A fetus is not alive? Waaah?

[manifold]

So why are you afraid to acknowledge the FACT that abortion is an all or nothing procedure?

 

[Shogun]

poor guy... THIS is why you continue to fail every time you try to snatch the pebble from my hand.

 

[manifold]

You're such a pussy.

Gotta go. You have a good night and make sure to put some salve on that irritated snatch of yours.

 

[Valerie]

Even that isn't true. You didn't answer the question I asked, you answered the question you thought I asked and then ignored my post that clarified what I asked.

I've since answered your clarified question.

Then you should have no problem retracting "cuntrag," "liar," or "fuck you." But of course that's probably mentally impossible for you...to admit that you were wrong.

Sorry Ravi, I must have missed that part.

In any case, I'm glad he retracted his nasty remarks, but if you ask me, this entire thread smacks of disingenuous nutbaggery* to the extreme!

Perhaps the biggest lie of all might actually be in Manifold's misrepresentation of his intentions. I mean, does he really think your posts here constitute "a lie" on your part??? That seems like a real stretch, and most likely the biggest LIE of all is that he didn't understand what you meant in your statement which prompted this thread in the first place!


FTR - Ravi, I am pro-choice as well.

 

[Valerie]

Do you support muslims? Yes.

Do you support their rights to do in their country as they wish? Yes.

Therefore you support under age marriages.

Soggy......that should be easy to understand........even for a mental midget like yourself.

It should, but that doesn't make it so. Just check out his refusal to acknowledge that abortion is an all or nothing procedure. The whole laugh riot is linked in my sig line.

HA!

poor Mani... STILL refusing to actually read what I post so that you can replace what I actually HAVE said with what you think makes a fine straw man, eh?

indeed, the link is a riot.. just not how you imagine... what was it you said when running away from my posted link to the OP? you'll find it in MY sig line.

Seems to be a pattern with him, choosing to misunderstand.

 

[Valerie]

It's not a stupid statement. Heck everyone speaks in a first draft, they usually write in a first draft on forums, I know I do and if I use a word or phrase that might be open to interpretation I expect a reader to at least give me the benefit of accepting the obviously intended meaning. There's a technical phrase for that, can't think of the proper terminology but someone here might know it.

Common courtesy? Mutual respect? Benefit of the doubt?

 

[Diuretic]

A fetus is not a human, at least, not until it develops a nervous system, usually around the 40 day mark.

Until then? It's no more "human" than a single sperm or an unfertilized egg. Just a mass of cells.

That's one man's subjective determination. One that I tend to agree with btw. But the point of the OP wasn't whether it was "a human," but rather whether it was alive. And that's not subjective at all.

Sorry to hop in right now and potentially disrupt the thread as it has no doubt moved on. My defence is "time zones."

But as I was reading this post and prior posts it occured to me that since words are important that perhaps the argument is between "alive" and "living".

I'll keep reading, I hope this isn't out of whack.

 

[Diuretic]

A fetus is not a human, at least, not until it develops a nervous system, usually around the 40 day mark.

Until then? It's no more "human" than a single sperm or an unfertilized egg. Just a mass of cells.

That is close to what I was saying...it isn't alive in the sense that a person is alive, it is alive in the sense of a sperm or whatever...which is why I originally stated the term kill was inappropriate, imo. Abort fits better, like aborting a mission...stopping it before it is a fact.

Where does "sentience" fit in here? Assuming it does of course.

 

[Diuretic]

The definition of alive is one of the most subjective definitions of all.

Perhaps philosphically. But we're not talking philosophy here are we?

Literally, alive means not dead. And that's hardly a subjective matter.

This whole forum is based on philosophy - some of us don't use technical terms and certainly I don't see myself as a "philosopher" in the accepted sense, but it's all about philosophy.

 

[Diuretic]

It's not a stupid statement. Heck everyone speaks in a first draft, they usually write in a first draft on forums, I know I do and if I use a word or phrase that might be open to interpretation I expect a reader to at least give me the benefit of accepting the obviously intended meaning. There's a technical phrase for that, can't think of the proper terminology but someone here might know it.

Common courtesy? Mutual respect? Benefit of the doubt?

All of those SHOULD be adhered to Valerie (and I admit I am one who doesn't adhere and should) but Nemesis fixed it up for me, the principle of charity, is what I was trying to think of. I think I saw it in a piece by or an interview with Christopher Hitchens, I'd never heard of it before.

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity is an approach to understanding a speaker's statements by interpreting the speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, rendering the best, strongest possible interpretation of an argument. In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies or falsehoods to the statements of others, when there is another coherent, rational interpretation of the statements. According to Simon Blackburn (1994), "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings."

Principle of charity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of course if I get tripped up in the forums I shall resort to my own "principle of get stuffed" to get myself out of it

 

[Ravi]

I've since answered your clarified question.

Then you should have no problem retracting "cuntrag," "liar," or "fuck you." But of course that's probably mentally impossible for you...to admit that you were wrong.

Sorry Ravi, I must have missed that part.

In any case, I'm glad he retracted his nasty remarks, but if you ask me, this entire thread smacks of disingenuous nutbaggery* to the extreme!

Perhaps the biggest lie of all might actually be in Manifold's misrepresentation of his intentions. I mean, does he really think your posts here constitute "a lie" on your part??? That seems like a real stretch, and most likely the biggest LIE of all is that he didn't understand what you meant in your statement which prompted this thread in the first place!


FTR - Ravi, I am pro-choice as well.

Good point.

 

[Agnapostate]

I guess this is where you should have posted a link to that "lively exchange" that decided that a human at ANY stage has less utility than a primate at ANY stage. I'm not really interested in hashing over the nature of your assumptions through utilitarianism. If you've got tangible evidence that a baby monkey has more utility than a Human Fetus then go ahead and post a link. Otherwise, spare me the bullshit jargon from an ethical standard that seems to have given you a reason to hump Singer's leg.

Your obtuseness has proven to be a major impediment to legitimate ethical analysis. As repeatedly mentioned at this point, my reference was not to a "baby monkey." It does not necessitate parallel comparisons of infants of separate species. Rather, a normal adult chimpanzee has a greater awareness of its existence and surroundings and a greater capacity to feel pain than a human fetus does, as do dogs, cats, goats, and pigs, for that matter. This greater level of self-awareness and sentience thus endows it with a greater capacity to suffer then the human fetus. Not an especially difficult concept!

Regarding your harsh slap/amputation scenario: This is where it becomes blatantly obvious that your OPINION is the sole mitigating factor. Would a slapped holocaust victim whose family has been gassed as she faces being raped by a nazi SUFFER MORE than a drunk driver whose .35 blood alcohol level caused an accident that amputated his leg? I guess THAT depends on the standard measure of SUFFERING, eh? Which, let me point out, you don't really have a claim to define outside of your bullshit ethical standard.

This is a laughable attempt to defend your feeble claims. If we were to conduct a legitimate measurement of suffering, we would not merely consider the slap and the amputation in isolation; it should be painstakingly obvious that we would consider the additional factors of the family gassing and the rape. I'd advise you to conduct a more thorough analysis of the theories that you clumsily attempt to address, so that you don't make such a ridiculous mistake in the future.

WHY do you think Ethics and Philosophy are closely related as subjects, dude? Descartes SOUNDS good on college t shirts and posters but his opinion, much like yours, means two things at the end of the day: Jack and Shit.

Ethics and philosophy aren't merely "closely related as subjects"; ethics is a branch of philosophy. Perhaps you'd better return to these basic concepts before attempting to make comments.

I guess a little realty WOULD become the pin that burst your silly little balloon, eh? The fact remains, if YOU can't fathom the inherent imperative to place a HUMAN LIFE above that of a fucking monkey then...

This odd rambling has no conceivable relation to the topic. You began blathering about a comparison of my infant daughter and a chimpanzee, which is why I informed you that emotional partiality clouds objective ethical analysis. For instance, if either your daughter or three stranger children were to be killed, it would be morally right from an objective perspective to save the three, but your own emotional partiality would undoubtedly incline you toward saving your own daughter.

Bentham, my bad.. And yes, you specifically appealed to the calculus derived from Utilitarian standards as if THEY were, by definition, universally validated by name dropping and jargon use. By all means, dude... dodge left and right if you need to. You are not the first pseudo intellectual trying to dazzle the crowd with Ethics 101 crap that means othing outside of your accepted paradigm. THIS is why you have to keep assuming that no one knows that they are talking about except you. Meanwhile, your leap for utilitarian excuses trying to rationalize a primate life above that of a human at ANY stage keeps the FAIL IMAGE industry from going out of business..

You've not attempted to argue otherwise. Your screaming and foot-stamping does not constitute anything near a legitimate argument. My argument, conversely, is fairly straightforward. Various nonhuman animals possess a greater awareness of their own existence and surroundings than do human fetuses. They thus possess a greater capacity to suffer than human fetuses do. It is thus morally worse to kill them than it is to kill human fetuses. From what do you derive your original claim that humans as a species are superior to every other animal species? Is it not derived from the fact that humans possess a greater level of self-awareness and related traits than those animals do?

Sometimes I'm short on time, sometimes I'm short on patience, but believe me...I'm so far ahead it only LOOKS like I'm behind.

Don't be so obtuse! Every single one of your claims has been rebutted by me. They're sometimes difficult to uphold when you don't go to the trouble of complementing them with arguments.

As for Nemesis, I found his first few posts in this thread somewhat interesting and thought provoking. But then he took a left turn at Alberquerque IMO, so I haven't read any of his subsequent posts or other's replies to them.

Radicalism or unorthodoxy are not themselves conditions that can legitimately exclude ideas or proposals from thorough consideration. As mentioned earlier, belief in a heliocentric solar system was once considered heresy unworthy of any sort of consideration, yet today it is affirmed as scientific fact.

I agree.

That guy Nemesis was not talking about fetuses, he was saying that an INFANT is not a person.

I can think of no conceivable reason for claiming that a late-term fetus is not a person, but that an infant somehow is. There are effectively no developmental differences between them, and the only distinction between them is that of location.

There is a valid basis for making a distinction between nonviable fetuses and infants in that infants have gained a degree of extrinsic moral value that infants lack. Since a fetus undergoing an abortion is presumably unwanted by its mother and a live infant is presumably wanted by both its mother and other family members, killing a healthy infant would therefore cause external suffering in a manner that killing a fetus would not. Moreover, a born infant can be adopted by others, whereas a nonviable fetus cannot, so there is no rational purpose for killing a born infant.

I will maintain that an infant is a nonperson and that killing an infant is not equivalent to killing an older person because an older person possesses a capacity to suffer than an infant does not. A normal human is self-aware and possesses the ability to form rational moral preferences and interests about his or her own future, and thus suffer from the inhibition or denial of these preferences and interests. A human infant does not possess such a capacity inasmuch as it is not aware of its own existence, and is thus not capable of suffering from its own painless death. So killing a healthy infant is morally wrong, yes, but not to the same extent as killing a normal person.

I have to say, I'm surprised at where you draw a line. What is it in your idealogy that will not allow you to find justification in a 44 year old male having sex with a 13 year old female? Sound like 'ethical egoism' if you ask me.

What relation has this topic to the thread? The answer to this question should be obvious, however. A utilitarian ethical perspective would find child sexual abuse to be morally wrong because it causes suffering, and utilitarianism is obviously based on the converse aim of maximizing happiness. For instance, we could refer to Kendall-Tacket et al.'s The Impact of Sexual Abuse on Children: A Review and Synthesis of Recent Empirical Studies. Consider the abstract:

A review of 46 studies clearly demonstrates that sexually abused children have more symptoms than non-abused children, with abuse accounting for 15 to 45 percent of the variance. Fears, post-traumatic stress disorder, behavior problems, sexualized behaviors and poor self-esteem occur most frequently among a long list of symptoms noted, but no one symptom characterizes a majority of sexually abused children.

I also don't believe you've defined "ethical egoism" accurately. It isn't merely the concept of an "egotist" merely doing whatever they want; it's a legitimate normative ethical theory involving maximization of self-interest. Utilitarianism is effectively a form of collective ethical egoism in that it focuses on maximizing the self-interest (and thus, the happiness), of all moral agents.

 

[Valerie]

I guess this is where you should have posted a link to that "lively exchange" that decided that a human at ANY stage has less utility than a primate at ANY stage. I'm not really interested in hashing over the nature of your assumptions through utilitarianism. If you've got tangible evidence that a baby monkey has more utility than a Human Fetus then go ahead and post a link. Otherwise, spare me the bullshit jargon from an ethical standard that seems to have given you a reason to hump Singer's leg.

Your obtuseness has proven to be a major impediment to legitimate ethical analysis. As repeatedly mentioned at this point, my reference was not to a "baby monkey." It does not necessitate parallel comparisons of infants of separate species. Rather, a normal adult chimpanzee has a greater awareness of its existence and surroundings and a greater capacity to feel pain than a human fetus does, as do dogs, cats, goats, and pigs, for that matter. This greater level of self-awareness and sentience thus endows it with a greater capacity to suffer then the human fetus. Not an especially difficult concept!

Regarding your harsh slap/amputation scenario: This is where it becomes blatantly obvious that your OPINION is the sole mitigating factor. Would a slapped holocaust victim whose family has been gassed as she faces being raped by a nazi SUFFER MORE than a drunk driver whose .35 blood alcohol level caused an accident that amputated his leg? I guess THAT depends on the standard measure of SUFFERING, eh? Which, let me point out, you don't really have a claim to define outside of your bullshit ethical standard.

This is a laughable attempt to defend your feeble claims. If we were to conduct a legitimate measurement of suffering, we would not merely consider the slap and the amputation in isolation; it should be painstakingly obvious that we would consider the additional factors of the family gassing and the rape. I'd advise you to conduct a more thorough analysis of the theories that you clumsily attempt to address, so that you don't make such a ridiculous mistake in the future.



Ethics and philosophy aren't merely "closely related as subjects"; ethics is a branch of philosophy. Perhaps you'd better return to these basic concepts before attempting to make comments.



This odd rambling has no conceivable relation to the topic. You began blathering about a comparison of my infant daughter and a chimpanzee, which is why I informed you that emotional partiality clouds objective ethical analysis. For instance, if either your daughter or three stranger children were to be killed, it would be morally right from an objective perspective to save the three, but your own emotional partiality would undoubtedly incline you toward saving your own daughter.



You've not attempted to argue otherwise. Your screaming and foot-stamping does not constitute anything near a legitimate argument. My argument, conversely, is fairly straightforward. Various nonhuman animals possess a greater awareness of their own existence and surroundings than do human fetuses. They thus possess a greater capacity to suffer than human fetuses do. It is thus morally worse to kill them than it is to kill human fetuses. From what do you derive your original claim that humans as a species are superior to every other animal species? Is it not derived from the fact that humans possess a greater level of self-awareness and related traits than those animals do?



Don't be so obtuse! Every single one of your claims has been rebutted by me. They're sometimes difficult to uphold when you don't go to the trouble of complementing them with arguments.



Radicalism or unorthodoxy are not themselves conditions that can legitimately exclude ideas or proposals from thorough consideration. As mentioned earlier, belief in a heliocentric solar system was once considered heresy unworthy of any sort of consideration, yet today it is affirmed as scientific fact.



I can think of no conceivable reason for claiming that a late-term fetus is not a person, but that an infant somehow is. There are effectively no developmental differences between them, and the only distinction between them is that of location.

There is a valid basis for making a distinction between nonviable fetuses and infants in that infants have gained a degree of extrinsic moral value that infants lack. Since a fetus undergoing an abortion is presumably unwanted by its mother and a live infant is presumably wanted by both its mother and other family members, killing a healthy infant would therefore cause external suffering in a manner that killing a fetus would not. Moreover, a born infant can be adopted by others, whereas a nonviable fetus cannot, so there is no rational purpose for killing a born infant.

I will maintain that an infant is a nonperson and that killing an infant is not equivalent to killing an older person because an older person possesses a capacity to suffer than an infant does not. A normal human is self-aware and possesses the ability to form rational moral preferences and interests about his or her own future, and thus suffer from the inhibition or denial of these preferences and interests. A human infant does not possess such a capacity inasmuch as it is not aware of its own existence, and is thus not capable of suffering from its own painless death. So killing a healthy infant is morally wrong, yes, but not to the same extent as killing a normal person.

I have to say, I'm surprised at where you draw a line. What is it in your idealogy that will not allow you to find justification in a 44 year old male having sex with a 13 year old female? Sound like 'ethical egoism' if you ask me.

What relation has this topic to the thread? The answer to this question should be obvious, however. A utilitarian ethical perspective would find child sexual abuse to be morally wrong because it causes suffering, and utilitarianism is obviously based on the converse aim of maximizing happiness. For instance, we could refer to Kendall-Tacket et al.'s The Impact of Sexual Abuse on Children: A Review and Synthesis of Recent Empirical Studies. Consider the abstract:

A review of 46 studies clearly demonstrates that sexually abused children have more symptoms than non-abused children, with abuse accounting for 15 to 45 percent of the variance. Fears, post-traumatic stress disorder, behavior problems, sexualized behaviors and poor self-esteem occur most frequently among a long list of symptoms noted, but no one symptom characterizes a majority of sexually abused children.

I also don't believe you've defined "ethical egoism" accurately. It isn't merely the concept of an "egotist" merely doing whatever they want; it's a legitimate normative ethical theory involving maximization of self-interest. Utilitarianism is effectively a form of collective ethical egoism in that it focuses on maximizing the self-interest (and thus, the happiness), of all moral agents.

Sorry the pragmatist in me needs to have a point in order for me to stay interested. Are you advocating for infanticide? Or are you really pro-life and trying to get someone to make your argument for you?

Not sure what you're referring to...My supposed points you've rebutted? I'm feeling pretty good about my assertion that an infant is a person. Should I find a link?

 

[Valerie]

I also don't believe you've defined "ethical egoism" accurately. It isn't merely the concept of an "egotist" merely doing whatever they want; it's a legitimate normative ethical theory involving maximization of self-interest. Utilitarianism is effectively a form of collective ethical egoism in that it focuses on maximizing the self-interest (and thus, the happiness), of all moral agents.

How come the link to my quote doesn't show up in your quote?

And BTW -- What do you think of my assertion that this entire thread is based on disingenuous nutbaggery*?


Philosphically speaking, of course.

 

[Agnapostate]

Sorry the pragmatist in me needs to have a point in order for me to stay interested. Are you advocating for infanticide? Or are you really pro-life and trying to get someone to make your argument for you?

I've not advocated infanticide, as you would notice had you happened to read the post that you quoted. I distinguished between killing a fetus and killing an infant on the grounds that an infant could be adopted by others, whereas a nonviable fetus could not, and thus possessed extrinsic moral value. I thus concluded that killing an infant was morally wrong, but I maintained that an infant was a nonperson and that killing an infant was not equivalent to killing a normal person because the latter possessed a greater level of self-awareness, and accordingly, a greater capacity to suffer.

Not sure what you're referring to...My supposed points you've rebutted?

Just to toss out a random example, we could consider your reference to a sleeping person, which is inevitably mentioned every time I discuss this topic. Regardless, as I noted, it's not an accurate comparison.

I'm feeling pretty good about my assertion that an infant is a person. Should I find a link?

What could you even find a link to? This discussion presumably centers around whether or not an infant is a person according to the philosophical definition. If you were referring to a link to some legal statute, that would not be relevant to ethical analysis.

 

[Valerie]

Sorry the pragmatist in me needs to have a point in order for me to stay interested. Are you advocating for infanticide? Or are you really pro-life and trying to get someone to make your argument for you?

I've not advocated infanticide, as you would notice had you happened to read the post that you quoted. I distinguished between killing a fetus and killing an infant on the grounds that an infant could be adopted by others, whereas a nonviable fetus could not, and thus possessed extrinsic moral value. I thus concluded that killing an infant was morally wrong, but I maintained that an infant was a nonperson and that killing an infant was not equivalent to killing a normal person because the latter possessed a greater level of self-awareness, and accordingly, a greater capacity to suffer.

Not sure what you're referring to...My supposed points you've rebutted?

Just to toss out a random example, we could consider your reference to a sleeping person, which is inevitably mentioned every time I discuss this topic. Regardless, as I noted, it's not an accurate comparison.

I'm feeling pretty good about my assertion that an infant is a person. Should I find a link?

What could you even find a link to? This discussion presumably centers around whether or not an infant is a person according to the philosophical definition. If you were referring to a link to some legal statute, that would not be relevant to ethical analysis.

I forgot about the sleeping example, to tell you the truth, but okay. You did indeed rebut that point. Still, you're speaking as if I've asserted things that I actually have not:

I can think of no conceivable reason for claiming that a late-term fetus is not a person, but that an infant somehow is. There are effectively no developmental differences between them, and the only distinction between them is that of location.

So, you're pro-life and looking for someone to make your argument? Sorry, no can do.

My personal morality as it relates to aborting a pregnancy is trumped by my personal morality to not allow the government to impose itself upon the personal freedom of individual choice in that regard. Personally, I do actually draw a line after the first trimester, but I do not advocate allowing the law to dictate that complex personal choice upon women.

 

[Agnapostate]

So, you're pro-life and looking for someone to make your argument? Sorry, no can do.

I don't know where you got that idea. The fact that I don't accept traditional "pro-choice" arguments as logically sound certainly shouldn't imply that.

My personal morality as it relates to aborting a pregnancy is trumped by my personal morality to not allow the government to impose itself upon the personal freedom of individual choice in that regard. Personally, I do actually draw a line after the first trimester, but I do not advocate allowing the law to dictate that complex
personal choice upon women.

If you concede that to kill a fetus is to kill a person (as Judith Jarvis Thomson does, for instance), I can conceive of no legitimate reason for not favoring government intervention to prevent the life of that person, since permitting it to be killed would effectively constitute a more severe imposition than the government intervention to save it would.

 

[Valerie]

So, you're pro-life and looking for someone to make your argument? Sorry, no can do.

I don't know where you got that idea. The fact that I don't accept traditional "pro-choice" arguments as logically sound certainly shouldn't imply that.

My personal morality as it relates to aborting a pregnancy is trumped by my personal morality to not allow the government to impose itself upon the personal freedom of individual choice in that regard. Personally, I do actually draw a line after the first trimester, but I do not advocate allowing the law to dictate that complex
personal choice upon women.

If you concede that to kill a fetus is to kill a person (as Judith Jarvis Thomson does, for instance), I can conceive of no legitimate reason for not favoring government intervention to prevent the life of that person, since permitting it to be killed would effectively constitute a more severe imposition than the government intervention to save it would.

No I do not concede that. Do you concede that you are posturing your pro-life stance? I got that idea from reading your posts. Are you going to answer?

 

[Agnapostate]

No I do not concede that. Do you concede that you are posturing your pro-life stance? I got that idea from reading your posts. Are you going to answer?

It's not especially difficult; it's merely a matter of denying that a fetus is a person. The best utilitarian arguments of this nature have come from the much-maligned Peter Singer. For instance, we could consider his Abortion, the dividing lines for a brief look at the issue. I don't have a "pro-life stance." The fact that I reject conventional pro-choice arguments as unsound should not imply that, as previously mentioned.

 

[manu1959]

if it wasn't alive you wouldn't have to kill it....