sorry for being so vague.
The possibility of a person does not equal a person. The pending generation of a person, is equal to a person.
This sounds completely arbitrary to me, and the only thing you can use to back it up is fancy metaphysical wordplay. But you aren’t fooling anyone.
At a given time, the possibility of the production of a child may be very probable given a woman’s choices (who her mate is, the chance of having sex, how much she wants to be a mother, etc.), making the child’s existence, at that time, “pending,” since it will be a probable result of current circumstances. If the mother then decides against producing the child, for whatever reason, she has, in essence, aborted the child, since she destroyed a pending person. It makes no difference if the child is only an idea of the woman or if its a cluster of cells in her belly, the child can be pending and “destroyed” either way.
Correct. I just don’t see how a person can be of any moral significance if they aren’t sentient (unless they are valued by others). It makes no difference whether the being is a “person” to me. If you kick an infant, I’ll disapprove of the pain being caused. If you kick a dog, I’ll disapprove of the pain being caused. The commonality, here, is not one of being a “person” but of being sentient. (Dogs are persons according to certain definitions, however.)
I’m curious, though: what’s your definition of “person?” I don’t really need a definition, since it isn’t relevant to my ethical system, but it seems that you bring it up quite often.
The consideration of having a child may inevitably result in a person. If you cast aside the consideration, you destroy the person. Why is this so hard to understand?
We also have good reason to believe that if a woman wants a child, she’ll have one, or perhaps more. Dissuading her from doing so causes the destruction of the person(s), according to your own logic. (I wouldn’t use the word “destruction,” however.)
LOL. In other words, you’re saying: “You can diagree, but I’m telling the truth. Thus, any disagreement amounts to lying to yourself.”
I’m beginning to wonder why you think the future personhood of the embryo is so inevitable. For something to be inevitable, it has to be impossible to prevent, by definition. Apparently, the fetuses that have been aborted were not inevitably going to reach personhood, since the ability to prevent that outcome was demonstrated.
Oh, ok. No harm done.
All right, I see what you’re getting at.
Ok, I accept your point. In a materialistic world, there can be no absolute/inviolable rights, or absolute values, etc. However, would you agree that there can be non-absolute or violable rights and values?
You’re thinking of an abortion from a biased perspective, though, from the perspective of currently having your intrinsic value, and facing the possibility of suddenly losing it if your mother had an abortion. If she had had an abortion, you would not be losing what you currently have, you would simply never receive it. It’s similar to a job agency almost offering you a job, and changing their mind at the last minute, so that you were never aware of the whole situation.
Well, I don’t believe in a God, so it’s hard to accept that a God gave them to me.
If we did not see that, it is because you did not explicitly stipulated it.
.If I may, Spock, I think their sentiment is that one should never willingly kill even if the goal is to save a life (or lives). Deontology, ya know? Foolish, yes, but the Church seems to be hellbent on disregarding consequences and only judging intentions, albeit with a very limited understanding of human psychology.
Yes, I know. Sometimes it is bypassed by calling it “the foreseen, but uninteded” consequences, which is just another euphemism, like “friendly fire” and “collateral damage”. Let’s not forget that the killing in self-defense is allowed, likewise the state-sanctioned murder (conveniently called “execution”), and of course mass-murder if it is euphemized as “war”. How hypocritical.
As it should be.
In my understanding, only when it is necessary as a form of self-defense for the culture. That is, if we don’t have prisons that will contain the person effectively. I will acknowledge that the Church, through its history, has had different definition – although so has society at large.
Please show me a major historical organization that has been more pacifistic in the last 200 years than the Church. (The opinions of American Catholics hardly typify the opinions of the Vatican, on this topic, by the way.)and of course mass-murder if it is euphemized as “war”. How hypocritical.
Yes, as it should be.
But sometimes the self defense will entail the deliberate killing (aka murder) of the perpetrator, so the blanket prohibition of “thou shalt not kill” (murder) needs to be clarified.To build new prisons is not necessary. This may be off-topic, but currently the huge majority of the prison population is comprised of people who should not be there… as usual I am referring to victimless “crimes”. Having fewer “crimes” on the books would also lead to the beneficial side effect that the existing police force could concentrate on real crimes, not trumped up ones. It is easier to trap someone into buying a non-significant amount of “controlled substance” than pursuing the perpetrator of a murder. Personally, I am against the death penalty not so much on moral grounds, rather because the error of an incorrect conviction cannot be “undone”. I know that many members of different churches are outspoken critics of the death penalty, and I agree with them. But this is also a new phenomenon. The old mentality of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” is slowly losing ground, but it was prevalent for most of the lifetime of the Church.
Last 200 years? Not a long time. But, yes, the track record is certainly improving, which is a good sign.
You are quite mistaken. Have you heard of the principle of the lesser of two evils? We take into account the intention, the means and the end…
The Catechism states that the morality of an action is not determined by the consequences. A number of apologists seem to think so as well.
not determined, perhaps, but the nature of the consequences can contribute to the moral character of the choice inasmuch as one’s acceptance of certain outcomes can be unreasonable (and thus go toward the “intent” of the action, taken as a whole).
there’s no such thing as a moral dilemma from the ethical perspective of the church, and so it’s never possible to have a choice which necessarily results in the chooser sinning mortally.Now, of course the Church wants the lesser evil done. But one problem is that, if there happened to be a situation in which a person had only two ways to act, both resulting in mortal sins, he would still be condemned by the Church for commiting the lesser evil. He would, like the others, be exempted from salvation if he died without making it to Confession.
sounds like something that might have been said to slaves and to women at certain times in the past: “you aren’t suffering any indignity by not having the vote and by being treated as chattel, because you don’t have any intrinsic value to dignify”.
That’s a different topic altogether. I was arguing that an abortion now isn’t an affront to the dignity of an individual 20 years down the road, because the future hasn’t happened yet. I was not arguing that individuals don’t have any (intrinsic) value or dignity.
you were arguing that fetuses don’t currently have the kind of (intrinsic) value that provides them with security against being killed in the womb, and that arguments about such (alleged) fetal rights by those who do have the right sort of value are so far forth biased.
As you said, deontological, yup. Thus, you may not kill one healthy person in order to save ten lives by organ transplant. On a deeper level, however, you might say that Catholic teaching is consequentialist – in the sense that we believe the best world would arise from the expression of the virtues in (deontologically) moral actions.
(By the way, the Church does not condemn anyone.)
In my humble opinion, the Catholic teaching on mortal sin has spiraled out of control, and needs a serious course correction. Sin is an *expression *of separation to God. We can never know, from the outside, how close a person is to God. This is why the Church has always taught the necessity of constant conversion. That individual Catholics take it upon themselves to condemn others is a grievous sin.He would, like the others, be exempted from salvation if he died without making it to Confession.
Well, the primary aim of my argument was to establish that regardless of whether a fetus has intrinsic value, killing it while it is a fetus cannot be an affront to a future being, because the future hasn’t happened yet.
Off topic
… I live in Detroit, and the absurdity of the legal system is on full display. People get years for drug use, from a young age. And we expect them to be productive members of the society afterward?!? My original point, though, was that – according to my understanding of Catholic teaching – no execution would ever be justified in the USA, because we do have resources to incarcerate.In other words you haven’t got any valid arguments, and so you have chosen to resort to assertions, which are in fact disproved by your own posts, as will be shown by the fact of your following arguments which i will now quote.
You are simply redefining words and the context as it suits you. To say that pending the production of a specific kind, a person will be the functional result, is to speak of a functional end of a process beginning with a human embryo. Where there is no “biological” production in which the functional end is a person, there is no wrong involved. If you value me as a person, then you would not destroy that production knowing that a person i.e “me” is the functional end. Its a willful act to stop a person from developing to full term. Its the same as murder; and at the very least manslaughter.
No. As has been already said above and in previous posts, that which is merely a potential possibility, is not a being or a person. That which is a person in production is a being and a person; and we know this because we can see people around us and we know that they are the productive result of a human embryo. Thus it is correct to understand a human embryo as a person in the early stages of production. If you value people you cannot think it morally acceptable to destroy a human embryo. It is also a selfish act to not have children for no good reason, but it is not murder because of the reasons given above.
She certainly did not destroy a pending person in so far as we are talking about a biological embryonic process. A person is not pending until a women is pregnant, and until then, there is merely a possibility of bringing a person into existence, and in that respect we cannot speak of a person in production.
False.
If you value me as a person then you will not approve of my abortion.
You do not have an ethical system from what i have read. You seem to be a nihilist when it suits your agenda. For what i have read of your post, I am no more valuable to you then a lump of cow-dung. If you don’t know what a person is, then you certainly cannot be a serious person. In any case i am not a dictionary. Wikipedia is free. A person is that which constitutes the reality of a person, a reality of which you are well aware. Also, such a reality includes the information which can be found in the human embryo, from which i emerged.
No you do not, since the child is not in production. There is a difference. That you refuse to acknowledge the fundamental difference will not change that fact.
In Christianity, it is certainly a very selfish act to try and dissuade a person from having a child with out “good reason”; because it is a moral vocation to have children “GENESIS 1:28: Be fruitful and multiply”. But sometimes there are special circumstances where that command is not morally binding, for instance it might not be morally practical to have a child at a specific point in somebodies life because they are incapable of looking after a child’s needs. However this is not murder, as a child is not in production. You are not stopping the immediate and productive development of a child in so far as the human embryo is concerned. One is merely preventing the possibility of pregnancy to a later the date. In the case of destroying ones ability to get pregnant; this is immoral because its a selfish act, but this is besides the point. Abortion is wrong. In terms of abortion, the word “destruction” is a legitimate inference.
I made this statement only to emphasize to you that your obvious attempts to avoid the reality of my arguement is not going to change the reality of its truth; but of coarse you can disagree. It is evident that once one reads my posts clearly that my arguement is very clear and has none of the faults that you are claiming it to have, at least not in terms of “arbitrariness”. You know this, and this is why you have attempted to render the difference between a potential possibility and a pending being as false. If my arguement was arbitrary as you claim then you wouldn’t waste any time arguing and attempting to redefine words. And since you probably have nothing more to say accept to try and twist words, we can both say that we disagree and should move on.LOL. In other words, you’re saying: “You can diagree, but I’m telling the truth. Thus, any disagreement amounts to lying to yourself.”
False. A “functional necessity” is different from a material event that is impossible to be otherwise, and thus must come pass. What you are talking about is like a “logical impossibility”. This is not what i claimed. A functional necessity is where an end follows necessarily from the functional nature of the act according to its nature, but that needn’t mean that it cannot be “prevented” by destroying the functional nature of the act; which is what is occurring when when one commits abortion.
Why does everyone do that here? You insult my intelligence, and then you plaster a smily at the end of it. It’s like punching someone in the gut and then handing them a box of chocolates. Do you think you could be more consistent?In other words you haven’t got any valid arguments, and so you have chosen to resort to assertions, which are in fact disproved by your own posts, as will be shown by the fact of your following arguments which i will now quote.
No, it is you who is heeding the old adage “If you run into a contradiction, make a distinction!” There is no difference between a pending being and a potential being, as both are developing and are not actually significant at their current stage. I assume you understand that there is a difference between potentiality and actuality.