Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on December 03, 2015, 11:55:31 pm
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There are two debates that aren't happening. The first is about "What is Life?". That's been covered up with the simplifying and dividing language where Pro-Choice is pushed up against Pro-Life.
Except Pro-Choice doesn't mean you're in favor of killing babies, and Pro-Life doesn't mean you're in favor of the government throwing you in jail because what you do with your body doesn't adhere to their guidelines.
The second debate is "What the FLIPPING CRAP do we do about human-driven climate change?".
The phrasing on this is important, because whether or not you believe "Global Warming" is real, the REAL debate is:
"Should we use the God-like abilities of the human race we possess at this point in time to shape our own environment and change it? Can we handle the ability we have to shape transformations of the Earth? Should we start trying? When? For how long? Etc, etc."
So ok, wait wait....UT, you're crazy. What do questions of change control have to do with population management?
It's simple. Meat produces a lot of greenhouse gasses - either directly (cow farts), or indirectly (fuel burned to grow the food that feeds the cows, being one example). The more people there are, the more fuel they'll burn making food to grow cows to feed more people. If I locked you in a room full of fresh car exhaust, you'd die. So whatever it is, putting a lot of it into the air can't be good for it.
But I digress..let's get back to the first debate. "What is Life?".
I'm not sure. But whatever life is, it has certain inalienable rights. Those rights include the right to living, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If you force a baby to be born when the world is not ready for it, then you are infringing on that baby's right to the pursuit of happiness, by removing choices that had it come at the right time, it would have been able to pursue. Even though we like to believe in the fantasy of the poor kid climbing the ladder to millions, the problem is with a population of a million millionares, no one has any money.
By their very nature, millionares are rare in the economic system we have set up. If you're lucky, you'll get born into a well off and stable family. If you're not, you'll be born into a broken family, or one that, through years of poor choices, by themselves and others and fortunes, for those near and far, have found themselves repeatedly unable to leave their negative circumstances behind them.
So taking away the ability of those responsible for their actions to choose whether or not to have a baby, is robbing a potentially unwanted child of it's future.
The graphic referenced in the thread linked at the bottom of the posts says that since 1820, there have been more people not living in absolute poverty every year. However, it also shows that over that same time period, the total amount of people that lived in total poverty remained unchanged, except recently with the ascension of China's citizenry out of poverty. Maybe if we started focusing on keeping the blue the same height and get the red down to zero, instead of just adding more things, then maybe the things we already have will get better.
Right now the world's got a lot of people in it, and it's set to only get more. We need to stop thinking about fighting the other guy and start thinking about what we're gonna do to get out of this situation. Because there's a lot of fighting, and a lot of pain in this world these days...and when we only think about ourselves, we lose sight of the bigger picture. We'll never get everyone to see it at once, but we can get enough people to make a change.
Anyway. Maybe if we started focusing on how to take care of the planet as part of a collective "human body", or something, some gift from nothingness, then we'll finally fix these problems and get on with the next stage of human change.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3fbqg5/1_billion_people_lived_in_extreme_poverty_two/
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I'll start off by saying I'm pro-choice as well but not necessarily for the same reasons you've posted.
Abortion is not the solution for an unsustainable population. It can be part of a solution, and there's certainly evidence that suggests abortion allows for population control.
Population control is not going to happen unless government or individual incentives favors it. A government is not going to restrict its population growth if it feels that it needs more citizens. China actually favored higher birth rates in the 50s-70s. On some accounts, this may have been a wise move because it created a large labor force ideal for working in manufacturing. Allowing for abortion is not going to stop a family from having 5+ kids. For rural farming communities or disease ridden areas, you might actually want more kids for family labor, e.g. running a farm.
What I do know is that wealthy people seem to have less kids. This might be because they can expect their kids to live longer, have no need for family labor, are culturally different, or any other reasons. If you want to stop excessive population growth, then taking the route of making them wealthier might do a lot more than simply allowing for abortion.
I feel like you're really arguing against population growth and climate change, but you're using abortion as the reason for why these things are happening. An unsustainable population seems like a terrifying prospect, but I think it's one that you can combat. Find more green sources of energy, eat less meat, find meat substitutes, etc. People respond to incentives. If you want people to change, give them the incentives to do so. Abortion might be a step in the right direction, but it is not the only solution nor is banning it the primary or significant reason to why there are as many people on this earth as there is.
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I am not going to debate Global Warming or now Climate change but before you believe the party line from the men who are making themselves rich off it read this
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
Yeah old enough to remember hearing many of those myself.
Now read this
http://dcwhispers.com/meet-the-climate-scientist-barack-obama-wants-silenced/#bPzzkGSHcOW8GQH7.01
As for life.... a fetus has its own DNA and often its own blood type. Not sure how anyone can not see it is a human life inside the womb is beyond me
End of my input
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No. You do NOT get to drive-by post like that. Have a warning.
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We already know how to solve the problem of climate change, without serious economic impacts or population control. We just have to get serious about doing it.
http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/The_Way_forward.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/
Added: Just to emphasize, this post is meant mainly for UT. Population growth and climate change are both issues that we, as a civilization, need to look at pretty carefully, but the two are not as directly related as a lot of people seem to think. The thermodynamics of the atmosphere doesn't directly care about how many people or cows there are. It cares about the concentration of greenhouse gases, or the emissions rate vs. sequestration rate. Sure, the more people there are, the more energy we use, and with our energy production being largely from fossil fuels, that means a lot of emissions. So you could imagine trying to solve this by controlling population growth. Consider a strategy where we want to avoid more than 2°C of warming, but use the same energy production methods, and the same energy per capita. Guess what -- you'll have to either find some awesome and practical way of reducing solar insolation, and/or sequestering CO2... or you'll have to reduce population by a few hundred million people per year. Cutting emissions by controlling population just doesn't work, unless you're insane and throw out all ethics. :) There are far better ways.
As for managing population growth for its own sake, I don't think abortion is the right way to look at it, either. Not because of any ethical problem with abortion, but rather because it's a much more complex socioeconomic issue than that. It's really difficult to say what our "carrying capacity" is anyway, since it depends a lot on our technology, food production, and management of the environment.
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I think you guys are focusing a lot on the part of my argument with population control, and less so on my preposition that abortion is important mainly because it provides a higher quality of life for those babies that are actually brought into this world as wanted beings. Read the bit about "what is life", inalienable rights, etc.
That being said, I never proposed that abortion would be the end-all, be all to population control. But it would help, because it would give people who didn't want or couldn't handle a child the option to not have it. The less unwanted people we have in this world, the better - for them and for the rest of us.
As for population control and climate change....well, I've always understood it to be a thermodynamic issue, wherein there's just not enough energy hitting the planet to support all of us living first world lifestyles. I could be wrong on that, though.
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If you want the end-all, be-al of population control, you only need to look at the history of women's suffrage, and the effects of pervasive education of and career opportunities other than mother and wife for women.
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That being said, I never proposed that abortion would be the end-all, be all to population control. But it would help, because it would give people who didn't want or couldn't handle a child the option to not have it. The less unwanted people we have in this world, the better - for them and for the rest of them.
Wouldn't a government run spay and neuter program be more efficient and less morally invasive if you want population control and improvement in quality of life?
Let's say $30 a neuter or spay if you don't want kids.
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Sure, but a lot of people would be scared of that, and I imagine many people wouldn't go for the surgery. But I think it's a good idea.
@The E: Yea, agreed.
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ok, but how does one deal with population control and an aging population?
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I never said WeatherOp's idea was bad or shouldn't be implemented. I just wasn't saying it was a slot-in replacement for legal abortion.
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Abortion should be legal, accessible, safe, and rare. The best way to accomplish the latter is through sex education and improvement of living standards, as has been demonstrated both by studies and real-world data all over the planet. Improve sex education, women's education, women's job prospects, and over-all access to birth control options for the population and the abortion rate does nothing but drop. So does the overall birth rate, I might add, which renders the idea of abortion-as-supplementary-population-control both morally repugnant and completely unnecessary.
It's the great irony of consevrative America: oh hell no, we can't possibly cover pregnancy-prevention in schools or health care, but if you get pregnant you'd better see that pregnancy to term. Good grief.
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Come on MP, no sex education past abstinence is all that's required. It's not like complete ignorance will lead them to try anal because they can "remain virgins and not get a STD"...
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Abortion should be legal, accessible, safe, and rare. The best way to accomplish the latter is through sex education and improvement of living standards, as has been demonstrated both by studies and real-world data all over the planet. Improve sex education, women's education, women's job prospects, and over-all access to birth control options for the population and the abortion rate does nothing but drop. So does the overall birth rate, I might add, which renders the idea of abortion-as-supplementary-population-control both morally repugnant and completely unnecessary.
It's the great irony of consevrative America: oh hell no, we can't possibly cover pregnancy-prevention in schools or health care, but if you get pregnant you'd better see that pregnancy to term. Good grief.
Whenever I think of abortion as population control, I think of BSG, where Roslin outlawed it to keep the population rising.
I'm not saying it will solve our problems, but having it as legal means that we can focus more on the quality of the humans we produce, rather than the number.
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It's the great irony of consevrative America: oh hell no, we can't possibly cover pregnancy-prevention in schools or health care, but if you get pregnant you'd better see that pregnancy to term. Good grief.
I think the great irony is we are dumb enough to need to be taught about the basic facts if life yet they allow many of the same to control a two ton vehicle.
Wait who am I kidding some people ask me what you do with a forged wall hook.
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Um, the utilization of abortion squarely resides around the personal choice of the woman involved. Its a very difficult personal decision and opening it up to some socio/cultural system to promote population control is morally repugnant. Especially when, as multiple folks have pointed out, there are much better ways of promoting stable population than some dystopian bull****.
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*Shrug* Just saying, from a logical perspective it makes sense. Allow people to choose whether or not to bring someone into circumstances that will significantly limit their future expansion in life. That's really the thrust of what I was trying to say, a counter-argument to the "all lives matter" side of things that you get from the "Pro-Lifers". Is the life that you're creating going to be worth it? I say no, if you're not prepared to care for it.
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I am not going to debate Global Warming or now Climate change but before you believe the party line from the men who are making themselves rich off it read this
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
Yeah old enough to remember hearing many of those myself.
Now read this
http://dcwhispers.com/meet-the-climate-scientist-barack-obama-wants-silenced/#bPzzkGSHcOW8GQH7.01
As for life.... a fetus has its own DNA and often its own blood type. Not sure how anyone can not see it is a human life inside the womb is beyond me
End of my input
No. You do NOT get to drive-by post like that. Have a warning.
You guys do realize you're not the most pleasant bunch to debate with? Not the worst, but there's a reason I don't really dig in to debates here, just saying. I don't blame someone for wanting to only have input lite into an echo chamber.
EDIT: By which I'm not saying that you all are in lockstep. More like you all tend to ream out anyone whose ideas you all disagree with heartily, leading to a corrosive atmosphere in those debate threds.
EDIT2: I suppose I should also clarify that in the recently locked thread here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91066.0), towards the end it looked (to me at least) as if people were actually starting to understand each other's viewpoints.
Then, of course, the thread gets locked for people supposedly trying to "Interrogate the unbeliever about the extent of his heresy"
I don't recall anyone at the end of that thread making any sort of accusations about the opposing position, it actually seemed to be conveying a decent deal of information about both sides of the argument.
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If all you are interested in is voicing your opinion without discussion, get a blog and turn off comments. This is not what discussion forums are for though. If you do not wish to participate in a discussion, then do not participate. Do not enter a discussion, drop a bunch of opinions and tell people you're not going to be around to explain, defend or expand on your statements. That's a breach of etiquette at best, outright trolling at worst, and tolerating it is a bad idea.
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I think it was meant as a "here's my thoughts on this" -- I'm sure he'd read any responses made to it, and probably might even respond to other points of view, but he's not in the mood / doesn't have the time to be cross-examined about it. That's what I took it as anyways. If it was meant as more of a 'this is what I think and I don't care what your opinions are', then yeah that's not nice.
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The post started with "I'm not going to debate climate change", dropped a bunch of links on climate change, and ended with "End of my input". That's textbook drive-by posting.
And that's the end of that debate in this topic. Any further discussion of this should take place either in pms or Site Support.
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Not locking the thread?
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Abortion should be legal, accessible, safe, and rare. The best way to accomplish the latter is through sex education and improvement of living standards, as has been demonstrated both by studies and real-world data all over the planet. Improve sex education, women's education, women's job prospects, and over-all access to birth control options for the population and the abortion rate does nothing but drop. So does the overall birth rate, I might add, which renders the idea of abortion-as-supplementary-population-control both morally repugnant and completely unnecessary.
It's the great irony of consevrative America: oh hell no, we can't possibly cover pregnancy-prevention in schools or health care, but if you get pregnant you'd better see that pregnancy to term. Good grief.
Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow. Personally I can see only three cases in which this... procedure could be allowed. Severe disability of the child, if pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Or finally.... rape. I can simply understand that a girl who was hurt that way may not want to give birth to such child. Yet it doesn't change the fact that anytime you scrub... you kill a human or a wannabe human. Abortion is the ultimate solution in these cases and should be avoided unless critically necessary.
But make it accessible for everyone like painkillers? You gotta be f***** kidding me. So what? Every teen and adult who was dumb enough to have carefree sex and if something goes wrong just escape the responsibility? At what cost. It's the child who will pay the price, not an idiot who did not predict the results of their actions. That's where the sexual education, condoms and other stuff hits in. And here I agree totally. The more people will learn, the bigger are the chances that such situations won't appear and abortion won't be needed.
Besides it's a goddamn irony. First some people yell loud to have wider access to abortion. But then comes butthurt about birthrate regression < I know, the whole problem is a lot more complex but it's an integral part of it>. can't tell if that's a social engineering or stupidity. Or a mix of both. I also laughed mad when I read the UN's advice that in my country "we should have more liberal access to abortion". No thanks. I think that our rules are fair here.
TL:DR
If the child is severely disabled, pregnancy threatens mother's life or health or was conceived because of rape ----> you should have right to abort.
Any other case. Get your hands off and learn how to deal with responsibility.
Sorry if I got a bit emotional here. This topic is always a "hot" one.
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But make it accessible for everyone like painkillers? You gotta be f***** kidding me. So what? Every teen and adult who was dumb enough to have carefree sex and if something goes wrong just escape the responsibility? At what cost. It's the child who will pay the price, not an idiot who did not predict the results of their actions. That's where the sexual education, condoms and other stuff hits in. And here I agree totally. The more people will learn, the bigger are the chances that such situations won't appear and abortion won't be needed.
You do realise that the majority of abortions are by women who already have one or more children right? And that contraceptive failure is a major reason for abortions?
Cause from your post you don't seem to be aware of that and think abortion is just women who had unprotected sex.
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But make it accessible for everyone like painkillers? You gotta be f***** kidding me. So what? Every teen and adult who was dumb enough to have carefree sex and if something goes wrong just escape the responsibility? At what cost. It's the child who will pay the price, not an idiot who did not predict the results of their actions. That's where the sexual education, condoms and other stuff hits in. And here I agree totally. The more people will learn, the bigger are the chances that such situations won't appear and abortion won't be needed.
You do realise that the majority of abortions are by women who already have one or more children right? And that contraceptive failure is a major reason for abortions?
Cause from your post you don't seem to be aware of that and think abortion is just women who had unprotected sex.
Being a married man with three kids, I seriously doubt contraception failure is a major reason for abortions.
Now if you mean they are putting condoms on their heads and over their eyes, I could see that as a failure I guess.
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
by this definition, masturbation is also murder
But make it accessible for everyone like painkillers? You gotta be f***** kidding me. So what? Every teen and adult who was dumb enough to have carefree sex and if something goes wrong just escape the responsibility? At what cost. It's the child who will pay the price, not an idiot who did not predict the results of their actions. That's where the sexual education, condoms and other stuff hits in. And here I agree totally. The more people will learn, the bigger are the chances that such situations won't appear and abortion won't be needed.
You do realise that the majority of abortions are by women who already have one or more children right? And that contraceptive failure is a major reason for abortions?
Cause from your post you don't seem to be aware of that and think abortion is just women who had unprotected sex.
Being a married man with three kids, I seriously doubt contraception failure is a major reason for abortions.
Now if you mean they are putting condoms on their heads and over their eyes, I could see that as a failure I guess.
Lack of comprehensive sex education means that people don't learn how to use contraceptives properly; you don't have to put the condom on your head to **** it up.
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
by this definition, masturbation is also murder
But make it accessible for everyone like painkillers? You gotta be f***** kidding me. So what? Every teen and adult who was dumb enough to have carefree sex and if something goes wrong just escape the responsibility? At what cost. It's the child who will pay the price, not an idiot who did not predict the results of their actions. That's where the sexual education, condoms and other stuff hits in. And here I agree totally. The more people will learn, the bigger are the chances that such situations won't appear and abortion won't be needed.
You do realise that the majority of abortions are by women who already have one or more children right? And that contraceptive failure is a major reason for abortions?
Cause from your post you don't seem to be aware of that and think abortion is just women who had unprotected sex.
Being a married man with three kids, I seriously doubt contraception failure is a major reason for abortions.
Now if you mean they are putting condoms on their heads and over their eyes, I could see that as a failure I guess.
Lack of comprehensive sex education means that people don't learn how to use contraceptives properly; you don't have to put the condom on your head to **** it up.
No, but you have to try really hard even in that case. It has nothing to do with sex education in any case as the dead simple instructions are on the box. If you don't read them then that is not a failure on the condom, but on you which is unprotected sex. If you can't understand them, then you definitely don't need to be having sex or driving a vehicle for that matter.
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Apply this (https://www.optionsforsexualhealth.org/birth-control-pregnancy/birth-control-options/effectiveness) to a large enough population and you're gonna get a significant amount of failures.
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ok, since this thread is apparently still open...
learn how to deal with responsibility.
ah, so once again it boils down to children should be a punishment for people who have sex outside of the contexts I approve of. glad to see a bit more confirmation for my bias on that.
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
I dont consider the second one to be murder. "Killing" potential persons is just not morally wrong at all. A being must already exist for it to be murder. Using a condom or even refusing sex leads to one less person alive in this world, too. Is it murder? Of course not. Think of all the future children you are killing right now by not having sex. You murderer.. :)
There is some point in development where the developing foetus actually (not just potentially) becomes a person, and I believe it has to do with higher brain development. A bunch of unsentient cells dont deserve the same rights as you and me.
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
by this definition, masturbation is also murder.
Wouldn't miscarriages be manslaughter in that same vein?
ANyway: Abortion is not a decision that people make lightly. You don't think that a woman who is considering abortion internally considers or externally discusses the viewpoints we are discussing here? Because she does. Her doctors will talk to her about it, too, simply because quite a few women who had abortions have later struggled with their choices, or have faced social stigma for having made such a decision. I do not think there should be laws that make that process even more difficult. Rather, society should ensure that as few people as possible have to make that decision at all.
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Being a married man with three kids, I seriously doubt contraception failure is a major reason for abortions
You'd be massively wrong then. It's not the biggest reason but quite a few abortions are carried out by people who used contraception rigorously. A 99% success rate doesn't mean that much when we're dealing with something that every couple are doing.
Oh and if you're going to talk about talk about contraceptive failure, it's probably not a good idea to mention having 3 kids before claiming you understand contraceptives. You invite way too many cheap shots. :p
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
That doesn't make any sense. Obviously you don't think that killing a living being means murder.
Also the abortion debate isn't primarily about legal definitions anyway, but about whether it's wrong or not, so insisting on applying this or that legal label on it isn't going to do anything.
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Abortion is a murder. No matter the reasons, no matter the stage. You either kill a living being or a material from which that being can grow.
by this definition, masturbation is also murder.
Wouldn't miscarriages be manslaughter in that same vein?
I wasn't precise enough. By "material" I meant inseminated combination of semen and ovum.
You can't grow a human being from semen itself <not now at least xD>, so no :P
To be honest I could tolerate abortion if it could be executed before the nervous system develops. At least it would have been painless.
Misscarriage is also not. It's an organism's reaction which can be caused by many reasons, mostly independent from us. Yet abortion is a concious act. And here's the hook.
And, for the record. I'm not any radical "prolife fighter" is somebody is worried ;) I try to make my statements based on my own perception.
#Zookeeper I should have written "human being" if that's what you meant.
If an concious abortion of a pregnancy in for example advanced development is not a murder, then we're done here.
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#Zookeeper I should have written "human being" if that's what you meant.
Yes. Because, you know, the 4-celled dog embryo vs the 4-celled human embryo from the previous thread. There's no difference between them which would have relevance to whether it's ok to kill it or not, aside from magical thinking.
If an concious abortion of a pregnancy in for example advanced development is not a murder, then we're done here.
I don't care that much about what gets labeled murder in a discussion and what doesn't, as long as no one makes it into a circular argument and starts saying that it's bad/wrong because it's murder, or feigns outrage when someone for example points out that the new wider definition of murder simply makes not all murders be wrong. But as we know, someone always does.
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Being a married man with three kids, I seriously doubt contraception failure is a major reason for abortions
You'd be massively wrong then. It's not the biggest reason but quite a few abortions are carried out by people who used contraception rigorously. A 99% success rate doesn't mean that much when we're dealing with something that every couple are doing.
Oh and if you're going to talk about talk about contraceptive failure, it's probably not a good idea to mention having 3 kids before claiming you understand contraceptives. You invite way too many cheap shots. :p
Yeah, failures will happen, just the law of averages. However when you consider a 99% success rate and then you consider only a handful of those will get an abortion, the idea that a huge number of abortions are a result of failure is unlikely.
They can take cheap shots if they want too, but we got pregnant with all three when not using contraception. Otherwise we are 100%. Our three kids were not planned not prevented. We understood how it all works beforehand. That said, I've got to throw a shameless plug that my kids are awesome. :D
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Yeah, failures will happen, just the law of averages. However when you consider a 99% success rate and then you consider only a handful of those will get an abortion, the idea that a huge number of abortions are a result of failure is unlikely.
Look up some statistics, then talk to me. Cause right now you're just talking about something you clearly don't understand. Last time I looked it was over 10% of abortions. And if you don't feel that is a large number of abortions, you've just lost any right to complain about abortion.
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Yeah, failures will happen, just the law of averages. However when you consider a 99% success rate and then you consider only a handful of those will get an abortion, the idea that a huge number of abortions are a result of failure is unlikely.
Look up some statistics, then talk to me. Cause right now you're just talking about something you clearly don't understand. Last time I looked it was over 10% of abortions. And if you don't feel that is a large number of abortions, you've just lost any right to complain about abortion.
Come on now, if ten percent is correct which I'm sure is still fudged high due to the fact that some people would no doubt rather claim their contraception failed than admit they failed.
But even at ten percent, that is not a "major" reason for abortions. Personally I was thinking between three and five percent on my last post. If we say a cancer had a ten percent chance of killing you, major wouldn't be the word 99% of people would use. No doubt ten percent is a lot of abortions, but contraception failure is not a major cause even by your number.
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Actually, if cancer had a 10% chance of killing you, I would still consider this rather major. There are very few ailments that actually have a chance of killing you in the first place with our current medicine.
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Actually, if cancer had a 10% chance of killing you, I would still consider this rather major. There are very few ailments that actually have a chance of killing you in the first place with our current medicine.
But as far as cancer goes that would be pretty good odds, right? If a doctor told me that I had cancer, but that I had a 90% chance I would live ten years I would be feeling pretty good. Now if he said I had a 60% chance that wouldn't be so good.
Another way to look at it is if they have a team a 10% chance of an upset, that isn't a major chance by any stretch of the imagination.
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Actually, if cancer had a 10% chance of killing you, I would still consider this rather major. There are very few ailments that actually have a chance of killing you in the first place with our current medicine.
But as far as cancer goes that would be pretty good odds, right? If a doctor told me that I had cancer, but that I had a 90% chance I would live ten years I would be feeling pretty good. Now if he said I had a 60% chance that wouldn't be so good.
Another way to look at it is if they have a team a 10% chance of an upset, that isn't a major chance by any stretch of the imagination.
Depends on the type of cancer and when treatment begins. Here's a chart with 5 year mortality rate of patients diagnosed with various types of cancer. See the far right column on page 1.
http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2012/results_merged/topic_survival.pdf
Some survival rates are just awful at less than 10% while some are around 90%. This is only a 5 year chart though and it doesn't seem to suggest the patients are cured/safe from future incidences.
In terms of death, 10% is very high. That's a higher likelihood of dying than being drafted to fight WW2 as an American.
But this is getting off topic. I'll pose a different argument. Abortion in economic lingo has a high (abstract) social/transport cost. Having an abortion isn't as simple as taking a pill or putting on a condom. This means (if properly educated), most people are probably already using contraceptives first. This is the one of the rare places where I would advocate having lengthy and "needless" bureaucracy. If you still believe abortion would be too easy to initiate, then we can add in some extra red tape just to make the cost of getting an abortion even higher. IMO, the cost is already high enough to incentivise taking other measures first.
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And Kara, I'm not trying to be obtuse in any shape or fashion. If I misrepresented or misunderstood your original post, I apologize.
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Do you value people who don't exist, or do you value freedom?
I value freedom.
(Obviously this is simplistic, and it's not meant to be all encompassing of every possible position on the pro/anti-choice spectrum, but that's the basic conundrum)
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A pro-lifer would probably say that the people in question do exist.
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And thereby assume by default that freedom is less valuable - despite the amount of blood we (as a nation and as a global society) shed in order to preserve it.
There is an implicit declaration of priorities in that decision that I emphatically reject.
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By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.
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@Scotty: Sure. I just disagreed with your framing of the issue.
The abortion debate isn't really about nonexistent people vs. freedom (or women's rights, or bodily autonomy). The crux of the debate is personhood. If everyone agreed on a definition of "person", I think the entire debate would immediately dissolve.
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By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.
Funny, I have a few dozen (hundred) wars fought that say literally the exact opposite.
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By prioritizing people over freedom, one assumes by default that freedom is less valuable than people? I doubt you'll find many people in either side who have much of a problem with that.
Funny, I have a few dozen (hundred) wars fought that say literally the exact opposite.
You should really be less cryptic and maybe just say what you mean. I have no idea what you've meant by "valuing people" if you're saying that 1) you think valuing freedom is more important than valuing people and 2) lots of wars have been fought for freedom in a way which has been at odds with valuing people.
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Scotty, I'm going to assume I agree with your position, but that's a really ****ty argument.
Using the same logic, you should be free to do a whole bunch of things to the detriment of everyone because freedom.
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Typically, when assigning priority to a selection of items, it's pretty indicative of relative value. If you prioritize people over freedom, you assume by default that freedom is less valuable than people. If you do not, then you aren't really prioritizing people over freedom, are you?
The very act of fighting a war for freedom indicates a value judgment placing it above human life. This is a pretty consistent trend over human history! Why, then, does it suddenly reverse when we get to the topic of abortion? Why does human life suddenly become so much more important in this one instance?
It doesn't. But it's a pretty convenient excuse for what is in reality a deeply personal disgust or distaste with the methods used. I'm not one to judge on whether that reaction is appropriate or not, and I'm sure as **** never going to force someone to get an abortion. That's barbaric and cruel.
And that's really the crux of my pro-choice standing. It's a choice, go ahead and see the pregnancy to term! Have children, don't get any abortions ever. It's your choice. Being pro-choice does not inherently mean being pro-abortion. It means being pro-choice. If it's ever up to me (and likely it will not be, for various reason), and it was my spouse dealing with this issue, I would probably want to keep the baby! But having that choice is vitally important, for societal, economic, and psychological reasons.
Being pro-life is being anti-freedom.
I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born, not a child educated, not a child housed. That's not pro-life, that's pro-birth.
Hope that's clear enough for you, zookeeper.
Scotty, I'm going to assume I agree with your position, but that's a really ****ty argument.
Using the same logic, you should be free to do a whole bunch of things to the detriment of everyone because freedom.
See: my arguments regarding bodily integrity in the other thread. I sort of jumped ahead past the half dozen people not understanding what any of that meant and instead started at the core issue.
Liberty of one comes to an end where liberty of another begins.
My position on the matter is that bodily integrity is sacrosanct. No person may be forced to provide a part of their body to another in order to continue that other's existence. This is the most basic nugget at the center of the issue, and is the driving force behind my declaration of freedom > human life. Unless you're going to start demanding that people be forced to donate blood, and people with perfect matches for organ donors be forced to donate non-essential organs, you cannot then also demand that women be forced to carry a fetus to term without being a massive hypocrite. It's saying "I value your freedom, except when the results of it offend me."
EDIT: that "you" is non-specific.
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But even at ten percent, that is not a "major" reason for abortions. Personally I was thinking between three and five percent on my last post. If we say a cancer had a ten percent chance of killing you, major wouldn't be the word 99% of people would use. No doubt ten percent is a lot of abortions, but contraception failure is not a major cause even by your number.
If you think something that causes 30,000 to 50,000 abortions a year in America alone using your figures isn't a major cause of abortions, if you think that number is minor, you should stop talking about the subject as if you're pro-life.
I did warn you to look up the statistics. :p
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Scotty, you are stating two very different things as being equivalent.
You are stating that bodily integrity is the same things as uncategorized freedom, which I'm going to assume that is simply an error with your previous statements.
As it is, you are also inadvertently justifying things like breaking and entering.
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I'm discussing a specific case here (abortion), and using the concept of bodily integrity to state my position. Since nobody could actually figure out what bodily integrity meant last time, I took a short cut and used that quote to help define it.
We're not discussing breaking and entering, nor are we discussing concepts that must inherently be discussed when discussing the morality and legality of those things (most notably and visibly the social contract).
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I must have missed all those wars we had because of abortions then.
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Important elaboration on Scotty's position from IRC: Scotty believes that a woman has a total, uninterferable right to bodily autonomy over the life of the foetus, except he also thinks this is superseded by the time the foetus can feel pain and by then she had plenty of time to make her mind up anyway.
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In large part yes: I think it's inhumane to conduct an abortion if the fetus is developed enough to feel pain (while I don't think I ever strictly stated it should be illegal, before that gets brought by some stickler, I think it's a pretty good line to define the moral acceptability of the decision).
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And this is, of course, a profoundly anti-freedom position by your own admission.
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So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?
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I said inhumane, I didn't say illegal. If inhumane meant illegal none of us would ever eat another hamburger. I think there should be measures put in place to minimize the occurrence of late-term abortions by way of education and a societal allowance of discussion of the process (and alternatives) before it ever becomes an issue.
Abortion should be available on principle. That doesn't mean it's always morally right. The alternative is unsanctioned abortions that put everyone involved at risk, not just the fetus.
So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?
There's no possibly about it: the concept of personhood is and will be significantly more nebulous than the concept of freedom is. It serves to illustrate my position and the reasons for it. The reason why I believe something is just as important to me as what I believe.
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Scotty, are we to assume you support legalization of abortion for fetuses 9 months in?
I bring this up because that's the only possible way you can justify the argument that personhood is more nebulous than freedom in the context of this argument.
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So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?
Ditto. As I said before, personhood is the core of the issue; it's the crucial point on which the two sides disagree. Everything else is a sideshow.
For example, arguments about bodily autonomy would hold no weight with a pro-lifer. They'd probably say, "Yes, bodily autonomy is important. But the right to life trumps the right to bodily autonomy, and the fetus has the right to life." The same would apply to freedom, women's rights, and so on.
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Legalization? I think I've been pretty clear about that (the answer is yes, without contradicting myself, which I'm obviously not going to do because then I might as well have posted 'lol **** pro-lifers' for all the good my post would have done).
That said, I've also been pretty damn clear about what I personally think about the practice. I think it's inhumane. I think that if the option existed at all before the point at which a fetus feels pain it should have been taken prior. I'd personally suggest a lot of the current measures implemented in states where abortion is technically legal, but strongly frowned upon by the sitting government (information on the alternatives, the process itself, the effects of the process, potential complications, etc.).
But I think it's pretty interesting that we're not longer discussing whether abortion in the broadly painted sense should be legal or not, and instead decided to spend the conversation cross-referencing my personal viewpoint for tiny inconsistencies! Much more productive.
So then why bring the nebulous concept of freedom instead of the (admittedly possibly equally nebulous) concept of personhood, sentience or some other form of categorization of living beings, which has been the whole point of the entire discussion?
Ditto. As I said before, personhood is the core of the issue; it's the crucial point on which the two sides disagree. Everything else is a sideshow.
For example, arguments about bodily autonomy would hold no weight with a pro-lifer. They'd probably say, "Yes, bodily autonomy is important. But the right to life trumps the right to bodily autonomy, and the fetus has the right to life." The same would apply to freedom, women's rights, and so on.
I would very much like you to answer that question I asked a few posts back about forcing people to donate blood or organs if someone else needed them to live.
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The reason why I believe something is just as important to me as what I believe.
But I think it's pretty interesting that we're not longer discussing whether abortion in the broadly painted sense should be legal or not, and instead decided to spend the conversation cross-referencing my personal viewpoint for tiny inconsistencies! Much more productive.
Pick one.
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I would very much like you to answer that question I asked a few posts back about forcing people to donate blood or organs if someone else needed them to live.
Good point. I don't know the standard pro-life stance on organ donations, but I'll state my own position: unless you're directly responsible for someone's condition, you have no moral obligation to give them your organs.
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I would very much like you to answer that question I asked a few posts back about forcing people to donate blood or organs if someone else needed them to live.
Good point. I don't know the standard pro-life stance on organ donations, but I'll state my own position: unless you're directly responsible for someone's condition, you have no moral obligation to give them your organs.
So if someone caused a car accident that damaged a person's kidneys beyond operation or repair, you'd force them to give up a kidney for it, were they compatible? A liver? A heart?
I can do hypotheticals, too! :D
The reason why I believe something is just as important to me as what I believe.
But I think it's pretty interesting that we're not longer discussing whether abortion in the broadly painted sense should be legal or not, and instead decided to spend the conversation cross-referencing my personal viewpoint for tiny inconsistencies! Much more productive.
Pick one.
I don't see anything mutually exclusive here. It does matter to me why I think what I think. I've been pretty clear on that. I don't think it's productive quibbling the minutiae when we haven't even settled the main issue.
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So if someone caused a car accident that damaged a person's kidneys beyond operation or repair, you'd force them to give up a kidney for it, were they compatible? A liver? A heart?
you're just after saying you think abortion is immoral if the foetus can feel pain; Ghyl, you should try turning his hypotheticals around to pick at that
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I don't think anyone on this thread is claiming that abortion should be completely illegal on all circumstances, most of the discussion is on when it should stop to be legal. Then you start arguing that the matter is about freedom and start a discussion where apparently all abortion, no matter the circumstances should be legal.
When I first engaged with you I thought that the reason why you would take a position was important too, like the first quote would lead to believe. But then you dismiss all discussion of this as quibbling on minutiae.
Admittedly I started this exchange mistaken on your position because I had no idea that people existed that claimed all abortion should be legal. So if that's your position, now I understand why you would attempt to argue for freedom.
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I thought I was being pretty clear about bodily integrity earlier. At this point I'm asking Ghyl to define his own position, since this particular point is a major source of contention between our ideologies.
I don't think anyone on this thread is claiming that abortion should be completely illegal on all circumstances, most of the discussion is on when it should stop to be legal. Then you start arguing that the matter is about freedom and start a discussion where apparently all abortion, no matter the circumstances should be legal.
When I first engaged with you I thought that the reason why you would take a position was important too, like the first quote would lead to believe. But then you dismiss all discussion of this as quibbling on minutiae.
Admittedly I started this exchange mistaken on your position because I had no idea that people existed that claimed all abortion should be legal. So if that's your position, now I understand why you would attempt to argue for freedom.
I certainly didn't dismiss all of it; there were a good 20 or so posts on the subject, and I answered the questions posed. I wanted to make sure we didn't lose sight of the major issue: that is to say, whether abortion should be legal and at what point it should cease to be. Pretty sure I answered that! Pretty sure I also answered what I thought about it (it's not positive). I'm aware of why I think the way I do, I articulated as much. If that's distasteful to you, it's not really my place to tell you not to be. Quite frankly, even though I think it should be 'legal' I don't like the thought of it happening. To say otherwise (that is, to say that it should be illegal after a certain point) would make me a hypocrite by my own words, and I'm well aware of that. If the impression you got was that "I don't think anyone on this thread is claiming that abortion should be completely illegal on all circumstances," you clearly missed Col.Hornet's introduction to the thread.
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He claimed at least three circumstances where it should be allowed.
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He also unequivocally called all three of those cases murder. Pretty sure murder is illegal! That aside, though, I had forgotten those three exceptions he posted. That's what I get for skimming on a phone earlier. It doesn't really change how deeply we disagree on the subject (also, congrats on once again nitpicking and missing the main point of the post. This is why discussions on HLP are ****).
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I thought I was being pretty clear about bodily integrity earlier.
So did I, which is why I'm now terribly confused that you think it's immoral to exercise your bodily autonomy if it causes pain to a foetus.
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@Scotty: If someone's organs are irreparably damaged through your wrongdoing, then (IMO) you have a moral obligation to give them your organs, or something of "equal value". Should you be forced to? That's a messier question, but I would say yes.
Obviously, this scenario is different from abortion. Since the fetus will die, abortion is closest to the "heart donation" scenario - except the donor won't die. (And again, the fetus' personhood is in question.)
@Phantom: I have trouble determining when you're being sarcastic. My rule of thumb is, "if Phantom's typing in all-lowercase, then he's being sarcastic". :p
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He also unequivocally called all three of those cases murder. Pretty sure murder is illegal! That aside, though, I had forgotten those three exceptions he posted. That's what I get for skimming on a phone earlier. It doesn't really change how deeply we disagree on the subject (also, congrats on once again nitpicking and missing the main point of the post. This is why discussions on HLP are ****).
Oh come on... why is it whenever I defend my argument you accuse me of nitpicking or quibbling on minutiae? You specifically called me out on
If the impression you got was that "I don't think anyone on this thread is claiming that abortion should be completely illegal on all circumstances," you clearly missed Col.Hornet's introduction to the thread.
but I'm not allowed to respond to it?
Is discussion only not **** when everyone agrees and forms an echo chamber?
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Well, if we're going to be pedantic about it, I think I said "inhumane", which it is regardless of whether I think it's immoral or not. I don't think it should happen if there's an alternative (with the understanding that we're still talking about abortions at a stage late enough that the fetus can feel pain), especially given that I should certainly hope that there's been ample time to reach a decision before that point. I would personally deeply disapprove. I don't think I can genuinely call that thinking it 'immoral'.
You do bring up a good point though (at least someone does). It gives me something to think about.
but I'm not allowed to respond to it?
Is discussion only not **** when everyone agrees and forms an echo chamber?
Ideally you'd respond to the substance of a post as well! You didn't, you picked out arguably the least important single sentence of the post, and addressed it exclusively.
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How do you respond to a post where you agree with the majority of it, but there's a part of it that you don't?
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PMs. :P
Or don't respond.
That's not intended in a negative fashion; tiny little disagreements like that are a large portion of why HLP is **** at debates of substance.
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I personally haven't found a better place on the internet...
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That's not intended in a negative fashion; tiny little disagreements like that are a large portion of why HLP is **** at debates of substance.
Or you know you could debate it public and just note that your issue is with an exclusive segment, like sane people.
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Here's two PMs at the suggestion of Scotty
Isn't the point of having forums and open threads to present arguments in an open manner?
I liken these discussions to be like sharpening a rock. If there are substantial disagreements, there is going to be a whole lot of rock smashing. But you eventually reach a point where you are sharpening a blade, and there is only going to be small details that will collide. In this case I thought, mistakenly, that we were on the same position, i.e. abortion should be legal until an arbitrary date, which is why I engaged with you. Either I would convince you your argument was wrong, or you'd present counter-arguments for why your argument was better than those proposed before, e.g. using personhood as the defining feature regarding legality.
I'm not going to lie and tell you that you didn't present some good counter-arguments, e.g. concerning the donation of organs, which I'm unsure how to adjust my position to that. However, I still think that the freedom argument would be wrong, because in my opinion, which evidently you don't share as you expressed these would be only used for this context, these same arguments could be used other situations to deprive people of quality of life. That is, I like an argument where the applicability of it is as large as possible.
Anyway, to prevent me from babbling on, if we don't present these disagreements on an open thread, how can we improve our arguments or (most crucially) allow others lurking to improve theirs?
It is! The issue I had with the response I received wasn't one of quantity or depth of disagreement, it was of how little it overall contributed to the conversation! On a public forum, the actual substance of a discussion is only one part of the public awareness of a discussion. I've seen more threads on HLP (and elsewhere) than I care to admit (and a smaller number that I care even less to admit that I contributed to) get bogged down in the details that don't really affect the core substance of the debate, but which disrupt the discussion such that it no longer continues in a constructive manner.
After that abominable mouthful of a sentence, this is arguably what happened in the last abortion thread, just a couple days ago.
My arguments using the concept of Bodily Integrity stem from a core belief of mine: personal self-determination is the highest priority for any government or social construct to enable someone to experience. In a slightly more digestible mouthful: The right to have control over one's own body is the most important right. All other rights must eventually stem from this one. This ideal is human self-expression in the most basic sense. Bodily Integrity, the concept of being ultimately and personally responsible for every part of one's own body.
Responsibility does not preclude abuse or misuse. I personally would never try to convince my spouse (should I ever have one capable of having children) to get an abortion, and would try to dissuade her if she did! I would not (could not) demand it, but that is her choice. It is her body, and I have no dominion over any part of it - and neither should anyone else. I would be extremely disappointed in anyone who chose to undergo a late-term abortion; I think it's inhumane, but I will fight to the death for that person's right to control her own body under any circumstance, and I don't think that she should suffer legal consequence for exercising that right. There will always be consequences (it's a choice, after all), but legally I think there should be none. (Special note: I can already hear the objection to alcohol and drug use, to which I would redirect you back to the whole "your freedom ends where my nose begins" quote; legally allowed to use, and legally allowed to operate equipment and vehicles under the influence are radically different concepts)
This doesn't excuse second and third order effects of exercising rights, to wit: trespassing, breaking and entering, breaking the law in other ways, etc.
I think it might be helpful to post these messages in the thread, since they've been pretty good discussion!
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Well then, Scotty, I think we might be able to finally get to the core of the matter.
The right to have control over one's own body is the most important right. All other rights must eventually stem from this one. This ideal is human self-expression in the most basic sense. Bodily Integrity, the concept of being ultimately and personally responsible for every part of one's own body.
I can't find anything in this definition that I actually disagree with. But here's the problem: it has to be applied consistently. It seems pretty clear that if your body is destroyed, and you have no choice in the matter, this is very clearly a violation of the above defined right. You acknowledged in the previous thread that you applied this right to an unborn baby when we both agreed that selling said baby's organs was wrong. But how, then, is the baby's right to bodily integrity intact if said baby's body is destroyed?
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I still have yet to hear a good explanation for why a lump of undifferentiated cells is a baby.
I know the response is that it will become a person, but that is an admission that it isn't yet a person. In no other case can I think of is treating a thing as what it will be rather than what it is presently considered remotely rational. it's like the concept of time is thrown out the window for the sake of the presupposed conclusion.
I don't think a distinction between who's rights take priority is the core of the matter because even lower level than that is this, the disagreement about how many "who"s are involved.
Maybe we should make several threads on the subject because there are multiple arguments going on with different premises. maybe one about when personhood starts and a separate one where the thread presupposes as a given that personhood starts at some arbitrary point, and a few others for other similar sub-arguments.
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I still have yet to hear a good explanation for why a lump of undifferentiated cells is a baby.
I know the response is that it will become a person, but that is an admission that it isn't yet a person. In no other case can I think of is treating a thing as what it will be rather than what it is presently considered remotely rational. it's like the concept of time is thrown out the window for the sake of the presupposed conclusion.
I don't think a distinction between who's rights take priority is the core of the matter because even lower level than that is this, the disagreement about how many "who"s are involved.
Note that I directed this post to Scotty, who had already acknowledged that the baby deserved some kind of rights. Before I can engage your position I need to know when you, specifically, believe that a fetus becomes a human with rights.
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Ultimately? Irrelevant. If the woman decides that she will no longer provide her uterus to the fetus, than that's the final say in the matter. You cannot preserve rights by violating rights; it's paradoxical. If you decide that the woman must carry the fetus to term, then you are violating her bodily integrity. Period. It's unacceptable. Violating her rights in order to attempt to preserve rights is an exercise in hypocrisy.
And you're still not using "bodily integrity" right. It has nothing to do with the integrity of the body, despite the name, which is the impression I'm still getting from you.
EDIT: And now thanks to the wonders of retail, I need to get to bed. My responses will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon.
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Ultimately? Irrelevant. If the woman decides that she will no longer provide her uterus to the fetus, than that's the final say in the matter. You cannot preserve rights by violating rights; it's paradoxical. If you decide that the woman must carry the fetus to term, then you are violating her bodily integrity. Period. It's unacceptable. Violating her rights in order to attempt to preserve rights is an exercise in hypocrisy.
And you're still not using "bodily integrity" right. It has nothing to do with the integrity of the body, despite the name, which is the impression I'm still getting from you.
A. But by aborting the baby, you are violating the baby's rights to preserve the perceived rights of the mother. And the baby is not merely providing bodily support to another person, it's having it's bodily completely stolen, a much larger violation. The alternative is simply to wait a brief time until the two rights are no longer in conflict, and both parties can leave alive and well.
B. A clarifying question, then. If you or I were killed and dismembered by an ISIS member, then it's pretty clear that the ISIS member is violating our right to life. Is he also violating our right to bodily integrity, under your definition?
EDIT: Ninja'd about retail. Better get back to studying myself. :P
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@InsaneBaron
I do not believe that it happens at a singular given point of time but rather that it happens gradually over the course of the first year and a half post birth. I would be willing to accept a baby lacks personhood for several months post birth but would feel it appropriate to grant it the most basic of rights (life) during this time due to the fact it is certainly alive and highly valued by definite persons during this period. I would be willing to push these rights back a month or two in exchange for an end to this argument, but there is no one who has the authority to make that deal on behalf of all pro-lifers, but for the sake of argument we can pretend that you have such authority if you would like. As for now, for practical matters, to be on the safe side, and the reasons mentioned above I make an arbitrary line for effective personhood at birth even though I think the evidence for this is flimsy at best.
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... Drawing the line at birth isn't on the safe side at all. Anything past that point would be extreme.
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Ultimately? Irrelevant. If the woman decides that she will no longer provide her uterus to the fetus, than that's the final say in the matter. You cannot preserve rights by violating rights; it's paradoxical. If you decide that the woman must carry the fetus to term, then you are violating her bodily integrity. Period. It's unacceptable. Violating her rights in order to attempt to preserve rights is an exercise in hypocrisy.
And you're still not using "bodily integrity" right. It has nothing to do with the integrity of the body, despite the name, which is the impression I'm still getting from you.
A. But by aborting the baby, you are violating the baby's rights to preserve the perceived rights of the mother. And the baby is not merely providing bodily support to another person, it's having it's bodily completely stolen, a much larger violation. The alternative is simply to wait a brief time until the two rights are no longer in conflict, and both parties can leave alive and well.
B. A clarifying question, then. If you or I were killed and dismembered by an ISIS member, then it's pretty clear that the ISIS member is violating our right to life. Is he also violating our right to bodily integrity, under your definition?
A) You have your descriptions backwards. You're violating the mother's rights to avoid violatin the perceived rights of the fetus (it's not a baby until it's born!). Which is leaving aside the fact that you're still violating rights. You're also declaring that the fetus is worth more than a current, living, breathing human being. And I would absolutely love to hear you tell somebody who wants to get an abortion that you're going to violate their rights for "only" nine relatively unpleasant months in order to force her to have a baby she doesn't want and possibly can't care for.
If a man needed a kidney, but only for nine months until a new one can be cloned and grown and the donate returned (magic medical advancement for the sake of example here) or he would die, a man who had a perfect match with him would not be obligated to provide it. He cannot be forced to do so. The duration is utterly irrelevant. It does not ****ing matter how long or short it lasts, telling someone that they do not have the right to their own body parts is unconscionable.
B) Can we cut it out with the hypotheticals? I've been pretty clear on exactly what bodily integrity means, how far it extends, and to whom it extends. But if you absolutely insist: the act of killing someone, believe it or not, does not violate bodily integrity. That's not what bodily integrity means.
The right to have control over one's own body is the most important right. All other rights must eventually stem from this one. This ideal is human self-expression in the most basic sense. Bodily Integrity, the concept of being ultimately and personally responsible for every part of one's own body.
This is what bodily integrity means. It says absolutely nothing about harm. It says absolutely nothing about actual, physical integrity. It doesn't give a single **** whether the body in question is alive or dead, and sure as hell doesn't care if it's been destroyed. This is because it's not (in the grand scheme of things) a physical idea. Bodily integrity is being allowed to assume responsibility for one's own body. (You may also note that I have never once used the phrase 'right to life'.)
A fetus cannot survive outside of a uterus before it is carried to term (or reasonably close). If a woman decides that she does not agree to having the baby in her uterus, the fact that the fetus is non-viable outside of it does not matter.
If you don't understand it by now, nothing I can say or explain will make you.
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... Drawing the line at birth isn't on the safe side at all. Anything past that point would be extreme.
maybe I worded that overly conservative... to be clear, that is the lower bound for personhood. Not all rights are necessarily dependent on that. I say effective personhood because once the conflict of rights is resolved whatever you want to call a baby's status at that point it's certainly deserving of effectively the same rights as any other person, even if it isn't a person (I'm saying here the distinction is moot), simply due to the combination of the fact it is simply alive and highly valued by definite persons. Value placed by persons is why I consider pets to have higher rights than livestock which have higher rights than wild animals.
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OK, that makes me less worried.
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A. But by aborting the baby, you are violating the baby's rights to preserve the perceived rights of the mother.
Even if I agreed with this argument (which I don't) you're making a massive assumption here that you've not really addressed. Why should the foetus (which is completely dependent on the mother for its entire existence) automatically have the same rights as the mother?
It's not like we don't already grant children fewer rights than adults on the basis that parents are responsible for them.
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I thought I was being pretty clear about bodily integrity earlier.
So did I, which is why I'm now terribly confused that you think it's immoral to exercise your bodily autonomy if it causes pain to a foetus.
There is no contradiction here when you realize that just because something is a right does not mean it also has to be moral. I can exercise my bodily autonomy by becoming a drunk and it is my right and yet it is certainly immoral, too. Just not immoral enough to be illegal. I dont share Scottys opinion on abortion but this criticism is not valid, IMHO.
Anyway, in late term the pregnancy can usually be ended without killing the foetus, because it is viable. Thats why argument about bodily autonomy becomes much weaker in third trimester. At the same time, the argument that the foetus is now a person becomes much stronger because it is a lot more developed.
I think these two facts are really why most pro-choice people are only pro-choice in early-term, myself included.
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At the same time, the argument that the foetus is now a person becomes much stronger because it is a lot more developed.
As the foetus becomes more developed I would argue that it gains more rights. I have no issue with an 8 cell embryo being used for medical research. I doubt you can find anyone who would say the same at 8 month old.
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An 8 month old fetus can survive outside the mother thanks to advancements in medical tech. Could it at that point be considered a baby and as such being a person with rights?
It's the line the Christian parties in the Netherlands are going for: As soon as a fetus is old enough to survive outside the mother's body, that's where the line between baby and fetus is drawn. This seems like a reasonable compromise.
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Scotty, I could say that you're violating the rights of the baby to protect the rights of the mother, but I already said that, and we could throw those two arguments back and forth at eachother until the Shivans glass Earth without getting anywhere. Even if I stipulate that pregnancy is a violation of the mother's rights (I have qualms about so labeling an essential part of human propagation), the violation of the baby's rights is far greater than the violation of the mother's rights; the little guy is losing literally everything.
Thanks for clarifying your definition of Bodily Integrity, but the problem is, this definition isn't consistent. If A. Bodily Integrity requires that I have jurisdiction of my body, and B. A person can destroy my body, it's self-contradictory to claim that my bodily integrity is intact. Doesn't bodily integrity include the right to keep my heart beating? No one would claim that stealing was a violation of the right to property, but vandalism wasn't.
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the violation of the baby's rights is far greater than the violation of the mother's rights
Once again, you're assuming equal rights.
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Scotty, I could say that you're violating the rights of the baby to protect the rights of the mother, but I already said that, and we could throw those two arguments back and forth at eachother until the Shivans glass Earth without getting anywhere. Even if I stipulate that pregnancy is a violation of the mother's rights (I have qualms about so labeling an essential part of human propagation), the violation of the baby's rights is far greater than the violation of the mother's rights; the little guy is losing literally everything.
Thanks for clarifying your definition of Bodily Integrity, but the problem is, this definition isn't consistent. If A. Bodily Integrity requires that I have jurisdiction of my body, and B. A person can destroy my body, it's self-contradictory to claim that my bodily integrity is intact. Doesn't bodily integrity include the right to keep my heart beating? No one would claim that stealing was a violation of the right to property, but vandalism wasn't.
You're assuming second order effects are equivalent to first order effects (especially when it comes to abortion). They are not.
The (ideal) goal (that I'm basing my entire definition on) during an abortion is not "kill the fetus". The goal is "remove the fetus from the uterus". The fact that the fetus cannot survive outside the uterus is a regrettable second order effect.
An abortion does not violate the fetus's bodily integrity. Using the parts afterward arguably does (and I think I've stated my position on that a couple times).
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the violation of the baby's rights is far greater than the violation of the mother's rights
Once again, you're assuming equal rights.
And you're assuming one isn't a human being. Check this out:
http://www.prolifehumanists.org/
Look, what distinguishes an unborn baby from, say, me? Biological differences? There's an immense biological difference between me and a newborn; there's an even bigger biological difference between me and a woman; neither of these have any moral relevance. Consciousness or intelligence, like Bobb suggested? The difference in consciousness between me and a newborn is an order of magnitude greater than the difference between a newborn and an unborn. None of that has any moral relevance. It's still a human being, created equal, with certain, unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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You're assuming second order effects are equivalent to first order effects (especially when it comes to abortion). They are not.
The (ideal) goal (that I'm basing my entire definition on) during an abortion is not "kill the fetus". The goal is "remove the fetus from the uterus". The fact that the fetus cannot survive outside the uterus is a regrettable second order effect.
Why does that matter? Both are still effects of the action, and an abortion that did not kill the unborn would be considered a failure. If I throw a rock at another rock, and that rock rolls into a rock, and that rock rolls into a rock, until all the rocks come crashing down the mountain and flatten your house, and I knew that would happen, I've just vandalized your house.
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Using that kind of retarded logic you'd have to also force people to donate blood if people are dying when there's not enough compatible blood available.
It's really not your responsibility to care for another person's well being. If medicine ever finds a way then it will be on the state, NOT YOU, to preserve that foetus.
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Scotty, I could say that you're violating the rights of the baby to protect the rights of the mother, but I already said that, and we could throw those two arguments back and forth at eachother until the Shivans glass Earth without getting anywhere. Even if I stipulate that pregnancy is a violation of the mother's rights (I have qualms about so labeling an essential part of human propagation), the violation of the baby's rights is far greater than the violation of the mother's rights; the little guy is losing literally everything.
As long as the mother is okay with carrying the baby, no violation of bodily integrity occurs (just as your financial autonomy is not impacted by your decision to pay your bills).
However, if after due deliberation a mother decides that she will not carry that child to term and that an abortion is the correct course of action, then her wishes must take precedence over those of the unborn child, if bodily autonomy is a concept we wish to stick to.
Placing restrictions on abortions sets a precedent for the needs of one person overriding the wishes of another, which I believe to be a bad thing.
As was pointed out earlier, IMO, "Pro-Life" is a misnomer in a way. The position is more accurately called "Pro-Birth", as its proponents place a high value on children being born, but not as much value on the childs' quality of life afterward. I would submit to you that lowering the ancillary costs of childbearing and childrearing (as in, the opportunity cost a mother incurs by dropping out of the workplace for a year or two, the financial burdens of getting adequate medical attention during and after pregnancy for all people involved, the running costs of raising a child until he or she is ready to live by him- or herself...) is a much more effective strategy in terms of getting women to agree to a pregnancy than any amount of picketing in front of women's health institutions or moralizing could ever be.
Thanks for clarifying your definition of Bodily Integrity, but the problem is, this definition isn't consistent. If A. Bodily Integrity requires that I have jurisdiction of my body, and B. A person can destroy my body, it's self-contradictory to claim that my bodily integrity is intact. Doesn't bodily integrity include the right to keep my heart beating? No one would claim that stealing was a violation of the right to property, but vandalism wasn't.
When is an unborn child a person? When is it granted its own set of rights? That's the only relevant question in this regard.
Personally, I draw the line at "able to live outside the mother's womb", you likely have a different point in mind. But until that threshold is crossed, the rights of the mother are the only rights applicable. Afterwards, it gets murkier. The reason I draw the line at independent living (well, as independent as a newborn can be) is that such a child could feasibly be put up for adoption, and thus we can accommodate the mother's wishes without violating any rights the newborn has.
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However, if after due deliberation a mother decides that she will not carry that child to term and that an abortion is the correct course of action, then her wishes must take precedence over those of the unborn child...
Why? Why are one person's rights more important than another's?
Placing restrictions on abortions sets a precedent for the needs of one person overriding the wishes of another, which I believe to be a bad thing.
I think we both agree that a young child has a right to be cared for, because it needs that care. Why does the logic change if the baby isn't born yet? Either way the little guy is dependent on his or her parents.
As was pointed out earlier, IMO, "Pro-Life" is a misnomer in a way. The position is more accurately called "Pro-Birth", as its proponents place a high value on children being born, but not as much value on the childs' quality of life afterward. I would submit to you that lowering the ancillary costs of childbearing and childrearing (as in, the opportunity cost a mother incurs by dropping out of the workplace for a year or two, the financial burdens of getting adequate medical attention during and after pregnancy for all people involved, the running costs of raising a child until he or she is ready to live by him- or herself...) is a much more effective strategy in terms of getting women to agree to a pregnancy than any amount of picketing in front of women's health institutions or moralizing could ever be.
Then by all means, let's lower the costs! Not sure why this excludes trying to make abortion illegal, or talking an individual person out of having one.
When is an unborn child a person? When is it granted its own set of rights? That's the only relevant question in this regard.
Personally, I draw the line at "able to live outside the mother's womb", you likely have a different point in mind. But until that threshold is crossed, the rights of the mother are the only rights applicable. Afterwards, it gets murkier. The reason I draw the line at independent living (well, as independent as a newborn can be) is that such a child could feasibly be put up for adoption, and thus we can accommodate the mother's wishes without violating any rights the newborn has.
Why is independence the deciding factor? I was dependent on my parents for sixteen years, that didn't change my moral value. But even if I concede that the question is "murky", shouldn't we then err on the side of caution by eliminating even the risk of the baby dieing?
EDIT: To clarify the last one, it seems your argument on where to draw the line where the little guy has moral value is based on when he gains a certain degree of independence, and I don't see how someone's value is dependent on whether or not the can survive on their own.
EDIT: If it makes this all more palatable, here's an Atheist putting this all much better than I'm doing:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/11/yes-there-are-pro-life-atheists-out-there-heres-why-im-one-of-them/
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Okay, first off, making abortions illegal means that abortions will be performed haphazardly and dangerously. The legalization of abortion was more a case of legalizing the status quo than anything else. It's an ineffective measure because it doesn't do anything to address the issues that lead to a mother choosing to have an abortion.
Now, you may be fine with drawing your particular line at "egg cell has been fertilized and is implanted". I'm not, and I'm not going to get into specifics any further than this post. My reasoning is that, as soon as the foetus is developed enough that it can be transferred into a mechanical womb, then that procedure should be used (assuming, of course, that the state foots the bill for the procedure, the high-intensity med care that follows, and the eventual adoption). As I said, this preserves the rights of the unborn and the mother simultaneously. Before that point, all I can say is that I value the rights of an actual person higher than those of a person in potentia. I can try to rationalize this, but at its core, it's an emotional decision.
Ultimately though, I do not have the right to tell another person what he or she may do with her body. I may assist in making a decision, but it is ultimately not mine to make, and once a decision has been reached, it is my responsibility to help deal with the consequences if required. Based on that, I cannot support any attempt to reduce another's bodily autonomy through force of law.
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Okay, first off, making abortions illegal means that abortions will be performed haphazardly and dangerously. The legalization of abortion was more a case of legalizing the status quo than anything else. It's an ineffective measure because it doesn't do anything to address the issues that lead to a mother choosing to have an abortion.
Murder, theft, rape, child abuse, all these will happen whether they are legal or illegal. Doesn't mean we should make them legal.
Now, you may be fine with drawing your particular line at "egg cell has been fertilized and is implanted". I'm not, and I'm not going to get into specifics any further than this post. My reasoning is that, as soon as the foetus is developed enough that it can be transferred into a mechanical womb, then that procedure should be used (assuming, of course, that the state foots the bill for the procedure, the high-intensity med care that follows, and the eventual adoption). As I said, this preserves the rights of the unborn and the mother simultaneously.
If we can develop this procedure to the point where we can do it safely and effectively, awesome! Until then, I'm going to keep fighting discrimination against the youngest of us.
I can try to rationalize this, but at its core, it's an emotional decision.
Therein lies the problem. Emotions aren't always a reliable way to determine morality. I'm pretty sure the perpetrators of Kristalnacht, or the shooter from the last thread, were acting on their emotions rather than reason. Morality must be based on reason. Emotions can be useful, but they must be true ones (ie ones that correspond with reality.) "Jews are pigs", as we both know, is an emotion that doesn't correspond with reality. "Black lives matter" does.
Ultimately though, I do not have the right to tell another person what he or she may do with her body. I may assist in making a decision, but it is ultimately not mine to make, and once a decision has been reached, it is my responsibility to help deal with the consequences if required. Based on that, I cannot support any attempt to reduce another's bodily autonomy through force of law.
But you can support the use of law to prevent one person from violating another's rights! Blast it, you're so close!
EDIT: Apologies if I got too emotional here; it's one of those debates where the other guys are inches away from getting it and just won't quite cross the threshold...
That's what I get for debating people who actually listen :cool:
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Holy ****, I forget to check for a few days and it's up to a 100 comments...????
At work now but I'll have to look at this later.
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Typically, when assigning priority to a selection of items, it's pretty indicative of relative value. If you prioritize people over freedom, you assume by default that freedom is less valuable than people. If you do not, then you aren't really prioritizing people over freedom, are you?
The very act of fighting a war for freedom indicates a value judgment placing it above human life. This is a pretty consistent trend over human history! Why, then, does it suddenly reverse when we get to the topic of abortion? Why does human life suddenly become so much more important in this one instance?
It doesn't. But it's a pretty convenient excuse for what is in reality a deeply personal disgust or distaste with the methods used. I'm not one to judge on whether that reaction is appropriate or not, and I'm sure as **** never going to force someone to get an abortion. That's barbaric and cruel.
And that's really the crux of my pro-choice standing. It's a choice, go ahead and see the pregnancy to term! Have children, don't get any abortions ever. It's your choice. Being pro-choice does not inherently mean being pro-abortion. It means being pro-choice. If it's ever up to me (and likely it will not be, for various reason), and it was my spouse dealing with this issue, I would probably want to keep the baby! But having that choice is vitally important, for societal, economic, and psychological reasons.
Being pro-life is being anti-freedom.
I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born, not a child educated, not a child housed. That's not pro-life, that's pro-birth.
Hope that's clear enough for you, zookeeper.
Kinda. It explains your position, but of course doesn't (and I know the intent wasn't to) explain and/or justify the reasoning behind the "bodily integrity is sacrosanct" thing, the same way "human life is sacrosanct" isn't. And justifying the reasoning behind one's position is something that hardly anyone ever does in abortion debates (or other debates either, for that matter). Debate is pretty much completely pointless without that.
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If you read more, you'll figure it out, zookeeper. I actually did exactly that when talking to GhylTarvoke.
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If you read more, you'll figure it out, zookeeper. I actually did exactly that when talking to GhylTarvoke.
I don't see it. As far as I can tell, you just talked with him about forced blood/organ donations, and didn't even seem to agree (as he was ok with it in very narrow circumstances, whereas you naturally aren't).
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Using that kind of retarded logic you'd have to also force people to donate blood if people are dying when there's not enough compatible blood available.
I dont think that would be such a bad thing. I might have reservations in the general case (forcing random people to do it), but forcing a person which is directly responsible for the situation which resulted in the dying people? (this is a correct analogy for pregnancy, unless it was rape). Yeah, I would do so. I dont consider bodily autonomy to be absolute, I can certainly imagine situations when violating it to prevent greater evil would be a preferrable course of action. Just like we can say that its a bad thing to steal in general, but stealing food if you are dying of hunger can still be morally justified.
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Okay, first off, making abortions illegal means that abortions will be performed haphazardly and dangerously. The legalization of abortion was more a case of legalizing the status quo than anything else. It's an ineffective measure because it doesn't do anything to address the issues that lead to a mother choosing to have an abortion.
Murder, theft, rape, child abuse, all these will happen whether they are legal or illegal. Doesn't mean we should make them legal.
There's a massive difference here though. We can all agree that murdering someone is a crime that needs to be punished. However, we (as in, humanity as a whole) can not come to a complete and objective agreement regarding when an assortment of cells becomes "someone". Convicting someone of capital crimes when we cannot for certain say that a capital crime has occurred is stupid.
And no matter what we do, women who can't bring a child to term for whatever reason will have abortions. Whether that involves travel to a country which does not treat it as a crime, deliberately having an accident, or even more dangerous means. It is, overall better to not make this illegal, just as it is better to legalize drugs than to fight a war on them.
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Okay, first off, making abortions illegal means that abortions will be performed haphazardly and dangerously. The legalization of abortion was more a case of legalizing the status quo than anything else. It's an ineffective measure because it doesn't do anything to address the issues that lead to a mother choosing to have an abortion.
Murder, theft, rape, child abuse, all these will happen whether they are legal or illegal. Doesn't mean we should make them legal.
There's a massive difference here though. We can all agree that murdering someone is a crime that needs to be punished. However, we (as in, humanity as a whole) can not come to a complete and objective agreement regarding when an assortment of cells becomes "someone". Convicting someone of capital crimes when we cannot for certain say that a capital crime has occurred is stupid.
And no matter what we do, women who can't bring a child to term for whatever reason will have abortions. Whether that involves travel to a country which does not treat it as a crime, deliberately having an accident, or even more dangerous means. It is, overall better to not make this illegal, just as it is better to legalize drugs than to fight a war on them.
Remember that it's kinda hard to get humanity in general to agree that even outright murder is wrong; arguably the majority of societies through history permitted it in some form. Even in America, for crying out loud, it took a very long time to achieve a consensus that slavery was wrong, and racism is still a problem. Morality doesn't come from consensus.
Regarding the drug analogy, it all comes back to my right to swing my fist ending where your nose begins. Even with alchohol and marijuana, we don't let people drive under the influence. Yes, illegalizing abortion isn't a be-all-end-all solution, but it's a massive step in the right direction.
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Here's two PMs at the suggestion of Scotty
Isn't the point of having forums and open threads to present arguments in an open manner?
I liken these discussions to be like sharpening a rock. If there are substantial disagreements, there is going to be a whole lot of rock smashing. But you eventually reach a point where you are sharpening a blade, and there is only going to be small details that will collide. In this case I thought, mistakenly, that we were on the same position, i.e. abortion should be legal until an arbitrary date, which is why I engaged with you. Either I would convince you your argument was wrong, or you'd present counter-arguments for why your argument was better than those proposed before, e.g. using personhood as the defining feature regarding legality.
I'm not going to lie and tell you that you didn't present some good counter-arguments, e.g. concerning the donation of organs, which I'm unsure how to adjust my position to that. However, I still think that the freedom argument would be wrong, because in my opinion, which evidently you don't share as you expressed these would be only used for this context, these same arguments could be used other situations to deprive people of quality of life. That is, I like an argument where the applicability of it is as large as possible.
Anyway, to prevent me from babbling on, if we don't present these disagreements on an open thread, how can we improve our arguments or (most crucially) allow others lurking to improve theirs?
It is! The issue I had with the response I received wasn't one of quantity or depth of disagreement, it was of how little it overall contributed to the conversation! On a public forum, the actual substance of a discussion is only one part of the public awareness of a discussion. I've seen more threads on HLP (and elsewhere) than I care to admit (and a smaller number that I care even less to admit that I contributed to) get bogged down in the details that don't really affect the core substance of the debate, but which disrupt the discussion such that it no longer continues in a constructive manner.
After that abominable mouthful of a sentence, this is arguably what happened in the last abortion thread, just a couple days ago.
My arguments using the concept of Bodily Integrity stem from a core belief of mine: personal self-determination is the highest priority for any government or social construct to enable someone to experience. In a slightly more digestible mouthful: The right to have control over one's own body is the most important right. All other rights must eventually stem from this one. This ideal is human self-expression in the most basic sense. Bodily Integrity, the concept of being ultimately and personally responsible for every part of one's own body.
Responsibility does not preclude abuse or misuse. I personally would never try to convince my spouse (should I ever have one capable of having children) to get an abortion, and would try to dissuade her if she did! I would not (could not) demand it, but that is her choice. It is her body, and I have no dominion over any part of it - and neither should anyone else. I would be extremely disappointed in anyone who chose to undergo a late-term abortion; I think it's inhumane, but I will fight to the death for that person's right to control her own body under any circumstance, and I don't think that she should suffer legal consequence for exercising that right. There will always be consequences (it's a choice, after all), but legally I think there should be none. (Special note: I can already hear the objection to alcohol and drug use, to which I would redirect you back to the whole "your freedom ends where my nose begins" quote; legally allowed to use, and legally allowed to operate equipment and vehicles under the influence are radically different concepts)
This doesn't excuse second and third order effects of exercising rights, to wit: trespassing, breaking and entering, breaking the law in other ways, etc.
I think it might be helpful to post these messages in the thread, since they've been pretty good discussion!
My mistake, zookeeper, it was the conversation with Ghostavo.
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Regarding the drug analogy, it all comes back to my right to swing my fist ending where your nose begins. Even with alchohol and marijuana, we don't let people drive under the influence. Yes, illegalizing abortion isn't a be-all-end-all solution, but it's a massive step in the right direction.
The right direction to what, exactly? You must have some goal in mind here.
And again: If you want to stop abortions, your first priority should be to make sure that noone needs to have them. Use the carrot, not the stick.
Also, just for the record? Morality does come from consensus. All your examples prove it.
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The right direction to what, exactly? You must have some goal in mind here.
Defending innocent human life.
And again: If you want to stop abortions, your first priority should be to make sure that noone needs to have them. Use the carrot, not the stick.
Abdorption. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that making it easier to raise a family is a critical way to protect these lives. But no matter how much progress we make in this direction, as long as abortion is legal it's going to keep happening. Even one is too many. Every single baby saved is, in and of itself, enough to justify all the effort the Pro-Life Movement is capable of putting into it.
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The only thing that pro-choice and pro-life agree on is that both want to see fewer abortions.
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Abdorption. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that making it easier to raise a family is a critical way to protect these lives. But no matter how much progress we make in this direction, as long as abortion is legal it's going to keep happening. Even one is too many. Every single baby saved is, in and of itself, enough to justify all the effort the Pro-Life Movement is capable of putting into it.
Okay, let's move on to a practical issue then: Assume you succeed in your desire to use your country's legal system to enforce (rather than codify) your morality. Let us posit a scenario: A woman finds out that she's pregnant against her wish. Knowing that abortion is illegal, and assuming that it's too early in the pregnancy to move the foetus, she decides to head to neighboring Othercountry, where abortions are legal and will be performed at a reasonable fee for foreigners. A few days later, she returns, now baby-free, and continues with her life.
How do you intend to police this? How do you make sure that your law can be enforced fairly? In other words, how intrusive do you want your law enforcement to be to make sure that you can catch perpetrators?
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Abdorption. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that making it easier to raise a family is a critical way to protect these lives. But no matter how much progress we make in this direction, as long as abortion is legal it's going to keep happening. Even one is too many. Every single baby saved is, in and of itself, enough to justify all the effort the Pro-Life Movement is capable of putting into it.
Okay, let's move on to a practical issue then: Assume you succeed in your desire to use your country's legal system to enforce (rather than codify) your morality. Let us posit a scenario: A woman finds out that she's pregnant against her wish. Knowing that abortion is illegal, and assuming that it's too early in the pregnancy to move the foetus, she decides to head to neighboring Othercountry, where abortions are legal and will be performed at a reasonable fee for foreigners. A few days later, she returns, now baby-free, and continues with her life.
How do you intend to police this? How do you make sure that your law can be enforced fairly? In other words, how intrusive do you want your law enforcement to be to make sure that you can catch perpetrators?
Honestly, I can't say for sure how I'd want to deal with that scenario, other than supporting the Pro-Life movement of Othercountry. I'll think about it. There's smarter Pro-Lifers out there than me, you might have to ask them. But this doesn't invalidate preventing it from happening in my own country. Like I said, illegalization isn't going to usher in a utopian golden age, but it sure will save a lot of lives.
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The only thing that pro-choice and pro-life agree on is that both want to see fewer abortions.
Then why on earth do you insist that it's such an important right?
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Even aside from the numerous reasons I've posted in this thread: access to legal, safe, supported abortions has the long term effect of reducing the number of abortions and reducing the number of unsafe, unsanctioned abortions at the same time.
Having children at an inopportune time in this country is nothing short of financially catastrophic. Higher quality of life correkates significantly with reduced abortion rates.
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Even aside from the numerous reasons I've posted in this thread: access to legal, safe, supported abortions has the long term effect of reducing the number of abortions and reducing the number of unsafe, unsanctioned abortions at the same time.
Having children at an inopportune time in this country is nothing short of financially catastrophic. Higher quality of life correlates significantly with reduced abortion rates.
If Roe v. Wade was supposed to reduce the number of abortions in the US, it's failed catastrophically.
And again, by all means, let's do what we can to raise quality of life! Pretty sure most people on both sides are doing what they can to accomplish that anyway.
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Like I said, illegalization isn't going to usher in a utopian golden age, but it sure will save a lot of lives.
No it won't. The people who are having abortions now would choose to have abortions regardless of whether or not it's illegal. All you are getting in the end is a bunch more children filtered into the adoption system, and a bunch of women who are now criminals. And on top of that, whatever method you choose to police this, it will be rather intrusive. If you are serious about this, it means you need to have pregnancy tests at every border crossing. Not just the "pee on this" kind, but the full "check the ultrasound" ones.
That is what I meant by using the legislative to force your morality on people instead of codifying the consensus. As proven by this very topic, there is no consensus on this and there likely never will be. What gives you the right to make your interpretations the law of the land? What's your mandate?
Now, I know you're going to respond with something vaguely inspiring sounding about speaking for the voiceless and advocating for those who cannot advocate for themselves. That's not enough. You already have legislation that requires counselling in cases where a woman wishes an abortion. That should be all you need. It's not your place to tell people what they should do with their bodies.
Even aside from the numerous reasons I've posted in this thread: access to legal, safe, supported abortions has the long term effect of reducing the number of abortions and reducing the number of unsafe, unsanctioned abortions at the same time.
Having children at an inopportune time in this country is nothing short of financially catastrophic. Higher quality of life correlates significantly with reduced abortion rates.
If Roe v. Wade was supposed to reduce the number of abortions in the US, it's failed catastrophically.
And again, by all means, let's do what we can to raise quality of life! Pretty sure most people on both sides are doing what they can to accomplish that anyway.
You know what reduces abortions? Free health care. Free education. Free postnatal care. Pre-abortion counselling.
For ****'s sake, this isn't hard: If you want people to do something, give them positive incentives to do it. If you outlaw something, all you're doing is creating outlaws. You're not going to stop anything.
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@The_E: we might be reaching the point of impasse. It's rather obvious that making abortion legal has made it far more common. Making it illegal, shutting down the business that conduct it, et cetera puts a lot more incentive into the alternatives: Adoption, to begin with.
And again, by all means, let's give mothers the health care, counseling, et cetera they need! You're right, the carrot method works too! Thing is, most people already agree to this. My focus is on resolving the problem people don't agree on.
Finally, remember that there was no consensus on Slavery a few hundred years ago. That didn't make slavery right, and it didn't make abolitionists wrong to oppose it. The hope is that in the future, people will look back on abortion the way we look back on slavery now. Not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, not sure if it's even going to happen, but it's sure worth working towards.
EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of people thought abolishing slavery was impossible and we should just live with it. History proves otherwise.
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@The_E: we might be reaching the point of impasse. It's rather obvious that making abortion legal has made it far more common. Making it illegal, shutting down the business that conduct it, et cetera puts a lot more incentive into the alternatives: Adoption, to begin with.
And again, by all means, let's give mothers the health care, counseling, et cetera they need! You're right, the carrot method works too! Thing is, most people already agree to this. My focus is on resolving the problem people don't agree on.
Finally, remember that there was no consensus on Slavery a few hundred years ago. That didn't make slavery right, and it didn't make abolitionists wrong to oppose it. The hope is that in the future, people will look back on abortion the way we look back on slavery now. Not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, not sure if it's even going to happen, but it's sure worth working towards.
EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of people thought abolishing slavery was impossible and we should just live with it. History proves otherwise.
I think it's hilarious and somewhat disturbing that you're using the abolition of slavery as an example for your cause, because you're pretty solidly advocating that women be slaves to their uterus.
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@The_E: we might be reaching the point of impasse. It's rather obvious that making abortion legal has made it far more common. Making it illegal, shutting down the business that conduct it, et cetera puts a lot more incentive into the alternatives: Adoption, to begin with.
And again, by all means, let's give mothers the health care, counseling, et cetera they need! You're right, the carrot method works too! Thing is, most people already agree to this. My focus is on resolving the problem people don't agree on.
Finally, remember that there was no consensus on Slavery a few hundred years ago. That didn't make slavery right, and it didn't make abolitionists wrong to oppose it. The hope is that in the future, people will look back on abortion the way we look back on slavery now. Not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, not sure if it's even going to happen, but it's sure worth working towards.
EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of people thought abolishing slavery was impossible and we should just live with it. History proves otherwise.
I think it's hilarious and somewhat disturbing that you're using the abolition of slavery as an example for your cause, because you're pretty solidly advocating that women be slaves to their uterus.
I could just as easily claim that you're advocating considering unborn babies as property without rights. Neither accusation gets us anywhere.
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@The_E: we might be reaching the point of impasse. It's rather obvious that making abortion legal has made it far more common. Making it illegal, shutting down the business that conduct it, et cetera puts a lot more incentive into the alternatives: Adoption, to begin with.
You do not know that! You do not have enough data to confirm this! Very few people were ever convicted of having or performing abortions, so the vast majority never made it into any form of statistic you could use to prove your point.
Look at this chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States). Abortion rates have been on a slow and steady decline since the 80s. That's the success story here, and what you're doing now amounts to little more than whining that things are not going as fast as you want them to, despite the absolute knowledge that the end goal you seek is absolutely unattainable.
EDIT: I forgot to read the notes. It seems that abortion rates have been more or less steady since the 1990s. So by criminalizing abortions, it would seem that you would make somewhere between a fourth and a third of all women that become pregnant criminals. Good Job!
Finally, remember that there was no consensus on Slavery a few hundred years ago. That didn't make slavery right, and it didn't make abolitionists wrong to oppose it. The hope is that in the future, people will look back on abortion the way we look back on slavery now. Not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, not sure if it's even going to happen, but it's sure worth working towards.
EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of people thought abolishing slavery was impossible and we should just live with it. History proves otherwise.
History also proves that slavery still persists (even if we call it different things now) and that abortions have always happened.
Morality is built on consensus. There was a time when the consensus was that slavery was a good and necessary thing. The consensus changed, but that does not mean that our consensus now is absolutely correct now, has been correct retroactively, and will remain correct in the future.
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@InsaneBaron: the vast majority of human pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually before the pregnancy is even noticed. Where are the pro-lifers rallying to devote all our medical resources to ending this holocaust?
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@The_E: we might be reaching the point of impasse. It's rather obvious that making abortion legal has made it far more common. Making it illegal, shutting down the business that conduct it, et cetera puts a lot more incentive into the alternatives: Adoption, to begin with.
You do not know that! You do not have enough data to confirm this! Very few people were ever convicted of having or performing abortions, so the vast majority never made it into any form of statistic you could use to prove your point.
Look at this chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States). Abortion rates have been on a slow and steady decline since the 80s. That's the success story here, and what you're doing now amounts to little more than whining that things are not going as fast as you want them to, despite the absolute knowledge that the end goal you seek is absolutely unattainable.
Awesome! Why do you think the rates are going down? Perhaps because the Pro-Life movement is having an impact?
Like I said, whether or not the end goal is attainable, it's worth trying.
EDIT: and no, we don't know that the end goal is unattainable. After all, it was illegal for most of American history.
Finally, remember that there was no consensus on Slavery a few hundred years ago. That didn't make slavery right, and it didn't make abolitionists wrong to oppose it. The hope is that in the future, people will look back on abortion the way we look back on slavery now. Not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, not sure if it's even going to happen, but it's sure worth working towards.
EDIT: come to think of it, a lot of people thought abolishing slavery was impossible and we should just live with it. History proves otherwise.
History also proves that slavery still persists (even if we call it different things now) and that abortions have always happened.
Morality is built on consensus. There was a time when the consensus was that slavery was a good and necessary thing. The consensus changed, but that does not mean that our consensus now is absolutely correct now, has been correct retroactively, and will remain correct in the future.
Morality is not determined by consensus. Whether or not an action is wrong is not determined by how the people of a place and time feel about the matter. Slavery was wrong then and is wrong now. Yes, we still have some forms of slavery, yes, we would likely have illegal abortions, but in both cases the problem is much less widespread.
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Morality is built on consensus.
Part of me agrees with this, but most of me recoils.
@InsaneBaron: the vast majority of human pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually before the pregnancy is even noticed. Where are the pro-lifers rallying to devote all our medical resources to ending this holocaust?
That's a question for medical science, like other deaths by natural causes. Though you have a point.
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I'd also like to hear the pro-life reaction to in-vitro fertilization clinics, because they're emphatically and without ambiguity at all little better than mass murder factories based on some of the definitions thrown around in this thread.
EDIT: But I forgot no one actually cares about those, because they don't offend our tender sensibilities like abortion does.
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Morality is built on consensus.
Part of me agrees with this, but most of me recoils.
All of me recoils on this. If we build morality on consensus, we have to justify Aztec human sacrifice, the holocaust, and most of the atrocities of history on the grounds that the consensus of society permitted them.
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I really wonder what you're basing your morality on, then, if not consensus?
If you say anything relating to religion or God, I'm going to laugh at you.
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The Aztecs believed they were serving their religion. The Germans believed they were serving their country. What do you believe?
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I'd also like to hear the pro-life reaction to in-vitro fertilization clinics, because they're emphatically and without ambiguity at all little better than mass murder factories based on some of the definitions thrown around in this thread.
Sounds about right. For whatever reason, abortion draws more attention.
All of me recoils on this. If we build morality on consensus, we have to justify Aztec human sacrifice, the holocaust, and most of the atrocities of history on the grounds that the consensus of society permitted them.
I agree with it from a practical perspective. I mean, what else can we do? At the same time, consensus has zero impact on my own morality. (Your signature is remarkably appropriate here.)
Scotty: I base my morality on my beliefs (not meant religiously). Consensus is irrelevant.
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I really wonder what you're basing your morality on, then, if not consensus?
If you say anything relating to religion or God, I'm going to laugh at you.
The Aztecs believed they were serving their religion. The Germans believed they were serving their country. What do you believe?
I'm using human reason, which is pretty much what either of you do when you argue that a human being has rights. The fact that every human person has intrinsic value is as self-evident as 2+2=4, and when the Aztecs or Nazis neglected it, they as a nation had no excuse (individual members might have been more or less culpable, if culpable at all, due to coercion or brainwashing, much like how I avoid judging a mother's culpability due to the amount of propaganda she's exposed to. Love the sinner, hate the sin)
EDIT: again, look at Pro-Life Humanists. They draw their conclusion by applying reason to the self-evident postulates of morality. That's why I love these guys; they're some of the best apologists I've ever met.
EDIT: A question for you guys, then. If morality is built on consensus, why on earth do we have the right to condemn the holocaust?
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The fact that every human person has intrinsic value is as self-evident as 2+2=4
Why? What makes people valuable? What makes a fetus a person? What makes a fetus's rights equivalent to the woman's rights? What makes a woman's rights less important than a fetus's rights? What distinguishes people from any other intelligent animal? Do pets have intrinsic value? Why is that value less than a person?
People don't have intrinsic value. People have the value they make for themselves. An ambulatory lump of complex meat does not suddenly become more valuable (to you, to me, or to society) just because it looks like you and I. Some people are utterly worthless scum and the world is better off without them.
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I'm using human reason, which is pretty much what either of you do when you argue that a human being has rights. The fact that every human person has intrinsic value is as self-evident as 2+2=4, and when the Aztecs or Nazis neglected it, they as a nation had no excuse (individual members might have been more or less culpable, if culpable at all, due to coercion or brainwashing, much like how I avoid judging a mother's culpability due to the amount of propaganda she's exposed to. Love the sinner, hate the sin)
You're applying your morality as if it is the only morality that is, has been, and will be the correct one. Doing so is intellectually dishonest, as it precludes understanding of what actually happened back when and why it happened. Using your morality to judge whether or not to support something happening today is one thing. Condemning the past for something you see as sin that the people at the time thought was the good and proper way to behave is silly.
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Oh, wow. Okay, we've identified a major divide here. (And I thought the only one worth mentioning was the definition of "person".)
Do I think my morality is the only correct one? No. Do I think the morality of, say, Nazi Germany was incorrect? Absolutely.
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The fact that every human person has intrinsic value is as self-evident as 2+2=4
Why? What makes people valuable? What makes a fetus a person? What makes a fetus's rights equivalent to the woman's rights? What makes a woman's rights less important than a fetus's rights? What distinguishes people from any other intelligent animal? Do pets have intrinsic value? Why is that value less than a person?
People don't have intrinsic value. People have the value they make for themselves. An ambulatory lump of complex meat does not suddenly become more valuable (to you, to me, or to society) just because it looks like you and I. Some people are utterly worthless scum and the world is better off without them.
You just made a bunch a judgements regarding moral value. On what grounds?
@The_E: So according to you, we don't have a right to condemn to holocaust? I mean, what, then, makes our morality better then that of the Nazis, or your morality better than mine, if there's no objective standard to measure them against?
EDIT: And before we get into a God debate, said moral standard can be found by reason, just like the multiplication table can. Doesn't mean it's neccessarily easy to find, or that we already have solved all of it any more than we've exhausted mathematics.
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Seriously, this whole "consensus morality" thing is very illuminating. Now I understand why we've been at loggerheads.
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There's a difference between saying "What the Nazis did was bad and we need to do our best to stop it from happening again" and "I have no idea how they did these things when it was clearly wrong".
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Do I think my morality is the only correct one? No. Do I think the morality of, say, Nazi Germany was incorrect? Absolutely.
This a really good summary of the situation, actually. I might not understand the calculations of quantum physics, but if my little brother adds two and two and gets five, I can tell he's wrong. I'm not claiming moral omniscience here, but I can understand the basics. The idea that people have intrinsic value is literally the entire basis for human morality; any concept of rights, good or evil actions, et cetera, stems either from this or from an error in reasoning.
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There's a difference between saying "What the Nazis did was bad and we need to do our best to stop it from happening again" and "I have no idea how they did these things when it was clearly wrong".
We know how they did these things, just check Mein Kampf. Doesn't mean they were right.
EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
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If all foetuses are human beings with intrinsic moral value why are you so apparently unconcerned that most human beings die in the earliest stages of development? Wouldn't reducing those mortality rates be an urgent moral imperative from your perspective?
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You just made a bunch a judgements regarding moral value. On what grounds?
@The_E: So according to you, we don't have a right to condemn to holocaust? I mean, what, then, makes our morality better then that of the Nazis, or your morality better than mine, if there's no objective standard to measure them against?
You want to apply an objective standard to tens of thousands of years of human history spanning thousands of different cultures and civilizations, and you ask me on what grounds I make my value judgments?
I like to think I've been pretty consistent with my position. Bodily Integrity (that is, once again, the concept of being ultimately and personally responsible for every part of one's own body) is easy enough. If we don't agree on that, there's absolutely no point in continuing this line of discussion because it's a fundamental disagreement that is irreconcilable. What you do with your body (and all the things that follow from that) is how we define our value. "Value" is subjective. I value a friend more than I value a person I have never met. I value an upstanding citizen more than I value a convicted felon. So does society. So do you, unless you seriously mean to tell me that you would have a crisis of faith if asked to choose between your mother and a convicted rapist. Our value is what we make of it, and our value to other people is what they make of it.
EDIT: Synonyms might not be the best idea in this discussion.
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If all foetuses are human beings with intrinsic moral value why are you so apparently unconcerned that most human beings die in the earliest stages of development? Wouldn't reducing those mortality rates be an urgent moral imperative from your perspective?
Unconcerned? Not at all. Unfortunately There's a lot less that can be done about that problem. Besides, there's a big difference between people dying natural deaths (which happens to most of us) and the government claiming a certain group of people have no right to live and can be deliberately killed.
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There's a difference between saying "What the Nazis did was bad and we need to do our best to stop it from happening again" and "I have no idea how they did these things when it was clearly wrong".
We know how they did these things, just check Mein Kampf. Doesn't mean they were right.
EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
I thought it was obvious. Nothing. If someone 80 years from now discusses our moral standards, we will probably seem horrible in any number of ways. The point is that you cannot apply your moral standards to the past as if they had applied at the time, when it's pretty clear that they didn't. As I said, saying that you do not wish to return to the moral standards of the past is one thing, condemning the past for not following your standards is quite another.
Objective Morality? There is no such thing. If there was, we wouldn't be having these discussions.
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You just made a bunch a judgements regarding moral value. On what grounds?
@The_E: So according to you, we don't have a right to condemn to holocaust? I mean, what, then, makes our morality better then that of the Nazis, or your morality better than mine, if there's no objective standard to measure them against?
You want to apply an objective standard to tens of thousands of years of human history spanning thousands of different cultures and civilizations, and you ask me on what grounds I make my value judgments?
Well, I provided a grounds for such judgements, and explained that it could be derived from human reason in much the same way as math. I simply wanted to know what your grounds were, and whether or not they could be applied outside of modern America.
"Value" is subjective.
If so, we have no grounds on which to tell another person that what they are doing is wrong.
I value a friend more than I value a person I have never met. I value an upstanding citizen more than I value a convicted felon. So does society. So do you, unless you seriously mean to tell me that you would have a crisis of faith if asked to choose between your mother and a convicted rapist. Our value is what we make of it, and our value to other people is what they make of it.
I'd certainly choose my mother over a convicted rapist. To choose otherwise would be objectively wrong. If value is what we make of it, why are you able to condemn, say, the actions of the Colorado Springs shooter? He had his views, you had yours, and if we're free to make up our own values, what makes yours better than his?
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There's a difference between saying "What the Nazis did was bad and we need to do our best to stop it from happening again" and "I have no idea how they did these things when it was clearly wrong".
We know how they did these things, just check Mein Kampf. Doesn't mean they were right.
EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
I thought it was obvious. Nothing. If someone 80 years from now discusses our moral standards, we will probably seem horrible in any number of ways. The point is that you cannot apply your moral standards to the past as if they had applied at the time, when it's pretty clear that they didn't. As I said, saying that you do not wish to return to the moral standards of the past is one thing, condemning the past for not following your standards is quite another.
Objective Morality? There is no such thing. If there was, we wouldn't be having these discussions.
If there is no actual morality, these discussions are pointless because neither of us is right or wrong. The whole stipulation of the debate is that one of us is closer to the truth than the other. Otherwise, why do you waste your time trying to change my mind?
So, according to your standards, the holocaust was justified because the people in that time and place said it was? Think about this for a minute. Better yet, ask a Jew about it. (Which I've done myself).
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I thought it was obvious. Nothing. If someone 80 years from now discusses our moral standards, we will probably seem horrible in any number of ways. The point is that you cannot apply your moral standards to the past as if they had applied at the time, when it's pretty clear that they didn't. As I said, saying that you do not wish to return to the moral standards of the past is one thing, condemning the past for not following your standards is quite another.
Objective Morality? There is no such thing. If there was, we wouldn't be having these discussions.
This is utterly fascinating. It's now crystal clear that our mindsets are irreconcilable, but not for the reason I expected.
I do believe in objective morality. No doubt you find my position as ludicrous as I find yours.
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I'd certainly choose my mother over a convicted rapist. To choose otherwise would be objectively wrong. If value is what we make of it, why are you able to condemn, say, the actions of the Colorado Springs shooter? He had his views, you had yours, and if we're free to make up our own values, what makes yours better than his?
Wow. This is a truly impressive misunderstanding of what I meant, or it's a truly impressive deliberate misrepresentation of the same. "Value is what we make of it" is a personal matter, not a societal matter. I personally value friends more than I do enemies or people I have never met (and so do you). I personally value an upstanding member of society more than a convicted rapist. These are the values I have assigned to these categories, and they are continually influenced and in turn influence my morality. I personally hate violence, and view murder (that is to say the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another) as especially heinous. So do you! So does society, largely because society has placed the same value impact on murder that I have (or vice versa, influences are everywhere).
You may noticed that absolutely nowhere have I ever said that mine was better or worse than anyone else's. This is an incredibly important concept to grasp: I am no more important to any other arbitrary person as that person is important to me. My morality isn't superior, but it is mine. This is arguably why society is so important! It is an amalgamation of the views and values of everyone that it includes.
I think I'm beginning to see why you prefer an objective interpretation of morality, though. It's much easier to feel superior about it when someone else had to do all the ground work.
So, according to your standards, the holocaust was justified because the people in that time and place said it was? Think about this for a minute. Better yet, ask a Jew about it. (Which I've done myself).
This is utterly laughable. The entire world decided that the Holocaust was an abominable thing. And that's even leaving aside that the vast majority of the German people didn't even know the extent of it until near the end of the war. Your attempt to turn this thread into a literal Godwin is incredibly flimsy.
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Scotty, you're missing the point. I'm going to resort to clarifying questions.
A. Is the societal value system of modern America better than that of any other society?
B. If no, are all societal value systems equal?
C. Is your morality better than mine?
D. If yes, why?
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This is utterly laughable. The entire world decided that the Holocaust was an abominable thing. And that's even leaving aside that the vast majority of the German people didn't even know the extent of it until near the end of the war. Your attempt to turn this thread into a literal Godwin is incredibly flimsy.
For the sake of argument, what if nearly everyone decided that the Holocaust was a good thing?
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Scotty, you're missing the point. I'm going to resort to clarifying questions.
A. Is the societal value system of modern America better than that of any other society?
B. If no, are all societal value systems equal?
C. Is your morality better than mine?
D. If yes, why?
And you're missing mine, because I answered every single thing you just asked in the last post.
A) Of course not, because there is no such thing as objective morality, and the relative quality of a societal value system is by its very nature linked to the society. If there were, morality would be the same 1000 years ago as it is now, and that's emphatically untrue. The societal value system of the modern US is the best societal value system of the modern US.
B) See above.
C) I actually answered this one word for ****ing word. Emphasis added so you don't miss it again.
You may noticed that absolutely nowhere have I ever said that mine was better or worse than anyone else's. This is an incredibly important concept to grasp: I am no more important to any other arbitrary person as that person is important to me. My morality isn't superior, but it is mine. This is arguably why society is so important! It is an amalgamation of the views and values of everyone that it includes.
D) See above.
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Scotty, you're missing the point. I'm going to resort to clarifying questions.
A. Is the societal value system of modern America better than that of any other society?
B. If no, are all societal value systems equal?
C. Is your morality better than mine?
D. If yes, why?
And you're missing mine, because I answered every single thing you just asked in the last post.
A) Of course not, because there is no such thing as objective morality, and the relative quality of a societal value system is by its very nature linked to the society. If there were, morality would be the same 1000 years ago as it is now, and that's emphatically untrue. The societal value system of the modern US is the best societal value system of the modern US.
B) See above.
C) I actually answered this one word for ****ing word. Emphasis added so you don't miss it again.
You may noticed that absolutely nowhere have I ever said that mine was better or worse than anyone else's. This is an incredibly important concept to grasp: I am no more important to any other arbitrary person as that person is important to me. My morality isn't superior, but it is mine. This is arguably why society is so important! It is an amalgamation of the views and values of everyone that it includes.
D) See above.
To answer the Godwin accusation, let me point out that when asked what grounds we had to condemn the holocaust, The_E's answer was a very emphatic "Nothing". I find this horrifying.
So according to you, no morality, no values system, no code of conduct, is better than any other? Because that's why I ask clarifying questions even after you say things like that: such a belief precludes the ability to tell someone else that what they are doing is wrong, even though you've done so a lot over the past two threads.
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So according to you, no morality, no values system, no code of conduct, is better than any other?
Intrinsically, which is what you're actually asking? No; No morality, values system, or code of conduct is better than any other.
Subjectively, which is what I've been saying the entire goddamn time? Yes. I don't need an objective justification for disapproving of an arbitrary morality/values system/code of conduct/etc that I happen to disagree with! What matters to me, and what matters to society, is that I (and collectively we) disapprove of a given competing system for whatever reason we do. An objective system for determining moral advantage is unnecessary (and I frankly think it would be pretty horrifying).
EDIT: Meaning comes from people, not the reverse. Our values as a society are the summation of the values of the individuals that compose it. They are not an objective standard. Again, if an objective standard did exist, it would have existed in the past! Clearly it did not.
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The fact that every human person has intrinsic value is as self-evident as 2+2=4.
No it isn't. I don't believe every human life has intrinsic value.
EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
That we believe it's better. That's it. That's the only thing required. And in 300 years they'll think theirs is better and that we were wrong about some things. Morality is always subjective.
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I don't believe every human life has intrinsic value.
I wholeheartedly agree.
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If there is no actual morality
This is a stunning logical leap.
Why is "morality is relative" the same as "morality does not exist"? Simply because a position is relative does not make valid, after all.
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EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
That we believe it's better. That's it. That's the only thing required. And in 300 years they'll think theirs is better and that we were wrong about some things. Morality is always subjective.
So in other words, we're not actually any better than the Nazis, or Aztecs, or ISIS, we just think we are? No. Just no. Please, just think about this for a bit.
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You're misinterpreting. In our morality we are better than the Nazis and Aztecs because we believe that we are. That's how morality works.
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If Roe v. Wade was supposed to reduce the number of abortions in the US, it's failed catastrophically.
On what basis are you saying this? Do you actually have statistics for the number of abortions before abortion was re-legalised?
Pretty much every single set of statistics I've seen put the number at being roughly the same before and after.
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EDIT: you still haven't answered the question. What makes our consensus better than theirs?
That we believe it's better. That's it. That's the only thing required. And in 300 years they'll think theirs is better and that we were wrong about some things. Morality is always subjective.
So in other words, we're not actually any better than the Nazis, or Aztecs, or ISIS, we just think we are? No. Just no. Please, just think about this for a bit.
Again, there's no objective standard for morality. Hitler believed what he was doing was moral. Daesh believe they're moral. Why are they wrong?
Easy answer: because we believe they're wrong. That's it. Their beliefs are abhorrent to us, and ours are abhorrent to them. If Hitler had won, there might have been generations of children born and raised to believe that the Holocaust was right. And if that's a scary thought, it should be. This is why what we believe are destructive, immoral ideologies must be fought. Because if we don't fight them, we might find ourselves in a world where they're accepted. Retreating behind some idea of an objective moral standard is arrogant and complacent.
And in a few hundred years, there will be people who think that some of the things we do today are completely immoral. I'm not talking about things that are debatable now, I'm talking about things we can't understand could be immoral. I know this because it happened so much in the past and it would be the height of arrogance to think that we've finally now unlocked the one true objectively correct moral code.
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So in other words, we're not actually any better than the Nazis, or Aztecs, or ISIS, we just think we are? No. Just no. Please, just think about this for a bit.
To choose a less horrific example, look at the universal declaration of human rights as endorsed by the UN. There's a bunch of good, humanist, secular rules that we can all agree on, yes?
Except, we kinda can't. Because that declaration is rooted in humanist tradition, which is basically christian ideals with all references to God or the Bible removed. It should be no surprise then that countries with non-christian backgrounds reject them. Does that make muslim countries objectively less moral? No. It makes them different. Maybe, over time, they will come to agree with us. Maybe, over time, we will agree with them. Point is, you cannot assume that your particular moral standards are universally true.
If you posit objective morality, you have to explain why there have been so many variations on what is considered moral over the course of human history. You have to explain why your set of morals are closer to this universal morality than that of your parents or grandparents.
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Morality is mostly subjective, IMHO. But you dont need objective morality to justify imposing your morality on others. After all, if morality is subjective, nobody can prove that doing so is wrong. And everyone wants to impose some kind of morality on others, no exceptions.
So if you believe abortion is as bad as murder, then yes, you are correct in trying to ban it by law. No matter what the consensus is.
I dont think abortion is comparable to murder but I do understand why those who believe this push for it to be banned. From their point of view, it makes sense.
If anything, I would be more suspicious of someone who thinks abortion is as bad as murder but at the same time is still pro-choice. Now that would be an absurd stance, tolerating murder is creepy..
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So in other words, we're not actually any better than the Nazis, or Aztecs, or ISIS, we just think we are? No. Just no. Please, just think about this for a bit.
To choose a less horrific example, look at the universal declaration of human rights as endorsed by the UN. There's a bunch of good, humanist, secular rules that we can all agree on, yes?
Unless I'm mistaken, you're saying, yes, we're not actually better than said horrific examples, we just think we are, and what we think isn't true, it's subjective.
Look, am I the only one who realizes where this leads? I could give myself face paint and a Glasgow Grin and start shoving pencils up people's eyes and stuffing crowded ferries with gas drums; or stuff two-year-olds into wood chippers and mix the results into a fast food fry bin; or set off a dirty bomb at the super bowl and blame it on the Russians, and according to this logic, I would be no worse of a person for doing so, you guys would just be subjectively unhappy about what I was doing. Some heroic police officer or soldier could find out what I was doing and stop me, and give his or her life to do so, and they wouldn't actually be any better than me, you guys would just find them more palatable than me. It doesn't work that way!
YES, I can see that different nations through history have had different ideas about what was right or wrong. In some periods of history, people thought the world was flat, or the stars were fixed, or the Philosopher's Stone was possible. The world was round then, and it's round now. There's people out there with a better understanding of morality than me, just like there's people with a better understanding of mathematics than me, and later civilizations will have a better understanding of mathematics, and hopefully but not certainly of morality, than we do. But I'm not so ignorant that I can't understand the basics; I'm not such a monster that I can look at 9/11 and approve of it; and I highly doubt anyone here actually applies this sort of relativism so consistently that they can actually look at some atrocity and say "It would be wrong now, but it was okay back then for them."
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This is why what we believe are destructive, immoral ideologies must be fought. Because if we don't fight them, we might find ourselves in a world where they're accepted. Retreating behind some idea of an objective moral standard is arrogant and complacent.
1. So you actually do acknowledge that some moralities are bad enough that they need to be fought? You actually do acknowledge that it would be a bad thing if they were accepted? Are they truly bad, or do you just feel that they're bad?
2. How is asserting that there's a moral standard that doesn't change based on how we feel about it "retreating"? This assertion is literally the basis of any attempt to destroy an evil ideology: the fact that some things are evil, no matter how people feel about them.
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Are they truly bad, or do you just feel that they're bad?
What's the difference?
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Again, there's no objective standard for morality. Hitler believed what he was doing was moral. Daesh believe they're moral. Why are they wrong?
They are wrong because the internal logic of their morality collapses under scrutiny.
In a way, that happens for all forms of morality at some point because sooner or later you have to rely on an axiom, but how deep you have to dig first varies. In other words, some are more or less wrong than others even if no one is entirely right.
Not that I could say who in this discussion might be least wrong, because everyone is clearly so hilariously wrong.
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So in other words, we're not actually any better than the Nazis, or Aztecs, or ISIS, we just think we are? No. Just no. Please, just think about this for a bit.
To choose a less horrific example, look at the universal declaration of human rights as endorsed by the UN. There's a bunch of good, humanist, secular rules that we can all agree on, yes?
Unless I'm mistaken, you're saying, yes, we're not actually better than said horrific examples, we just think we are, and what we think isn't true, it's subjective.
Look, am I the only one who realizes where this leads? I could give myself face paint and a Glasgow Grin and start shoving pencils up people's eyes and stuffing crowded ferries with gas drums; or stuff two-year-olds into wood chippers and mix the results into a fast food fry bin; or set off a dirty bomb at the super bowl and blame it on the Russians, and according to this logic, I would be no worse of a person for doing so, you guys would just be subjectively unhappy about what I was doing. Some heroic police officer or soldier could find out what I was doing and stop me, and give his or her life to do so, and they wouldn't actually be any better than me, you guys would just find them more palatable than me. It doesn't work that way!
Yes it does. It isn't a comfortable idea to live with, but it's fact. There is no objective moral standard by which we can measure good or bad. It does not exist. Things are good or bad because we believe they are. End of line. That's it. Period. There is no empirically correct mathematical formula for morality. The universe does not give a flying **** what people do to each other.
And if you do believe such a standard exists, point it out. You already claimed that every human life objectively has intrinsic value, which is something I completely disagree with, so even that's evidently not true.
YES, I can see that different nations through history have had different ideas about what was right or wrong. In some periods of history, people thought the world was flat, or the stars were fixed, or the Philosopher's Stone was possible. The world was round then, and it's round now. There's people out there with a better understanding of morality than me, just like there's people with a better understanding of mathematics than me, and later civilizations will have a better understanding of mathematics, and hopefully but not certainly of morality, than we do. But I'm not so ignorant that I can't understand the basics; I'm not such a monster that I can look at 9/11 and approve of it; and I highly doubt anyone here actually applies this sort of relativism so consistently that they can actually look at some atrocity and say "It would be wrong now, but it was okay back then for them."
It was okay for them. That's why they did it. 9/11 didn't happen because the people carrying it out were monsters or insane. The Holocaust didn't happen because the Nazis were some different species from the rest of us. They did what they did because they genuinely believed it was the right thing to do. And the only condemnation we can make is that we believe it was wrong. And when enough of us speak out against something, it doesn't matter that our belief is subjective. So many essential components of society work only because we collectively believe they work.
1. So you actually do acknowledge that some moralities are bad enough that they need to be fought? You actually do acknowledge that it would be a bad thing if they were accepted? Are they truly bad, or do you just feel that they're bad?
There's no difference. My convictions don't require me to hide behind imagined objectivity.
2. How is asserting that there's a moral standard that doesn't change based on how we feel about it "retreating"? This assertion is literally the basis of any attempt to destroy an evil ideology: the fact that some things are evil, no matter how people feel about them.
And who or what is deciding which things are "evil" and which are not?
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Prefacing "this is wrong" with "I believe that" seems like a solipsistic caveat. Yeah, nothing is provable beyond cogito ergo sum. Who cares? To have an ethical discussion, we must relax our definitions of "provable" and "objective".
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Why should we? The statement that there is such a thing as objective morality, with a definable source and definable characteristics, seems eminently provable to me.
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Did you mean disprovable? I thought you were in the "there is no objective morality" camp.
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Proofs can have negative results. Either way, such a proof should be possible, and I eagerly await your attempts to do so.
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Why should we? The statement that there is such a thing as objective morality, with a definable source and definable characteristics, seems eminently provable to me.
So you agree that there is such a thing as objective morality? In that case, I misunderstood your position completely.
I won't attempt to prove its existence, because I don't think such a proof is possible.
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You misunderstood his position completely. Saying something is provable doesn't mean it's true, because you can prove it isn't.
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They are wrong because the internal logic of their morality collapses under scrutiny.
PRECISELY!!!
It was okay for them. That's why they did it. 9/11 didn't happen because the people carrying it out were monsters or insane.
That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
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You misunderstood his position completely. Saying something is provable doesn't mean it's true, because you can prove it isn't.
Now I'm really confused. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness#Soundness) If something is provable, then it is true, unless your logical system is broken.
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It was okay for them. That's why they did it. 9/11 didn't happen because the people carrying it out were monsters or insane.
That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
You're having issues actually reading these points, aren't you? It's like you come across something you can't agree with, and then the rest of the post becomes incomprehensible, because that's not what he said. He said that bin Laden thought it was okay to kill thousands of Americans. Demonstrably, he did, or he would not have! That doesn't mean that Aesaar thinks it was okay (and pretty obviously doesn't).
No one we think is evil thinks that they're evil. Everyone thinks that what they're doing is right. This has been true for all of human history, and it will remain true for the rest of human existence.
Now, speaking not as a participant but as a moderator, you should be reading these posts a little bit more carefully if you want to discuss them.
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No one we think is evil thinks that they're evil. Everyone thinks that what they're doing is right.
This is a very strong statement. It's also false. I've done things that I thought were wrong (e.g. teasing my brother), just because they were fun.
And I still don't understand how "some provable statements are not true" makes any kind of sense. You might as well argue that black is white.
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Now I'm really confused. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness#Soundness) If something is provable, then it is true, unless your logical system is broken.
That only means that anything you prove in deductive system X is also true in deductive system Y. You would do well not to confuse mathematical logic systems with the languages we speak. They have things in common but language is not a very sound deductive system.
What The_E meant was obviously that a proof could be made with positive or negative results. Not to put words in his mouth, but by reading the follow up comment I'd say 'knowable' might be a better word.
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No one we think is evil thinks that they're evil. Everyone thinks that what they're doing is right.
This is a very strong statement. It's also false. I've done things that I thought were wrong (e.g. teasing my brother), just because they were fun.
Do you think that you're evil? Do you genuinely think that anyone believes that what they're doing is evil? That doesn't mean that they regret (or don't regret) things they've done, or that everything they do is perfectly aligned with doing good in their own eyes. It means that Hitler didn't think he was evil, that bin Laden didn't think he was evil, Stalin didn't think he was evil, etc.
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That only means that anything you prove in deductive system X is also true in deductive system Y. You would do well not to confuse mathematical logic systems with the languages we speak. They have things in common but language is not a very sound deductive system.
What The_E meant was obviously that a proof could me made with positive or negative results. Not to put words in his mouth, but by reading the follow up comment I'd say 'knowable' might be a better word.
... okay, then you're using a truly bizarre definition of "proof".
Do you think that you're evil? Do you genuinely think that anyone believes that what they're doing is evil? That doesn't mean that they regret (or don't regret) things they've done, or that everything they do is perfectly aligned with doing good in their own eyes. It means that Hitler didn't think he was evil, that bin Laden didn't think he was evil, Stalin didn't think he was evil, etc.
Of course not. I have, however, done things that I believed were wrong at the time, so the statement "everyone thinks that what they're doing is right" is false. I would also be surprised if nobody has ever thought they were evil. Again, this is a strong statement.
I would agree that very few people think they are evil.
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Proofs can have negative results. Either way, such a proof should be possible, and I eagerly await your attempts to do so.
Well, it makes no sense using strictly defined words from the English language but it's pretty clear what he was going for, isn't it?
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That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
So you're saying that not justifying your morals with a made up 'objective' system that is very much like our current morals but completely different from the moral values of 99% of civilisations throughout human history means you can't distinguish right from wrong?
If someone believed what they were doing is right and good then in their moral system it IS.
If you want to make up some kind of history spanning objective morality simply to justify the perceived superiority of the system you happen to be using then knock yourself out.
They are wrong because the internal logic of their morality collapses under scrutiny.
PRECISELY!!!
So you're agreeing that objective standards are only linked to the internal logic of one's moral system? What about this one: 'If it is alive and it is not me, kill it'. The internal logic is perfect yet I'm guessing you wouldn't call this an objectively good moral system.
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Well, it makes no sense using strictly defined words from the English language but it's pretty clear what he was going for, isn't it?
Not really. Maybe it's just me. Here was my post that started the whole provability discussion, and The E's reply:
Prefacing "this is wrong" with "I believe that" seems like a solipsistic caveat. Yeah, nothing is provable beyond cogito ergo sum. Who cares? To have an ethical discussion, we must relax our definitions of "provable" and "objective".
Why should we? The statement that there is such a thing as objective morality, with a definable source and definable characteristics, seems eminently provable to me.
... I guess he's been using relaxed definitions all along?
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He's arguably been using more rigorous language than you have. "Provable" does not, counter-intuitively, mean that the outcome must be "true". It means that there can be a proof arrived at, and that proof may be either "true" or "not true". The E is pretty positive that it's "not true", and that such an outcome is provable.
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http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/provable
Not according to the Oxford dictionary. Not sure that it matters at this point since it's out of the way already.
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lads
lads
there's an easy way to resolve this
is there a set with cardinality between that of N and that of R
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@Scotty: Well, that would remove all the force from the word "proof". Almost anything could be a proof. If you really want to be rigorous, logicians almost always use "proof" in the stronger sense... but we've wandered far afield.
@Phantom: Continuum hypothesis!
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Phantom, are you implying that mathematical Platonism should be applied here to separate provability and truth?
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Proofs can have negative results. Either way, such a proof should be possible, and I eagerly await your attempts to do so.
Well, it makes no sense using strictly defined words from the English language but it's pretty clear what he was going for, isn't it?
It's weird how one's native language can interfere sometimes. The german word "beweisbar" doesn't carry as much of a connotation towards a particular outcome as "provable" apparently does; calling a statement "beweisbar" simply means that it can be evaluated to a truth value (in the boolean sense). I apologise for the confusion.
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Interesting! No problem.
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So you're agreeing that objective standards are only linked to the internal logic of one's moral system? What about this one: 'If it is alive and it is not me, kill it'. The internal logic is perfect yet I'm guessing you wouldn't call this an objectively good moral system.
The internal logic is imperfect in that it includes that unfounded exception for yourself. There's no logical difference between yourself and someone else and there's nothing else that necessitates such an exception either, so that's the first point where the internal logic fails.
P.S. I realize you were probably responding to InsaneBaron more than me, but I still like to clarify that I don't argue for an objectively good moral system. Of course morality is subjective, although I don't see that as particularly relevant in contexts of human moral disputes because humans are so similar that I see no reason to assume the kind of fundamental differences which would be necessary to explain widely different subjective moralities even if everyone was being internally consistent and as-rational-as-possible.
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What? The logic holds up just fine, it's the reasoning that's lacking. There's nothing self-contradictory about it. You don't need a reason for any exception to remain internally consistent. That's why it's called 'internal', for that to break you'd need a direct self-contradiction.
And yes, there's a logical difference between any 2 defined objects/groups. I really don't see where you were going with that.
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It was okay for them. That's why they did it. 9/11 didn't happen because the people carrying it out were monsters or insane.
That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
This is a question we've been struggling with a lot in the aftermath of WW2. How responsible were the individuals that made up the armed forces of the third Reich for the atrocities those forces committed? Our legal systems, which are an expression of our moral systems, have long held that it is permissible to commit crimes in the service of the state, as long as its done within a chain of command. A soldier following orders cannot be blamed for doing so, cannot be convicted for committing premeditated murder when ordered to do so, because he is absolved of the full responsibility of his actions by the oath he swears.
So, can I blame my grandfathers for enlisting into the Wehrmacht, and being in a very tiny part accomplices to atrocity? No. They believed they were serving their country. They believed they were doing things that were necessary to ensure german prosperity. They thought that they were doing the right thing at the time. It was only afterwards, after everyone was forced to ackknowledge the truth of what happened, that they became remorseful.
So. While I condemn the actions as a whole and the people who planned and ordered them, I cannot truly condemn the people who were actually at the sharp end. Knowing what I do now, it's easy to say "Well, I would have done everything to stop it", but that question soon morphs into the angrily shouted accusation "Why did you not do anything to stop this?", because it's hard for us to separate our knowledge from their knowledge.
The hardest part for us to accept was that the Nazis weren't monsters. They weren't fundamentally different from us. All it took was misinformation and prejudice to enable them. If you've ever wondered why Germany has restrictions on certain types of public and political speech, this is why. Our civilizations are more fragile than they may appear, and all it takes is one demagogue and a bunch of parrots to create a monster.
I hope, InsaneBaron, that this helps you understand the complexity of this discussion a bit better. When I, or Aesaar, or Scotty say that all morality is relative and that there's no such thing as an absolute good or absolute evil, this sort of reasoning is behind it. What you are doing in this discussion, what you have done for several posts now, is mistaking understanding of a particular moral stance with endorsing that stance. There is a difference between the two, and you would do well to learn it.
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What? The logic holds up just fine, it's the reasoning that's lacking. There's nothing self-contradictory about it. You don't need a reason for any exception to remain internally consistent. That's why it's called 'internal', for that to break you'd need a direct self-contradiction.
And yes, there's a logical difference between any 2 defined objects/groups. I really don't see where you were going with that.
The internal logic includes more than just your example proposition. It includes whatever it is that you've derived it from. I'm not saying the proposition in itself is self-contradictory, only that the chain of logic from your axioms to the proposition is broken. Or, rather, quite a bit less rational than it could be.
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The E: Fair enough. I believe that most Nazis weren't evil. ("Eichmann in Jerusalem" is a fascinating read.) I do believe, however, that (say) Hitler and Mengele were evil.
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Using those definitions no moral system EVER could be internally consistent as there is no tautology to start with. You'd have to start from an assumption, as you do in everything else. Since you're starting from assumptions anyway you can start from any assumption and remain as internally consistent as any other system. Using only truths you would never get past:
1. My mind exists
Any other axiom after this would have to be an assumption. Now before you say I'm just trolling with this as you can simply define axioms outside modern logic you're still left with a problem when you look at history. "Any premise that is so evident as to be accepted as true without controversy" would lead to very different premises in different cultures.
Therefore any non-contradictory system is as valid as every other one since they both started on assumptions. Whether those assumptions be "The goal of living is the advancement of humanity" or "The goal of living is eliminating as many other living beings".
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FrikgFeek is right that "if it is alive and it is not me, kill it" is logically consistent. At the same time, zookeeper's "there's no logical difference between yourself and someone else" is the very first axiom I would include in a moral framework.
Using only truths you would never get past:
1. My mind exists
Why didn't you comment in the consciousness megathread?! ;)
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The E: I thought of a possible way to settle our objective morality disagreement. When I say "Mengele was evil", what I really mean is "I believe that Mengele was objectively evil". Is this acceptable?
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The E: I thought of a possible way to settle our objective morality disagreement. When I say "Mengele was evil", what I really mean is "I believe that Mengele was objectively evil". Is this acceptable?
No, it's not, unless you can come up with a description for "objectively evil" that isn't dependant on any particular worldview. I mean, you can believe he was evil, no problem there, but to say that something or someone is objectively evil requires that you define evil in a universally true way. The problem here is that you can't; Mengele himself did not believe himself to be evil after all.
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See, with that logic, we can't define anything objectively. Which is exactly what I meant when I mentioned solipsism:
Prefacing "this is wrong" with "I believe that" seems like a solipsistic caveat. Yeah, nothing is provable beyond cogito ergo sum. Who cares? To have an ethical discussion, we must relax our definitions of "provable" and "objective".
If you insist on rigor, the word "objective" becomes completely useless.
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But if we relax the definition of "objective" in this discussion, what are we left with? What would "objective" mean in this context?
You're asking "Who cares?" The answer is, I do. Because whether or not we can define something as objectively good or objectively evil (using non-relaxed definitions of objective) is a really interesting and hard problem. By redefining objective to mean something ultimately subjective, the question becomes meaningless.
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But if we relax the definition of "objective" in this discussion, what are we left with? What would "objective" mean in this context?
Objective morality exists independently of our beliefs. We can't know what it is, in the same sense that we can't know what anything is. The point is that some subjective moralities are better than others.
You're asking "Who cares?" The answer is, I do. Because whether or not we can define something as objectively good or objectively evil (using non-relaxed definitions of objective) is a really interesting and hard problem. By redefining objective to mean something ultimately subjective, the question becomes meaningless.
Actually, using the non-relaxed definition of objective, the problem becomes really uninteresting and easy.
(The answer is no. Nothing can be defined objectively. Might as well strike the word "objective" from the English dictionary.)
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Thank you for agreeing with me that objective morality doesn't exist.
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He's basically saying that anything empirical can't also be objective. In the strictest meaning of the word, only self-contained ideas like pattern recognition or logical axioms(formulas) can be objectively true.
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Using those definitions no moral system EVER could be internally consistent as there is no tautology to start with. You'd have to start from an assumption, as you do in everything else. Since you're starting from assumptions anyway you can start from any assumption and remain as internally consistent as any other system.
As I said, you need to start from an assumption, but you can still compare those assumptions and the ways one draws conclusions from them.
If Billy claims that his core axioms are that getting lots of cake is good and that Johnny should be punched in the face, we know that it's not true and that his claim would instantly collapse under scrutiny. He doesn't get to claim any arbitrary silliness as his core axioms (whether he's knowingly lying or just kinda stupid) simply because we don't currently have the technology to probe his mind and prove that they aren't. His axioms still need to be something that he cannot eliminate, reduce or generalize any further using reason.
If Billy revises his core axioms a bit and now states them to be that pleasure is good and that inflicting pain is only okay as karmic retribution (so punching Johnny is okay because Johnny punched him first, yesterday), then great, Billy is now being a bit more rational and consistent. He's still being pretty dumb, but at least it's an improvement.
My moral system, if you can call it that, does not offer any way to solve disputes between actors who actually hold different core axioms. If I run into a machine, alien or animal which truly doesn't share my axiom of pain being bad and starts dissecting me, then they aren't being immoral or internally inconsistent and there is no way for me to persuade them otherwise. However, if it was you who was dissecting me, you would be, because you do share my axiom of pain being bad. I wouldn't need to convince you to act according to my axioms, only your own.
So, to put it differently: sure, our axioms of course cannot be logically justified. That's fine, I don't mind. However, my claim is that due to our brains' similarity, in fact me, you, Hitler, the aztecs, Gandhi and the guy from Daesh all have the same underlying axioms if we all just use reason to chip away all the non-axiomatic cruft. And that's why I say that some of those guys are more wrong than me; I'm not comparing our axioms because they are the same, I'm comparing whether and how consistently we act according to them. If I believed that their axioms were actually different than mine, I couldn't say that.
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Thank you for agreeing with me that objective morality doesn't exist.
And nothing else exists objectively, either. Not even you. I'm 100% behind that.
I also vote that we strike the word "belief" from the English dictionary. Everything is subjective, so everything is a belief.
He's basically saying that anything empirical can't also be objective. In the strictest meaning of the word, only self-contained ideas like pattern recognition or logical axioms(formulas) can be objectively true.
Right.
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Ah, but you're missing 1 thing. Some of those cultures truly believed they were better than other humans, almost like humans believe they are better than animals. So in the case of the Aztecs, those who truly believed that humans should be sacrificed to appease the gods or more-than-human leaders they made no faults in logic.
Death is bad, therefore I should avoid the apocalypse by ritually sacrificing a few.
How do you even define 'arbitrary silliness'. Do we just dismiss the truly crazy ideas that a mental patient might hold as true as 'arbitrary silliness'? From what you've wrote you also seem to believe that 'treat all humans as equal' is something every system that's not 'arbitrary silliness' should hold. And really, not everyone truly believes that. Putting yourself in first makes sense in systems which also assume that 'Things that exist have value'.
1.I exist
2.Others may or may not exist
3.Things that exist have value
Therefore I have value, others may or may not have it.
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Ah, but you're missing 1 thing. Some of those cultures truly believed they were better than other humans, almost like humans believe they are better than animals. So in the case of the Aztecs, those who truly believed that humans should be sacrificed to appease the gods or more-than-human leaders they made no faults in logic.
Death is bad, therefore I should avoid the apocalypse by ritually sacrificing a few.
It doesn't matter whether they truly believed it or not, it was still an irrational belief. Whether their axiom was "death is bad" or not, it was still a logical fault to assume that greater amount of death could be avoided by ritual sacrifice. I'm pretty sure you agree that their belief was false.
How do you even define 'arbitrary silliness'. Do we just dismiss the truly crazy ideas that a mental patient might hold as true as 'arbitrary silliness'?
The point was simply that Billy is not a problem for me, because I only concern myself with genuinely held axioms.
From what you've wrote you also seem to believe that 'treat all humans as equal' is something every system that's not 'arbitrary silliness' should hold. And really, not everyone truly believes that. Putting yourself in first makes sense in systems which also assume that 'Things that exist have value'.
1.I exist
2.Others may or may not exist
3.Things that exist have value
Therefore I have value, others may or may not have it.
That would require more or less a solipsist psychopath, and I might be perfectly willing to put them in the "does not share axioms with me" box.
Whether someone belongs in that box or whether they're faking it is, in theory, provable: see if there's anyone whose well-being they actually care about. If you can find anyone whose torture they would object to, then clearly they do believe others exist. If there are no others whose well-being they care about, then they are genuinely a solipsist psychopath and moral arguments between us cannot be made.
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It was okay for them. That's why they did it. 9/11 didn't happen because the people carrying it out were monsters or insane.
That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
This is a question we've been struggling with a lot in the aftermath of WW2. How responsible were the individuals that made up the armed forces of the third Reich for the atrocities those forces committed? Our legal systems, which are an expression of our moral systems, have long held that it is permissible to commit crimes in the service of the state, as long as its done within a chain of command. A soldier following orders cannot be blamed for doing so, cannot be convicted for committing premeditated murder when ordered to do so, because he is absolved of the full responsibility of his actions by the oath he swears.
So, can I blame my grandfathers for enlisting into the Wehrmacht, and being in a very tiny part accomplices to atrocity? No. They believed they were serving their country. They believed they were doing things that were necessary to ensure german prosperity. They thought that they were doing the right thing at the time. It was only afterwards, after everyone was forced to ackknowledge the truth of what happened, that they became remorseful.
So. While I condemn the actions as a whole and the people who planned and ordered them, I cannot truly condemn the people who were actually at the sharp end. Knowing what I do now, it's easy to say "Well, I would have done everything to stop it", but that question soon morphs into the angrily shouted accusation "Why did you not do anything to stop this?", because it's hard for us to separate our knowledge from their knowledge.
The hardest part for us to accept was that the Nazis weren't monsters. They weren't fundamentally different from us. All it took was misinformation and prejudice to enable them. If you've ever wondered why Germany has restrictions on certain types of public and political speech, this is why. Our civilizations are more fragile than they may appear, and all it takes is one demagogue and a bunch of parrots to create a monster.
I hope, InsaneBaron, that this helps you understand the complexity of this discussion a bit better. When I, or Aesaar, or Scotty say that all morality is relative and that there's no such thing as an absolute good or absolute evil, this sort of reasoning is behind it. What you are doing in this discussion, what you have done for several posts now, is mistaking understanding of a particular moral stance with endorsing that stance. There is a difference between the two, and you would do well to learn it.
This makes at least some sense. But I still don't completely buy it. Yes, I'm willing to concede that, considering the amount of brainwashing he was exposed to, an individual Nazi soldier, for instance, may or may not have been fully culpable for his actions. But culpability isn't what's at stake here, but accuracy. The German soldier may have thought "Jew are Pigs" was true, and we in general think "All Men are Created Equal" is true, but to claim that these two statements are equally true? That's unacceptable. The sincere beliefs of a specific person might effect their guilt, but we must always bear in mind that even if he believed them to be true, they were still false and evil. And there are some pretty clear and obvious guidlines we can use in sorting right from wrong. To begin with, Malice is obviously inherently bad, Charity is obviously inherently good.
EDIT: A question. According to your reasoning, is there even such a thing as an evil person?
EDIT: And "It was okay for them" is still a preposterous thing to say about 9/11, no matter how much context you want to add.
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Please go play Knights of the Old Republic 2 and then come back to the thread if you think charity is inherently good.
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Have any reasoning why Charity would be inherently good and Malice inherently bad aside from pure gut feeling? You just seem to be repeating what 21st century morality is and claiming that to be some kind of objective standard or at least close to it.
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Aren't good and evil a bit like entropy and atrophy? If life likes to live, then life thrives on Entropy. Atrophy is the death of life, in a very literal sense; atrophying limbs will tend to not function and become dead weight.
So I would posit that, since I believe our civilization should continue, entropy is "good" and atrophy is "bad".
I don't think I'm bringing anything particularly new to the discussion, just framing it in different terms.
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To begin with, Malice is obviously inherently bad, Charity is obviously inherently good.
Neither of these things is true.
Oof, you're having a really hard time finding objectively moral things, aren't you?
Please go play Knights of the Old Republic 2 and then come back to the thread if you think charity is inherently good.
This. KotOR 2 makes some wonderfully scathing comments about charity.
EDIT: A question. According to your reasoning, is there even such a thing as an evil person?
Sure there is. But not objectively evil. They're only evil because I think they are. To them and their supporters, they're not evil. I think they're wrong, of course, and that's why I might fight them if I found them evil enough.
Daesh believe they're good, and they believe we're evil. I think they're utterly wrong. And I believe that strongly enough that I'd happily go off to war to end them. That belief isn't objective fact. It doesn't need to be.
EDIT: And "It was okay for them" is still a preposterous thing to say about 9/11, no matter how much context you want to add.
So, what, you think that the people who carried out 9/11 decided "hey let's go do something evil today!" Of course they thought it was the right thing to do. If they didn't, they wouldn't have done it. Are you really so small-minded that you're incapable of understanding that people can disagree with you about morality without being insane or evil?
That's it. I'm done. If you insist on claiming it was okay for bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans, or the Nazis to kill millions of Jews, just because they thought it was, then you've abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, and there's nothing I can do for you. God help you.
You sound like those fundie Christians who think that by not believing in God, you're evil because you've abandoned the only objective moral standard. It's pretty sad.
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Just poking in from an outsider's perspective with a question here (and wondering who has the squirt guns ready for when things plummet into some sort of crazy-meta-solipsism hole again), but does the fact that someone believes their own morality to be correct automatically negate the possibility that there is indeed an objective morality in existence? Yes, the 9/11 hijackers personally believed extremely strongly that they were on a holy mission, but we're all aware that fervently-held beliefs can be completely wrong. There are still a frightening number of people out there who firmly believe that man never set foot on the Moon, and they can cite "evidence" at you until they're blue in the face and you want to smash said face in. Now obviously morality is a far vaguer and thornier issue than an historical event with actual physical truth, but I still feel like there's a massive false equivalence being created. "Everyone is convinced that their morality is correct, so there's no such thing as a universal objective morality!" To which I respond...why?
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Because universal objective morality would need to define the 'best' goal to follow. Using a prophetic supercomputer you can make a system that's best for the long-term advancement of the species but this isn't really what morality is, at least not for everyone.
With an infinite number of goals you'd get an infinite number of morality systems. Then you get to the question of how 'moral' a purely goal-driven system is. Is morality there for the advancement of that goal or are certain things principally wrong because they go against our beliefs as humans?
Both lead to an infinite number of subjective moralities. Even with omniscience the best you could do would be a very thorough analysis of those goals for every human and then combining those into one big 'best' morality that would work in the greatest number of cases compared to other systems.
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I think a truly-objective morality would go rather beyond defining some sort of "best good" to follow, because as you note you'd automatically wind up with individual-versus-group arguments, and all you'd really be doing is slapping the word "objective" on another set of subjective moralities. From where I'm sitting, an actual objective morality would define an action as good because it is inherently so, and evil likewise. It's basically stating a tautology, I know, but such an objective morality would need to have an external definition, with all the various human individuals and groups and civilizations coming up with their own better or worse subjective approximations of that external objectivity (with the really ****ty ones usually being pretty easy to spot, at least in hindsight). I fully realize that I come to the table with a religious upbringing, and so I'm used to treating certain concepts as axiomatic that others would never waste time considering. Even so, I do remember a while back seeing a presentation by a prominent humanist thinker-type who made a compelling fully-secular argument for the necessity of an objective standard of morality. I'll be damned if I can remember who it was, though.
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Battuta and I discussed this on IRC. I'll summarize.
There has been no argument made in this thread attempting to prove objective morality is true, only statements like 'X is objectively moral'. Every argument made is about how it's useful to believe it's true and that it's frightening to imagine how people might behave if they didn't believe in objective morality. But being afraid of something has no bearing on the truth of things. It doesn't matter if it's scary. I pointed this out earlier. We could all believe the Holocaust to be a good thing if only we'd been raised in a different environment. That's a scary thought, but just because it's scary doesn't make it false.
[12:17.48] <battuta> to argue that we MUST believe in an objective morality to be good is to abandon the possibility of any good — since it denies people the ability to set up moral systems and choose which ones work over ones which don’t
Analogy time: What makes a game good? There's no objective standard by which we measure whether a game is good or bad, so how do we determine it? I mean, we're perfectly capable of deciding which games to play and which we like and don't like, but how do we do this without an objective standard? Could it be that believing a game is good or bad is enough?
[12:19.17] <battuta> subjective morality is just a set of game rules for human civilization. you don’t lose anything by realizing morality is subjective - you GAIN the power to design good rules
[12:24.57] <battuta> i’ve never seen anyone argue for objective morality without saying “if we abandon it, we are lost to chaos"
[12:25.14] <battuta> well, so what? lots of terrible things are true, something being scary doesn’t make it untrue
[12:25.28] <battuta> implicitly your argument is ‘we should all CHOOSE TO BELIEVE In objective morality, lest we be lost to chaos’
[12:25.45] <battuta> a very useful consensual lie
And that's the crux of InsaneBaron's argument. Objective morality is fact because it's useful to believe it exists. But the universe doesn't give a **** about what's useful to us.
Just poking in from an outsider's perspective with a question here (and wondering who has the squirt guns ready for when things plummet into some sort of crazy-meta-solipsism hole again), but does the fact that someone believes their own morality to be correct automatically negate the possibility that there is indeed an objective morality in existence? Yes, the 9/11 hijackers personally believed extremely strongly that they were on a holy mission, but we're all aware that fervently-held beliefs can be completely wrong. There are still a frightening number of people out there who firmly believe that man never set foot on the Moon, and they can cite "evidence" at you until they're blue in the face and you want to smash said face in. Now obviously morality is a far vaguer and thornier issue than an historical event with actual physical truth, but I still feel like there's a massive false equivalence being created. "Everyone is convinced that their morality is correct, so there's no such thing as a universal objective morality!" To which I respond...why?
What makes the 9/11 hijackers wrong? You can't compare this to something like the Moon landing because it's trivial to prove that we did in fact land on the Moon. The reason Moon landing conspiracy theorists and Flat Earthers are wrong is because their beliefs are testably false. "The Earth is flat" is objectively false.
Prove to me that the 9/11 hijackers were wrong to do what they did. Something which no thinking person could disagree with any more than they could disagree that 1+1=2.
An objective morality that does nothing, can't be agreed upon by anyone, and leaves no evidence for its existence does not exist. You may as well be arguing that God objectively exists, and, indeed, that's what it leads back to. It might not be the Christian God whose existence you're arguing for, but it is a god.
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Prove to me that the 9/11 hijackers were wrong to do what they did.
It was a tactically and strategically terrible choice that cost them support, bases, personnel, and credibility. It set AQ in particular and that brand of extremism in general back decades, if not more. It fundamentally misunderstood that terrorism is successful by the application of continuous pressure rather than by spectacular but brief and unrepeatable gestures.
If not for the entirely unpredictable and completely unlooked-for result of the United States eventually invading Iraq with a considerable amount of bungling, things would have likely stayed that way.
Doubtless, if you explained the consequences as they stand now to Osama bin Laden, he would be delighted with them. (Or maybe not, al-Baghdadi's new brand of radicalism may not have appealed to bin Laden any more than it does to his other surviving AQ contemporaries.) However what happened was very much unlikely at the time to his knowledge, and if you explained the short-term consequences prior to Iraq it's likely he and his immediate circle of advisers and supporters would have perceived them as catastrophically unwelcome.
Thus, they ultimately should have realized they were acting against the interests of the causes they believed in, and against the interests of those people they had chosen to follow; wrongly, in simplest terms.
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But that's all post-9/11 reasoning. The harder task is to prove that it was the wrong decision at the time when the decision was made, using only information available to the deciders at the time.
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So you're saying they were morally wrong in killing 2000 people in one big spectacular blaze of glory because it was tactically and strategically bad?
So if they killed 4000 people over a year with small, repeatable shootings they would've been right?
If you're not doing anything spectacular then you could just blend in with the other weekly mass shootings not done by terrorists.
And it's not very significant when talking about objective morality as they made a mistake in planning. They were morally right if they were truly convinced what they were doing was the best course of action, misinformed or not.
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It was a tactically and strategically terrible choice that cost them support, bases, personnel, and credibility.
None of which has anything to do with the morality of the choice to do it or not.
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It was a tactically and strategically terrible choice that cost them support, bases, personnel, and credibility. It set AQ in particular and that brand of extremism in general back decades, if not more. It fundamentally misunderstood that terrorism is successful by the application of continuous pressure rather than by spectacular but brief and unrepeatable gestures.
If not for the entirely unpredictable and completely unlooked-for result of the United States eventually invading Iraq with a considerable amount of bungling, things would have likely stayed that way.
Doubtless, if you explained the consequences as they stand now to Osama bin Laden, he would be delighted with them. (Or maybe not, al-Baghdadi's new brand of radicalism may not have appealed to bin Laden any more than it does to his other surviving AQ contemporaries.) However what happened was very much unlikely at the time to his knowledge, and if you explained the short-term consequences prior to Iraq it's likely he and his immediate circle of advisers and supporters would have perceived them as catastrophically unwelcome.
Thus, they ultimately should have realized they were acting against the interests of the causes they believed in, and against the interests of those people they had chosen to follow; wrongly, in simplest terms.
None of this is morally relevant. Morally right and strategically right are two different things.
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This makes at least some sense. But I still don't completely buy it. Yes, I'm willing to concede that, considering the amount of brainwashing he was exposed to, an individual Nazi soldier, for instance, may or may not have been fully culpable for his actions. But culpability isn't what's at stake here, but accuracy. The German soldier may have thought "Jew are Pigs" was true, and we in general think "All Men are Created Equal" is true, but to claim that these two statements are equally true? That's unacceptable. The sincere beliefs of a specific person might effect their guilt, but we must always bear in mind that even if he believed them to be true, they were still false and evil. And there are some pretty clear and obvious guidlines we can use in sorting right from wrong. To begin with, Malice is obviously inherently bad, Charity is obviously inherently good.
EDIT: A question. According to your reasoning, is there even such a thing as an evil person?
Aesaar already answered this, but yes: There are evil persons out there. Just not people who are objectively evil, meaning evil in all possible moral frames of reference.
The thing is, if you insist on there being universal standards for good and evil, you have to explain why people disagree on what they are. So far, neither you nor centuries of philosophical debate on the subject have managed to come up with that explanation.
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this thread is bad because everyone who is arguing against objective morality would still act to force their own subjective morality on hitler or bin laden, and that's the thing insanebaron actually seems to take objection to the questioning of
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Why are we still discussing this? We already agreed that the word "objective" is meaningless. There are no facts, only opinions.
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No, you agreed. We did no such thing.
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This discussion isn't as simple as you seem to want to make it, Ghyl.
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I'll elaborate. This is my position:
Prefacing "this is wrong" with "I believe that" seems like a solipsistic caveat. Yeah, nothing is provable beyond cogito ergo sum. Who cares? To have an ethical discussion, we must relax our definitions of "provable" and "objective".
When I say "Mengele was evil", what I really mean is "I believe that Mengele was objectively evil".
Objective morality exists independently of our beliefs. We can't know what it is, in the same sense that we can't know what anything is. The point is that some subjective moralities are better than others.
If you use fully rigorous definitions, then nothing is provable or objective; every statement depends on a worldview. That's why using rigorous definitions is silly.
I assume the existence of objective morality for the same reason that I assume the existence of objective reality. Because it's a useful assumption. We recognize that our understanding evolves, we accept that we can never know the true state of things, and then we move on.
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But that's all post-9/11 reasoning.
No it's not. Frankly anyone who didn't think the United States would invade and destroy the government of Afghanistan over 9/11 was a moron.
More to the point, you didn't read the bit about the history of terrorism and the value of grand gesture vs. constant pressure.
None of this is morally relevant. Morally right and strategically right are two different things.
Reread the last line. To them, tactical failing on this magnitude is moral failing. When your cause is taken up solely because it is just, because it is the only correct, moral course of action, what is it when you set it back? Injuring good is, pretty much by definition, evil. (To say nothing of the personal loyalties this action would ultimately betray even in the attempt to serve them.)
It's absolutely morally relevant if you advance the cause of evil and harm the cause of good.
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i'm probably with ghyl on this, the distinction between objective/subjective morality is meaningless because ultimately you, individually, are not going to compromise on your subjective morality so you essentially think it's objective
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Explain how societal and personal morals can change over time, then. If they do, clearly they are not objective (and they clearly do).
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Explain how societal and personal morals can change over time, then. If they do, clearly they are not objective (and they clearly do).
We recognize that our understanding evolves, we accept that we can never know the true state of things, and then we move on.
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Not you, PH.
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I stopped following this thread for a while, how the **** did you get from abortion to... are you arguing something about 9/11?
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@Scotty: Sigh. "Explain how scientific theories can change over time, then. If they do, clearly they are not objective (and they clearly do)."
@Bobboau: We're now discussing moral subjectivity... which isn't a huge leap from discussing abortion.
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Explain how societal and personal morals can change over time, then. If they do, clearly they are not objective (and they clearly do).
What difference does that even make? Like, you obviously believe that it is wrong to make gay marriage illegal, and that people who disagree should be forced* to acknowledge it. I don't see a consequential difference between you doing this because you believe that it's objectively or subjectively right.
*In the sense of being denied means to enforce their disagreement.
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What difference does that even make? Like, you obviously believe that it is wrong to make gay marriage illegal, and that people who disagree should be forced* to acknowledge it. I don't see a consequential difference between you doing this because you believe that it's objectively or subjectively right.
The difference is that when you believe you are objectively right there is no reason whatsoever to listen to other viewpoints or examine your own morality. Why bother, you are objectively right.
Subjectively right means that although you may believe you are correct, there is always a chance that you are wrong about something. Maybe something minor, but it's always worth examining your beliefs.
You could make the argument that a large number of problems in the world are due to people who act like they are objectively right.
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No. If you believe that you're objectively right, there's always a chance that you're wrong in your belief. This makes you more likely to listen to other viewpoints, because you want to approximate objective morality as closely as possible - and your approximation may be a poor one.
If you only believe in subjective morality, there's no reason whatsoever to listen to other viewpoints or examine your own morality, because it's not even possible to be wrong.
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Now you're just getting into determinism. If you believe you are right subjectively you also have to accept that everyone else is right subjectively. If you believe in subjective morality you're then using your own guidelines and your own reasoning instead of deluding yourself into following a system you don't really believe in.
In the end, you're still bound by your own beliefs, the difference only comes whether you accept that or not. Those beliefs can always be changed and it's easier to change them if you don't try to force yourself into following an 'objective' standard you don't believe in.
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No. If you believe that you're objectively right, there's always a chance that you're wrong in your belief. This makes you more likely to listen to other viewpoints, because you want to approximate objective morality as closely as possible - and your approximation may be a poor one.
Nope gotta disagree with that. Because it is quite clear that people who believe they are close to objective morality only listen to people who are saying something similar to them. Basically it's an enormous loop of confirmation biases. No one ever believes that their morality is completely wrong. So since they believe that their morality is mostly correct, they're only going to listen to people who say things that are similar to what they already believe. After all, if they are correct, why take advice from someone so obviously further away from objectivity?
Reread the last line. To them, tactical failing on this magnitude is moral failing. When your cause is taken up solely because it is just, because it is the only correct, moral course of action, what is it when you set it back? Injuring good is, pretty much by definition, evil. (To say nothing of the personal loyalties this action would ultimately betray even in the attempt to serve them.)
It's absolutely morally relevant if you advance the cause of evil and harm the cause of good.
Except that you're missing something. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's roots are in the teachings of Sayyed Qutb who espoused using acts of terror to shock the masses into becoming what they viewed as good Muslims again. In that respect the 9/11 was actually their greatest triumph because it did shock people all over the world. They literally did exactly what their morality said they needed to do to stop the corruption of Muslims by the West. The fact that this was (as you have explained) an extraordinarily self-destructive belief doesn't mean that they were betraying their own morals by following it.
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Now you're just getting into determinism. If you believe you are right subjectively you also have to accept that everyone else is right subjectively. If you believe in subjective morality you're then using your own guidelines and your own reasoning instead of deluding yourself into following a system you don't really believe in.
In the end, you're still bound by your own beliefs, the difference only comes whether you accept that or not. Those beliefs can always be changed and it's easier to change them if you don't try to force yourself into following an 'objective' standard you don't believe in.
I don't see your point. I agree that everyone is subjectively right, which is exactly why the concept of "subjectively right" is useless. It also removes all motivation to examine your morality, because it's not even possible to be wrong. Why should you ever change your mind?
This is also how science works, by the way. Scientists are unusually open-minded because they believe they are objectively right. They believe that their theories approximate reality, which motivates them to update their theories over time.
Nope gotta disagree with that. Because it is quite clear that people who believe they are close to objective morality only listen to people who are saying something similar to them. Basically it's an enormous loop of confirmation biases. No one ever believes that their morality is completely wrong. So since they believe that their morality is mostly correct, they're only going to listen to people who say things that are similar to what they already believe. After all, if they are correct, why take advice from someone so obviously further away from objectivity?
You're talking about people who not only believe that they are objectively right, but believe it so strongly that they have no doubt at all.
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Because science is empirical. Morality isn't.
Following things you honestly believe in means you're following your subjective morality. Following things you've forced yourself to accept due to outside input(but don't honestly believe in) is just self-delusion. While the latter might lead to more 'good' actions as defined by society, the former is close to actually moral actions, things you honestly believe to be good.
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Of course morality isn't science. My point is that belief in an objective truth gives you a reason to change your mind. Again: if it's not even possible to be wrong, why should you change your mind?
I still don't see your point about "accepting things I don't believe in". I've accepted things because other people convinced me. I believed they were objectively right.
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It's very simple. If you believe in it, then it's subjectively right for you. The only case where what you believe is 'objectively' right and what you believe is 'subjectively' right don't overlap is when you're deluding yourself.
If you changed your mind then what you previously believed was subjectively right is no longer subjectively right for you.
And you should never need a reason to change your mind. You changed your beliefs because outside input or introspection forced you to change them. It comes down to your core axioms. If someone points out that your conclusions don't lead from your premises then you either have to change your premises or fix your logic, which is objectively wrong.
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What I believe is "subjectively right for me" is also what I believe is "objectively right". The concept of subjective rightness is utterly useless, because everyone's subjectively right.
Why should outside input change my morality, if my morality cannot possibly be wrong? Why should I listen to outside input at all?
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Because you believe outside input has value. If you don't believe that, then you shouldn't listen to it. And while your set of core axioms can't be objectively wrong, your logic definitely can. Logic is an idea and therefore can be objectively right or wrong.
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Why should outside input change my morality, if my morality cannot possibly be wrong? Why should I listen to outside input at all?
You're kidding, right?
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You're talking about people who not only believe that they are objectively right, but believe it so strongly that they have no doubt at all.
No. I'm talking about anyone who believes that there is an objective good and that they are somewhat close to it. The closer you believe you are, the less likely you are to listen to anyone else but I think it's pretty obvious that more people than not believe that they are close and that they don't need to listen to the other side. You can see that in pretty much every argument on the internet.
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Why should outside input change my morality, if my morality cannot possibly be wrong? Why should I listen to outside input at all?
You're kidding, right?
Have you been paying attention? That's my whole point. If it's not even possible to be wrong, you reach the (hopefully) absurd conclusion that there's no reason to change your mind.
Because you believe outside input has value. If you don't believe that, then you shouldn't listen to it. And while your set of core axioms can't be objectively wrong, your logic definitely can. Logic is an idea and therefore can be objectively right or wrong.
If it's not even possible to be wrong, outside input has no value. And let's not return to the whole logical consistency angle; as you rightly noted earlier, "if it's not me, then kill it" is logically consistent.
No. I'm talking about anyone who believes that there is an objective good and that they are somewhat close to it. The closer you believe you are, the less likely you are to listen to anyone else but I think it's pretty obvious that more people than not believe that they are close and that they don't need to listen to the other side. You can see that in pretty much every argument on the internet.
Those people are closed-minded. I completely agree.
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ITT: GhylTarvoke repeatedly fails to understand how subjective morality functions as a concept.
"If it's not even possible to be wrong" is a pretty ****ing huge assumption that is also pretty wrong for a whole lot (most?) people and an even greater proportion of societies.
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No, you don't reach that conclusion if you hold "outside input and introspection has value" as one of your core axioms. And as I explained, it is possible to be objectively wrong if your logic isn't consistent with your core axioms.
If you truly believe the previously mentioned "If it is alive and it is not me, kill it" then you should act according to it. Following your core axioms as closely and as rationally as possible is the point of morality.
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ITT: GhylTarvoke repeatedly fails to understand how subjective morality functions as a concept.
"If it's not even possible to be wrong" is a pretty ****ing huge assumption that is also pretty wrong for a whole lot (most?) people and an even greater proportion of societies.
You're saying that a person's subjective morality can be wrong?
No, you don't reach that conclusion if you hold "outside input and introspection has value" as one of your core axioms. And as I explained, it is possible to be objectively wrong if your logic isn't consistent with your core axioms.
If you truly believe the previously mentioned "If it is alive and it is not me, kill it" then you should act according to it. Following your core axioms as closely and as rationally as possible is the point of morality.
If you simultaneously have "outside input [regarding my subjective morality] has value" and "[barring logical inconsistency,] my subjective morality cannot be wrong" as core axioms, you've reached a contradiction. (If your subjective morality is consistent, then it cannot be wrong, so outside input should have no effect on it.)
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That's the point. If it's consistent then you shouldn't change it. You should act according to your core axioms.
But most people don't hold the belief that it's impossible they've made a mistake and that their logic is perfectly consistent.
And even if you did, you're still not contradicting yourself. You can believe things to have inherent value, even if it's not possible that your core axioms are ever 'wrong'.
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You can believe things to have inherent value, even if it's not possible that your core axioms are ever 'wrong'.
Let's be clear here: by "things", you specifically mean other moralities, which brings us right back to where we started. Why would you value one morality over another (again, barring logical inconsistency)? What reason would you have to change your axioms?
If the description "subjectively right" can be applied to any consistent morality (even one as repugnant as "if it is alive and it is not me, kill it"), the description is useless. We might as well refer to everything in strictly mathematical terms.
EDIT: If it's consistent then you shouldn't change it.
So no argument would convince you to change it, unless the argument addressed logical consistency. If this isn't closed-minded, I don't know what is.
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So no argument would convince you to change it, unless the argument addressed logical consistency. If this isn't closed-minded, I don't know what is.
Yes, that's the point. Anything else is self-delusion. Your core axioms aren't something you arrive at through reason and aren't something that can be changed through reason. That's why they're your CORE axioms.
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Yes, that's the point. Anything else is self-delusion. Your core axioms aren't something you arrive at through reason and aren't something that can be changed through reason. That's why they're your CORE axioms.
OK, now I understand your position. In addition to making moral debate impossible, it implies that the worldview "only my mind exists" is subjectively right, which suggests that your definitions of "subjective" and "objective" are too rigorous.
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ok, just looking over the last few posts.
You can believe that there is an objective basis for your position but that it has a high sample variance, large error rate, hard to account for confounding variables, what you are talking about is more qualitative than quantitative, or that there was a misreading when you took your measurements, so believing you are objectively right does not mean you are stuck and cannot have your position changed, and it doesn't mean that you can't be convinced out of the belief that you are objectively correct.
Personal and societal morals can change over time while there is still an objective base to it by there being low level objective morals informed by beliefs or perspective. Think of it like a sense of fairness, which are informed by the individual's model of reality. If you feed into an innate morality your belief that there is an immortal soul that will exist forever and judged by loyalty to a ruler in life, that innate morality might produce a different response than if you feed in a belief that everyone only has one very short life. People objectively have legs (even if you can find a few counter examples) but they can be used to walk, crawl, or run depending on how you use them. From this perspective you can assume everyone's morality is basically the same but that the major differences lay in the models of reality that they are feeding into it, and THAT is where the true differences exist. In the case of abortion it's not that pro-life people believe it's OK to kill babies, that that they don't think that pea sized lumps of undifferentiated cells are babies. I suppose this comes down to an argument of semantics of what is meant by objective vs subjective morality.
objective morality is something completely different than absolute morality, I'm going to assume this has been tackled already.