Questions for pro-lifers

[BPSCG]

I have no problem eating Flipper. I've eaten mahi-mahi, as a matter of fact. ETA: not exactly dolphin, but I would eat dolphin if it was on the menu.

Point is, a great many people - even most, I would bet - wouldn't eat dolphins, on moral grounds, whereas the only compunction they have about tuna is whether or not we're fishing out the ocean.

Also, our labrador retriever was smarter than our kids all the way up through their first year of life, and maybe even past that point. A dolphin probably is, too.

I didn't say "more learned" or "better educated," I said more intelligent, i.e., having a greater capacity to learn. An average newborn human is more intelligent than the smartest dolphin that ever lived.

 

[toddjh]

I lean toward option two. I am definitely not an option three kind of person.

This is a whole other topic we have discussed on here and could take up pages and pages.

No argument there. I was just trying to see if your concept of rights could narrow down your concept of human. If you had picked option three like you were supposed to, it might have. But since I don't really understand the natural law thing, I don't know where to go from here.

One of the reasons some people opposed a Bill of Rights was that it implied rights were granted (option three) and those rights not enumerated were not granted, that they had been taken away or could be taken away.

Indeed. They added a whole amendment to make it clear that the Bill of Rights was not an exhaustive list. It's ironic that the Ninth Amendment is the primary justification for the newly-discovered right to privacy used in Roe v. Wade.

Jeremy

 

[Luke T.]

I didn't say "more learned" or "better educated," I said more intelligent, i.e., having a greater capacity to learn. An average newborn human is more intelligent than the smartest dolphin that ever lived.

I don't think so. A newborn has the potential to become more intelligent. I doubt a newborn brain itself has that much capability.

 

[Mark]

Roe v. Wade is not gospel, pun definitely intended.



edited to add source: http://slate.msn.com/id/1005956/

An interesting article to read, by the way, on the Jewish position on abortion.

Interesting. Although, once again, I was regerring to religious leaders in this country. In any case, it doesn't alter my point which is that God didn't take a stand on abortion until after it had been practiced for thousands of years.

In fact, if you read Psalm 137:9, you'll find that God thinks killing babies (after they have been born) is a pretty darn good idea.

 

[Luke T.]

Indeed. They added a whole amendment to make it clear that the Bill of Rights was not an exhaustive list. It's ironic that the Ninth Amendment is the primary justification for the newly-discovered right to privacy used in Roe v. Wade.

As well as "due process".

But if the 9th Amendment is such a pillar of Roe v. Wade, it seems strange to me that you would be an option three person.

 

[Kerberos]

I agree with you that it's usually a mistake to try to get rid of ethics, but it's not always impossible.

You can make a good case for banning murder on sociological grounds: societies that don't do it are not stable and won't survive. Does thinking that survival of our species is a good thing count as a moral code? I'd call it more of an axiom, especially since it's probably hard-wired in our biology.

Jeremy

I'd say it is morality, but it comes as clsoe to natural law as anything. Also there are and were socierties that allowed stuff that we would call murder, though they probably still had some laws agaisnt murder, but just defined it differently.

 

[toddjh]

I'd say it is morality, but it comes as clsoe to natural law as anything. Also there are and were socierties that allowed stuff that we would call murder, though they probably still had some laws agaisnt murder, but just defined it differently.

Yeah. In previous threads about this, I've said that the universal anti-murder rule is "unprovoked killing of a peer." Some societies choose to broaden that rule, but I think that's the core.

Jeremy

 

[BPSCG]

I don't think so. A newborn has the potential to become more intelligent. I doubt a newborn brain itself has that much capability.

Yikes. Consider how much a newborn learns in his first year of life, in a completely alien environment. Yeah, he may not be up on Moby Dick and Finnigan's Wake, but he learns a hell of a lot. If you don't consider that to be strong evidence of intelligence, then we have two different understandings of the term.

But putting that aside, you've said you are ambivalent about whether abortion is necessarily wrong two weeks after conception.

Why?

 

[Kerberos]

Yeah. In previous threads about this, I've said that the universal anti-murder rule is "unprovoked killing of a peer." Some societies choose to broaden that rule, but I think that's the core.

Jeremy

Then you might very well be right, the case I was thinking of was the (possibly unfounded) rumours that samurais could legally kill a peasent for practically any reason, but that's abviously not a peer.

 

[toddjh]

But if the 9th Amendment is such a pillar of Roe v. Wade, it seems strange to me that you would be an option three person.

Well, I think a right to privacy is a good thing overall, whether it derives from the Ninth Amendment or the Fourteenth. So I guess I support it for pragmatic reasons. I don't have a problem with "discovering" new rights, either: to me, that just means that society has recently decided to grant them.

And I don't dismiss the "natural law" origin of rights. A lot of very smart people have taken it seriously over the centuries, so I don't want to downplay it just because I don't understand it.

Jeremy

 

[Kerberos]

I lean toward option two. I am definitely not an option three kind of person.

At which point I have to ask: Evidences? (of 2, not of you leaning towards two) We can prove the existance of social rights and we can prove that these vary across time, place and culture, but natural law is purely metaphysical. It's no more logical than option 1

This is a whole other topic we have discussed on here and could take up pages and pages. But I will say that all creatures are born with rights. A fox is born with the right to be a fox and hunt and kill his prey.

sorry, but you lost me there, if I shot a fox that's hunting my chickens have I violated it's inalianable right to hunt and kill it's prey? I doubt that's what you mean.

 

[Jocko]

I agree with you that it's usually a mistake to try to get rid of ethics, but it's not always impossible.

You can make a good case for banning murder on sociological grounds: societies that don't do it are not stable and won't survive. Does thinking that survival of our species is a good thing count as a moral code? I'd call it more of an axiom, especially since it's probably hard-wired in our biology.

Jeremy

Well, thinking anything is "good" involves a judgement, and any judgement implies reference to a moral code. You can't measure something without using something else as a yardstick.

I didn't mean to imply that the requisite "morality" is necessarily a christian one, or indeed even a religious one; athiests are just as capable of moral decisions on their own terms. I agree that it's a hard-wired thing... religious or social, it's really the same thing underneath.

 

[Jocko]

Point is, a great many people - even most, I would bet - wouldn't eat dolphins, on moral grounds, whereas the only compunction they have about tuna is whether or not we're fishing out the ocean.

I object in the strongest possible terms to your deliberate disenfranchisement of those here who would gladly beat a dolphin to death just for the sheer joy of it, rather than those who would just eat one that they didn't even dispatch themselves.

 

[El Greco]

Jeffrey Dhamer was capable of discussing murder and cannibalism with calm detachment. So what? Abandonment of ethics is considered a psychological problem in some cases, and this would likely be one of them.

It's easy to dispassionately discuss murder when you're on the side of it; witness A Modest Proposal for an example, which features similarly sanitized terms to help an otherwise grotesque position go down smoother.

Then try making one solid argument against murder in general without appealing to some sort of moral code. Good luck.

Actually I believe that passions and morals are to blame for much more atrocities than logic and reason. Think about "morals" in the middle ages... I bet they could had used some dispassionate view of the things back then. toddjh gave a good example of how one could convict murder on a purely sociological base, but I also disagree with him in that "it's usually a mistake to try to get rid of ethics". One can see pretty well how we have reached today's ethics and can also try to predict the ethics of future societies in hypothetical situations: What would be the society's position on abortion or even murder in a gloomy future where extreme overpopulation is threatening the human species ? On the basis that a society's ethics are nothing more than rules which try to preserve its continuity and prosperity, not only we can but maybe we should distance ourselves from emotions and ethics if we are to judge with that society's best interests in mind.

In brief, morals and ethics are nothing more than a society's collective cold logic.

 

[BPSCG]

I object in the strongest possible terms to your deliberate disenfranchisement of those here who would gladly beat a dolphin to death just for the sheer joy of it

Yes, Jocko, we all know how much pleasure you get from "flogging your dolphin."

 

[Furious]

I would have to see evidence that anything even approaching a majority of people opposed to abortion also oppose birth control.

[intentional trolling]

This is probably the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetuated.

So many so called "pro-life" people are ok with spermicide. It sickens me that so many people (indeed, apparently a majority of most religious people) are perfectly fine terminating potential human life with the use of condoms and pulling out early.

I cannot fathom why someone would hold that abortion is wrong, yet killing sperm is fine.

[/intentional trolling]

 

[Jocko]

Actually I believe that passions and morals are to blame for much more atrocities than logic and reason.

Believe what you like; the fact is that the entire argument revolves around what's "good" for the mother or "good" for the fetus. That's a moral evaluation, no matter how you sanitize the terms, and no matter what side you're on. It's a moral dilemma, plain and simple.

Think about "morals" in the middle ages... I bet they could had used some dispassionate view of the things back then. toddjh gave a good example of how one could convict murder on a purely sociological base, but I also disagree with him in that "it's usually a mistake to try to get rid of ethics". One can see pretty well how we have reached today's ethics and can also try to predict the ethics of future societies in hypothetical situations: What would be the society's position on abortion or even murder in a gloomy future where extreme overpopulation is threatening the human species ?

Yes, but you're assuming that perpetuating the species is a good thing. How, exactly, are you arriving at that? Certainly the universe in toto will not be affected one way or the other by our extinction or overpopulation.

On the basis that a society's ethics are nothing more than rules which try to preserve its continuity and prosperity, not only we can but maybe we should distance ourselves from emotions and ethics if we are to judge with that society's best interests in mind.

But that's just it - how do you arrive at the "best interests" (as a theoretical, let alone as a reality) without some kind of ethical yardstick? Some outcomes are more desirable than others; what makes them so?

In brief, morals and ethics are nothing more than a society's collective cold logic.

I agree. But they are real nonetheless, and inescapable in this or any other social issue. Judgements are made, alternatives are weighed. Ethics - whatever your source and whatever you call them - determine how you read those scales.

 

[Jocko]

Actually I believe that passions and morals are to blame for much more atrocities than logic and reason.

Believe what you like; the fact is that the entire argument revolves around what's "good" for the mother or "good" for the fetus. That's a moral evaluation, no matter how you sanitize the terms, and no matter what side you're on. It's a moral dilemma, plain and simple.

Think about "morals" in the middle ages... I bet they could had used some dispassionate view of the things back then. toddjh gave a good example of how one could convict murder on a purely sociological base, but I also disagree with him in that "it's usually a mistake to try to get rid of ethics". One can see pretty well how we have reached today's ethics and can also try to predict the ethics of future societies in hypothetical situations: What would be the society's position on abortion or even murder in a gloomy future where extreme overpopulation is threatening the human species ?

Yes, but you're assuming that perpetuating the species is a good thing. How, exactly, are you arriving at that? Certainly the universe in toto will not be affected one way or the other by our extinction or overpopulation.

On the basis that a society's ethics are nothing more than rules which try to preserve its continuity and prosperity, not only we can but maybe we should distance ourselves from emotions and ethics if we are to judge with that society's best interests in mind.

But that's just it - how do you arrive at the "best interests" (as a theoretical, let alone as a reality) without some kind of ethical yardstick? Some outcomes are more desirable than others; what makes them so?

In brief, morals and ethics are nothing more than a society's collective cold logic.

I agree. But they are real nonetheless, and inescapable in this or any other social issue. Judgements are made, alternatives are weighed. Ethics - whatever your source and whatever you call them - determine how you read those scales.

 

[Luke T.]

Yikes. Consider how much a newborn learns in his first year of life, in a completely alien environment. Yeah, he may not be up on Moby Dick and Finnigan's Wake, but he learns a hell of a lot. If you don't consider that to be strong evidence of intelligence, then we have two different understandings of the term.

The intelligence of a newborn is not the same as the intelligence of a one year old. What you are talking about with a newborn is potential just as pro-choicers talk about the potential of a fetus.

A dog is more intelligent than a newborn.

But putting that aside, you've said you are ambivalent about whether abortion is necessarily wrong two weeks after conception.

Why?

Because my definition of what is human is undecided. If pressed, I would have to say it is human from conception.

 

[Mark]

Because my definition of what is human is undecided. If pressed, I would have to say it is human from conception.

Then once again I must ask, where is your grief for the millions more---way more---of "humans" who die as a result of failure to implant on the uterine wall.

Abortion is a tiny fraction.