Defense of the abortion/Discussion about Ethics

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Since you perceive death, pain and lack of freedom as bad, can you declare that every abortion is bad, regardless of its justification because every abortion most likely causes pain and guarantees a lack of freedom, as well as a death?

If you can’t declare that every abortion is bad, regardless of its justification, you are confusing understanding and empathy with morality. Although I can understand and empathize with mortal sinners, who have committed wretched sins, doesn’t change that our sins are still bad.

Greater definition to the simplified natural/unnatural position I shared earlier can be found in this article: https://www.cacatholic.org/teaching...requently-asked-questions-about-end-life-care
In particular the section on “Does the Catholic Church require the use of all available technology to preserve life?”
 
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Nonatheist said:
I disagree.
l don’t see profit every as a good reason to justify any moral action, profit is what makes man forget what morality is.
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Regardless of what you think, money is good and things can be sacrificed for it according to your logic.
 
First, freedom cannot be attributed to fetus. As freedom is something only beings with personhood posses.
Yes, abortion is in every case a bad act, that doesn’t mean that person doing abortion is immoral.
l would say this as well, deaths of a bug or a tree are bad things as well.
Death,pain, lack of freedom(persons) is always bad in every possible scenario.
Doing those actions can be either neutral or immoral based on if that action is justified.

l think for any good moral system, morality of an action has to depend on intentions or other forcing factors
 
There are three links not two…

The argument can be made that all learning is instinctual, thus the ability to be sentient is really just a result of instincts …

Your hierarchy of what life has more or less value is no less arbitrary because you give a chimpanzee more value than a dog and an unborn child but less than a 25 year old human. Thus, no - I do not have to accept all life as equal.

I do respect the value of all human life equally through all its stages and conditions, something you do not do. I do not devalue a child because some other human does not value it. I do not devalue a child based on the circumstances of its conception - whether its conception was wanted or not. I do not devalue a child or adult because they have a physical or mental defect.
 
Depends how you look at it, money on it’s own is a bad concept, as it damages the well being and life of humans and other animals, but in the system where profit is the goal money would be a necessity evil.
Though that’s a complicated question.
 
You misunderstood my remark. I never said or implied that morality is an emotion. I was equating your value system to real life situations. One such real life situation is love. I was assuming you must a value system on love as well.
 
Yeah, sorry.

Learning as the ability would be instinctual, but us choosing to learn something wouldn’t be.

Yes, because chimpanzee and dolphines are second most intelligent/sentient beings, both have self-awareness which dogs do not and have the higher capacty for emotion amongst other things.
l follow rules l placed in order to determine the moral value of a being, so l wouldn’t call it really arbitrary. Death/suffer=bad, beings that can experience death and suffer to a highest extent have the most moral value.

Do you value a dog more than a fetus, if so why?
 
Nonatheist said:
Though l am not fully against humans not eating meat, l
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If we can survive on plants why not?
Nonatheist said:
Second example:
This really depends on the intention, if women REALLY just didn’t want her child to suffer, than l think she would be MORALLY justified(she wouldn’t act immorally), intentions matter.
l see things like death, pain, and lack of freedom as intrinsically bad things, and health,life and freedom as intrinsically good. Those things can’t ever be not bad.
Someone can however have a justification for actions that would result in loss of those things.
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Lets say the child is born and severely disabled. Is the mother morally justified in killing it to prevent it’s suffering?
 
l know you didn’t, l said that just to drive a hard line between emotions and morality.

Love as well as any other emotion can make person irrational, and as people can’t control emotions l would say that if people are emotion enough, their actions can be morally justified.
Example would be
Person killing another to save their loved one from dying.

Any emotion that clounds someones judgment so much, that they can’t even think straight would serve as a justification
 
Nonatheist said:
Do you value a dog more than a fetus, if so why?
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I for one don’t think in terms of evaluating one over another when it comes to living things. I think they deserve more than a value system. This I think is your lack of understanding.
 
l still don’t know the answer to ‘Can humans live healthy lifes without meat’, some people say yes some people say no.
l am however in favor of non-meat animal products, as long as they are done in a way not to cause pain to the animal.

If by severely disabled, you mean that child will suffer for the rest of it’s life, than yes. l would say that killing it would be mercy.
By sufer l mean pain, not just the disability to have complex thought or walk for example
 
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No I would not value a dog more than a unborn baby. But that does not mean I would mistreat or kill the dog because the child has greater value.

Neither would I abort unborn puppies just because I did not intend for a female dog to become pregnant. I would deal with the puppies - not kill them but find them homes followed up with taking the steps necessary not to prevent the female dog to become pregnant another time.

Before you ask. Yes, I am an omnivore. I eat meat and plants - no I do not eat dogs - but some of my ancestors probably did. As for carrots and other tasty plant life … I chop them and eat them for dinner.

You speak of sentient beings. I think what distinguishes humans has more to do with the ability to reflect. It is that ability to have introspection - individually and socially - that allows humans to move from what is purely instinctive - self preservation and self gratification into actions that consider the impacts of our actions upon others and the world around us. That reflection moves us to change our actions and allows is to consider not just the survival of our individual self but of our families and our greater communities and the environment we live in. That capacity to consider the life of another and sacrifice our self interest for theirs. That child in the womb and its development, birth and life experience all contribute to that. I can consider you and the unborn child to be worthy of life.
 
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Reductio ad absurdum of that way of thinking would lead us to, ‘ALL life in every form has the same moral worth’.
Which would lead to extreme version of Jainism and it’s philosophy.

To avoid that, we have to show that not ALL life is equal. And that’s either by using sentience as a measure, or by appealing to anthropocentrism(meaning only humans have moral worth) which l find to disturbing .
 
I wanted to duck out of this thread, as I thought it would fizzle into a dud, but I was wrong…

Is NOBODY going to talk about the three first principles of natural law? (Towards life, towards propagation, and toward truth?) The metaethical and normative impoverishment on display (“if it feels pain it gets treated better accordingly because it is more sentient”) is a function of ignoring all that in the context of a robust metaphysical anthropology. There is no way out of the pro-choice loop with someone whose intuition is lasered in on this slice of empathy… It’s futile. You might find some contradictions and ad absurdums, but it will just refine the system of defending the position, not undo it. That is, unless you can back up and talk about much, much more basic things, like what are the things that human beings most fundamentally want, and how that is rooted in their being.

I ask the OP - what if I derive immense pleasure, and so does everyone else, from “killing just for the sake of killing”? Why is that “immoral”?

You will have to contend with Nietzsche - “Why be good?” The natural law and virtue-theory, confirmed and elevated by revelation and the opening of the Beatific Vision, provide the answer - there is no Euthyphro dilemma. God is goodness “in se,” along with His Will, expressed in creatures, which are ordered to Him (goodness). The FIRST and MOST fundamental inclinations of human beings are listed above. If you decide that any of them can be simply eliminated, you are running up against the order of creation (whereby God Himself directs things to their proper end)… That’s the key to the Decalogue.

The violin analogy makes no sense in light of this.

The person/life distinction is more robust… but it is a deeper error, one rooted in a confusion of what substances are vis-a-vis powers or faculties are. Agere sequitur esse - action follows being. To BE a person comes before DOING things that persons do. And we watch the same BEING from conception to death.

Good luck, all other posters, and good night…

-K
 
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Now another question, would you value dog/cat/money more than a bug. If so why?

If you say yes, than only way would be to agree with me on sentience, if you say no than that would be the end of it.

l agree, humans are unique animals, only we have the ability to use logic and reason, and to think of abstract concepts such as morality.

But if you think that reason and logic is only thing that give us moral worth, than all other animals would be the same.
Killing a dog and a bug would be exectly the same.
 
You are the second person bringing Natural law theory.
l really did expect more Thomists to be honest.

Natural law theory appeals to the existence of the ‘first cause’ God. Even if existence of such being is proven(never going to happen, as that’s the nature of philosophy), natural law would be incomplete.
You would have to appeal to specific religion, and at that point we are leaving the territory of Aristotelian God.
 
The question of ‘Why be good’ cannot ever be answered in any meaningful way,
 
Nonatheist said:
l still don’t know the answer to ‘Can humans live healthy lifes without meat’, some people say yes some people say no.
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If it was possible to live a healthy life, and have enough food without meat, would eating meat be morally justifiable?
 
Holy cows! I just read every post in this thread. I have a very serious problem. We are not called “Homo Sapiens” for nothing. And we are not called “Homo Sentiens”. The reason is simple. Having the ability to feel pain rests on certain nerve-endings. There are some humans, who literally cannot feel pain, due to the deficiency in their nervous system. (They usually don’t live long, since they cannot shy away from even life-threatening injuries)

Of the two features the “sapiens” is the determining factor. That would make most of the arguments in dire need of an update. The nervous system responsible for thinking (especially abstract thinking) is totally different from the nervous system responsible to feeling (pain, heat, cold… etc). Obviously the “sapient” part is must higher than the “sentient” part.

The other objection is any reference to “morality”. Morality is a subjective assessment of “right and wrong” - based upon someone’s ethical system. Ethical systems are “dime a dozen”. The ethical system of a carnivore is incompatible with the ethical system of a herbivore, and the system of an omnivore. So to discuss the “morality” of abortion without an ethical system is a futile endeavor.

There are lots of other questions I would introduce, but they must wait. Maybe these objections would merit to be asked in a separate thread. Have fun. 🙂
 
Yes, but killing an animal wouldn’t.

Meat is just a byproduct of killing an animal, eating meat is not immoral but the act of getting meat in many cases is
 
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