A Philosophical Arguement against Abortion

[Betterave]

person[/B].

But if self-awareness is the measure of humanity (of ‘ensoulment’), then the embryonic human being does not possess any of the relevant *intrinsic *functionality. Instead it has an *instrumental *functionality with respect to the development of the future person. It seems hard to avoid this conclusion when you yourself call it a person in development, and not a person. (I would suggest emphasizing the fact that *all *persons are “persons in development” so that you avoid giving the erroneous impression that these are separable categories.)

It is irrelevant. Most people who fight for pro - choice do so on the notion of moral equality and moral dignity. “Moral truth” is the defining motivation of the pro choice movement, regardless of whether it is rational or not to believe in objective moral values.They argue that pro life is intrinsically “wrong” because it is depriving women of a moral dignity which they ought to have as “persons” with freewill. And they try to morally justify the use of abortion as not being murder by using the moral argument that a embryo should be denied the value of a person because in its present state, it is not a walking talking person; and they expect us to recognize and understand the objective moral truth of their statement. They may not really believe in right and wrong, but so long as they attempt to justify abortion on “moral terms”, they are bound to a standard of moral truth that is true whether we subjectively think it is or not, and is a truth that we can reason to according to that universal moral standard. Pro-choice is a moral argument; it isn’t an argument against objective moral values. Otherwise their claim cannot be determined as objectively valid.

Ones position on moral nihilism is really irrelevant because that is the the motivation of the movement.

Good points.

This is just an assertion. You have not provided us with any explanation as to why an embryo does not equate to a person. As i said before, it is correct to think of the embryo as having the same value as a person because that is the intrinsic end to which the embryonic process is in act; it is making a person. If you destroy the embryo you destroy the end to which the embryonic process was in act. If we truly value the end to which the embryonic process is in act, we cannot justify destroying that embryo. In so far as the human embryo is intrinsically in act to that which we value, it is right for me to think of the embryo as being a person in development. We say that people have value not because of what they can give us as persons, but rather because they are persons, and thus we must protect all that which is immediately intrinsic to the existence of a person which includes their dna and what ever other nature that is intrinsic to person-hood such as their conception. If you value my existence as a person now, then you must value my conception.

Continued…

It seems that if it is only “making a person” then it is not yet a person - case closed (not good). The “making a person” language is inaccurate anyway; I’d drop it.

 

[Betterave]

People who are already here are more valuable than the unborn, by virtue of the fact that they are sentient, aware, and able to interact and form relationships with others. At the time when the majority of abortions are performed, the human foetus is none of these things.
Since it is unable to attach any value to its own life, its value comes entirely from the attitude its parent(s) have towards it.

**This **is a very interesting claim. Do you mean it? I hope you can answer some questions about it:

Do you mean parent (mom) or parents (mom and dad) (why “parent(s)”?)? Why restrict “its value” entirely to the attitude of this one or these two individuals?

If ‘value’ comes from ‘attitude,’ as you say, I should want to know: where does ‘attitude’ come from? Surely it’s not some kind of sui generis absolute entity which infallibly produces some abstract quantity or other of ‘value’?

What happens as the child develops self-awareness: does its value come to be only partly (no longer entirely) derived from the attitude its parents have towards it? Does parental attitude *cease entirely *to be a factor governing the child’s value at some point?

Do conflicting attitudes cancel each other out? How is that supposed to work when people have opposing attitudes?

 

[Sair]

**This **is a very interesting claim. Do you mean it? I hope you can answer some questions about it:

Do you mean parent (mom) or parents (mom and dad) (why “parent(s)”?)? Why restrict “its value” entirely to the attitude of this one or these two individuals?

If ‘value’ comes from ‘attitude,’ as you say, I should want to know: where does ‘attitude’ come from? Surely it’s not some kind of sui generis absolute entity which infallibly produces some abstract quantity or other of ‘value’?

What happens as the child develops self-awareness: does its value come to be only partly (no longer entirely) derived from the attitude its parents have towards it? Does parental attitude *cease entirely *to be a factor governing the child’s value at some point?

Do conflicting attitudes cancel each other out? How is that supposed to work when people have opposing attitudes?

I would say the most important person in the equation is the mother, simply because she is the one who faces the greatest investment, the greatest opportunity cost, in seeing the pregnancy through to its completion (and beyond, should she decide to raise the child herself). If abortion is being considered - not that I speak from personal experience on this front - then my guess is that it’s likely the father is either absent or indifferent, or otherwise unwilling to commit to the potential child. If he values the potential child, obviously his wishes ought to be considered, but second to those of the mother as he has less at stake. I used ‘attitude’ in this context simply to refer to the position the parents take - whether they value the potential child or not; or perhaps more specifically, whether they have other interests they value more than the potential child.

As for when the parents’ values/attitudes cease to be the primary deciding factor (morally speaking) in whether the child lives, my answer to that - since I generally tend to adhere to a utilitarian ethic - is when ending a pregnancy would be likely to cause the developing foetus to suffer. That is, when the nervous system is developed enough to process pain. The present scientific consensus (I think) is that this happens sometime during the second trimester. Personhood is a little more problematic, and somewhat more difficult to define, since it involves attaining a certain degree of conscious self-awareness. It is doubtful whether a young human infant has as much self-awareness as the average dog, for example; but lack of personhood does not entail lack of sentience, so the above-stated position still holds.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

But if self-awareness is the measure of humanity.

Self awareness is an expression of “human nature”; which is dependent on and includes the biological sphere. Personal nature has to exist first before it can be aware. Awareness doesn’t exist merely upon the ground of awareness. Awareness is not that which causes awareness. For Christians it is the soul in union with biological/teleological processes which causes the awareness of people. For the naturalist it is the brain which causes and preserves the self awareness that we call the mind. A “person”, by definition is a union of mind and body. Knowing that the mind is dependent on the functionality of the brain would you stab somebodies brain? Or would you value their brain? I would value their brain. I would not say to my self that because somebody is unconscious, that therefore its okay to stab that persons brain while they are sleeping. Why? Because i would be destroying the** intrinsic end** to which a brain acts, which is the consciousness of a living person.

Instead it has an *instrumental *functionality

Firstly, that depends on your conception of the soul, and either way the existence of a soul is not the premise of the argument. Surely you can see that. I suggest you go back a read it again. In any case the existence of a soul is not the premise of my argument; it was just an example. The existence of a soul is not assumed in a pro-choice debate.

Secondly; again you are trying to downgrade the importance of the brain in relation to the consciousness of a person. It is the the combination of mind and body that makes a person; and it is that union we value; and if we value that union then we ought not to destroy any process pending the biological functionality of that union. You would not stab somebody’s biological organ because you know that you are destroying all future potential for that persons continuity in physical existence. If you could go back in time knowing the value of what i am now, and attempted to destroy that which was in actuality toward the functionality of my consciousness, given your knowledge of the end product, you would be guilty of intentionally attempting to erase me from existence. The fact that you tried to get to me when i was not conscious is irrelevant, since the embryo is defined as human in light of the end to which it intrinsically acts. Thus the embryo is also defined as a person in light of its productive end.

If somebody was to argue that a baby is not self conscious at birth would you see it as morally justifiable to destroy that baby? Better yet, if my mind was to cease in its actuality, but it was known that this was a temporary fact; would it be morally permissible to destroy my body upon which my minds actuality depends?

Its painfully obvious that the answer cannot be yes, simply because we know that we are destroying the objective value of the end product.

It seems that if it is only “making a person” then it is not yet a person

Its irrelevant. You are ignoring my emphases that a things value is determined by the end to which a things nature acts. If you know that something is making a person, and you attempt to destroy that process, then given your knowledge, you admit to maliciously attempting to destroy the existence of that person. It does not matter that the person is not yet complete, since your attack is aimed at the end product which is a living person, not an object that is not yet a person. Abortion is not an attempt to stop an object from growing in your stomach. Abortion is a conscious decision to stop a “person” from existing; which is, according to objective morality, a selfish act. You are attempting to destroy the end to which an organic substance is in act; and the end in so far as it is pending existence, is of objective value.

Let me put this in Christians terms that you and i are familiar with.
If the devil, in knowing that God was going to create the human race, attempted to destroy the processes leading to the definite actuality of the human race, the devil would be guilty of attempted murder. It would not matter that the people just described were not yet in existence. The fact that eternal existence was in act toward the potential but definite existence of people, is justification enough to condemn the devil for attempted murder. There is no reason why this wouldn’t also be true for human beings given the truth of objective morality.

It might be of help to realize that the value of a person is independent of any persons existing. A person doesn’t only become valuable in existing, but rather persons are objectively valuable regardless of whether or not any human-beings had ever existed. To assume otherwise is to think that the idea of person is only of value in relation to actually existing persons; but this is false. It would be wrong to rape and kill children regardless of whether or not children actually existed. Objective Moral truth is always objective Moral truth regardless of the changing nature of events. Thus perhaps you can now see why it would be valid to say that it is wrong to destroy that which is in act toward the existence of a person, precisely because the value of a person is “time-independent”. The value of a person is not determined by the actuality of events.

“Time” is misleading because it gives the impression that that which in only in potential is unimportant and is of no value until it is actual; but according to objective morality, actual existence includes that which is in potential precisely because it will exist.

My argument is thus valid and absolutely impeccable.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

As for when the parents’ values/attitudes cease to be the primary deciding factor (morally speaking) in whether the child lives, my answer to that - since I generally tend to adhere to a utilitarian ethic - is when ending a pregnancy would be likely to cause the developing foetus to suffer. That is, when the nervous system is developed enough to process pain. The present scientific consensus (I think) is that this happens sometime during the second trimester. Personhood is a little more problematic, and somewhat more difficult to define, since it involves attaining a certain degree of conscious self-awareness. It is doubtful whether a young human infant has as much self-awareness as the average dog, for example; but lack of personhood does not entail lack of sentience, so the above-stated position still holds.

If the value of a person is only related to the actuality of certain qualities that we understand as personal such as language and thinking, then it is morally permissible to murder very young babies.

 

[hatsoff]

I think you are wrong: taste (as you’ve described it) is not a kind of value judgment - it’s no kind of judgment at all, any more than being cold, or feeling sluggish, or delirious, or having itchy armpits are judgments.

Well, perhaps I should have been clearer about this, but in posts #31 and #35, Charlemagne II spoke of preferring chocolate to vanilla ice cream, and that is the context of my reply. We aren’t talking about the sensation of tasting that ice cream, which you correctly point out is not a value judgment.

I don’t know if you have me on your ignore list or something, but I’ve asked for your own definition of the badness of judgments in general and you’ve ignored my question. Now it seems you owe us your definition of ‘judgment’ (and perhaps an explanation as to why your definition is not purely stipulative, but rather warrants our paying any attention to it). Also: are you equating ‘subjective’ with ‘relative’? If so, why would you do this?

I understand “bad” as a kind of value judgment whose use is defined by natural language. It characterizes the expected reaction of a subject (typically a person) to an object (which can be anything, including abstract objects and other people).

 

[Betterave]

Well, perhaps I should have been clearer about this, but in posts #31 and #35, Charlemagne II spoke of preferring chocolate to vanilla ice cream, and that is the context of my reply. We aren’t talking about the sensation of tasting that ice cream, which you correctly point out is not a value judgment.

Okay, right, but I think that a preference as such is still not a judgment in the relevant sense. To illustrate: I recently learned that squirrels prefer (eating) red tulips to yellow tulips. Now obviously we shouldn’t simply conclude that squirrels generally form the judgment that red tulips are better than yellow tulips… right? Or sometimes my son will prefer to not eat some food, say mushrooms, that he normally enjoys (he might even say, “I don’t like mushrooms”) - his preference does not express a judgment about mushrooms… right?

(Obviously, then, I also think that Ch’s post 31 is not correct in calling a preference for chocolate ice cream a “value judgment” - it’s not, it’s just a preference, and that is all anyone judges it to be.)

I understand “bad” as a kind of value judgment whose use is defined by natural language. It characterizes the expected reaction of a subject (typically a person) to an object (which can be anything, including abstract objects and other people).

Okay, thanks, I’ll try to keep this in mind, but I’d like to get clear on what you mean by ‘judgment’ first. Then (hopefully) we can address ‘bad judgment.’

 

[Sair]

If the value of a person is only related to the actuality of certain qualities that we understand as personal such as language and thinking, then it is morally permissible to murder very young babies.

Well, yes, quite.

This is why I don’t cite personhood as an important criterion here. It’s arguable - and I think most would probably agree - that the act of killing acquires greater gravity when a person is involved, and perhaps becomes what we could call “more” wrong, but that does not mean that the killing of sentient nonpersons is less wrong in and of itself.

Why sentience? It’s been asked of me before, so I’ll endeavour to explain. The simple fact of the matter, for me, is that I have found no other basis upon which to build a system of ethics that is more universal, more practical, less arbitrary - and believe me, I have spent a lot of time considering such things. Of course life is important - I have never denied that. No other interests can subsist without life. But since it is impossible for us to live without taking other life, we still need some informative basis for discerning when it is morally acceptable (if not necessarily preferable) to take life. Although I have no actual statistics to back this up, it appears from reading this thread and others that the majority of people who claim to be pro-life are very much specifically pro-human life, and consider a nonsentient human foetus more valuable, by virtue of being human, than sentient members of other species. This, to my way of thinking, is just arbitrary personal preference.

Of course utilitarianism is not a perfect moral system. It cannot provide the answers to every moral question we may have. But it does, I feel, provide a sound basis for considering ethical quandaries, in a way that most absolutist moral systems do not.

 

[Betterave]

Whose attitude is the most important in determining the value of the fetus and what contingent sociological factors are likely to be involved in assessing actual cases where abortion is considered? I would say the most important person in the equation is the mother, simply because she is the one who faces the greatest investment, the greatest opportunity cost, in seeing the pregnancy through to its completion (and beyond, should she decide to raise the child herself). If abortion is being considered - not that I speak from personal experience on this front - then my guess is that it’s likely the father is either absent or indifferent, or otherwise unwilling to commit to the potential child. If he values the potential child, obviously his wishes ought to be considered, but second to those of the mother as he has less at stake. I used ‘attitude’ in this context simply to refer to the position the parents take - whether they value the potential child or not; or perhaps more specifically, whether they have other interests they value more than the potential child.

**When should the parents’ attitudes cease to be the primary deciding factor in whether the child lives?**As for when the parents’ values/attitudes cease to be the primary deciding factor (morally speaking) in whether the child lives, my answer to that - since I generally tend to adhere to a utilitarian ethic - is when ending a pregnancy would be likely to cause the developing foetus to suffer. That is, when the nervous system is developed enough to process pain. The present scientific consensus (I think) is that this happens sometime during the second trimester. Personhood is a little more problematic, and somewhat more difficult to define, since it involves attaining a certain degree of conscious self-awareness. It is doubtful whether a young human infant has as much self-awareness as the average dog, for example; but lack of personhood does not entail lack of sentience, so the above-stated position still holds.

I asked a lot of questions and thank you for your reply, but I don’t think, strictly speaking, that you answered any of them. Perhaps this was unintentional and I didn’t state the questions in enough detail? For comparison I have supplied for you above the different questions that I didn’t ask but that you did answer. Regarding your second paragraph above, especially the bolded phrase, you do recognize, I hope, that the issue of causing pain to something (or not) while we are killing it is not so much a question of fetal development as a purely technical question (involving the mastery of techniques of killing painlessly)? Anyone can be killed painlessly, you sure don’t have to be in your mother’s womb for that to be a possibility!

 

[Betterave]

Firstly, that depends on your conception of the soul, and either way the existence of a soul is not the premise of the argument. Surely you can see that.

A soul is a principle of life. I think that you probably don’t see that the debate most certainly is about the existence of the soul, even for the pro-choicers, and even if they don’t like to actually use the term soul. Pro-choicers are very much interested in making what effectively amount to vague claims about an ensoulment (the event of “becoming-a-real-person” or “becoming-sentient” for the animal lovers (think Aristotelian ‘animal-soul’)) that does not happen at conception, but only some time after, let’s say, when the nervous system reaches a certain level of sophistication, or when the baby has breached the birth canal, or when it has said its first word, formed a self-concept, or graduated high school… they have many different opinions. I suggest you keep this in mind when you engage in these debates.

I suggest you go back a read it again. In any case the existence of a soul is not the premise of my argument; it was just an example. The existence of a soul is not assumed in a pro-choice debate.

 

[hatsoff]

Okay, right, but I think that a preference as such is still not a judgment in the relevant sense. To illustrate: I recently learned that squirrels prefer (eating) red tulips to yellow tulips. Now obviously we shouldn’t simply conclude that squirrels generally form the judgment that red tulips are better than yellow tulips… right? Or sometimes my son will prefer to not eat some food, say mushrooms, that he normally enjoys (he might even say, “I don’t like mushrooms”) - his preference does not express a judgment about mushrooms… right?

(Obviously, then, I also think that Ch’s post 31 is not correct in calling a preference for chocolate ice cream a “value judgment” - it’s not, it’s just a preference, and that is all anyone judges it to be.)

Okay, thanks, I’ll try to keep this in mind, but I’d like to get clear on what you mean by ‘judgment’ first. Then (hopefully) we can address ‘bad judgment.’

Well, I hate to say it, but I’m not sure I’m going to be posting much more in this thread, if at all. I will only say for now that I agree that preferences are not value judgments, per se. Preferences are sometimes understood as expressions of values or value judgments, or, alternatively, the objects of value judgments, that is, the values themselves.

Hopefully I haven’t been so careless with my language in previous posts that I have explicitly equated values with value judgments, but if so I’m sorry. Either way, I will be especially careful about that in the future.

 

[Sair]

I asked a lot of questions and thank you for your reply, but I don’t think, strictly speaking, that you answered any of them.

My apologies if I didn’t directly address your questions. You asked:

*Do you mean parent (mom) or parents (mom and dad) (why “parent(s)”?)? Why restrict “its value” entirely to the attitude of this one or these two individuals?
*

I thought I made it sufficiently clear last time why the mother’s attitude is the most important; of course other people’s feelings should weigh into the decision, but ultimately, as I said, the mother has the most invested in the decision to continue the pregnancy. To suppose otherwise would be kind of like me saying that it’s immoral for you not to invest your own time and resources in building a large house for your children to live in, whilst being in no position to assist you with such an endeavour.

I think the difficulty with this question lies in the difference between intrinsic and relative value. You’re asking me - I think - if the only thing that ascribes value to a nonsentient human foetus is the attitude of the mother and possibly the father. If I were to seek a secular explanation for what ‘intrinsic’ value actually means, I would tend towards supposing that when a living thing is capable of valuing its own life, even in the most basic sense of consciously avoiding or reacting adversely to things that might threaten its life and wellbeing (for which reason we have a pain response), it has value in and of itself. Without an ability to value one’s own life, or to be the subject of a life, what other source of value is present that does not come from the relationship of living things to other living things? To give an ecologically-based example, I think there are few who would argue that a tree is not valuable - but whence this value? Because the tree is valuable in and of itself, or because of the myriad other life that the tree supports?

To tie this back to actually answering the question, the value of a nonsentient foetus is, I believe, entirely relative, since it is incapable of feeling or demonstrating even the simplest sense of value for its own life. One encounters parents who are overjoyed at the prospect of a new child, and other parents who are downcast by it - clearly, the former feel a greater sense of value for their potential child than the latter. To reverse the question, whence the value of a foetus if it is not valued by others, in particular by its mother and father (assuming the father is present and aware of the pregnancy, hence my earlier use of the term ‘parent(s)’)?

If ‘value’ comes from ‘attitude,’ as you say, I should want to know: where does ‘attitude’ come from? Surely it’s not some kind of sui generis absolute entity which infallibly produces some abstract quantity or other of ‘value’?

I thought I had explained my use of the term ‘attitude’ previously, but perhaps it would have been more accurate to refer to ‘experience of value’ - since it is really the feelings of the parents towards the potential child - do they value it or not? - that I meant to describe.

What happens as the child develops self-awareness: does its value come to be only partly (no longer entirely) derived from the attitude its parents have towards it? Does parental attitude cease entirely to be a factor governing the child’s value at some point?

When the child is capable of demonstrating a basic value for its own life (as described above), its parents’ attitudes cease to be a determining factor in the value of the child’s life in and of itself. The parents may still be indifferent to the child, but once the subject of a life, the child has what can be thought of as intrinsic value, even by secularists like myself.

*Do conflicting attitudes cancel each other out? How is that supposed to work when people have opposing attitudes?
*

I would say that depends upon circumstances. The person whose attitude and feelings matter the most is the person who has the most invested - the most to gain or lose - in the possible outcome of a decision. In the case of abortion, this is always the mother. Whilst she may well be swayed by the feelings of others - for example, the father of the foetus, or her own parents, and their willingness to support her and the potential child - the decision is ultimately hers to make. So the short answer is no - I don’t think that conflicting attitudes cancel each other out in the case of abortion.

you do recognize, I hope, that the issue of causing pain to something (or not) while we are killing it is not so much a question of fetal development as a purely technical question (involving the mastery of techniques of killing painlessly)? Anyone can be killed painlessly, you sure don’t have to be in your mother’s womb for that to be a possibility!

I do recognise this, but I also recognise the difference between what can be and what generally is. I am not well-versed in techniques applied for later-term abortions, but I’m pretty sure none of them involve anaesthetising the foetus beforehand.

 

[Spirithound]

Not so good. If we simply stipulate moral absolutism, our opponent can just as well stipulate moral nihilism, can’t she? Whatever our moral position, it shouldn’t be based on mere stipulation. We need to recognize that there are not just two alternatives: either moral nihilism (or emotivism or anarchism) or moral absolutism. One of these may be correct, we needn’t deny that, but (mistakenly!) thinking that these are the only alternatives is not conducive to productive dialogue, it seems to me.

Thank you, I should have said that “whether there are moral absolutes” needs to be a discussion we must have before being able to truly dive into MoM2’s argument.

What would be the third option? By moral absolutism, I mean to say “some moral absolutes exist”, not necessarily that every considered/human/moral action is governed by an absolute.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

This is confused. Yes, it would be wrong to kill children even if no children actually existed; but that wrong will never be committed if no children actually exist.

No. It is you that is confused by the illusion of time indexes. As i said before, existence includes that which is in potential. If children are not pending existence, then one cannot possibly stop a child from existing; thus no wrong is done. Please note that when i say “potential”, i am not merely saying a “possibility”. A possibility is not the definite end product of a process, but rather it is a possibility given that there are elements that could bring about the processes intrinsic to the existence of a person. This is not what i am saying. But rather i am saying that some being (embryo) is in a definite act toward the existential act of “children”. It is acting for the existence of children, and that is what the embryo is doing from the time of conception. It is building what we know to be a person. A person is of moral value and thus has a right to exist. Thus to stop that act would be to destroy that which is of moral value. If we truly value the end product as having a right to life then we cannot justify annihilating processes that are intrinsic to the pending existence of a living person. The processes of a human embryo is processing a personal being that has a moral right to life; thus to destroy that process would be to undermine a personal beings moral right to life.

If i was building a table, and you came along and destroyed its construction; i would be upset because you destroyed my “table”; and not because you destroyed a mere construct.You destroyed that to which the construct was in act, and thus in so doing you stopped me from bringing about that which is of “value” to me, and that is why i am upset. Of course, in this case, the value we speak of is subjective. If you punched a pregnant women in her stomach and there by destroyed that which she valued, she would not be irrational for saying that you killed her baby, which is true in light of the fact that a living baby was the definite end product of conception. In light of “objective morality”, the consequences of stopping an embryo from reaching maturity, is to stop that which has a right to life, and that which is has a right to life does not need the subjective opinions of the mother in order to be of value. A persons right to life begins at conception, because a “person” is the end product.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Well, yes, quite.
This is why I don’t cite personhood as an important criterion here.

It’s arguable - and I think most would probably agree - that the act of killing acquires greater gravity when a person is involved, and perhaps becomes what we could call “more” wrong, but that does not mean that the killing of sentient nonpersons is less wrong in and of itself.

Why sentience? It’s been asked of me before, so I’ll endeavour to explain. The simple fact of the matter, for me, is that I have found no other basis upon which to build a system of ethics that is more universal, more practical, less arbitrary - and believe me, I have spent a lot of time considering such things.

All ethics is arbitrary if there is no objective basis. You are nothing more than a bag of chemicals. The words you are speaking is nothing more than the firing of neurons. I am not speaking to a person with free actions. In fact such words have no objective meaning and is thus objectively quite meaningless and arbitrary. Born of a fantasy that we are more than the sum of an object. Folk psychology. This conversation is quite pointless.

Of course life is important - I have never denied that. No other interests can subsist without life. But since it is impossible for us to live without taking other life, we still need some informative basis for discerning when it is morally acceptable (if not necessarily preferable) to take life.

It is irrational to try and discern a basis for when it is morally permissible. Morality is meaningless. What are you talking about?

Although I have no actual statistics to back this up, it appears from reading this thread and others that the majority of people who claim to be pro-life are very much specifically pro-human life, and consider a nonsentient human foetus more valuable, by virtue of being human, than sentient members of other species. This, to my way of thinking, is just arbitrary personal preference.

It depends on the meaning of morality. If morality means merely that we ought to preserve life, then it would seem that Christianity is at odds with true moral law. But that is not what Christians mean by morality.

Of course utilitarianism is not a perfect moral system. It cannot provide the answers to every moral question we may have. But it does, I feel, provide a sound basis for considering ethical quandaries, in a way that most absolutist moral systems do not.

I don’t know what you are talking about.

We are all going to die. The question is how do i get the most amount of pleasure before i die. I am not going to put up with a less pleasurable barely tolerable existence just so that somebody else can have a bit more pleasure. I would rather die young with extreme pleasure then live to old age making concessions for other peoples pleasure. Life is merely an opportunity to exploit the senses. That is all. Old age is for cowards. Morality is for the deluded.

 

[Betterave]

My apologies if I didn’t directly address your questions.

No problem. I realize it’s not always easy to see the point of questions in philosophy.

You asked:

[RE: “the value of the non-sentient unborn comes entirely from the attitude its parent(s) have towards it”]

*Do you mean parent (mom) or parents (mom and dad) (why “parent(s)”?)? Why restrict “its value” entirely to the attitude of this one or these two individuals?
*

I thought I made it sufficiently clear last time why the mother’s attitude is the most important; of course other people’s feelings should weigh into the decision, but ultimately, as I said, the mother has the most invested in the decision to continue the pregnancy. To suppose otherwise would be kind of like me saying that it’s immoral for you not to invest your own time and resources in building a large house for your children to live in, whilst being in no position to assist you with such an endeavour.

So where does value come from in your view? (That’s what my question was about.) From the attitude of the parent(s) still? Or does it actually come from the product of (attitude of person effected) x (‘investment’ in continued pregnancy) - and the person with the highest absolute score (positive or negative) gets to make the decision (and you think this will always be the mother - for very vaguely stated reasons)?

… I think there are few who would argue that a tree is not valuable - but whence this value? Because the tree is valuable in and of itself, or because of the myriad other life that the tree supports?

I think the tree is valuable in itself, though not for itself - you don’t?

If ‘value’ comes from ‘attitude,’ as you say, I should want to know: where does ‘attitude’ come from? Surely it’s not some kind of sui generis absolute entity which infallibly produces some abstract quantity or other of ‘value’?

I thought I had explained my use of the term ‘attitude’ previously, but perhaps it would have been more accurate to refer to ‘experience of value’ - since it is really the feelings of the parents towards the potential child - do they value it or not? - that I meant to describe.

I know you made ‘explicative’ comments about the word attitude, but whatever term you want to substitute (e.g., experience of value), I will have the same question: if ‘value’ comes from it, where does it come from?.. etc.

What happens as the child develops self-awareness: does its value come to be only partly (no longer entirely) derived from the attitude its parents have towards it? Does parental attitude cease entirely to be a factor governing the child’s value at some point?

When the child is capable of demonstrating a basic value for its own life (as described above), its parents’ attitudes cease to be a determining factor in the value of the child’s life in and of itself. The parents may still be indifferent to the child, but once the subject of a life, the child has what can be thought of as intrinsic value, even by secularists like myself.

An intrinsic value like a slug?? …or like what? You seem to be setting a very minimal standard: “even the simplest sense of value for its own life”…

*Do conflicting attitudes cancel each other out? How is that supposed to work when people have opposing attitudes?
*

I would say that depends upon circumstances. The person whose attitude and feelings matter the most is the person who has the most invested - the most to gain or lose - in the possible outcome of a decision. In the case of abortion, this is always the mother. Whilst she may well be swayed by the feelings of others - for example, the father of the foetus, or her own parents, and their willingness to support her and the potential child - the decision is ultimately hers to make. So the short answer is no - I don’t think that conflicting attitudes cancel each other out in the case of abortion.

Okay, let’s be clear: if value came from the attitudes of anyone affected, then the mother wouldn’t have an exclusive claim to determine the value of the fetus. So the mother has the final say, in your view, simply because, according to you, she “has the most invested - the most to gain or lose.” Is that right as far as your opinion goes?

I do recognise this, but I also recognise the difference between what can be and what generally is. I am not well-versed in techniques applied for later-term abortions, but I’m pretty sure none of them involve anaesthetising the foetus beforehand.

Do you think that ethics is about what can be or about what generally is??? Anaesthetizing fetuses is certainly possible and is done in pre-natal surgery. So isn’t your distinction here irrelevant?

 

[Betterave]

Well, I hate to say it, but I’m not sure I’m going to be posting much more in this thread, if at all. I will only say for now that I agree that preferences are not value judgments, per se. Preferences -]are /-]cansometimes be understood as expressions of values or value judgments, [and sometimes not] or, alternatively, the objects of value judgments, -]that is, the values themselves/-] [this didn’t seem to make any sense in context].

Hopefully I haven’t been so careless with my language in previous posts that I have explicitly equated values with value judgments, but if so I’m sorry. Either way, I will be especially careful about that in the future.

Fair enough, thanks for your courtesy in letting us know. I think you’re still putting things misleadingly so I’ll try to fix up what you wrote. Take care.

 

[Betterave]

Thank you, I should have said that “whether there are moral absolutes” needs to be a discussion we must have before being able to truly dive into MoM2’s argument.

What would be the third option? By moral absolutism, I mean to say “some moral absolutes exist”, not necessarily that every considered/human/moral action is governed by an absolute.

By a third option I would recommend no stipulation either way - just talk about the real ethical problem. As MoM2 noted, we are all absolutists practically speaking. The abstract notion that values are relative is not an ethical thesis and doesn’t help us to answer any properly ethical questions.

 

[Betterave]

I think you’re still confused.

No. It is you that is confused by the illusion of time indexes. As i said before, existence includes that which is in potential. If children are not pending existence, then one cannot possibly stop a child from existing; thus no wrong is done. Please note that when i say “potential”, i am not merely saying a “possibility”. A possibility is not the definite end product of a process, but rather it is a possibility given that there are elements that could bring about the processes intrinsic to the existence of a person. This is not what i am saying. But rather i am saying that some being (embryo) is in a definite act toward the existential act of “children”. It is acting for the existence of children, and that is what the embryo is doing from the time of conception. It is building what we know to be a person. A person is of moral value and thus has a right to exist. Thus to stop that act would be to destroy that which is of moral value. If we truly value the end product as having a right to life then we cannot justify annihilating processes that are intrinsic to the pending existence of a living person. The processes of a human embryo -]is processing /-]** are the processes of**a personal being that has a moral right to life; thus to destroy that process would be to -]undermine /-] destroya personal beings -]moral right to /-]life.

I understand the distinction you’re referring to, but you are using it in a confused way, not me.

If i was building a table, and you came along and destroyed its construction; i would be upset because you destroyed my “table”; and not because you destroyed a mere construct.You destroyed that to which the construct was in act, and thus in so doing you stopped me from bringing about that which is of “value” to me, and that is why i am upset. Of course, in this case, the value we speak of is subjective. If you punched a pregnant women in her stomach and there by destroyed that which she valued, she would not be irrational for saying that you killed her baby

If you had a drawing of a table and I destroyed that, I would have destroyed your table? If I cut down a tree you were growing that you were going to make a table from, I would have destroyed your table?

You kill the baby when you punch it because it’s an *actual *(not just possible and not just potential) baby, not because it’s “the definite end product of conception.”

 

[hatsoff]

Fair enough, thanks for your courtesy in letting us know. I think you’re still putting things misleadingly so I’ll try to fix up what you wrote. Take care.

Hmm. I’m not sure why you thought those changes were helpful, but as long as you take my meaning, I’m satisfied.