thing.”
=================
I would disagree, however, that lex talionis (even assuming the “eye for an eye” thing was carried out literally, which it probably was not) has deterrence as its primary purpose. Rather, its purpose was seeking out, as you say, the most reasonable penalty for violating a particular stricture. That is a process that is still ongoing.
——————
I probably should have assigned equal weight to both things, the reasonable penalty and the deterrence. One thing we do know, however, is that the more unreasonable the penalty, the greater the deterrence. A rather unofficial example of that happened some years ago, when “carjackings” began being common news items. One driver pulled out a gun and killed the guy attempting to do a car-jack. In that city the incidence of carjackings suddenly dropped off the chart….
=====================
I would have to go through the different formulations and their contexts to determine whether the Golden Rule is simply a matter of encouraging people to pay attention to potential punishments. This might arguably be the case with R. Hillel, though that is unclear (i.e., it has to be argued, not assumed). In Jesus’ formulation, the rule appears to be about unqualified altruism rather than strict reciprocity.
—————-
This is another case where two interpretations might deserve equal weight.
AYM: No, I’m saying morals are arbitrary because there is no presentation of any rationale/basis for them, while ethics always starts with a rationale/basis, and even recognizes the importance of Objectivity in choosing a rationale/basis. I won’t deny the possibility that morals might have had a rationale/basis, but the failure to present it implies that it could not have been as important as the list of morals!
That is, we could assume a Subjective rationale/basis, and it is very easy to speculate about such. For example, suppose a pig farmer and a chicken farmer were enemies, but the chicken farmer had an “in” with the local High Preacher. The next thing you know, there is a proclamation that eating pork is immoral! (And yes, I’m certainly aware of other possible and more-Objective rationales for that particular “moral”. But since we are never told about the actual basis used….)
TG: Now I see what you are saying. You’re probably right that the failure to present the rationale for the morals means it wasn’t as important as the morals themselves. Likely they would have been self-evident to the cultures in which they emerged and needed no commentary.
TG previous: These commandments are part of a mutually-agreed-upon contract between Yahweh and the Israelites.
———–
AYM: I’m not sure I ever heard them described like that before. I do acknowledge, however, that in the realm of “contracts”, the concepts of Objective and Subjective don’t really matter. All that matters is “agreement to be bound by the contract”. One thing that can be noted, however, is that if each person has Free Will, then no-one can bind his or her descendants, not yet able to exhibit Free Will, to a Contract. Each person must individually be given the opportunity to accept or decline it. Which again means providing the basis/rationale (like explaining the pluses and minuses of a Contract)!
TG: Any decent commentary on the Torah will talk about the covenant’s relation to the covenant/treaties of the surrounding cultures. Technically all the commandments fall under that covenant between Yahweh and the Israelites.
I don’t know about not being able to bind one’s descendants without giving each individual the opportunity to accept or decline it. I was never given an opportunity to accept or decline the laws of the United States or the State of Arizona, and yet I am surely bound by them, as would any children I have. As I remember [Note: I don’t have a copy of the Crito before me, so my memory may have been confused with class discussion on the topic], Socrates and Crito (or Plato putting it in their mouths) discussed that issue. I’ve formed no firm conclusions on the matter, mind you, but it does seem to me that binding our descendants to a pre-existing contract is something we already do in practice.
AYM: Are you indicating that if a suitable Objective rationale was presented, you could accept the claim of a right to kill flies, while a Subjective rationale would be an inadequate excuse? Does this not connect to other stuff regarding moral dictums and the absence of a presented rationale?
TG: If a suitable objective rationale was presented, I could accept the claim of a right to kill flies. I don’t know if a subjective rationale would be inadequate–in terms of realpolitik enough subjective denials of such a claim (such as we see in laws against animal cruelty) would still be enough to do the job no matter the differences in the individual subjective claims. Note how we are agreed that abortion should be legal though we take different routes to that conclusion.
AYM: I suppose the preceding could support your initial sentence quoted above, that “right to kill” and “justified in killing” may be a distinction without an actual difference.
TG: True. I would say that all your examples would be instances of “justified in killing.” For someone who made no such distinction, they might well say that it amounts to a “right to kill.” The end result is still the same.
AYM: Well, when we consider the overall Human Population Explosion, and the fact that humans are encroaching every piece of terrain on the planet, it logically follows that there eventually isn’t going to be any pristine place where disease-carriers can be left alone. So perhaps instead of a discussing whether or not humans have a “right to kill other creatures” we should be asking whether or not humans have a “right to breed explosively”…because apparently lots of humans think they do have such a “right”, without paying any attention whatsoever to the logical consequences!
TG: That would be a discussion worth having.
AYM: I would argue that the type of education matters, although I admit it is possible that in at least some cases a human bad-guy might have a fundamental biological problem at the root of the apparent psychological problem. Per Murphy’s Law, and the known fact that humans are extremely complex organisms. Nevertheless, education typically includes tests and scores. Where are the widespread tests, in which the scores might reveal such problems early?
TG: I don’t know if there is such a test. I understand that almost all people below eighteen test out as psychopaths because they lack the brain developments necessary for impulse control. Zoosadism, however, is a certain indicator of psychopathology.
TG previous: Leaving aside pure pyschopaths, we can also point to the role of animal cruelty in domestic abuse (my dog is such a survivor), the ecological devastation caused by assuming a right to kill animals, and so forth.
——————
AYM: The first of those things is another that should be detectable with appropriate tests. The other can be either the result of greed, or the result of overpopulation –or even both (see arguments about the “Pebble Mine” project). I suspect we will never be able to control greed if we fail to control population. After all, Logically, the more people in the world, the more total greed there also is….
TG: Perhaps domestic abusers could be detected early with appropriate tests, but given the link between socio-economic factors and domestic violence, I wouldn’t count on it. I agree we won’t be able to curb ecological devastation without controlling greed, but I would argue that we can’t control either without denying the claim to a right to kill animals.
My background never included study of the Torah AS the Torah, and so I never encountered the “contract” interpretation before.
======================
I don’t know about not being able to bind one’s descendants without giving each individual the opportunity to accept or decline it. I was never given an opportunity to accept or decline the laws of the United States or the State of Arizona, and yet I am surely bound by them, as would any children I have. As I remember [Note: I don’t have a copy of the Crito before me, so my memory may have been confused with class discussion on the topic], Socrates and Crito (or Plato putting it in their mouths) discussed that issue. I’ve formed no firm conclusions on the matter, mind you, but it does seem to me that binding our descendants to a pre-existing contract is something we already do in practice.
————–
Every culture ASSUMES its youngsters will automatically accept the rules of that culture –and every culture finds itself dealing with rebellious youths. To a large extent this is explainable by Biology (a perfectly natural urge to be independent), but perhaps some of it can be explained by the failure of the culture to adequately explain why the Rules are the way they are.
==============
TG: If a suitable objective rationale was presented, I could accept the claim of a right to kill flies. I don’t know if a subjective rationale would be inadequate–in terms of realpolitik enough subjective denials of such a claim (such as we see in laws against animal cruelty) would still be enough to do the job no matter the differences in the individual subjective claims.
————–
Are you talking about denials of the claim of a right to kill flies, or denials that there cannot be a claim of a right to kill flies? I’m sure there are plenty of both out there, which kind of leaves the argument with no particular result. :)
===============
Note how we are agreed that abortion should be legal though we take different routes to that conclusion.
————–
Yes. I actually have a bunch of independent-from-each-other reasons why abortion should be legal. Off the top of my thoughts:
1. Helping to stave-off a Malthusian Catastrophe is a reason to allow abortion.
2. Exercising abortion is a way to demonstrate superiority over Natural Mindless Biology, instead of subservience to it (other examples of such include such things as getting a heart transplant).
3. The choice to not tolerate the actions of unborn humans is a reason to allow abortion.
4. Understanding that there is almost certainly a genetic factor associated with rape means realizing that if rapists never successfully passed their genes on (something abortion can accomplish), eventually those genes would be weeded out of the population. (it would still be a very long-term thing, though)
5. Should there happen to be so many abortions that the total population actually started decreasing, the average wealth of individuals would eventually go up, a logical consequence of the Law of Supply and Demand. Less competition for jobs means higher wages being offered to attract workers –and less demand for goods tends to cause prices to go down. The difference is increased wealth for anyone hired to work and who also pays for goods. Which is better, Quality Of Life, or Quantity Of Life?
I probably have more that I’m not thinking about just now.
===================
AYM: Well, when we consider the overall Human Population Explosion, and the fact that humans are encroaching every piece of terrain on the planet, it logically follows that there eventually isn’t going to be any pristine place where disease-carriers can be left alone. So perhaps instead of a discussing whether or not humans have a “right to kill other creatures” we should be asking whether or not humans have a “right to breed explosively”…because apparently lots of humans think they do have such a “right”, without paying any attention whatsoever to the logical consequences!
TG: That would be a discussion worth having.
————
Well, perhaps elsewhere. And of course I follow the Logic, that if there is no inherent “right to life” for anything, then there is also no inherent right to breed at all, much less any right to breed explosively.
=================
AYM: Nevertheless, education typically includes tests and scores. Where are the widespread tests, in which the scores might reveal such problems early?
TG: I don’t know if there is such a test. I understand that almost all people below eighteen test out as psychopaths because they lack the brain developments necessary for impulse control. Zoosadism, however, is a certain indicator of psychopathology.
—————-
You are mistaken about the impulse-control thing for “almost all” below eighteen. Here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all Apparently about 30% can resist, by as young as age 4 or 5.
Regarding zoosadism, I agree about it being an indicator, and about something that should be prevented from changing from an “impulse” to a “habit”.
====================
TG: Perhaps domestic abusers could be detected early with appropriate tests, but given the link between socio-economic factors and domestic violence, I wouldn’t count on it.
————
Ah, another independent reason to allow abortion! The crime-rate-reduction thing….
================
I agree we won’t be able to curb ecological devastation without controlling greed, but I would argue that we can’t control either without denying the claim to a right to kill animals.
———–
I disagree because the root of ecological devastation is the human population explosion. As long as population pressure pushes humans to expand their environs, everything outside of those environs suffers. “Rights” seldom supersede cold facts. By the way, for some people, breeding is basically a way to express greed. Consider the OctoMom: “My selfish desire to breed is so important that I’m going to do it and you are going to pay for it!” (not that she ever said any such thing, of course, but Actions Speak Louder Than Words)
AYM: My background never included study of the Torah AS the Torah, and so I never encountered the “contract” interpretation before.
TG: If you’re interested, look first to commentaries on Deuteronomy, where the covenant is the major theme. The (Yale) Anchor Bible is probably the best bet. It’s scholarly, but the Hebrew is transliterated so you won’t have to worry about the language.
AYM: Every culture ASSUMES its youngsters will automatically accept the rules of that culture –and every culture finds itself dealing with rebellious youths. To a large extent this is explainable by Biology (a perfectly natural urge to be independent), but perhaps some of it can be explained by the failure of the culture to adequately explain why the Rules are the way they are.
TG: Exactly. Every culture assumes it, and the children are not given a chance to accept or reject the rules. I don’t know if youthful rebelliousness can be explained by the failure of the culture to explain why the rules are what they are or simply because the culture itself has forgotten why they are the way they are.
AYM: Are you talking about denials of the claim of a right to kill flies, or denials that there cannot be a claim of a right to kill flies? I’m sure there are plenty of both out there, which kind of leaves the argument with no particular result. :)
TG: I’m not sure I understand the question, but I don’t think you’re exactly looking for an answer, either.
AYM: Yes. I actually have a bunch of independent-from-each-other reasons why abortion should be legal. Off the top of my thoughts:
TG: Whereas I approach it largely as a human rights issue, with the effects you describe being mostly salutary. Have you read Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom? There is at least one chapter discussing women’s rights, including reproductive rights, as the key for staving off a Malthusian Catastrophe.
TG previous: I don’t know if there is such a test. I understand that almost all people below eighteen test out as psychopaths because they lack the brain developments necessary for impulse control. Zoosadism, however, is a certain indicator of psychopathology.
—————-
AYM: You are mistaken about the impulse-control thing for “almost all” below eighteen. Here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all Apparently about 30% can resist, by as young as age 4 or 5.
TG: My entire understanding about minors testing out as psychopaths may well be off. I’m still not aware of any widespread tests that can predict psychopathy with any degree of confidence early enough to do any good in the education front.
AYM: Regarding zoosadism, I agree about it being an indicator, and about something that should be prevented from changing from an “impulse” to a “habit”.
TG: For me, that would be enough to deny a claim to a “right to kill” animals.
TG: If you’re interested, look first to commentaries on Deuteronomy, where the covenant is the major theme. The (Yale) Anchor Bible is probably the best bet. It’s scholarly, but the Hebrew is transliterated so you won’t have to worry about the language.
—————–
Thanks, but it will have to wait. There are too many other things on my plate just now.
===============
TG: Exactly. Every culture assumes it, and the children are not given a chance to accept or reject the rules. I don’t know if youthful rebelliousness can be explained by the failure of the culture to explain why the rules are what they are or simply because the culture itself has forgotten why they are the way they are.
——————-
If you are willing to consider that last thing you wrote, then, logically, you should expect those youths to conclude that Morals Are Arbitrary! (Which was the starting point that led this discussion to here.)
=====================
TG: Whereas I approach it largely as a human rights issue, with the effects you describe being mostly salutary. Have you read Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom? There is at least one chapter discussing women’s rights, including reproductive rights, as the key for staving off a Malthusian Catastrophe.
———-
I doubt you would think I would hesitate to add another reason for abortion to my list :). No, I haven’t encountered Sen’s work. I can still comment on what you wrote: “human rights” is a prejudiced rationale. Better to say “person rights”. Then it won’t matter what sort of persons one might be discussing; all of them should have conscious control over their reproductive systems.
================
AYM: Regarding zoosadism, I agree about it being an indicator, and about something that should be prevented from changing from an “impulse” to a “habit”.
TG: For me, that would be enough to deny a claim to a “right to kill” animals.
————–
Sadism is about HOW the killing is done. Meanwhile, you could be putting yourself into a trap of your own devising. After all, if unborn humans qualify as animals, not persons, and you deny a right to kill animals, then you end up denying that abortion should be a “right”.