A Philosophical Debate On The Problem Of Abortion

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Oreoracle said:
It doesn’t matter when we cut the process short, whether we do so through abortion or by dissuading our mates from procreating, so long as the sentient being is still only potential during the process. I suppose the $64,000 question is: Why should I believe that one stage of potentiality is better than another?
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Personally i think its obvious, but i have explained in good detail the two kinds of potentiality in regards to possibility and why they are not the same in existential value.
Oreoracle said:
My bad. I didn’t know we were using the Christian definitions.
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It seems to me that you are just redefining words according to how they suit you. I am just using words according to their traditional usage. You assume that your idea of human value isn’t influenced by the Christian definition and religion in general. I think you will find that anybody who speaks of moral right or wrong are drawing such an idea from their metaphysical and religious heritages even if they claim that they have broken away from such traditions.
The point is, when we speak of right and wrong, we usually intend to speak about objective truth concerning human behavior in so far as we are expressing what we believe to be true of persons. Otherwise there is no right and wrong; thus all human action is permissible and have no objective difference in terms of moral truth or universal values.

Selfishness has always been understood as living merely for the good of the self at the expense of others. There is nothing necessarily selfish in giving good things to ones self, because it means that one values ones self, and that is a good thing so long as other people are taken into account in terms of their personal value as existential entities. Looking after ones self enables one to look after other people. “Self” is not synonymous to selfish. The term selfishness, in a moral sense, is only functional in terms of how you treat other people. Any other definition of selfish is meaningless to me in terms of upholding the universal value of people. The universal Good is only meaningful to me in this respect. Look up selfishness in the dictionary.
 
hatsoff said:
Correct.

Incorrect. Truth does lack “intrinsic” value, but people can still value truth for their own reasons, whatever they might be. And those people will often prefer truth as a result.

And so the rest of your post…

…is invalid.
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You’re right; there should have been a slight language change. Instead of saying:
If truth does not have intrinsic value, then it is by no means to be preferred to untruth.
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I should have said: If truth does not have intrinsic value, then there is no compelling reason to prefer it to untruth. The argument then maintains its validity. (There is an implied premise, as well, by the way, to the effect that people make decisions on the basis of value).

But the logic is not really my point. Modern logicians would say that my first premise claims that truth is “something”, which is quite controversial. My point is that discarding intrinsic value seems to call into question the process of seeking truth. Why would you seek the truth if it weren’t valuable?

(One regular here, Leela, might chime in and tell me that seeking the truth is of no value whatsoever. But even her opinion is a statement that aims at truth, isn’t it?)
 
hatsoff said:
Human beings are usually but not always considered valuable.
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Well I’m talking about people who believe that human beings do have values and should have human rights that protect those values. Such people are both atheist, theist and agnostic. These are the people that i am concerned with. If you do not consider human life to have intrinsic universal value, then this is not the debate for you, since this thread is not called “Is there such a thing as intrinsic universal human value”. Perhaps you didn’t see that?
 
hatsoff said:
I have never claimed to possess “inalienable rights.” I agree that the concept is fallacious, regardless of its appearance in an otherwise brilliant document.
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Can you please start another thread if you want to discuss the evidence for objective universal moral values. That people have intrinsic moral value is assumed from the beginning of this thread, as do many people regardless of whether or not they believe in God. This is no secret. Please read the OP properly please.
 
hatsoff said:
Human beings are usually but not always considered valuable. Certain unnamed criminals, for instance, are reviled, and not valued at all by a large portion of the American population.
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Spock made a somewhat related point about elderly people who are in pain – that we need not value their lives if they can be spared pain. But I would say that it precisely *life *that we are valuing in these cases, and that our passion for life is precisely what makes us open to these people dying. The murderer has taken life and violated our fundamental value. This forfeits his value in our eyes. (At any rate, you can hardly compare a fetus to a criminal!)

As far as the elderly go, they are letting go of life. We believe that life is valuable, and we do not want to deny them life – but the very nature of things (which is out of our control) *is *denying them life. If they had vitality, we would not question their value. We still do not question their value at the end of life, but we question whether that value is best expressed in suffering.
More importantly, though, fetuses aren’t valued at all by many.
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Overstated. To the degree that it’s true, it’s because we’ve brainwashed people into thinking that fetal life is not human life. But it obviously is both *human *and life.
 
hatsoff said:
If you think God values human life, that’s fine. But I don’t believe in your God.
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Believe what you want, as you have been doing. But please take in to account the context of this debate.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
You’re right; there should have been a slight language change. Instead of saying:

I should have said: If truth does not have intrinsic value, then there is no compelling reason to prefer it to untruth. The argument then maintains its validity. (There is an implied premise, as well, by the way, to the effect that people make decisions on the basis of value).

But the logic is not really my point. Modern logicians would say that my first premise claims that truth is “something”, which is quite controversial. My point is that discarding intrinsic value seems to call into question the process of seeking truth. Why would you seek the truth if it weren’t valuable?

(One regular here, Leela, might chime in and tell me that seeking the truth is of no value whatsoever. But even her opinion is a statement that aims at truth, isn’t it?)
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Truth is valuable! But it does not have “intrinsic” value.
 
hatsoff said:
Truth is valuable! But it does not have “intrinsic” value.
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Then what do you mean when you say that it has value? Why didn’t you just say, “its valuable to me, but only in so far as it suits my purposes?”
 
MindOverMatter said:
Well I’m talking about people who believe that human beings do have values and should have human rights that protect those values. Such people are both atheist, theist and agnostic. These are the people that i am concerned with. If you do not consider human life to have intrinsic universal value, then this is not the debate for you, since this thread is not called “Is there such a thing as intrinsic universal human value”. Perhaps you didn’t see that?
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I don’t want to debate the existence of intrinsic value, either. I have merely pointed out that your argument is useless to those who do not agree that life has any such intrinsic value.

Incidentally, you could reconstruct your argument to avoid that problem, but if you did, you would still have the additional problem that you equivocate between time indices. In particular, just because I value your life now doesn’t mean I would have (or should have) valued your life before you were born. Similarly, just because I might value the life of the human being into which some fetus will grow does not mean I must (or should) value the life of the fetus.
 
MindOverMatter said:
Can you please start another thread if you want to discuss the evidence for objective universal moral values. That people have intrinsic moral value is assumed from the beginning of this thread, as do many people regardless of whether or not they believe in God. This is no secret. Please read the OP properly please.
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There is nothing in the OP about refraining from mentioning the controversy between moral relativism and absolutism, or subjectivism versus objectivism.
 
hatsoff said:
I don’t want to debate the existence of intrinsic value, either. I have merely pointed out that your argument is useless to those who do not agree that life has any such intrinsic value.

Incidentally, you could reconstruct your argument to avoid that problem, but if you did, you would still have the additional problem that you equivocate between time indices. In particular, just because I value your life now doesn’t mean I would have (or should have) valued your life before you were born. Similarly, just because I might value the life of the human being into which some fetus will grow does not mean I must (or should) value the life of the fetus.
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Again this thread concerns those who believe that human beings have universal intrinsic value, because they are living persons. Please keep it within that context. But even if you placed only a singular value upon me alone, it still goes to reason that if you value my life now, then you would not consider the destruction of the embryo that lead to my existence as a good thing.

If you have nothing more to say in this regard, then please agree to disagree, and lets move on.
 
MindOverMatter said:
Then what do you mean when you say that it has value?
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That’s a complex matter which would require a lot of time and effort to answer completely. Suffice it to say here that value is a particular kind of relationship between an agent and an object. As Spock explained before, this prevents value from being defined by an object alone.
Why didn’t you just say, “its valuable to me, but only in so far as it suits my purposes?”
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To have said that would have been both imprecise and inefficient.
 
hatsoff said:
That’s a complex matter which would require a lot of time and effort to answer completely. Suffice it to say here that value is a particular kind of relationship between an agent and an object. As Spock explained before, this prevents value from being defined by an object alone.
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I don’t see how somebodies subjective opinion is going to prevent anything from being objectively true.
 
MindOverMatter said:
Again this thread concerns those who believe that human beings have universal intrinsic value, because they are living persons. Please keep it within that context. But even if you placed only a singular value upon me alone, it still goes to reason that if you value my life now, then you would not consider the destruction of the embryo that lead to my existence as a good thing.

If you have nothing more to say in this regard, then please agree to disagree, and lets move on.
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As I noted before, it does not “go] to reason” that I would have (or should have) valued your fetus at some time before you (the grown person) actually existed. To say otherwise equivocates inappropriately between distinct time indices.
 
hatsoff said:
Truth is valuable! But it does not have “intrinsic” value.
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MOM already said this, but …

If truth is not intrinsically valuable, then it is only extrinsically valuable – this means it is valuable as a means to an end. But lies are also valuable as a means to an end. Why choose truth?
 
Prodigal_Son said:
MOM already said this, but …

If truth is not intrinsically valuable, then it is only extrinsically valuable – this means it is valuable as a means to an end. But lies are also valuable as a means to an end. Why choose truth?
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I don’t know what is this business of extrinsic value being a “means to an end,” but as far as truth goes, I value it because, firstly, it makes me happy, and secondly, its opposite (falsehood) causes me great distress.
 
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