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16th May 2019, 11:59 AM | #321 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 12:00 PM | #322 |
Merchant of Doom
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We just need a reality show where the audience can vote for which fetuses (feti?) shoudl be saved and which can go.
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16th May 2019, 12:02 PM | #323 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The point of the fantastic hypothetical is to test whether one's stated principle really matches their moral intuitions. If the principle seems to produce strongly counterintuitive results in some hypothetical situations one should consider whether the principle really reflects his views or not.
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16th May 2019, 12:05 PM | #324 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 12:06 PM | #325 |
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"Hi I'm a twelve year old raped by their father and now I'm pregnant."
"Okay what are your opinions on what happens when I fire Zeno's Arrow from the Ship of Theseus into Plato's Cave?" This is just Bobbing with more words, an appeal to some arbitrary categorization we have to treat with absolute consistency above all else. My only "moral intuition" is to do things that do the most real world good and it matches up with my "states principles" just fine. |
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16th May 2019, 01:03 PM | #326 |
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Social burdens are not the same as physical burdens.
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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16th May 2019, 01:07 PM | #327 |
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16th May 2019, 01:10 PM | #328 |
Penultimate Amazing
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This approach of your utterly fails to settle disputes. A pro-lifer could just as well say, "I have convictions that abortion is murder and we can't wait for a perfect argument while thousands of fetuses are killed." Indeed, this may well be the view of the majority of folk in Alabama. Nothing you've said gives your personal view any priority over theirs.
If abortion is murder, then the most real world good is to end the practice. If it isn't, then the most real world good is done by ensuring it is safe and legal. Your disregard for addressing any actual arguments or applying clear reasoning is nothing more than an insistence that of course your opinion is correct and important and why the heck would anyone disagree? Sorry, Joe, but I don't regard this as a particularly reasonable approach. I tend to think that, if morality matters at all (and I reckon everyone up in arms about the horror of the new Alabama bill thinks it does), then careful thought is preferable to a rejection of principles. Careful thought hasn't settled the issue, not by any means, but it beats eenie, meenie, miney mo. |
16th May 2019, 01:11 PM | #329 |
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16th May 2019, 01:13 PM | #330 |
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If this were true, why do these people want to make abortion illegal when legal, safe and rare is a goal which will actually decrease abortions, while the evidence is that making abortion illegal only makes it less safe?
Same with defunding Planned Parenthood, how does that decrease the number of abortions? The first goal of making abortion illegal isn't to prevent abortion. It's some kind of perverse satisfaction labeling people as criminals. |
16th May 2019, 01:21 PM | #331 |
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16th May 2019, 01:21 PM | #332 |
Nasty Woman
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16th May 2019, 01:25 PM | #333 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I'd say the problem is even more extensive than that. Even if you don't accept the abortion is murder approach, it's still not cut and dry.
Joe's hypothetical strikes a little close to home, because that is what happened to a relative of mine. She was raped by her father, and became pregnant. And her father took her to get an abortion. The abortion didn't save her from anything. It enabled the father to conceal what he did, and to keep doing it. He got away with raping her for years, and many years later she committed suicide. I don't know for sure that things would be any better if she had carried the baby to term, but I also don't know that they would have been any worse. |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 01:26 PM | #334 |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 01:27 PM | #335 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Because if you think that abortion is murder, you don't think that the appropriate response is to make it state-sanctioned and safe murder, even if it decreases the number of abortions.
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Note: I am strongly against the defunding of Planned Parenthood. I'm just saying that I can understand why pro-lifers favor it. Even if the taxpayer money doesn't go directly to abortion services, the fact that they receive it frees up other money for those services.
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16th May 2019, 01:28 PM | #336 |
Penultimate Amazing
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All of this is why the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was about an individual's rights. There is no conflict once you've accepted that a person has the right to choose what happens in their body. In other words, all of your philosophical handwringing is irrelevant because it should be none of your ******* business.
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16th May 2019, 01:29 PM | #337 |
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And this is why navel gazing is useless, it always leads back to a limp dishrag "Oh well we can't say for sure...." And I find apologetics as much or more distasteful then then the things they are apologizing for.
Neither I, the 12 year old rape victim, or the law does or should give a Hersey Squirt about your moral conundrum. I can say "Hey here's a radical idea, a raped 12 year old shouldn't be forced to carry her rapist's child to term" without showy moral hairsplitting. You apparently cannot. I think my logic and my morals are coming out on top on this one. |
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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16th May 2019, 01:30 PM | #338 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I think that effective pregnancy prevention would be a bipartisan issue if not for the fact that the biggest provider also provides abortion services.
Look, please understand that I'm not supporting the pro-life position. I'm just arguing that I don't think that the claim abortion is wrong is obviously stupid and when you try to see it from the perspective that abortion is like murder, you can understand their actions without attributing them to malice, misogyny and evil. And, if they would take the time to see that the pro-choice side is not obviously stupid, they would not regard their opponents as evil baby-killers. |
16th May 2019, 01:31 PM | #339 |
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By not allowing women access to legal abortion, (g) you are pretty much forcing that on them as the only option.
Again unless "Hey 12 year old just carry your daddy-rapists child to term" is a viable (no pun intended) option you can't ban abortions, only the legal and safe ones. |
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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16th May 2019, 01:34 PM | #340 |
Penultimate Amazing
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A genuine question: Is euthanasia of those in a permanent vegetative state legal in every state? If so, was this because of laws passed or because of family members' right to privacy to decide what to do with their loved ones? Let me take this line of reasoning back. I still don't like the argument in Roe v. Wade, but I have been dragged off the point I originally attempted to make here. That point is merely that the right-to-life argument isn't obviously stupid and that if you look at things from the perspective that a fetus is a person, most of the positions by the pro-life camp are fairly reasonable. But I think your argument here isn't at all the kind of argument I was trying to dispute. You're right that no amount of philosophical babbling have settled this question and the law can't wait. This is a kind of settlement, though, of course, it would also be a kind of settlement to say that we ought to minimize damage done legally in the state, so abortion should be outlawed. Your argument is not at all dismissive of the other side as ignorant Bible thumpers, so I don't think I really have a beef here. |
16th May 2019, 01:36 PM | #341 |
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16th May 2019, 01:38 PM | #342 |
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That's NOT the fundamental question down here in the real world. It's an excuse used by people who obviously don't believe it because they can't account for the most fundamental, as in real world fundamental, problems with that approach.
An aborted fetus is not more special then the countless billions upon countless billion of fertilized egg shells naturally expelled every year. |
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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16th May 2019, 01:40 PM | #343 |
Penultimate Amazing
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One of the reasons I am no longer a conservative is the way that those who are not that religious themselves have become supporters and apoligists for the religiout fundies.
It's also a major reason that a lot of free market small government advocates call themselves "Libertarians" rather then conservatives. |
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Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
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16th May 2019, 01:42 PM | #344 |
Nasty Woman
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IOW they don't care about saving fetuses, they care about punishing women and doctors.
Some of them are. Some simply use cognitive dissonance to ignore the effects of their position like your rationalizing suggests. They choose to pay attention to one aspect while ignoring the reality that their actions are not decreasing abortions. |
16th May 2019, 01:53 PM | #345 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I don't suppose I can respond to you without doing philosophy, which you loathe, so perhaps we should let this discussion drop.
If, of course, you want to hear my response, I'll provide it, so long as you don't complain that I'm discussing an ethical issue using ethics. |
16th May 2019, 01:57 PM | #346 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Fair enough, I guess.
But I tend to see physical burdens as social burdens. If you're drowning and I try to save you, I don't get to change my mind halfway through because the physical burden is too inconvenient. A firefighter doesn't get to opt out of carrying people from a burning building because "lol people are heavy". Anyway, if your criteria is "sharing the body", does that mean you would allow abortions of convenience up until the moment of birth?
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The Klingons have warp drives, teleporters, and cloaking devices. But are their social services up to your humanitarian standards?
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Then there's all the idiots who think they want to breed, and then change their mind halfway through. Or who kept meaning to reverse the reversal but never get around to it, and go on having sex anyway. Even in a world of condoms, easy-access birth control, and the old standby of abstinence, we still seem to need abortions of convenience on the regular. I don't think foolproof technology is going to be the right answer for solving human problems. |
16th May 2019, 02:09 PM | #347 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 02:10 PM | #348 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 02:41 PM | #349 |
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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16th May 2019, 03:18 PM | #350 |
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16th May 2019, 03:19 PM | #351 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 03:25 PM | #352 |
Penultimate Amazing
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An argument based on "potential" is a weak argument. Depriving a potential person of "a future like ours" sounds like another version of the potential argument. And killing an adult or a child is wrong for reasons besides those. That's not the only reason why killing is wrong.
Forcing a woman (say a rape victim) or girl to become a single mother also deprives her of "a future like ours". You've taken away 20 years of her life. Anyone who feels so strongly about this that they would deny abortion to a rape victim or a single woman in a difficult situation should prove it by "putting their money where their mouth is" so to speak and adopting a child or two. If you're not willing to take on that burden yourself, then you have no right to impose that burden on someone else. |
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A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare |
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16th May 2019, 03:32 PM | #353 |
Penultimate Amazing
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NO...that's being left with NO choice but to go to some butcher in a back alley room or sticking a coat hanger up themselves. Choices which often end up with the woman dead or unable to have children in the future. Thanks to laws like Georgia's and Alabama's and people who think their own personal beliefs should control what a woman does with her own body.
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16th May 2019, 03:32 PM | #354 |
Nasty Woman
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That is a ludicrous analogy.
And this is a propaganda falsehood. Of course you have to get past the anti-abortion propaganda pages and all their fear-mongering to find the facts. Women don't just change their minds mid-pregnancy and casually decide to abort viable fetuses. Late abortions are almost always because either the mother's life is in danger or the fetus is so seriously malformed as to make continuing the pregnancy futile, for example, a fetus that has anencephaly. Rarely a girl who has been in serious denial about her pregnancy might show up for a third trimester abortion. Mother Jones 2013: Who Still Does Third-Trimester Abortions? - Just these four doctors—and here’s why they’re desperately needed.With only four doctors still performing third-trimester abortions, there certainly couldn't be thousands of abortions of viable fetuses as one of the anti-abortion websites claimed.
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From a clinic that does the procedure:
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NPR: 2019: Abortion In The Third Trimester: A Rare Decision Now In The Political Spotlight
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But then you have the fanatics:
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For example, WTF does this person know about how someone else should feel?
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That's one strange world you live in there. |
16th May 2019, 03:33 PM | #355 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 03:36 PM | #356 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 03:36 PM | #357 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 03:41 PM | #358 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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16th May 2019, 03:42 PM | #359 |
Penultimate Amazing
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16th May 2019, 03:51 PM | #360 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Some "choices"!
1. carrying to term against her wishes 2. committing suicide 3. endangering her life with a botched, illegal abortion 4. endangering her future ability to have children from a botched abortion Yep, women will really have some great options there! I wonder how you'd feel if you ever had to face an unwanted pregnancy at 12, 13, or 14 years old after being raped by daddy and then kicked out of the house when mommy doesn't believe you. Oh, wait...you'll never face that, will you? It's easy to tell others what to do and get on your moral high ground when it's all just something you'll never face. |
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