In
The New Yorker, physicist and
professional amateur philosopher Lawrence Krauss calls on all scientists to
become “militant atheists.” First club
meeting pictured at left. I respond at Public Discourse.
For earlier trips in the Krauss Klown Kar, go here, here, and here.
the hazing doesn't end
ReplyDeleteYeah, we kind of noticed that.
But if you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Scott:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote of the scientist's inner narrative: "I'll perform this experiment on the assumption that no external factors will interfere, but of course it's always possible that something will."
This is not how any scientist approaches an experiment. It's the opposite. What the scientist actually says to herself is: "I'll perform this experiment on the assumption that external factors will interfere." An actual scientist attempts to control for confounding variables, and looks to detect and eliminate them--not be surprised by them. She doesn't treat them as merely possible or readily evident (should they emerge).
She doesn't, in short, simply assume confounding variables won't show up by accident in the data. How, after all, could she know whether they did if she doesn't actively control for them (attempt to set up the experiment in such a way that they are detected were they to appear)?
If she can't control for confounding variables, she can't even get her findings published, for they're of no value.
Thus to control for the mischief of devils, one would have to have a predictable and reliable theory for how devils behave (and under what circumstances they do or do not interfere with the material and mental worlds). That's Feser's challenge. The one he dodged on the thesis that we live in a demon haunted world.
Liken controlling for devils to removing humans as confounding variables. No scientist says, "It's always possible that some individual could upend my experiment, and if such evidence shows up, it show up. I'll just try again." Instead, she takes active measures (such as conducting the experiment double-blind and locking lab doors) to assure that no human interference actually mars the data.
Put another way: How does one control for invisible men, free-floating about the world absent material bodies, deliberately malicious? It's as if all the locks to all lab doors were removed. It sounds like the plot for a B movie, but how could one conduct science if a plague of invisible men had spread over the earth?
ReplyDeleteWell, give Santi some credit. The usual tedious rhetoric aside, I think this may be the closest he has ever come to making an actual argument, however poor. Something like: "Religious people believe in demons. Belief in demons undermines science. Therefore Krauss is right that all scientists should be anti-religion."
ReplyDeleteIn addition to Scott's point that any competent scientist will acknowledge that there may be myriad unknown factors affecting their results, the fact that the scientific method arose and flourished in a culture where belief in demons was nearly universal should make it obvious that there is no fundamental conflict between them. Unless, of course, one is getting one's information from Andrew Dickson White, that infamous fabricator and charlatan, whose damage to the field of history of science modern scholars are still working to undo.
I think Charlie actually contrasts rather favorably with Santi. Certainly he is oversensitive and needs to work on his manners and debating skills, but it seems to me he's shown some genuine and admirable honesty in this thread, something of which Santi has never shown a flicker.
And Charlie, Santi has spent many months earning the hostility he receives here.
Ah, I see he posted another while I was writing. Truly he has the gift of glibness. Or perhaps he's possessed?
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't get is this aspect of the world youth crusade masquerading as philosophy. Next we will be treated to a linked arms chorus trilling out exciting songs of solidarity, community, and involvement in the details of the lives of others. All beneath a gigantic banner of that collapsed faced sack of ... Rorty
ReplyDeleteWho needs reasoning skills when you have emotions and ardor ...
Glenn you really are a sad human being. I'm clearly doing being the aggressor and you're still shitting on me.
ReplyDeleteI have no intention of thinking along your lines so I have no idea where you got that from. Even less so after your incredibly disrespectful comment.
Get a life dude. You picked through my comment and found nothing substantially wrong with it so you had to scroll up to find exactly who had voiced a similar thought before. JUST to prove me wrong.
I hope the other readers will interpret your pettiness as I have.
What a surprise, more arrogant condescension from a pathetic loser.
Also buddy, stating scientific/legal facts is not making assertions. I think you should look up the word 'assertion' instead of just parroting what everyone else has been saying.
DNW if you're referring to me with your youthful masquerade comment, I have never come close to suggesting anything that I'm saying is pretending to be philosophy. I have never studied philosophy or even learned about it beyond the normal level of a young academic.
ReplyDeleteHowever, many of my peers are actually engaged in the study of philosophy and would voice similar opinions to mine. At the very least, they would argue with every single one of your points heavily. So all I get from your comments, is that you are absolutely certain that you are right simply due to the fact that you have devoted time to the subject. Good for you, I hope you're happy with that.
Gottfried: admission time - I'm 20!
ReplyDeleteThink back to yourselves at 20. How interested were you in this particular area of politics/philosophy? Or any areas?
If you were, great. How were your debating skills and manners?
And no, I did not admit my age so you can throw it back at me. If none of you have anything constructive or useful to say regarding my age, don't reference it at all. Especially if you're going to tell me about all the achievements you had done by age 20 and how you had none of these fancy gadgets to do them with. Thanks.
Charlie Steele, the psychoanalyst.
ReplyDeleteMay God, and everyone here forgive me for what I'm going to ask here.
ReplyDeleteHowever, many of my peers are actually engaged in the study of philosophy and would voice similar opinions to mine. At the very least, they would argue with every single one of your points heavily. So all I get from your comments, is that you are absolutely certain that you are right simply due to the fact that you have devoted time to the subject. Good for you, I hope you're happy with that.
Could we have you tag-out, and your said peers who are actually engaged in the study of philosophy to tag-in, instead of you? You obviously handwave the assertions you make, to which I replied, "Never knew science came with bumper stickers." Legal facts, are indisputable facts, and philosophically indisputable? Never knew that either. Guess this modern world doesn't need philosophy like how I do. Anyway, can you get someone else who is at least somewhat more trained than you over here?
DNW,
ReplyDeleteI had actually imagined Rorty looking more effeminate.
As for Charlie, I simply meant to contrast him with Santi. I don't believe he is deliberately trolling. But on re-reading my comment I can see where it might be taken as encouragement, which is not at all what I intended. I agree that Charlie wore out his welcome a long time ago.
There is something peculiar, but not totally unfamiliar going on here.
ReplyDeleteAsk yourselves if when you were young, you ever went about proclaiming it; as if it were either some kind of passport to approval or a "get out of jail" card.
"I'm young and I like to be young!" Sounds like a 1960's pop song sung by a girl aggressively waving a lollipop.
Did your buddies on the wrestling or track team go around saying "I'm young, I'm part of the coming wave! The future is me!"?
Did the guys in logic, legal history, or economics class prattle on like that?
Does the skilled trades kid learning to be a machinist and program that CNC chucker talk or think like that?
What kind of mentality, what set of social or psychological circumstances produces a person who is so unaware and un-reflective that they can even think of talking seriously like that, without finding it absurd, and side-splittingly comical?
That's the kind of kid you abandon in the woods in a snowstorm - he don't need no damn compass - to find his own way back to the cabin; if he can.
We can of course think of some examples of people who have and continue to talk so; Bill Clinton, Obama, and the kid singing in that old movie Cabaret.
But they are people who only need be taken seriously as phenomena to be coped or eventually dealt with, not as sincere or serious fellow minds - i.e., as real persons in the sense of genuine moral peers - in themselves.
I know, and am closely related, to young men who have just recently been accepted at top universities and admitted to elite organizations - and they don't talk like that. I know young women with advanced degrees in socially prestigious and highly remunerative fields, and they don't talk like that. I know kids who've decided to follow their own life path, largely apart from advanced academic involvement, and they don't talk like that.
Who the hell does, and why?
Actually Dennis that's impossible.
ReplyDeleteThe people I refer to are much more intelligent, reasonable, and modest than myself. They have bigger things to worry about than arguing with a bunch of stubborn losers on the internet.
How about, instead of hiding in your little cave of comfort, you try voicing your opinions in a more public forum?
I say this because I have literally never seen any of this anywhere. This metaphysical, 'secular', non-Christian approach to being anti-choice. I have never seen it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, or any social media site. I have never seen it on the comment boards for the Independent or any other large newspaper that hosts such discussions.
I have seen many religious people turn over a new leaf and support abortion. I was literally 100% unaware of this particular branch of philosophy. So I suggest you guys stop conversing with your chums and broaden your prospects a bit.
As for the disputability of legal 'facts'. Of course their disputable. I never claimed that anything I said was undeniable. I'm challenging your consistent habit of defining my declarations of accepted facts as 'assertions'. They are not assertions. I am simply telling you what is considered to be the accepted truth in the legal and scientific world. And all I'm saying by that is that my ideas should be treated with a little more respect than acting like I've just escaped a mental hospital.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteCharlie, did you see where a poster above pointed to a few sources and organisations of secular pro-lifers? Beyond that, I know a few myself (one of my previous roommates, who is now a lawyer, and is also non-religious, is pro-life).
DeleteIt may be that the amount of those who don't use religious reasons are fewer, but that doesn't mean their arguments should not be considered seriously.
The people I refer to are much more intelligent, reasonable, and modest than myself. They have bigger things to worry about than arguing with a bunch of stubborn losers on the internet.
ReplyDeleteOf course! I really hope you're referring to yourself, if you aren't, boy you're deluded. If you are, boy you need a mirror. Clearly, Glenn is the obnoxious person here at bay.
As for the disputability of legal 'facts'. Of course their disputable. I never claimed that anything I said was undeniable. I'm challenging your consistent habit of defining my declarations of accepted facts as 'assertions'. They are not assertions. I am simply telling you what is considered to be the accepted truth in the legal and scientific world. And all I'm saying by that is that my ideas should be treated with a little more respect than acting like I've just escaped a mental hospital.
I'll say this, as I've said so again, you are too busy seeing who knows what, to see that you even have presuppositions. That very truth that you expound upon has Materialistic Presuppositions. You've clearly been unable to comprehend this, last time I checked science didn't interpret itself, things changed so fast? What is your response to this? - Handwaving.
People who escape from mental hospitals would probably show much more humility than you. Maybe that would change if you treated the people here with humility? But no, you aren't looking into that direction, and you perhaps never will.
I say this because I have literally never seen any of this anywhere. This metaphysical, 'secular', non-Christian approach to being anti-choice. I have never seen it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, or any social media site. I have never seen it on the comment boards for the Independent or any other large newspaper that hosts such discussions.
ReplyDeleteThe luxury of living in a closet, and obviously, we're the ones to blame for you not opening the door. Get over yourself and start reading the material that has been recommended.
"Gottfried said...
ReplyDeleteDNW,
I had actually imagined Rorty looking more effeminate.
As for Charlie, I simply meant to contrast him with Santi. I don't believe he is deliberately trolling. But on re-reading my comment I can see where it might be taken as encouragement, which is not at all what I intended. I agree that Charlie wore out his welcome a long time ago.
October 2, 2015 at 9:08 AM"
Well, each man will have to make his own evaluation; and Feser decide on how much he will tolerate and for what end or purpose.
For my part I decided to talk about Charlie, rather than to him. Unlike many of you, I don't feel a moral obligation to bring him into the light. I more or less just see him as a manifestation of whatever kinds of genetic and social input provides the kind of expression we are witnessing.
In Charlie's reality, morality is actually sub-moral; and the term "ad hominem" ceases to have any meaning as a label for a violation of one of the canons of reason. The personal is the political, the wants the want, the demand the demand, and that is the end of the road for analysis.
We see the same with Santi, and the same with Jindra: moral principles are defined in terms of the prevalence in some population of elements possessing X number of mirror neurons, or Y kinds of neuroses that require social underwriting.
You cannot even reason with them about that which they themselves believe to be fundamentally irrational. You end up arguing with an appetite, not a rational being.
"EVOLUTION", a shrug, and the threat of coercion, as we build the world we dream; and that is all there really is to it 'cause, "The Future Belongs to Me".
ReplyDelete"Could we have you tag-out, and your said peers who are actually engaged in the study of philosophy to tag-in, instead of you?"
I know a couple of genuine war heroes, and some retired Navy Seals. How mush credit does that get me at the medal store?
Dennis is obsessed and pathetic. He quotes my passage about social media and then purposefully leaves out the KEY part: that I urged you all to get your ideas out in to the public sphere so that people will be more aware and open to accepting them.
ReplyDeleteYou're like a dictator with a lust for censorship, or perhaps a Fox news reporter - perfectly twisting my words and quoting me incorrectly to get your point across and make me look even worse.
Practically everyone on here is against me and you still feel the need to shit on me. Hope you feel good about yourself :)
DNW
ReplyDeletewhere did I say that know such people makes my ideas correct? I said that such people share similar opinions, and thus you all should get off your high horse that you have been riding so comfortably through the bloodbath that is these comments (the slain being my comments, esteem, enthusiasm to learn, and excitement to accept your ideas). Again you will see my comments in brackets and somehow bring up a random comment, say #72 to 'disprove' me. Last night I had a great desire to understand this new area of thought, but people like you are discouraging me and people like me.
Anyway, don't you all have guns to protect and Presidents to crucify? RIP to the victims but seriously you guys have bigger things to worry about than a 20 year old spouting his mouth about religion on the internet.
Dennis is obsessed and pathetic. He quotes my passage about social media and then purposefully leaves out the KEY part: that I urged you all to get your ideas out in to the public sphere so that people will be more aware and open to accepting them.
ReplyDeleteLet me send this through google translate....
"Please write the entire book in a public forum for me."
Get over yourself.
@DNW
It is truly a shame that we live in such dark times.
Taylor I don't get your point. I said UNTIL I found this God-forsaken post, I had never heard of this branch of philosophy. What good does pointing out the comments do for anyone?
ReplyDeleteTaylor - you all deserve to be taken seriously. Certainly more seriously than a person in my particular position. But you guys are like less than 0.5% of those engaged in the debate. Can't you drop the pompousness and condescension?
ReplyDeleteHAHAH DENNIS YOU IDIOT
ReplyDeleteYou are seriously a lost cause.
I'm saying your ideas deserve to be heard and displayed in a public forum. I'm literally complimenting you and encouraging you to spread your ideas so more people can hear them and think about them. And challenge them!
What the hell is so bad about that? Yet you spin it against me again. Disgusting.
" 'Dennis is obsessed and pathetic. He quotes my passage about social media and then purposefully leaves out the KEY part: that I urged you all to get your ideas out in to the public sphere so that people will be more aware and open to accepting them.'
ReplyDeleteLet me send this through google translate....
"Please write the entire book in a public forum for me."
Get over yourself."
Do any of you seriously agree with this type of nastiness?
Dennis you are past misquoting me, you are now at the point where you are so desperate that you are literally 'translating' my words into how you want them to appear, and how you want to display my character. Pathetic, pathetic, PATHETIC.
ReplyDeleteIt may be that the amount of those who don't use religious reasons are fewer, but that doesn't mean their arguments should not be considered seriously.
ReplyDelete----
Taylor I don't get your point. I said UNTIL I found this God-forsaken post, I had never heard of this branch of philosophy. What good does pointing out the comments do for anyone?
No one gives a damn how far you've gone out of the closet, if you haven't reached it thus far, this is your deficiency, not anyone else's.
I'm saying your ideas deserve to be heard and displayed in a public forum. I'm literally complimenting you and encouraging you to spread your ideas so more people can hear them and think about them. And challenge them!
Oh, so asking me to tell you what we mean by what we say, when it cannot be compressed per se in such fashion, is encouraging me...
See, I can make silly analogies too! And then you question my maturity. Brainwashed Americans is what you all are. Progressive Americans, Philosophical Americans, whatever you are. You sit in your little nook of the world and think that you are the absolute height of human achievement. You are not Progressive. You are not Liberal. You are not free thinkers. The simple fact that you can call yourself left-wing in the US while still challenging abortion or supporting gun ownership is all the proof we need. Real democratic countries laugh at you. But of course you will all take this as raging racism and anti-Conservative rhetoric (only the latter is true).
You say I'm lazy for not reading your books. You're lazy for simply citing them and not explaining your point at all.
Given what you had to say about the cost of the book and so forth, and how it was 'conservative rhetoric' I don't see how this is true. Rather, than you actually encouraging the point, you are simply fooling yourself if you think you're doing that.
What the hell is so bad about that? Yet you spin it against me again. Disgusting.
Nothing. Other than the fact that you literally have no clue what your own position implies, nor what the other person is arguing for, this is why most of your replies went to empty rhetoric. Oh, not to mention presuppositions, did I mention that? Are you able to comprehend that...are you...? Let me know when you're able to comprehend them and get over the 'conservative rhetoric.'
Ooops!
ReplyDelete(Telling me to do my own research does nothing for the discussion and is classic Conservative rhetoric.)
This was the relevant part of the conservative rhetoric.
where did I say that know such people makes my ideas correct? I said that such people share similar opinions, and thus you all should get off your high horse that you have been riding so comfortably through the bloodbath that is these comments (the slain being my comments, esteem, enthusiasm to learn, and excitement to accept your ideas). Again you will see my comments in brackets and somehow bring up a random comment, say #72 to 'disprove' me. Last night I had a great desire to understand this new area of thought, but people like you are discouraging me and people like me.
ReplyDeleteAnd what better way to learn and understand, than by handwaving the material and trying to induce a conversation in a derogatory patronizing condescension fashion with the ones whom you wish to 'learn' from? Who knew? This is the way to go.
Oh. My. God. Dennis. You are doing my work for me.
ReplyDelete"No one gives a damn how far you've gone out of the closet, if you haven't reached it thus far, this is your deficiency, not anyone else's." Yes, because Dr. Feser's blog is the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement and debate. And you call me arrogant and condescending?
Telling me to do my own research shows that you have no interest in engaging in the debate. So why should I? If you don't want to post your opinions here (or in a more public space, which is clearly the case), then there's absolutely no reason to comment.
Get outta here with your victimized bullshit. I am literally asking you guys to consider sharing your opinions in a more public space. And somehow you're spinning that negatively. What. The. Fuck.
" Again you will see my comments in brackets and somehow bring up a random comment, say #72 to 'disprove' me. Last night I had a great desire to understand this new area of thought, but people like you are discouraging me and people like me. "
ReplyDeleteTO CHARLIE:
Ok Charlie. I'm going to break my own rule for the second time, and reply to you.
I am sorry you are being discouraged, from pursuing new areas of interest and thinking which you had not heretofore encountered.
You are in fact young. You no doubt have uncritically assumed many of the things your peers have assumed, while looking, as you imagined, critically at phenomena and obsolete views which you may not have fully understood and seen mainly in caricature.
One of the primary principles in agitation for social change is of course the strategy of mocking and ridiculing the opposition, rather than trying to debate either their premisses or conclusions. Engaging in rational discourse with the opposition is seen as lending potential validation to a position which the activist wishes to obliterate not dignify nor understand.
Furthermore, it is not all that unusual for someone to enter into a discussion somewhat aggressively, with the background purpose of actually having their assumptions challenged, and some of the more unpleasant conclusions they live with and glumly take for granted, possibly corrected, or modified.
Many simple, as opposed to militant atheists, might view this blog in that light.
But unlike many of those here, (and therefore like you to some extent) I am not a Thomist.
I am however committed to the inescapable logical position called moderate realism; whose chief defenders nowadays, are A-T influenced philosophers. All meaningful discourse, in the sense of intelligible discourse and not grunt communication, is dependent on the acceptance of some form of moderate realism: an acknowledgement that the categories and classes which the human mind has taken recognition of and uses in their predications, are not arbitrary and purely conventional, but that they are discovered and exist independently of the mind. And cannot be reckoned as arbitrary if the world is to be seen as intelligible, or any human regime other than brute power and ultimately pointless whim or attitude is to prevail.
Now, if you think that your time on twitter and Reddit has laid these issues to rest, once and for all, and has convinced you that neither natural kinds nor objective reference are possible, then there is nothing further to discuss.
But, if you think that the question of what has historically been called Universals - concerning the objectivity of categorization - and that questions regarding the existence of natural kinds and natures (defined teleologically) are live and interesting, or even critical questions for any intelligent associative life or formation, then you might find something of interest here.
Good luck with your decision.
Yes, because Dr. Feser's blog is the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement and debate. And you call me arrogant and condescending?
ReplyDeleteLet's begin by saying that I never said that, but Feser's blog has a high number of people who know what they are talking of, most of whom you have actually acted in a very derogatory, dismissive and patronizing fashion. What about, it's a matter of fact you don't know what you're talking of? And your deficiency is yours alone, not anyone, so sorry! Your luxury has saved you from the vast swath of the kind of literature, now when you've been recommended where to read, what do you say to that...?
Telling me to do my own research shows that you have no interest in engaging in the debate. So why should I? If you don't want to post your opinions here (or in a more public space, which is clearly the case), then there's absolutely no reason to comment.
I see. You are the one who wanted answers, not I. So, are you interested or not? By that decree, you're not. Goodbye, then?
Hey Charlie,
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I don't think you're a troll. 'Troll' implies one's intent is merely to cause chaos in a combox.
You said this (a waaays back) - numbers have been added to yours:
"3 issues . . .:
"1) Women's choice; 2) Rape situations; 3) Why a higher being must be referred to as God
"[4] Call me ignorant, immature, whatever you want. . . .
"[5] The closest you've come is suggesting that a fetus has more rights than is creating mother."
"[6] Telling:" Several times you claimed the anti-abortion claim tells women what to do.
To (3):
'God' is just the English word in debate as a place-holder for exactly such things as the highest being, Yahweh, the Unmoved mover, etc. (Btw, Aristotle's God's not the Prime mover: that is the outermost sphere of the Universe. The PM and the UMM are *very* different substances.)
To (1, 6):
'Is abortion typically wrong?' is one question. 'What shall we do about abortion?' is an independent question. For example, you see a mother mistreating her children (in a way that doesn't bring in the police), but you won't tell her what to do.
To (2):
Rape is horrifying - but an extremely rare cause of pregnancy, compared to the usual cause - mutual fooling around. In a discussion of abortion, rape cases are only relevant to the 'What shall we do?' question, not the 'what shall we do? question. Take lying as a different example: it is typically wrong to lie - many of the posters here would argue it is *absolutely* wrong - yet still in our decisions we make exceptions to the rule.
To (5):
Some anti-abortionists may think that. (For infants are young and innocent, and naturally command extra protection.) But the more common claim is that human babies, fetuses and embryos are just as worthy of rights as adult women. There's a brilliant rebuttal to this in a famous essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson - it's gotta be free online: she allows that fetuses are human, even persons, but that this doesn't matter; they still *don't deserve* to override the mother's rights, or even convenience. It's wrong, but it's *importantly* wrong.
Lastly, to (4):
You may be young, but you know a thing or two about the Internet. All forums and websites develop a group of regulars with a certain level of debate. This group is well educated, many doing so in their spare time. Heck, I'm a trained philosopher and envy people like Scott, who are not professionals, and write quite more clearly than I can ever hope to. (Shaking first at Scott.) The community here expects serious posters to ask basic question out of real confusion, or ask more complex questions. They assume a certain level of education (not intelligence, which you obviously are).
Keep slugging, but 'a soft word turneth away wrath' is still good advice.
Sincerely,
Chris-Kirk
Charlie and his "i'm a mere questioner" ...
ReplyDelete... Come on ...
Charlie Steele,
ReplyDeleteJUST to prove me wrong.
I don't know what it is (I'm supposed to have thought) I proved you wrong about. You recognized that, with respect to a certain subject, Santi knows more than you. Someone else had noticed that as well, and said as much before you did. But you didn't say you were the first to notice or remark upon the fact that Santi knows more than you, so mentioning that someone had said as much before you did didn't prove you wrong about anything. What it did do, however, is lend credence to to your assessment.
I think you should look up the word 'assertion'
Okay.
Assertion: "a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief."
The article written by Lawrence Krauss was simply a pile of poo- hence that reaction, "shut up". Actually, it was worse than a pile of poo. Seriously, was there anything at all that Krauss said that made sense?
ReplyDeleteThere's no God because science works!
There's no God because I don't like religion.
There's no God because religious freedom is bad.
Oy.
Hey Charlie,
ReplyDeleteFWIW I don't think you're a troll. To my mind that's someone who *merely* intends to cause chaos and ill feelings in a combox. At worst, you're the man in the old movie who says 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore.' You're obviously outraged at much of what you see in the world, and read here. There's a lot in the world to be outraged about.
Waaaay back, you warned anti-abortionists against telling women what to do. I don't think anyone clearly answered this question. (Though I admit to thumbing past stretches of the combox. Ladies, ladies, trim your nails!)
'Should we tell pregnant women what to do?' isn't the same as arguing that abortion is wrong or permissible. What is right and wrong is independent of what we should do about it. Example: you see a woman in the mall mistreat her kids but (unless it's worth calling the police) you don't tell her what to do. A mother mistreating her kids is wrong; a stranger bossing around the mother is wrong too. Obviously what we decide will be part of that second discussion, but they are independent discussions. (I'm an anti-abortionist without a clear idea of what we should do about it, for an example.)
You also didn't like using the word 'God'. Well, it is used just exactly as a place-holder for discussions about the Supreme Being, or Yahweh, or whoever is the candidate for the, um, 'job' of God. Not all discussion need be at the level of humble folk in a church pew. Aristotle's unmoved mover *is* the God of his metaphysics, and in a educated conversation we understand that.
As for giving you arguments; this is an educated group. You're intelligent enough to recognize it, or you wouldn't spend your time here (unless you really *are* a troll, a hypothesis I reject). Posters here in my opinion are so educated they expect the typical poster to do his own homework up to a point. You can't be *too* upset if they won't hand you a simple argument on a plate.
For the anti-abortionists here who haven't read it, try Judith Jarvis Thomson's essay 'A Defense of Abortion'. There she grants that fetuses do have a human right to life - but brilliantly (for 1971) notes that we do not allow that even humans are allowed to live in all circumstances. She gives various analogies to make her point. I think the paper is very wrong, but importantly so. It is able to bypass personhood arguments, in which debate at the time had gotten seriously bogged down.
Now, what about Krauss' philosophy? Let's smack that around some more.
(This is a brief repeat of a post that seems to have vanished, but we'll see.)
Chris-Kirk
oh, crumbs, and there that post is, to mock my impatience.
ReplyDeleteChris-Kirk
For what it's worth I liked the second version better ;)
DeleteI respect and appreciate the comments since my last one.
ReplyDeleteChris-Kirk yours is by far the most respectful and eloquently-worded. Good stuff. Don't think you were really looking to interact with me further so thank you.
DNW - again thank you for your eventual maturity. Your last comment summed up the issue much better than any of your previous comments. You did not distract or detract from the topic or what I'm saying. However, I still think you've gravely misinterpreted a number of things I've said. I only brought up Twitter, Reddit, etc because they are public forums where many debates take place. My point is that this particular branch of philosophy has absolutely no presence on those mediums. Don't know why you all get offended or try to use that against me.
And lastly, you all seem to imply that by reading your books I will agree with you. As if simply doing the readings has nurtured your opinions in a particular way. Which is simply wrong and I'm sure you'd agree. You read it from your particular backgrounds, and you all congregated here. That does not mean you all have incredibly diverse personal histories. So, I think my initial point that you may be influenced by certain things (I call them religious, you guys don't - either way I'm referring to your intrinsic beliefs and values as a person) whilst studying the topic. That is my issue and that is why I call all of you arrogant and condescending. Chris clearly admitted that this is a characteristic of the internet, this tight-woven group of regulars who share opinions and team up together. But you are all acting like you come from incredibly different places and somehow have unbiased, clear views of the world.
That is all. Thanks again
Chris,
ReplyDeleteHow much should we *worry* about that, though? I mean outside of real attempts to silence religious or moral debate, such as in laws or real social ostracism. My first career was in the physical sciences, and while there are a lot of secularists in it, there is also a healthy proportion of Christians in it in America. I remember reading books as a kid by Dawkins (say) and if any other Christian teenagers/college undergrads were like me, you either just didn't notice or generously ignored most of the anti-religious stuff, mostly because you were too busy chowing down on the science. (I wish I still had that billy-goat way of reading i used to!)
Sneering isn't much tolerated among polite working-class Americans. I strongly feel folk like Krauss, Tyson and Dawkins do harm mostly to themselves, once their tone gets picked up. I know I cannot read them anymore like I used to. (In my case, because my tastes have gotten a lot pickier.)
Chris-Kirk
Charlie -
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, i'm *not* "Chris" but "Chris-Kirk".
Taylor, your claim has merit. :)
Chris-Kir
ReplyDeleteWell, I tried. What can you say about someone who accuses but will not actually cite? Someone who sees "maturity" defined as an interest in how they "feel" about things? Someone who on the rare occasions he seems to quote, actually misquotes.
"Young", I guess.
At least he's not seeking out and gunning down Christians in college. And that guy was 26.
The important thing is we all agree that Mitchell and Webb are awesome.
ReplyDeleteDNW you all misquoted me and when you quoted me it was out of context and with key parts omitted. How is that better?
ReplyDeleteNo idea what you're referring to for maturity = feelings. I called you all immature when you attacked me, and I called Dennis immature for is pathetic, obsessive hatred. Don't know where feelings comes into that.
And thanks man. I'm glad I'm one step above a mentally ill terrorist in your books.
ReplyDeleteNever content to leave well enough alone, I have one more thing to say.
Unless Charlie is a very unusual and academically talented young Glaswegian, it is unlikely that he could have completed what we would call a complete high school college prep curriculum, and then 4 subsequent years of undergraduate studies. Although I understand some universities in Britain issue baccalaureates in 3.
If this superficial surmise is even partly accurate, some of the complaints I have been making regarding Charlie's approach will be as unfamiliar to him as the proper canons of discourse, as was A-T metaphysics.
I guess we assume courses in both formal and informal logic, the principles of rhetoric, critical analysis and demonstration, some kind of training in historiography or at least the canons of historical research and writing. And then philosophy.
Some or all of these things, at least as absorbed and internalized, may be as alien to Charlie as is this philosophy which he says is new to him.
Since he at least knows something about the city he calls his own, he might meditate on Glasgow's own early history and development when assessing relative historical credits and debits.
Charlie:
ReplyDelete"Chris[-Kirk?] clearly admitted that this is a characteristic of the internet, this tight-woven group of regulars who share opinions and team up together. But you are all acting like you come from incredibly different places and somehow have unbiased, clear views of the world."
Chris-just-Chris may have, but that's not what I meant: rather, that this group is philosopically savvy and demands a standard of education. They are right at times to send a beginner to do some reading. The fact you're sticking around is proof enough you hanker after something more than a slap-fest or a mutual admiration society. Some of us have already done a great deal of reading; it is not wrong to respect them for that - e'en tho' some be turkeys.
Chris-Kirk
After reading all these comments I was hoping that Dr. Feser would jump in and do this to good ole Charles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27qp189oiFo
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"And thanks man. I'm glad I'm one step above a mentally ill terrorist in your books. "
Yes, of course you are. Maybe even two.
But we do not yet know that he was mentally ill, do we? Is commission of homicide a per se sign of mental illness?
Think about it ... to yourself
This is just Chris. I'm definitely not a part of a "tightly woven group of regulars" nor am I an Aristotelian-Thomist. The article by LK was simply illogical- that's all. The title had very little to do with the "meat" of the discussion. If he wants to address the subject of religious liberty and the law, that's fine. But, why the "militant atheism"?
ReplyDeleteSanti said:
ReplyDelete"Put another way: How does one control for invisible men, free-floating about the world absent material bodies, deliberately malicious? It's as if all the locks to all lab doors were removed. It sounds like the plot for a B movie, but how could one conduct science if a plague of invisible men had spread over the earth?"
A false worry: no serious theistic metaphysics posits any such thing. Those that do posit evil spirits posit that God is much greater than they, and protects us from such pervasive gutting of our access to knowledge. Not even Al-Gazali, the medieval sceptic who thought God directly causes everything, believed that.
There's an old Sidney Harris cartoon of chemists around a lab bench with a priest. One chemist points to a flask and says to the priet 'This is the one. We want you to pray for *this* one.' Scientists want to know about stones and stars and whether their reactions will run to completion. While many would feel like it's cheating, if prayer could reliably get us *those* answers they'd happily pray away like monks.
For some reason, God doesn't interfere in scientific experiments. It seems so obvious why He doesn't that you shouldn't be surprised if scientists who are Christians don't talk about it much. For some reason, He doesn't allow supernatural beings to do much mischief in that area either. (Though it's no stretch to imagine them as causing a subset of the *failed* experiments.) Again, there's something too obvious about that to mention. Would I, a chemistry instructor, allow malicious lab-rats to screw up the standard solutions used in my lab classes? Arrhenius forbid!
Chris-Kirk
@Scott
ReplyDeleteNot at all, since the point in question was never taught infallibly or as a matter of dogma/faith. It's more like (in fact pretty much just like) the Church's eventual acknowledgement, also in response to scientific evidence (not Galileo's; he didn't have it and his arguments were bad), that the Earth moves.
Great, now you’re halfway to defending Galileo’s persecution. The first problem is that very little is actually characterized as infallible (for example Vatican II has not a single infallible statement within it), but that doesn’t make it any less authoritatively true for the average Joe Catholic. The second problem is that delayed ensoulment is still an open question, so if you are claiming that scientific evidence changed the underlying reasoning of the magisterium it has yet to do so officially. The third problem is that even with an incorrect science Aristotle and Aquinas both understood taxonomic categories, the teleology of the development process, and they also believed material from both parents was necessary – so it doesn’t make sense for them to have posited different types of souls for the developing human fetus unless they were talking about phenotype. The related fourth problem is that if they were referring to phenotype, those emerging characteristics and functionalities are a main component of personhood arguments and Thomists should engage pro-choice arguments on that basis instead of asserting genotype as the limiting boundary.
Step2:
ReplyDeleteI'm unclear where you're going in the meat of your last post, but I want to put a plug in for a good book: *The Crime of Galileo* by George Santillana. I doubt there's a more thorough examination of the history of the so-called Galileo affair. The real eye-opener will be that Galileo was not attacked by the Church, but by a cabal of Peripatetic university professors who hated him and all his works; and that the ecclesiasts actually took sixteen years of being worn down to convince. There was real skulduggery involved too, is Santillana's claim, and it's well argued.
The other eye-opener to me is more interesting to us religious folk: published in the 1950s, surrounded by fascist, communist and other vast statist entities, *The Crime of Galileo* attempts to analyze his 'crime' as really an ignorance of the modern (Modern) bureaucracy, which the Catholic Church was at the forefront of creating, along with all its faults as a faceless, information-gathering, mechanical jugernaut that the wrong people can influence to ends far beyond its original purpose.
So the book isn't exactly an *exoneration* of the Church except negatively: it was not animated by any real religion-science conflict. Rather it claims that Galileo was the victim of the first modern state, and the Church hierarchy, in particular Pope Urban VIII, was in his lofty and therefore remote position was an unwitting victim of manipulation of that system. If anything, it's a criticism of the bureaucratic system.
Chris-Kirk
Step2:
ReplyDeleteLike Chris-Kirk, I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from your post here, and in replying, I'm going to avoid some obvious sidetracks (including the "Galileo affair," about which I join Chris-Kirk in encouraging you to read more although I'm not familiar with the source he mentions).
As far as I know, neither the (im- or otherwise)mobility of the Earth nor the time at which a zygote/fetus is ensouled has ever been officially taught by the Magisterium—and as for the latter, the Church has opposed abortion from the very beginning, without any reliance on any such view. And Thomists and other opponents of abortion do address personhood-based arguments, primarily to show that such opposition doesn't depend on claims about fetal "personhood."
Gottfried:
ReplyDelete[T]he fact that the scientific method arose and flourished in a culture where belief in demons was nearly universal should make it obvious that there is no fundamental conflict between them.
That's a good point. It's also not as though the Church has never made any reasoned attempt to discern when and how demons really are at work, even if such attempts can't by their nature achieve the mathematical precision of (some) empirical science.
I'll let you guys take over but I'll be keeping an eye on things in an honest attempt to gain a better understanding of the concepts
ReplyDeleteCharlie,
ReplyDeleteTake it from a guy who wasn't 20 too long ago and is just coming out of college phase in his life and is still very much "baking in the oven," "much to learn learn, you still have." Real life and its difficulties are about to start to grind on your pretentions and like a crucible, test your metal. Judging by your comments, you haven't quite hit that point, intellectually or psychologically, and that's ok.
When I was 18-20 and just started getting into philosophy for apologetics reasons, it took about several years to actually start to "get" what the discipline is all about and overall how to think critically about arguments and assumptions of both myself and my interlocutors (Probably, one of the best places to start is Socrates' reaction to the Oracle in Plato's Apology). And it was through this praxis you learn something called the principle of charity and the proper etiquette of debate with whom you diametrically disagree if you're serious about such an end.
Frankly, your posture and conduct here exuded none of that integrity, perhaps out of, I hope, naivete. Let's just put it this way: It's like you came to a French wine tasting event in Bourdeaux and told everyone that French wine sucks. That piss tastes better, while wholeheartedly admitting you've never tasted wine but have had sparkling grape juice -- which is tantamount to your boast about being socially and politically "aware." Yep, that's kind of faux pas you committed, hence the umbridge in response, after it was clear you had as much awareness, let alone respect, for china in said shop, you marauding, bull, you.
It's not so much an indictment of you but the sham our Western education system has become. You and I, we've been indoctrinated to be chronic feelers, not critical thinkers. And when you make it to university, you're supposed to be exposed to differing ideas and worldviews (different vintages, if you like) and think critically about them. Instead, college, in many cases, imposes an orthodoxy that is very anti-religious, intolerant, masquerades as enlightened, that doesn't want you thinking too critically about its own presuppositions and ideological roots (Really, pull on the threads. If theistic belief systems can be dismissed by ad hominem association and the horrible acts done in God's name, then so can the secular philosophies and their progenitors for the large body counts they consequentially sired). This unconscious orthodoxy just wants you to feel strongly about "social justice," #lovewins, "income inequality," "progress" and a whole bunch of other vapid platitudes without having a thorough understanding what they entail and engender, just so as long you're singing "Kumbayah" in its key at the end. At least, that's my view.
continued...
ReplyDeleteYou talk about getting our stuff more in the public square. As someone who has experience in journalism grad school and how the press is supposed to safeguard a free exchange of ideas for comment and criticism, well it's those slogans and the cultural and intellectual miasma they embody that's rampant in society hindering that from really happening. Public debate and civil disagreement is nigh impossible, as exemplified by what's happened here on this thread.
You also bring up how a majority of educated people hold your views, I'm inferring that you adduce you must be in the right or on the winning side. Well, not considering the fallacies in such reasoning, what makes you think that many of us here, including Feser, have not also been educated, exposed to the same secular arguments and philosophies -- been made cognizant to both their merits and wrinkles -- and found them wanting and summarily rejected them? What makes such a thing impossible in your mind? See, the thing I find most stunning is that it seems, judging by your comments, that you had never considered that there are rational, intelligent, educated people of good will who just disagree with you. That, there is actually intellectualism to conservatism and or religious belief. You mention you don't see this stuff on social media. Well, Aquinas and philosophy in general just isn't suited for such banal forms of discourse and interaction between people.
And I'm not just trying to pick on you and pile on. And I apologize if it comes off that way. Yet, I do sincerely hope that this might be a beginning of a wake up call for you, that you've maybe been duped and really have only been getting one side of the story about "life, the universe and everything."
Anyway, best of luck,
Modus Pownens
Charlie Steele,
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to answer a few of your questions, I tend to gain from trying to explain these things myself, haven't done so in ages. But as has been pointed out earlier, what I say will most likely just prompt more questions or you will misunderstand what I have said. This is primarily because I am not an acclaimed writer on this topic, I am less informed on these topics than many of the people here, and because it appears (though you can correct me here) that you presuppose a materialist (or at least non-teleological) metaphysics without even being aware of it. The last point means that you will find it difficult to understand our positions on abortion, no matter how we explain it unless we go right back to our foundational views which means trying to explain our understanding of causation at least. None of us are willing to right a book for you, and better writers have already written them, so we point you elsewhere. We believe in essential-ism and teleology of the Aristotelian-Thomistic kind. If you don't want to read, see this video of Edward Feser providing a lecture that addresses the materialist conception and how it contrasts with our picture of the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Dkp1U9pek#t=08m20s
First question: why we use the word God, which you see as a character in a book, to describe the "higher power".
That is because the character, as you put it, of God in the revealed theology of the Abrahamic religions is described the same as God is described, argued for and defended by philosophers from Aristotle, to Aquinas, all the way up through these ages and on to the present day. Both are described as the unchanging, indivisible, incorporeal, omnipotent, omniscience, all good, creator source, and sustainer of all creation. Also, both speak of God as not just another being, happening to have the omni-attributes listed above, that is among other beings such as ourselves, but instead is Being itself. God is not just an all good being among other relatively good beings, but is Goodness itself. This last part especially will raise further questions, which I am not going to explain because of what I said above.
Anyone, let me know if I am incorrect?
Second, "Why do you get to choose for a woman?"
ReplyDeleteBecause, as has been stated, the foetus has personhood and thus is treated the same as a newly born child, or a 4 year old, or fully grown adult. A foetus is an innocent person. To intentionally kill an innocent person is murder. Murder is an abhorrently evil act. Therefore, to intentionally kill a foetus is an abhorrently evil act and the state has an obligation to outlaw abhorrently evil acts. Now I know you will disagree that the foetus has personhood. I believe that personhood is bestowed upon rational beings. Humans are rational animals and that separates us from other animals. Why I believe that a foetus at whatever stage is a human, and thus a person, is because saying the foetus is just a clump of cells doesn't really go deep enough. It isn't just a clump of cells. Not all clumps of cells are the same, they are different and they behave differently. There is a reason why cats give birth to cats, pigs give birth to pigs, and humans give birth to humans. You could say it is just a clump of human cells, but this isn't enough either. If a person were to undergo surgery and have some skin removed, this would be a clump of human cells, but not a foetus. If a pregnant woman were to have her foetus removed and have this clump of skin cells attached the way a foetus is, would it grow as a foetus would? No, because it is just a clump of human skin cells. Say the clump was a collection of different human cells, would it grow? Well that depends on how the cells are formed together, which is what makes a foetus, or any human at any stage, unique from just a bunch of human cells. Basically, it would need to take the form of a foetus to grow. There is a reason why a human foetus grows in to a new born human baby, not a kitten, or baby pig, or an oak tree. There is a reason why a 1 year old human eventually grows in to a 2 year old human (not a 2 year old giraffe or a walrus, or whatever) and eventually to a fully grown adult human. The reasoning that a foetus is just a clump of cells could be said about a 2 year old aswell. Why not? I'm sure you agree that the child which eventually developed in to the man you are now was not someone entirely different to you, but was merely a less complete or lesser developed version of you. And whether I say the 2 year old you, or the unborn foetal you, but it’s still you, as it is with everyone else. The process is one individual thing going through a biological process. What makes the foetus a human foetus is the same thing that makes a 2 year old a 2 year old human, rather than a 2 year old cat or zebra, is that the human foetus is of the kind that is human. Throughout the processes from an infant to an adult, this is all an internal process of the human, and there is nothing unique about a feoetus that separates it as its own unique process. From zygote to embryo, to foetus, to infant, to adult, it was all you at different stages of human development.
You make the claim that while still unborn, the foetus is a part of the womans body, and she has the right to do with her body what she wishes, therefore she can have the foetus killed if she wants. Firstly, what is so unique about arbitrarily being in one place, then arbitrarily being in another, that endows personhood? There is nothing unique about it. Second, why see it this way, and not turned around, that the woman is a part of the foetus' body? You could say “because the woman existed before the foetus”, but then one can simply take your own reasoning about arbitrary displacement in the opposing direction and say that once the foetus is formed, the woman is no longer a person and becomes a part of the foetus. I say both are ridiculous, so here is a ridiculous question: If a hippo swallows a whole man alive, does he suddenly lose his individual personhood and now is a part of the hippo? I don’t see anything unique about being in one place, then when you are in another place, you suddenly gain personhood, and the opposite does not apply either.
Thirdly, How would you deal with the case of a woman who's been raped?
ReplyDeleteThis answer is very easy for you because you don’t see a foetus as a person, which I stated above is based on it arbitrarily being in one place and not another, therefore the woman is not murdering anyone. My answer, because I see the foetus as a (innocent) person, is that even if a woman is impregnated in one of the most traumatic and unwanted ways possible, one I would not wish on any woman ever, still to intentionally kill an innocent person (ie murder) is wrong and should be illegal. Should she be obligated to parent the child? Adopting out is always an option. A child is in better hands with those that want one than one who doesn’t. But then I don’t think your point was about parenthood, but was about the pregnancy.
This probably raised more questions than answers, but hey hope it was helpful.
Adding to Billy's comments, I'll refer anyone who is unfamiliar, but still interested to take a look at this invaluable post by Dr. Feser.
ReplyDeleteBilly wrote: "God in the revealed theology of the Abrahamic religions is described the same as God is described, argued for and defended by philosophers from Aristotle, to Aquinas,..."
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is not the case.
The God of the Hebrew Bible is not portrayed consistently even within itself (let alone with Aristotle).
Among the Hebrew Bible's portrayals of God are the following: (1) God is a person with preferences (taking sides between the Israelites and Canaanites, etc.); (2) God is a person who walks in the cool of the Garden in Genesis; and (3) God is one who has angels and prophets that interact with God and speak and act on his (always male-gendered, that part is consistent) behalf.
These spirit beings and prophets have special powers to interfere with the natural courses of the cosmos and history (causing the sun to hold its place in the Book of Joshua, etc.).
Satan, for instance, in the Book of Job, talks with God, then interferes with the progress of the life of Job, using lightning to burn down his house. And Aquinas affirms, via Augustine, the power of devils to interfere with nature and human history in this manner.
So the God of the Hebrew Bible speaks and acts in history, and his good and bad angels interfere with its courses, whereas Aristotle's Being does no such thing. It's debatable whether Aristotle's Being even knows we exist, or has the capacity to think at all (except about himself, akin to some sort of ouroboros).
The whole point of Krauss's and Haldane's argument is that science has revealed that there is no such Being speaking or acting in history. We do not live in a deity, angel, and demon-haunted world.
So it's not revealed science, but "revealed theology" that is at issue here. For Billy to call theology "revealed" is therefore to beg the question, for it's the very thing in dispute (whether God speaks and acts in history).
But science actually does reveal things. It has, over the past four hundred years, revealed zero evidence of spooks.
Contra Scott, devils are not confounding variables in science or history.
So this is the point that every pro-Aquinas writer in this thread, and Feser himself, has dodged: they're not dealing with the substance of Krauss's and Haldane's argument as to why we have "atheistic" (Haldane's word) practice in science in the first place. Instead, they're retreating to the easy territory of affirming something that cannot be falsified either way: the cosmological argument (that a necessary supernatural being precedes contingent beings).
The real question is: Do angels, devils, and God interfere with the progress of nature and history?
God as "Being" is, in fact, irrelevant to anything we say or do in life (surrounding abortion, or anything else) if this direct question is not answered in the affirmative first. Haldane and Krauss answer the question in the negative. They say we do not live in a demon-haunted world; that devils (contra Scott) are not acting as potential confounding variables messing with nature, history, or our scientific experiments because they don't exist.
And how have we reached this reasonable conclusion? The same way we've reached the reasonable conclusion that aliens are not, ghost bird-like, darting about in flying saucers around our planet's stratosphere and troposphere. No evidence.
Santi has the unique ability to board a train in NYC's Grand Central Station, and find himself on another train leaving from DC's Union Station 3 seconds later.
ReplyDeleteHe is disappointed that most others do not travel in a similar manner, but is pleased that the following is slated to appear in the next edition of the OED:
the·ol·o·gy: a well-known, widely accepted and long used synonym for the text of the Hebrew Bible.
No evidence.
ReplyDeleteTranslation: Having arbitrarily ruled out the "supernatural" in advance on grounds largely of taste, I'm certain that any purported evidence of its activity can't really be any such thing, so I don't even need to be familiar with it in order to dismiss it out of hand.
Santi, I am a bit of a stranger here at times because I am unfamiliar with the usual interpretive strategies of Catholics (I admit to my woeful ignorance), so others here may disagree with me. However, you are dreadfully behind the times in regards to interpreting the biblical texts you use as proofs.
ReplyDeletePlease don't pontificate on your points by pointing to sections of Scripture that are usually regarded in biblical stories as to not be taken literally and in such a Philistine fashion, which you do in your pointing to YHWH walking in the garden. Using that as an example is actually pretty hilarious. The same with Job. At least read a survey on a particular text before rapingraping it so horribly. I'm sure even Wikipedia could give you a few pointers on how Job, or the early sections of Genesis can be read and what scholars are currently saying.
Minor point maybe, but damn if it doesn't annoy me.
*raping... Not rapingraping
Delete"God is a person who walks in the cool of the Garden in Genesis"
ReplyDeleteI'm of the impression that no Christian here actually believes the Garden of Eden was actually a real place and the events as described actually happened, so this is clearly not meant to be taken literally. But again, I could be wrong. I'm not a Christian.
"The whole point of Krauss's and Haldane's argument is that science has revealed that there is no such Being speaking or acting in history. We do not live in a deity, angel, and demon-haunted world."
Can you provide the evidence of this lack of acting or speaking? I didn't realise that events that never occurred leave evidence behind. Events that do occur, however, can leave evidence that cannot, or have yet to be scientifically confirmed. They can occur however.
"For Billy to call theology "revealed" is therefore to beg the question, for it's the very thing in dispute (whether God speaks and acts in history)."
The use of the term, 'revealed' is meant primarily to be used in the same sense that saying the Prophet Muhammad. I am not a Muslim, either, but you know who I am talking about, and you know exactly what I am referring to when I speak of the revealed theology of the Abrahamic religions.
"And how have we reached this reasonable conclusion? The same way we've reached the reasonable conclusion that aliens are not, ghost bird-like, darting about in flying saucers around our planet's stratosphere and troposphere. No evidence."
Are you sure it has no evidence? Or have we just yet to discover this evidence?
Your claim, as I understand it: The only reasonable conclusion to any claim that has no discovered evidence (I'm guessing of the scientifically rigorous kind?) is to reject it as false.
Is that right? If so, provide the evidence. Until then, I will, in order to adhere to reason as well as clearly undermine reason, conclude that it is itself a false claim.
moduspownens, Billy, et al:
ReplyDeleteI very much appreciate your comments and the lack of any signs of hostility. I wouldn't say it's quite respectful but you've all dropped the aggression which is nice.
However, apart from my aggressive ad hominem approach (I'd say you're all exaggerating there), your biggest problems are that a) I make assertions based on personal opinions and b) I reject all other views.
I'm sorry but both of you, and everyone else, write absolute essays of comments that are FULL of assertions. Point one: "a foetus is an innocent person." Sorry but at this point in time, I believe all sources (though you heavily deny science and the Bible), so definitely the law, count a foetus as NOT a person. so when you all say "a feotus is a person" I'm sorry but that is an assertion. If I made a statement so strongly and confidently you would all roast me and talk about my assertive attitude.
Do you see why I have such a hard time making any lee way here?
As for "adopting out" a baby in a rape case... You're all missing the point entirely. You are putting your selfish needs and the 'needs' of an undeveloped organism above those of the woman who has been assaulted physically and emotionally.
Pregnancy is an awful experience. You want someone to be pregnant for 9 months when a) they never wanted to be, b) they still don't want to be, and c) they were force to have sex. AND D) they don't keep the baby!?!?!?!? what! How is that human of you. You're going to remind that poor girl of the most horrific experience of her life all because of the arbitrary 'rights' of a parasitic organism.
Taylor Weaver:
ReplyDelete[Y]ou are dreadfully behind the times in regards to interpreting the biblical texts you use as proofs.…I'm sure even Wikipedia could give you a few pointers on how Job, or the early sections of Genesis can be read and what scholars are currently saying.
Or for that matter what they said a couple of thousand years ago. None of this stuff is remotely new, even if a certain kind of Modern Enlightened Person thinks he's the first one in the history of Western Civilization to notice that some parts of Scripture can't (or at least needn't) be taken literally and that this brilliant insight was somehow lost on two millennia worth of Jewish and Christian scholars. "Behind the times" here means "B.C.E."
I know I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but I always find myself doing a slight double take when I see Santi accuse someone else of begging the question or "blowing blue pipe smoke."
ReplyDelete…and, really, well before the Common Era. As in "before the Scriptures were even written."
ReplyDelete"Modus P Owens", says
ReplyDelete" ... the sham our Western education system has become. You and I, we've been indoctrinated to be chronic feelers, not critical thinkers. And when you make it to university, you're supposed to be exposed to differing ideas and worldviews (different vintages, if you like) and think critically about them. Instead, college, in many cases, imposes an orthodoxy that is very anti-religious, intolerant, masquerades as enlightened, that doesn't want you thinking too critically about its own presuppositions and ideological roots (Really, pull on the threads. If theistic belief systems can be dismissed by ad hominem association and the horrible acts done in God's name, then so can the secular philosophies and their progenitors for the large body counts they consequentially sired). This unconscious orthodoxy just wants you to feel strongly about "social justice," #lovewins, "income inequality," "progress" and a whole bunch of other vapid platitudes without having a thorough understanding what they entail and engender, just so as long you're singing "Kumbayah" in its key at the end."
Well stated.
Educators have always sought to indoctrinate to some degree. It's difficult to come up with a word for the formal process of transmitting knowledge that doesn't imply it. Educate, edify, school, train. Professors profess something, docents lead ...
But those who like Rorty, or the Nazis he admits to resembling in formal function if not substance, have never seemed to have gotten so firm a hold on the official academic imagination, or self-conception, as they have now.
This nonchalant nihilism, though it may make assertions for the sake of making assertions, has on the basis of its own premises, no real recourse other than to emotion and feelings - since critical reason has been reduced from an expression of man's highest faculty, to an instrumental function in the service of an ultimately, cosmically, pointless urge.
The mutual grooming (itself a completely contingent and historically accidental phenomenon) of the Bonobo-men adrift in a black sea of fizzling nothingness, becomes the point of life, the very definition of existence. The feeling of essentially meaningless feelings, and the arranging everyone's life and all of reality in order to satisfy these in principle un-criticizable impulses, becomes the project of life. Impulse, is taken as being immune from criticism of course, because there is no longer conceived any standard by which to judge that sovereign impulse; which has itself come to fill the place which being, or even man, once occupied.
Young Chris is a symptom of Rorty.
What the Rorty thing is a symptom of, is another question.
Chris Kirk said in response to my B movie analogy of invisible men being akin to invisible devils (as when we might imagine a scene where invisible men enter a science lab and mess with an ongoing experiment): "[N]o serious theistic metaphysics posits any such thing. Those that do posit evil spirits posit that God is much greater than they, and protects us from such pervasive gutting of our access to knowledge."
ReplyDeleteSuch reasoning in response to my analogy is ad hoc. Now we've got to believe, not one thing, but three: (1) there are devils, AND (2) they don't mess with experiments because God doesn't let them, AND (3) God wants humans to devote themselves to accessing knowledge through science.
That third claim, by the way, was strenuously disputed by Augustine, a serious theist. He listed curiosity among the vices. He called this vice the "disease of curiosity" and wrote, "[M]en proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.”
It's hardly much of a leap from Augustine's curiosity as vice to curiosity as opening oneself up to devils. It wasn't at all obvious to Augustine that God wants us meddling into the secrets of his creation. On Augustine's view of curiosity, it's not surprising that demons would be given permission by God to mislead the godless practitioners of the scientific arts, maliciously and mischievously misdirecting the course of their experiments.
Yet here's Chris again: "For some reason, God doesn't interfere in scientific experiments. It seems so obvious why He doesn't that you shouldn't be surprised if scientists who are Christians don't talk about it much. For some reason, He doesn't allow supernatural beings to do much mischief in that area either."
I have an alternative explanation for why Christian scientists don't talk about this much: cognitive dissonance.
The worry that we might seriously live in a demon haunted world cannot be brought into the lab--and science still function. Demons introduce a confounding variable that could never be controlled for.
Put another way: if we live in a demon-haunted world, our epistemic confidence in science collapses. Fortunately, there's no evidence over the past four hundred years of doing science that we live in such a world, so we don't have to seriously entertain the idea. No great scientist historically has entertained the idea.
So for the question--"Why don't we see devils interfering in experiments?"--there Occam's razor: they don't exist. It's the simplest explanation. It's Haldane's and Krauss's explanation. It's Galileo's and Newton's explanation. It's the "atheistic" premise without which science cannot confidently function. Demons--disembodied, invisible men--have to be left at the lab door.
Demons don't exist for the same reason UFOs don't exist. They're ghost birds. People have active imaginations. They think they see evidence of their presence, but on closer inspection, this evidence always evaporates.
Imagine someone reasoning in Chris's manner about UFOs: "For some reason, the aliens in UFOs never land on the White House lawn. Instead, they dart around the stratosphere and troposphere, and we only catch the briefest side glimpses of them. We can never pin them down because they don't want to be pinned down. They have their reasons. Obviously, they're protecting us until we're ready for their full revelation. We are just not smart enough to plunge the depths of their mysterious behavior (why they are so elusive, and do some things, but not others). It's hardly surprising that UFO believers don't talk much about this."
Hardly surprising at all.
Santi:
ReplyDelete"[1] The whole point of Krauss's and Haldane's argument is that science has revealed that there is no such Being speaking or acting in history."
What paper revealed this? How was the hypothesis stated? What was the experimental method and apparatus? How were null results handled? What of the people who claim to have witnessed the contrary - all of them, or at least a proper sampling. How was this sampling done? I know, the more usual claim is that *everything* about science reveals no God; but that is not a scientifically testable statement; it's an axiom or theorem of a metaphysics. Thus it is not 'revealing' or 'proving' no such God, it simply makes 'There is no such God' a theorem.
". . . the substance of Krauss's and Haldane's argument as to why we have "atheistic" (Haldane's word) practice in science in the first place."
Haldane really said 'atheistic practice in science'? That's sad. One might as well talk about atheistic cooking, or atheistic car maintainence. It implies that every Christian who did or does scientific work - and they are legion - acts 'atheistically' whenever he conducts an experiment. That's absurd. (Posthumous h/t to CS Lewis, who complained that a 'Christian' political party was like 'Christian' cooking.) Recall the point that physical science matured exactly in a culture with a robust belief in spirits good and bad, including most of the early investigators themselves.
- - -
For the other posters here, how's this for a thesis: some atheist thinkers seem to be forcing theists to adopt something like al-Gazali's world, wherein nothing moves or changes on its own; everything is run by God directly. To use Gazali's example, we must say (seems the claim) that God (or demon, angel, etc.) makes cotton burn when you put a burning match to it, and it is only habit that it happens regularly - as the Caliph has a habit of hunting at a certain time every day, to give again Gazali's example. Sicne this seems pretty absurd, and it's the only theistic/supernaturalist option they allow, therefore naturalism is true. Waddaya think?
Chris-Kirk
Charlie, you aren't getting what people are saying because you are too hung up on the emotions you feel about this and that regarding pregnancy. No one here has merely asserted personhood for a foetus, they've argued for it, explaining in layman's terms the A-T philosophical basis for said beliefs. If those beliefs seem insensitive or selfish to you that can't be helped, but I would suggest you are wrong on both counts. Again, read the metaphysical basis for fetal personhood outlined in these posts and suggested reading material.
ReplyDeleteYou've done a lot of talking (making assertions left and right) but little digestion of what people are saying to you, and unless you're willing to engage with the posters here and respond with reason and not hysterics like "Oh that poor woman, not allowing her to abort the foetus is like raping her all over again", no one here is making any leeway. If you have reason to believe that A-T metaphysics is incorrect about this issue, spell it out in rational terms, rather than appeals to emotion and presupposing selfish motives of the dissenters here, without that your recent moralizing is empty verbiage.
Talon - here's my issue. You are all placing metaphysical philosophical views above real-life experience and pain. Experience and pain that you, as a man (like myself), can never ever feel. You guys hate feelings for some reason. You prefer thoughts and rationalizations of philosophical views over real-world, practical choices.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm making assertions. I'm saying you can't call me out for that when you are all doing the same.
Talon:
ReplyDeleteNo one here has merely asserted personhood for a foetus, they've argued for it, explaining in layman's terms the A-T philosophical basis for said beliefs.
Also, for the record, several of us have expressly held that the moral point at issue depends not on the fetus's alleged "personhood" but only on its humanity. For my own part I think "personhood" is a red herring.
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not the response I was expecting.
"Sorry but at this point in time, I believe all sources (though you heavily deny science and the Bible), so definitely the law, count a foetus as NOT a person. so when you all say "a feotus is a person" I'm sorry but that is an assertion. If I made a statement so strongly and confidently you would all roast me and talk about my assertive attitude. "
I didn't just assert this. I literally spent that whole time after the assertion to explain why the foetus is a person. Read it. Saying that I am denying science does not show my case to be invalid. You have yet to actually provide what science actually says as to why a foetus is not a person. Please explain this. If it is because it is arbitrarily in one place (inside a woman), rather than another (outside the woman), as you have argued, then I addressed that point. Read it and respond.
"You are putting your selfish needs and the 'needs' of an undeveloped organism above those of the woman who has been assaulted physically and emotionally."
Selfish? I don't stand to gain anything from a woman being pregnant. This is not about me at all. As for your phrase, "undeveloped organism" to describe a foetus, a point I have made: A 4 year old is an undeveloped organism as well. Say that a 4 year old were to have some accident that leaves them severely mentally and physically handicapped. Clearly this would be a traumatic event for the mother that she definitely never intended and one that will inevitably lead to vastly greater difficulty with parenting. Say that someone began arguing that she should be able to have her child killed because the parenting now because of this. I assume you are rational and will clearly oppose this. Say that someone then goes to argue as you do, "But a)she never wanted to parent a severely disabled child, b)she still doesn't want to, and c) She had no say in this. You reply, "this is a 4 year old persons and if she kills her child, that would be murder. They respond, "You are putting your selfish needs and the 'needs' of an undeveloped organism above those of the woman who has been forced in to parenting that is now very physical and emotional."
What you are not understanding here is that first and foremost, we see the foetus as a person. The way we see the foetus in the rape case, is the way you would see a 4 year old in the case I explained above. They are both persons, and we can recognise and respect the points, a), b), and c), but that still does not give a mother the right to murder her child, no matter what stage of development.
"Pregnancy is an awful experience."
Pregnancy is a harsh experience. Its not necessarily awful. Climbing Mt Everest is a harsh experience also, but it is also not necessarily an awful one. Many pregnant woman will attest to pregnancy being tough, exhausting and sore, but they won't think of it as an awful experience. Many will carry on through it with a smile, happiness, and hope because they know what it will bring. An awful experience has a perceived net negative outcome, which pregnancy need not have and in many cases doesn't.
"You want someone to be pregnant for 9 months when a) they never wanted to be, b) they still don't want to be, and c) they were force to have sex. AND D) they don't keep the baby!?!?!?!? what! How is that human of you. You're going to remind that poor girl of the most horrific experience of her life all because of the arbitrary 'rights' of a parasitic organism."
ReplyDeleteD) is not what I said and you know it. I said adopting is an option. If she wants to keep it, she can keep it. If she doesn't want to keep the baby, I'm merely pointing out that adopting is an option. Both are in general, just fine by me. I know some others here will disagree though.
Also, arbitrary'rights'? What is arbitrary about them? Is a newly born baby's rights arbitrary as well? The rights that a foetus has, is the same as that of a 1 year old, a 5 year old, a 10 year old, etc. Please don't say Im just asserting this, either. Go read my 2nd response to you again, because I spent an essay defending this claim.
Charlie, if you want a discussion, can you please stop trying to make your case by appealing to feelings. You have made you claims that you hold to, now show me the logical progression of how they make sense. I provided an argument against your claims, and your only response is to rely on feelings. How you feel about a claim does not validate or invalidate it. I was hoping for a decent response to.
"For my own part I think "personhood" is a red herring."
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I just tend to hold that even a rational being who is not human would also have similar rights, so personhood is really just to cover all who can count as rational beings.
Billy - as I've said to many of you before, comparing pregnancy to Everest and abortion to infanticide does nothing for your case. They may be appropriate comparisons in your mind. But at the end of the day, pregnancy is pregnancy and abortion is abortion. A 4 year old may also be an undeveloped organism, but it is not a foetus. Surely you understand. Stop being such an absolutist. I can support destroying foeti while also saying it's bad to kill people (i.e. human beings that have exited the womb).
ReplyDeleteAs for feelings... It's not my fault that this topic actually involves feelings. It literally is based on feelings as pregnancy is an emotional, psychological, and physical experience that takes its toll on women. Not on you.
Again this is not about MY feelings. It's not about your feelings. It's about women's feelings and opinions. You choose to take it back a few notches and focus on the foetus. That's your view on it. In my opinion, in the lawmakers' opinion, in the medical community's opinion, it should be the woman's decision. So I'm really not appealing to feelings because I know you're incapable of feeling anything in this subject. You can make it pragmatic and reasoned and whatever you want, but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN.
Billy:
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I just tend to hold that even a rational being who is not human would also have similar rights, so personhood is really just to cover all who can count as rational beings.
That's also fair enough, and I agree. It's just that "personhood" is a slippery enough term that it can be denied of a human being who is as yet "rational" only in potentia. In fact, Thomists generally hold that all rational beings are "human" in the metaphysical sense of the word (and of course are so at all stages of their lives, whether their rationality has developed yet or not).
I also think a zygote/fetus qualifies as unambiguously "human" in at least the biological sense from the moment of conception, quite independently of any historically disputed questions about when it's infused with a rational soul. That's just basic biology.
Santi:
ReplyDeleteGreat name btw: SAN-ti Tafa-REL-li. Mine is 'Chris Kirk Speaks': three flat feet.
Pardon some fisking:
Such reasoning in response to my analogy is ad hoc. Now we've got to believe, not one thing, but three: (1) there are devils, AND (2) they don't mess with experiments because God doesn't let them, AND (3) God wants humans to devote themselves to accessing knowledge through science.
My response (it's not a reasoning) is not an ad hoc, though I despair of convincing you. It's just pointing to actually existing religions and serious theist thinkers through the ages. I cannot think of a single major religion that seriously worries that spirits *interfere* with natural processes such that they would undermine knowledge about those processes. To use al-Gazali's example, no major religion worried or worries that cotton will not reliably burn when a match is put to it. So your facts are just wrong.
As to your trio of beliefs, they can be subsumed under one: God is good. Worse, it's a poor use of Occam's Razor to merely count beliefs and pick the most belief-poor theory as the best. Your number (3) is just one consequence of God's goodness: He wants us to be happy. As Benjamin Franklin noticed, that's a capacious enough a belief to include discovering beer. It's important to latch on the *right* basic belief, from which the rest can flow naturally. (Occam's Razor is one of the most misused heuristics in philosophy.)
That third claim . . . was strenuously disputed by Augustine . . . [who] listed curiosity among the vices. . . . the "disease of curiosity" and wrote, "[M]en proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.”
I reply: [i] He is quite specific: don't dabble in knowledge beyond our ken, that's useless, and is fore mere curiosity. So in today's terms, Augustine might praise the search for a cure for HIV, reject the Large Hadron Collider as useless, and damn speculations of multiple Universes and string theory as the vice of mere curiosity. Augustine sounds not unreasonable to me. [ii] Naturally enough, Augustine thinks loving your neighbor and knowing God is more important. He was not just a theist but a theologian, priest and bishop. Obviously he thinks those things more important than the science of his day. [iii] Considering how backward medicine was for example, he's only expressing what lots of people thought then, atheists too: most 'science' sucked for the average man. So you're setting up a straw man.
It's hardly much of a leap from Augustine's curiosity as vice to curiosity as opening oneself up to devils.
It's great honking leap if we're talking about natural science. Which we are.
Yet here's Chris[-Kirk] again: "For some reason, God doesn't interfere in scientific experiments. It seems so obvious why He doesn't that you shouldn't be surprised if scientists who are Christians don't talk about it much. For some reason, He doesn't allow supernatural beings to do much mischief in that area either."
I have an alternative explanation for why Christian scientists don't talk about this much: cognitive dissonance.
Your alternative is easily falsified: real Christians who really are scientists do not typically display any of the marks of people undergoing real cognitive dissonance. My experience is that they don't discuss their religion much because it is not proper in the workplace to discuss religion or politics. Therefore, you should drop that alternative hypothesis.
Btw, since there is a Chris here, let's use 'Chris-Kirk' for me instead of shortening it.
Chris-Kirk
"comparing pregnancy to Everest and abortion to infanticide does nothing for your case. They may be appropriate comparisons in your mind. But at the end of the day, pregnancy is pregnancy and abortion is abortion."
ReplyDeleteWhat I want from you is an explanation as to why comparing pregnancy with Everest is not an appropriate comparison. I pointed out the reason why it is, I will spell it out again: Both pregnancy and climbing everest are harsh, but they are not necessarily awful. For a harsh experience to be awful, the total net outcome must also be negative. What is wrong with this comparison, or do you disagree with my understanding of the term awful? I simply want you to explain your claims. I have tried to do so, so show me where I have gone wrong and correct me by showing the correct logical progression.
"A 4 year old may also be an undeveloped organism, but it is not a foetus...I can support destroying foeti while also saying it's bad to kill people (i.e. human beings that have exited the womb)."
Correct with your first sentence. I agree with you. However, you made the claim: "You are putting your selfish needs and the 'needs' of an undeveloped organism above those of the woman who has been assaulted physically and emotionally."
So, a 4 year old (having exited the womb) is an undeveloped organism, and in that case, you condemn us for putting an undeveloped organisms needs above those of the mother. But here, you admit that you would do the same thing. That was my point.
"Again this is not about MY feelings. It's not about your feelings. It's about women's feelings and opinions. You choose to take it back a few notches and focus on the foetus. That's your view on it. In my opinion, in the lawmakers' opinion, in the medical community's opinion, it should be the woman's decision. So I'm really not appealing to feelings because I know you're incapable of feeling anything in this subject. You can make it pragmatic and reasoned and whatever you want, but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN."
Of course I have feelings in this subject. I care deeply for women and their concerns and it matters to me that on a topic as emotionally and physically demanding of woman as this, as well as involves new lives, probably the most innocent ones at that. that I make sure I have the right answer and not the one that I go with because you (who is not an expert on moral philosophy), scientists (who are not experts on moral philosophy), the medical community (who are not experts on moral philosophy), and lawmakers (who are probably a little close but still not experts on moral philosophy) said so. That is a fallacy called The Appeal to Authority - where an supposed authority in subject A makes claim X about subject B, and this is the argument for X being true. Imagine a state where the medical community, lawmakers, and scientists all claimed that killing anyone who is crippled is the morally right thing to do. History has shown that this has existed in the last century. Does that make this claim true? Of course not, because they are not experts on the rightness and wrongness of action.
"but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN."
Very much so, which is why I wonder why you are not actually interested in whether your understanding of abortion is correct. You just keep making claims without defending them as if it does not matter whether they are correct, as long as you say them. The Appeal to Authority is the only argument I have seen you make for your position. I have responded to it, now if I am incorrect, then show me where. If women matter so much to you, and if abortion is wrong, you are supporting that these women perform an act that destroys their moral character. So, for the sake of the women, show us that you actually care whether your beliefs are correct and defend them. If you do, we all gain a benefit.
Chris-Kirk:
ReplyDeleteHe is quite specific: don't dabble in knowledge beyond our ken, that's useless, and is fore mere curiosity. So in today's terms, Augustine might praise the search for a cure for HIV, reject the Large Hadron Collider as useless, and damn speculations of multiple Universes and string theory as the vice of mere curiosity.
He might, but on the other hand he might praise all three if and to the extent that they're undertaken in the proper spirit. He wouldn't favor merely "wanting to know more and more just for its own sake" (which he would surely regard as intellectual gluttony involving a disordered use of the intellectual faculty), but I'm sure he'd be well open to wonder at the marvels of creation as long as it led to adoration of the Creator.
"Again this is not about MY feelings. It's not about your feelings. It's about women's feelings and opinions. You choose to take it back a few notches and focus on the foetus. That's your view on it. In my opinion, in the lawmakers' opinion, in the medical community's opinion, it should be the woman's decision. So I'm really not appealing to feelings because I know you're incapable of feeling anything in this subject. You can make it pragmatic and reasoned and whatever you want, but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN.
ReplyDeleteOctober 3, 2015 at 10:03 AM"
Well, it should be pointed out to Charlie that even on his defective predicate the law is a public ordering matter, and as such, legal tolerance and social support is also an associative predicate question.
What moral-kind of humans beings are worth associating with in terms of voluntary mutual support and social sacrifice? And how much of that forbearing or cost is to be considered as assumed, before someone is entitled to suspect that they are being socially farmed by a bunch of neurotic weaklings and eff ups, who are not worth the existential cost of the association?
By the way, Charlie must know a very unhealthy class of female organisms. I pity the person who is stuck in such a hothouse of neurotic dysfunction and physical and emotional debility.
The most callow, if healthy woman, could take a child almost halfway to term without anyone noticing, and then give it up while missing only a step or two in her race for dramatic self-realization.
Of course I admit to having had conversations with women who would prefer to have an abortion simply because it was "their child" and they would rather that it die, than be raised by some party unknown to them.
Their property you see.
Yet it occurs to me that men have bodies too; and when they are forced (actually concede) to carry the metaphorically halt and the lame around, something undeniably theirs and theirs alone is being controlled by others and their choices limited.
We might say: His life energies, his money. Who is anyone else to tell him what to do with it?
Maybe genetic science, or even eugenics, will come to the rescue here with a kind of Spartan-Mother-Stepford-Wife: beautiful, virtuous, strong and intelligent, developed from women like our own wives and mothers, rather than the moral and physical problematicals Charlie hypothesizes as normal.
Then, the intra-society moral "problem" will simply evaporate. To be replaced no doubt by a conflict between divergent human sub-species.
Would a pro-choicer change his mind if it were scientifically proven in no incertain terms that abortion is more harmful physically and emitionally for a woman then finishing the pregnancy in a natural way?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI trust readers will know how to take the above comment.
I only say this because I don't actually ...
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI agree; I was thinking of the 'worst' Augustine I could think of.
Chris-I'm-not-just-Chris-Kirk
I keep trying to get an answer out of unconditional pro-aborts as to exactly what would be wrong in paying women who (ex hypothesi) have demonstrably homosexually programmed foeti (if there were such a thing) to have an abortion.
ReplyDeleteAs a rule they seem pretty outraged, but cannot say, on their own premisses, exactly what is wrong with such an abortion, and why.
You would think with the brouhaha over the mythical "Gay Ram" selective abortion issue a few years ago, the radical pro-aborts would have thought through this matter, and have a theory on it.
But if there is one, I have not yet seen it.
I guess some things are just a matter of emotion and that is all there is to it.
And then you expect to go to war.
On abortion, we are dancing around a distinction between a theory and its application to individuals. I am anti-abortion, but I'm not going to spout a theory to just any pregnant woman. I think Augustine's theodicy has legs, but I'm not going to console a man who just lost his daughter to the gunman at Umpqua Community College with 'you know, this is no evidence that the classic conception of God is false.' This break works the other way too: the fact that women face tough decisions about sex and pregnancy, and that it's their decision to make, doesn't gut the facts about the nature of a fetus.
ReplyDeleteSo Charlie, we must be charitable to women - and to all - and it's good to remind us all that real people are at one end of this stick we keep waving about. However, the fact that women make choices about their own body is no evidence against the moral claims of the anti-abortion position.
Chris-Kirk
>>> but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN
ReplyDeleteYes, especially for those women who are unlucky to be in the womb.
DNW, that is technically an ad hominem argument. Not a fallacy, but a limited argument. For if I thought abortion is no wrong, I'd just reply that of course it's the woman's choice. If it's none of my business (nodding to Charlie) then it's none of my business in that case.
ReplyDeleteThat said, pointing out the consequences of a pro-abortion position is a good strategy when trying to convince the right person.
Chris-Kirk
This made me smile. "You are dreadfully behind the times." This from someone writing in the thread of a Thomist website.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize you are also 'someone writing in the thread of a Thomist website' (so it goes both ways) and that, obviously, not everyone here is a Thomist (you aren't the only one).
DeleteYou do realize you are also 'someone writing in the thread of a Thomist website' (so it goes both ways) and that, obviously, not everyone here is a Thomist (you aren't the only one).
Delete
ReplyDelete"Chris Kirk said...
DNW, that is technically an ad hominem argument. Not a fallacy, but a limited argument. For if I thought abortion is no wrong, I'd just reply that of course it's the woman's choice. If it's none of my business (nodding to Charlie) then it's none of my business in that case.
That said, pointing out the consequences of a pro-abortion position is a good strategy when trying to convince the right person.
Chris-Kirk
October 3, 2015 at 11:08 AM "
Making allowance for the fact that I am not sure as to what passage you are noting, I ask, An ad hominem argument? You must have had a very different intro logic text than I did. (Copi)
I am not saying that Charlie's argument - if he has even fully made one - is refuted because he smokes cigarettes, has brown hair, or is Scotch (please don't lecture me on that term, LOL).
I am suggesting that we explore the implications of his unconditional premise; and I ask why others who have staked out similar positions have difficulty or have avoided doing the same.
>>> but at the end of the day it is an emotional issue for WOMEN
ReplyDeleteLet's say you have a married couple, a husband and a wife who is pegnant, and the wife decides to perform an abortion. Should the husband, who is the child's farther, have any say on the issue?
Mind you, for the farther, to get his child killed by an abortionist is quite emotional.
ReplyDeleteChris-Kirk,
Is this what you mean?
"By the way, Charlie must know a very unhealthy class of female organisms. I pity the person who is stuck in such a hothouse of neurotic dysfunction and physical and emotional debility."
That snide aside is about the only thing that I see that could be construed as an ad hominem. It might equally be seen as a comment on the possibly suspect nature of the one humanity assumption, IF what Charlie says about the primacy of pain as an arbiter is taken at face value.
Santi -
ReplyDeleteAnd yet philosophers and scientists often return to one part or the other of Aristotelianism and Thomism, often without realizing it. In mathematics an aristotelian approach is gaining ground from the 'Australian Aristotelians.' In biology, the debate between Dawkins and Gould is partly a repeat of Aristotle's opening remarks in his biology, where he stumps for biology as the science of organisms, rather than a part of them.
It's a little too early my local time to cough up more examples off the top of my head.
A/T is indeed the 'perennial philosophy'.
Chris-Kirk
ReplyDeleteGentlemen,
DNW is leaving the building.
Have a good weekend.
DNW,
ReplyDeleteNono, an *ad hominem* ARGUMENT is a legitimate argument that has a limited target. An ad hominem *fallacy* is a bad application of ad hominem. I think your objection to abortion is an ad hominem aargument in that it is directed "to the man" (the Latin) who accepts abortion but is concerned about gay rights. And I think the reply is just to bite the bullet: most philosophically savvy who are for abortion would allow that it's okay to abort a fetus because it's gay - becuase it's *always* okeay for a woman to abort a fetus, and the reason is her business, not yours.
This is a mistake made all the time in informal logic books. The book forgets to tell the reader that most of the fallacies the book leads you through have legitimate uses. There is for another example a legitimate argument from authority (you believe in special relativity because your PhD physics instructor told you), as well as a fallacious use of it (you are an atheist because Lawrence Krauss told you).
Chris-Kirk
To clarify my previous comment, Billy's short teleological defense about the humanity of the fetus applies just as much to the views of Aristotle and Aquinas. They both knew the fetus was not going to become a kitten, or baby pig, or an oak tree. But they still believed there was a progression of souls instead of a rational soul formed at the beginning of pregnancy. If you know something specific about the ancient views of fetal development which would account for such beliefs, please share. Until then, endlessly repeating an argument Aquinas plainly rejected is actively missing the point.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Billy, his answer to the first question comparing the god of Aristotle and the Abrahamic religions is partially incorrect. Aristotle criticized Plato’s Form of the Good because it is essentially defined by the particular and cannot be universal, and his god didn’t need to create anything because the universe was coeternal.
ReplyDeleteChris Kirk,
Couldn't resist coming back for a few moments.
Yes I misunderstood.
What I thought was simply an awkward phrasing involving some elision on your part, turned out to be an actual proviso: ad hominem (literally), but not a technical fallacy of relevance.
As to whether or not unconditional pro-aborts would affirm or not affirm the process of aborting homosexual foeti for pay as acceptable practice in order to preserve whole the principle they espouse, it is quite possible that they would. But if so, I have yet to see one step up and do so.
Your remark about partial argument puts me in mind of some not very systematic thinking I was doing the other day on the negation of conditionals. For some reason or other ...
Step2:
ReplyDeleteAristotle and Aquinas…both knew the fetus was not going to become a kitten, or baby pig, or an oak tree. But they still believed there was a progression of souls instead of a rational soul formed at the beginning of pregnancy.
But Aquinas, though he adopted Aristotle's views on this point, didn't treat that supposed initial pre-rational-soul period as a window during which abortion was morally licit. On the contrary, he held that abortion was contrary to natural law even before the unborn child was infused with its rational soul; it just wasn't full-blown homicide. (And that's the way the Church treated it until sometime in the mid-1800s: as wrong, but meriting a lesser penance than the abortion of a later-stage fetus.)
If you know something specific about the ancient views of fetal development which would account for such beliefs, please share. Until then, endlessly repeating an argument Aquinas plainly rejected is actively missing the point.
Which argument is that? Aquinas unambiguously held that the abortion of a fetus with a rational soul was murder; "backdating" that argument to the moment of conception doesn't change it to some other argument that he rejected.
Guys stop trying to convince me that a foetus is a person in the sense that you and I, or a child, or a just-born baby are. I simply won't see it that way. So talking about the rights of those that don't make it out of the womb is a waste of time. Please respect my view.
ReplyDeleteWhat you can do is try to explain why you believe abortion should not be an option available to every woman.
Basically, you are not proving that abortion is immoral if the very nature and subject of abortion is something we approach from completely different angles. It's immoral by your laws
- Charlie (anon because posting from phone)
So talking about the rights of those that don't make it out of the womb is a waste of time. Please respect my view.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to respect a view that is inconsistent and interminably vacillating. For example, earlier in the thread you wrote:
It is very much within my rights to say that a woman can have an abortion up until 24 weeks.
So which is it? Does a human being acquire the right not to be killed at 24 weeks, or only once it "makes it out of the womb." Does that mean that you now support abortion up until the moment of delivery, or are you still against late-term abortion? And if you are still opposed to late-term abortion, then on what grounds do you base that opposition? On your most recent view, the unborn human does not acquire the right not to be killed until it leaves the womb; indeed, you argue it is not a person, and therefore can't be the subject of any rights whatsoever.
Charlie:
ReplyDeleteGuys stop trying to convince me that a foetus is a person in the sense that you and I, or a child, or a just-born baby are.
A fetus *is* not a person *just like* (a) you or I, (b) a child or (c) newborn baby are persons. However, the anti-abortionist need only argue that the difference doesn't matter for the purposes of asking 'is it wrong to kill it?' It would be a good exercise to ask yourself what is alike about (a, b, c) other than they are outside of a womb; what makes it *wrong* to kill them so long as they don't deserve death?
Look, here's the anti-abortion argument in the nub:
(1) It is typically wrong to (i) kill (ii) human beings (iii) who are innocent.
(2) Abortion is the killing of a human being who is innocent;
(3) Therefore, abortion is typically wrong.
('Typical', b/c we are leaving out hard cases.)
To defang the argument, premise (2) can be attacked in three ways as suggested by the clauses.
Attacking (i) produces howling absurdities. A friend however firmly believes exactly that: to abort isn't to kill anything. I was too flustered to answer him well for a minute, and when I did he rejected the notion angrily.
Most of us here attack or defend (ii); introducing personhood is a subset of it. I think the endpoint of the anti-abortion position is that all human beings *are* persons, "no matter how small" as Horton puts it.
JJ Thomson attacked (iii); fetuses are not 'innocent' in that they don't *deserve* to be kept alive even being human beings/persons.
Charlie, if you cannot successfully attack any of those three clauses, then you cannot stop the conclusion from going through.
I suggest, as a sort of devil's advocaate, that you *accept*the argument: abortion *is* typically wrong. Instead, I think you should stump for women's rights in this matter *no matter the wrongness of the act*. That seems imo to be the point you are consistent about.
When I teach this in an ethics class, I usually stop right at asking about women's rights in the matter (explicitly). My weak excuse is that I'm teaching a philosophy class, not a public policy class. But imo people don't actually disagree all that much about *what* is being aborted; they really disagree on what (not) to do about it, and then work backwards, trying to fudge the philosophical issue so that what we give women the choice to do doesn't feel all that awful.
Chris-Kirk
It appears, as Scott pointed out, that I have muddied the water a bit by mentioning person-hood. My apologies. I would agree that humanity is sufficient and in either case, it does not really change my points.
ReplyDeleteI tried being charitable, but I am starting to think Charlie really is a troll. So I'm done.
Billy,
ReplyDeleteFor Charlie's line of thought, maybe you have; he doesn't seem to care what kind of thing a fetus is, and that the woman's rights trumps that of the fetus.
A line of attack might be asking what is the important difference between a late-term fetus and a newborn baby, and lean on one's intuitions that babies ought not be killed, and there's no *principled* difference between a baby and a fetus, therefore fetuses ought not be killed. Babies are not just humans, they are vulnerable and innocent, and thus deserve *special* consideration; likewise, fetuses. Therefore fetuses like babies *do* have some rights that override the mother's rights.
Chris-Kirk
I have a question for the scientist-ists here in the combox:
ReplyDeleteWhat is your opinion of *Krauss' article*, the one that animated Feser's post? I thought as one of the posters waaay back noted, that it was extraordinary for him to invoke science as a cultural phenomenon. My surprise moment was him claiming that all scientists (i) should be (ii) militant atheists. Why on earth for? Have the previous four hundred years of the Modern era been peanuts? What about the few hundred before that? did science really only progress or chiefly progress when militant atheists were conducting experiments? This kind of comedy writes itself.
Or is Krauss in that article right?
Chris-Kirk
Charlie wrote: "[H]ere's my issue. You are all placing metaphysical philosophical views above real-life experience and pain."
ReplyDeleteI've been saying this to them in different ways for months, Charlie. They don't care. Get used to this. It's basically the same move for them on every issue. Gays want to marry? Tough. The Holocaust? God has reasons, and is still good. Evolutionary variation? Lesbians are disordered. Women in the priesthood? No.
You name it. History doesn't matter. The human subject as an evolutionary variant doesn't matter. One's inner call doesn't matter. What matters is authority and conformity to the Golden Mean. Think center and margin--with you at the margin. God, like a black hole, vacuums up all the gravity to itself. Contra Sartre, essence is prior to your existence here. Democratic experiment is out, dogma in. And what works in democratic practice has to work in theory--or you drop the practice. ("That works in practice, but what about in theory?")
It's a topsy-turvy vantage, which is what makes it interesting to visit if you're a secular person. The individual is not the measure of all things. The wall between metaphysics and experience is policed here. No reality testing required. Thomists are rationalists, not empiricists. Nothing touches God. Nothing.
When you think about this from an intellectual chess-move perspective, this makes perfect sense. If you're going to be a conservative theist in the 21st century, you've only got two moves: (1) deny science (as know-nothing fundamentalists do); or (2) accept science (as intellectual traditionalists do), but make a very high wall around God--a wall scientists never get to breach.
Rationalism is the besieged bunker that conservative religious traditionalists have retreated into as a last stand against secularism's "dismal tide" (a phrase you might recall from the film, "No Country for Old Men"). Sociologically, contemporary Thomists are fascinating. Their behavior is akin to the Wizard of Oz bellowing, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Focus up here! Up here! And get Toto off my leg!"
It's a bit like the magician whose whole trick only works if he can get the audience to focus on his right hand and ignore his left. Neo-Thomists are severe compartmentalizers. They have to be, for their only other move is anti-science fundamentalism.
Charlie Steele: "However, apart from my aggressive ad hominem approach (I'd say you're all exaggerating there), your biggest problems are that a) I make assertions based on personal opinions and b) I reject all other views."
ReplyDeleteWell, I mean a) is hardly controversial and trivially true. b), I take as an admittance of dogmatism, and in such a case, there is nothing any of us can do here otherwise. And that's a major thrust of the critique against your behavior here.
"I'm sorry but both of you, and everyone else, write absolute essays of comments that are FULL of assertions. Point one: "a foetus is an innocent person." Sorry but at this point in time, I believe all sources (though you heavily deny science and the Bible), so definitely the law, count a foetus as NOT a person. so when you all say "a feotus is a person" I'm sorry but that is an assertion. If I made a statement so strongly and confidently you would all roast me and talk about my assertive attitude. "
This isn't really coherent, so I'm not going to bother trying to sift through and glean your intent save one exception. There have been cases where pregnant women have died in car accidents and the drunk driver responsible was charged with two counts of homicide or whatever it's called in such a scenario for the fetus inside. So, I don't think what you've said is accurate.
People here have provided an account of personhood and sketched out why a fetus qualifies. And so far, you haven't made able to muster an alternative account that discludes the fetus from such status. According to the essentialist and Aristotelian metaphysics, your claims about the fetus' location and its lack of likeness in appearance during its early stages misses the whole point and does not address their arguments and does nothing to cast doubt on Thomistic pro-lifer's case.
"As for "adopting out" a baby in a rape case... You're all missing the point entirely. You are putting your selfish needs and the 'needs' of an undeveloped organism above those of the woman who has been assaulted physically and emotionally.
Pregnancy is an awful experience. You want someone to be pregnant for 9 months when a) they never wanted to be, b) they still don't want to be, and c) they were force to have sex. AND D) they don't keep the baby!?!?!?!? what! How is that human of you. You're going to remind that poor girl of the most horrific experience of her life all because of the arbitrary 'rights' of a parasitic organism"
Oh master of projection, I ask what needs are those, exactly? The position in its barest from simply is abortion is murder and therefore should be prohibited. How, by subscribing to such a proposition, does it confer to the advocate of said position selfishness?
In our minds, your moral calculus is dubious. No doubt being pregnant for 9 months isn't a trivial experience, and being thrust into such a situation by an invasive and violent act as rape is hugely unfortunate and resolutely evil. But it's not at all clear that justifies killing an innocent human life, which to no fault of its own, is at the mercy of the mother. Surely, terminating an innocent life for the traumatic reasons you profess seems largely more susceptible to the same criticism of being "selfish" and lacking compassion. Rape-imposed nine-month pregnancy and all the innumerable consequences are indeed vast, but they seem hardly as definite and as wretched as being killed for being what seems to be an inconvenience by comparison.
Moreover, do arguments have testicles? The fact I'm male and can never undergo pregnancy if raped has no weight here. If we are to frame affairs by such sexist lenses, I am just as warranted to assert that about half of all pregnancies develop boys and merit my male privileged interjection, no matter how dickish they appear to women.
"I've been saying this to them in different ways for months, Charlie. They don't care. Get used to this. It's basically the same move for them on every issue. Gays want to marry? Tough. The Holocaust? God has reasons, and is still good. Evolutionary variation? Lesbians are disordered. Women in the priesthood? No.
ReplyDeleteYou name it. History doesn't matter. The human subject as an evolutionary variant doesn't matter. One's inner call doesn't matter. What matters is authority and conformity to the Golden Mean. Think center and margin--with you at the margin. God, like a black hole, vacuums up all the gravity to itself. Contra Sartre, essence is prior to your existence here. Democratic experiment is out, dogma in. And what works in democratic practice has to work in theory--or you drop the practice. ("That works in practice, but what about in theory?")"
See, here's the thing, Santi, I know you think of us as mean theocrats hiding behind our vague metaphysics, thereby threatening "real democracy" from taking hold, but I really don't know how what you're espousing qualifies as "the land of the free" either. Let's grant for the sake of the argument, that we are indeed the boogeyman and the monsters that go bump in the night as you frequently like to jeer. We're not, but we'll be charitable.
How does basing our democracy purely on sentiment and our public policy-making on the whims of popular emotivism not collapse into mob rule? Then the common good and such prudence and reason to determine its fulfillment is just a "slave of the passions." In such a society, it seems we have competing parties with different passions, i.e. moral convictions. Therefore, might makes right, in whatever form that would manifest, as these mobs grapple to impose their convictions on the body politic, using demagoguery, violence or whatever to ensure their ends. It's a call for hegemony, as reasoned deliberation just gets in the way of change and thusly is trampled underfoot.
See, we want to argue our metaphysics in a Miltonian "marketplace of ideas"; you know, that classical liberalism stuff that influenced the Founding Fathers and the Constitution that is supposed to be the law of the land. But seemingly, it's lefties, like yourself that want to decry us for our attempts at rational discourse with incendiary and defamatory claims of racist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe, bigot and whatever epithet that makes us the lowest of the low, demonizing us and circumventing the debate and open inquiry our country was supposed to have.
You talk of democratic experimentation, yet, for example, cheer the judicially imposed same-sex marriage on the country, undermining our federalism where such experiment could happen. Let's be clear: same-sex marriage happened not because we sat down as a country and decided that it was the best or right thing to do. No, it's implementation occurred behind closed doors, where unelected elites chose this unhistorical and novel view on marriage for the rest of us and overturned democratically ratified state amendments that supported a conception that abetted the rise of civilization itself (talk about throwing out what worked in practice for something, that up until 15 years ago, was not even considered theoretically coherent). Oh, and mainstream discourse on the matter consisted of the gay lobby slandering all opposition as the moral equivalent of Bull Connor in the express hope to cut short any sort of discussion. Yeah, not real democratic experimentation there, but good age old fashioned oligarchy.
continued...
ReplyDeleteI get it. In your view, we're enemies to democracy because not only do we not share your fetish egalitarianism steered by your whimsical heartstrings that serves as your narrow conception of an ideal "democratic" society, we dare to dissent from it. So, who is the real totalitarian here wanting to subvert and destroy the current polis in order to rebuild one founded on the pillars of his preferred dogma, as the rest of us lay crushed beneath such "liberal" orthodoxy?
Spare us your moral star-spangled grandstanding, sophist.
I've been saying this to them in different ways for months, Charlie. They don't care.
ReplyDeleteOh, we would care if we were given real arguments by someone who hadn't repeatedly shown himself to be intellectually dishonest in dealing with other people's arguments.
I know you all fancy yourselves as philosophers so this will be very difficult to grasp -
ReplyDeleteI can support abortion and not infanticide and not mob rule and not absolute chaos and tyranny. Crazy right? But get this - to me abortion isn't murder. No matter how many times you say I'm a murderer or I'm putting her choices and needs over 'theirs'. There is not 'them'. 'They' are not independent human beings like the rest of us. Being a person is about experience, communication, memory, and discovering things for yourself. A foetus is not that. However, once they are out of the womb, they start doing all of those things and are thus human beings. Or people. Or whatever the term is that I'm supposed to use.
So don't send me up Everest or on a killing spree in your fantasies, simply to get your 'point' across. Analogies and comparisions to murder and triumph and other types of human experience are USELESS. Okay? We're talking about abortion, women's rights, and at the very broadest, interpretations of 'God'. Deferring to other topics constantly only shows how poor your point is.
Abortion is not a moral or immoral act. Got it? It is okay for me to kill a foetus because it is not a person who has experienced the world. Don't stretch that to a blind, deaf, or otherwise impaired, LIVING person. Okay? They deserve to live.
You are all saying that a foetus deserves something simply for being one of millions of sperm to be successful. I'm sorry but exiting the womb as a living, breathing, crying, PERSON, is a much more deserving feat.
Charlie, thank you for writing here what you have written, because unless I missed it before you have, in this post, laid out what you see as the main difference between a person and a fetus in a more detailed manner. I think this will hopefully spur the discussion in a more productive manner.
DeleteBrandon get outta here. You have no answer but "abortion is murder1!!!!1!11!" you just take time to flesh it out into truly meaningless crap. Don't see what makes us so different.
ReplyDeleteBilly, I'm a troll for valuing real life practice over metaphysical theory and 'morals'?
ReplyDeleteYou guys think it's immoral to destroy a non-sentient organism. I think it's immoral to force a woman to go through 9 months of physical pain and emotional stress, especially when the outcome dictates (in the 'solution' of adoption) that she won't even keep the baby.
Anti-choicers: are you supporting programs to ensure that each and every single one of these kids are looked after and cared for after birth? Or is it simply your goal to ensure that every single baby is born, then move on to the next one? Because for much of America's history, those that have been voting against abortion have been the same ones voting against social assistance, public healthcare, and gun control. Don't call yourself pro-life if you stop supporting these babies once they are born.
You are pro-birth. And Anti-Choice.
@modusponens: Thanks for a very good summary of this thread's trend. I feel a bit bold correcting someone who has shown much more ability (not to say patience) than I, but I have to point out that Milton's "marketplace of ideas" probably wouldn't have included us. He did after all exclude Catholics, after all, and many here are just that. And those who are not, are a bit too close for comfort for a Miltonian (recall the fates of Laud and Charles.)
ReplyDeleteYet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtles is more wholsome, more prudent, and more Christian that many be tolerated, rather then all compell'd. I mean not tolerated Popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpats all religions and civill supremacies, so it self should be extirpat, provided first that all charitable and compassionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw it self: but those neighboring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of Spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace.
I would guess that in today's world, an example of the indifferences tolerated might be the choice of hir rather than tey, or some such.
@Brandon:
ReplyDeleteYour response to Santi's, "I've been saying this to them in different ways for months, Charlie. They don't care."
was "Oh, we would care if we were given real arguments by someone who hadn't repeatedly shown himself to be intellectually dishonest in dealing with other people's arguments."
Somehow, that brought forth this: "Brandon get outta here. You have no answer but "abortion is murder1!!!!1!11!" you just take time to flesh it out into truly meaningless crap. Don't see what makes us so different"
The more one looks, the more one marvels. I don't think I've yet seen so complete a summary of the kind of trollery we see here. In what possible world your words provoke that response, I hesitate to say (or what the response really means.) Perhaps alchemy may not work in the realm of metals, but does well in that of statements and ideas.
Troglodytum ne pasce is the best I can come up with, can anyone better at Latin improve that?
Scott, I believe you're the only troll left.
ReplyDeleteCharlie clearly concedes that he is less educated than you all. From what he's said he's clearly indicated a genuine, honesty desire to at least understand your beliefs. He wants to learn from you.
The same cannot be said about the rest of you. Until I read this discussion I felt like I was one of you. But the way you have treated this challenger, and others before him, is making me very disappointed to call you guys my 'peers'. You all claim to be so open-minded, yet each and everyone of your comments reeks of pompous, self-assured arrogance. You tell him to go read your books, as if doing so will produce the 'right' outcome. I read many of the books listed, and gained a similar understanding as the rest of you. But even someone as certain as myself is not so naive as to think that that's the ONLY way to interpret them.
I'm just very, very disappointed by this entire thread.
Charlie has made assertions. He has been rude. He as said some crazy things that I'd never imagine hearing.
But so have you all. You have all made assertions. Difference being, you 'back them up'. Except the evidence you use is almost entirely subjective and narrowly-interpreted. You have all been rude and said some pretty crazy things too.
I think Charlie is very much justified in his disbelief at your collective strategy. He is 100% correct to point out that comparisons to Everest, infanticide, and the like are wholly inappropriate and only meant to distract.
I wish I had come to the party sooner. I feel I might have been able to curb your enthusiasm (that is, Charlie's enthusiasm for being 'heard' [whatver that means] and your collective enthusiasm for putting him down).
I assure you guys, all of our opinions are safe here. We will always be in the majority on this blog. So why destroy the views and esteem of those that seek to challenge us? It's about time we had someone of a different ilk in here.
George why do you marvel?
ReplyDeleteCharlie's retort to Brandon, though grossly immature, was entirely accurate. He states his opinion, you all disagree, and then spout your metaphysical analysis of the foetus. He is 100% correct to say you are all missing the point.
Charlie will never see abortion as murder because Charlie does not view foeti as human beings in the same way that he views himself or others as human beings.
To continue to attack and/or disregard that is simply pointless.
We have to find a new way to argue the morality of abortion. As Charlie has clearly stated, it is not a moral issue for him. So how can we convince him?
The same cannot be said about the rest of you. Until I read this discussion I felt like I was one of you. But the way you have treated this challenger, and others before him, is making me very disappointed to call you guys my 'peers'. You all claim to be so open-minded, yet each and everyone of your comments reeks of pompous, self-assured arrogance. You tell him to go read your books, as if doing so will produce the 'right' outcome. I read many of the books listed, and gained a similar understanding as the rest of you. But even someone as certain as myself is not so naive as to think that that's the ONLY way to interpret them.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you understand, that this gives Charlie, no high moral ground, neither does it necessarily ask us to submit to his desires to understand by writing a book of beliefs when we have recommended them.
But so have you all. You have all made assertions. Difference being, you 'back them up'. Except the evidence you use is almost entirely subjective and narrowly-interpreted. You have all been rude and said some pretty crazy things too.
So the evidence of the metaphysical understanding of a 'fetus' as an actual rational being is subjective? The existence and immateriality of a soul(ensoulment), given the insufficiency of a materialism via philosophical demonstrations is also subjective? Let's go further, the taking of a life of a person(albeit in potentia) is also subjective given the above? I don't know about you, these are very serious matters, and this is where Charlie or anyone else has to argue their parts. I'm sure you might have visited this blog long since. But, if, and only if, you're endorsing that the regulars welcome people into the realm of argument and let them have their plate of presuppositions without questioning it at all, with a maintained form of insensitive derogatory behavior? I've nothing to say to you.
I assure you guys, all of our opinions are safe here. We will always be in the majority on this blog. So why destroy the views and esteem of those that seek to challenge us? It's about time we had someone of a different ilk in here.
I'm not sure that destroying their esteem was something anyone here was advocating per se, but a bringing back to reality that things as such as reddit, facebook and twitter are not the high tide of academic affairs to know our beliefs, and if you some people think that it is? It's no one's fault, let them open the book and turn the pages, let them walk out the door.
"I'm not sure that destroying their esteem was something anyone here was advocating per se, but a bringing back to reality that things as such as reddit, facebook and twitter are not the high tide of academic affairs to know our beliefs, and if you some people think that it is? It's no one's fault, let them open the book and turn the pages, let them walk out the door."
ReplyDeleteCorrection: "and...if you think that it is? It's no one's fault. . ."
To continue to attack and/or disregard that is simply pointless.
No offense, the heavy metaphysical demonstration of these parts, necessarily imply that these points be contested, if it is not contested, then this simply shouldn't be allowed. If any conversation is to continue.
Dennis sorry but you really need to start reading commentator
ReplyDeleteCharlie never claimed his social media sources were authoritative or even valid forums for debate.
He was simply urging your to get our ideas out into the public sphere. Can you honestly say you've ever seen our metaphysical view on the morality of abortion has ever been referenced in high profile public debate?
You're all so intent on making Charlie your enemy, you don't even realize he's complimenting you. He's saying your views deserve a more influential position and significant presence in public debate. No?
Also I agree heavily that a foetus has rights and is a person. Charlie clearly doesn't. You've missed the point again by asking if killing a foetus is morally subjective. Killing a foetus cannot be immoral if you do not regard the subject of destruction as having rights, feelings and deserving consideration. For you to imply the this is an objective question., I.e. abortion = immoral, is bordering on ludicrous.
He was simply urging your to get our ideas out into the public sphere. Can you honestly say you've ever seen our metaphysical view on the morality of abortion has ever been referenced in high profile public debate?
ReplyDeleteAnd this, as I've said before, defies what he said before, the whole idea of complementing that you suggest is a mere farce, Jmhenry did reply to him, and this is was my point made as well. What was his answer? A complete dismissal. He was answered later too, what was that replied with? Complete dismissals.
Should we allow these dismissals? You consider this is a genuine honest approach, I differ. Far far far from.
Also I agree heavily that a foetus has rights and is a person. Charlie clearly doesn't. You've missed the point again by asking if killing a foetus is morally subjective. Killing a foetus cannot be immoral if you do not regard the subject of destruction as having rights, feelings and deserving consideration. For you to imply the this is an objective question., I.e. abortion = immoral, is bordering on ludicrous.
I'm not sure what point you think here I'm missing. Charlie clearly doesn't.
Wonder what this has to do with anything, if he doesn't think this, then he has to present why his account on what is right/wrong. I think it's you who has missed the point, so I'll reiterate, such a point of it being a human being is at question. If Charlie is going to deny such a thing as a foetus as not being considered as a human being, then he has to give REASONS why it is so. Nothing about it is subjective, our understanding of what constitutes a human being under the A-T tech is wrong. Why do we allow this if he doesn't believe? It is not a matter of it, it is a matter of accounting and determining why/why not a foetus is a human being or not. Sorry if you don't think that this is an objective moral question, because this necessarily involves STRAIGHT points on what counts as a human being, not personhood, but that too is relevant in the long sense. Sorry if you think this is ludicrous, I don't. A foetus is an actual human being, if you wish to 'dismiss' this, please defend your dismissals.
"I assure you guys, all of our opinions are safe here. We will always be in the majority on this blog. So why destroy the views and esteem of those that seek to challenge us? It's about time we had someone of a different ilk in here."
ReplyDeleteThis comment makes me question your supposed familiarity with this blog or the "ilk" that frequent here.
Nothing about it is subjective, our understanding of what constitutes a human being under the A-T tech is wrong.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: Nothing about it is subjective, our understanding of what constitutes a human being under the A-T tech is MAYBE wrong...but he then has to present why it is wrong.
Sorry, I have too many typos.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteKilling a foetus cannot be immoral if you do not regard the subject of destruction as having rights, feelings and deserving consideration.
But isn't that to say that something is immoral if and only if the one doing it, or causing it to be done, deems it as such?
If so, then I don't think that is correct, for it would render illegitimate what, in fact, seems to be a legitimate question.
If "cannot be immoral" is replaced with "will not be perceived as being immoral", then at least it can be legitimately asked whether people can be held accountable for those actions of theirs which, though not immoral in their eyes, are immoral in the eyes of the society in which their actions are performed.
But if "cannot be immoral" is left in place, then the question cannot be legitimately asked, and morality is nothing more than an individual code of behavior, and one which need not answer to any standard(s) not set by the individual himself... which seems like a prescription for anarchy.
Brandon get outta here. You have no answer but "abortion is murder1!!!!1!11!" you just take time to flesh it out into truly meaningless crap. Don't see what makes us so different.
ReplyDeleteThis is merely unhinged, particularly given that my reply to Santi was literally the first thing I've said in the discussion. As it happens, I wouldn't answer 'abortion is murder!', in any case, because I don't in fact hold that view. But this is pretty much symptomatic of your entire mode of arguing: you don't actually listen to reasons, because you prefer to tell people about their own views to understanding what those views are or addressing them with appropriate arguments.
Scott, I believe you're the only troll left.
ReplyDeleteI take it this is a reference to a post I had thought better of and deleted some two hours before Anon replied to it. If so, then I agree it was unnecessary and unhelpful, which is why I deleted it. However, I'm confident that I'm not trolling.
And if, as you seem to think, Charlie is honestly and genuinely interested in learning from, or even about, other people's opinions, he sure has a funny way of showing it. Several of the regular posters here have been extraordinarily patient with him, all things considered.
Charlie will never see abortion as murder because Charlie does not view foeti as human beings in the same way that he views himself or others as human beings.…We have to find a new way to argue the morality of abortion. As Charlie has clearly stated, it is not a moral issue for him. So how can we convince him?
He thinks abortion isn't a moral issue, so everyone should accept that and try to convince him it's immoral without addressing his view that it isn't a moral issue? Tell you what—you go first and show us how that's done.
The same cannot be said about the rest of you. Until I read this discussion I felt like I was one of you. But the way you have treated this challenger, and others before him, is making me very disappointed to call you guys my 'peers'.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure what the point of this concern-trolling is. If you felt that the quality of argumentation needed to be improved, you had plenty of opportunities to step in and contribute yourself in order to improve it.
Charlie & Santi:
ReplyDeleteAbortion isn't simply murder; for murder needs intent; but typically abortions are not sought out with that intent; therefore, abortion typically isn't simply murder. And to do the posters here justice, none have called abortion murder. Right?
It *is* important to work out what pleases you two to call metaphysical issues - which are better called the facts of the case. What *is* this thing before me that I am about to dispose of? Who *is* this person seeking an abortion? Why *is* she seeking it? (And let's not forget who is the father.) Only knowing those facts can we *begin* to form proper public policy.
There's at least one person here - me - who thinks abortion is wrong, yet whose public policy is to allow women to have abortions. And it is good to know that even many liberals, famously Hillary Clinton, think there should be fewer abortions.
Chris-Kirk
@anonymous:
ReplyDelete1. George why do you marvel?
Charlie's retort to Brandon, though grossly immature, was entirely accurate. He states his opinion, you all disagree, and then spout your metaphysical analysis of the foetus. He is 100% correct to say you are all missing the point.
Well, for starters Charlie slashed out at a comment of Brandon's which wasn't addressed to him, but to Santi (whom Brandon quoted). He was saying why he (and others) don't care what Santi has been saying for months; Santi's consistent intellectual dishonesty. (I will add, this seems the only consistent thing about him.)
Further, Brandon did not mention abortion in his comment, not even indirectly. Yet Charlie's response was You have no answer but "abortion is murder1!!!!1!11!" you just take time to flesh it out into truly meaningless crap. Don't see what makes us so different". This was so irrelevant as to make me marvel, and should make you do so too.
2. I have to marvel at your own posture. Vand83 has already pointed this out, but when you say You've missed the point again by asking if killing a foetus is morally subjective. Killing a foetus cannot be immoral if you do not regard the subject of destruction as having rights, feelings and deserving consideration. For you to imply the this is an objective question., I.e. abortion = immoral, is bordering on ludicrous. makes me wonder if this is your first visit here, and whether you are at all familiar with Scholasticism. What you call "ludicrous" is exactly what Ed, and those commenters who agree with him, do argue. Not just about abortion, but about morals in general.
It seems that when you say I assure you guys, all of our opinions are safe here. We will always be in the majority on this blog... you are mistaken; the opinions here aren't those you have stated.
3. So why destroy the views and esteem of those that seek to challenge us? It's about time we had someone of a different ilk in here. Charlie jumped in with a bunch of very aggressive assertions, and continued in that vein. Several people did try to pin him down to some rational basis for these; he never really did give any. Rather, he seems to prefer just throwing out attacks and assertions. Assertions which are particularly odd given his admission that he'd never even heard of anything like Ed's approach to the question. Unsurprisingly, he got hit back. Thrasymachus had a similar experience. The first step is to induce a bit of intellectual humility, hence the recommendation he look at the Apology.
So far as I can tell (he isn't clear) he seems to be espousing some kind of emotivism in which his feelings, because they are those of most enlightened moderns, are privileged. (Again, I don't say this too confidently; like Santi, Charlie is very obscure when it comes to principles from which to argue.) But this is a philosophy blog; without establishing some premise to argue from, you can do nothing.
@Brandon: I should have known you'd do better in response to his attack than I would.
ReplyDeleteI still marvel.
(For the record re Anonymous -- and I acknowledge that what follows is purely speculative (and thus may be wide of the mark) -- I think there may have been a partial identification of an older, prior self with sentiments expressed by another current self, that this led to some anxiety, stresss and tension, and that that trio interfered with a full thinking on certain points. If my speculation is correct, then sans that trio, the results of his thinking on certain points likely would have been different, and thus expressed otherwise than as they had been.)
ReplyDeleteModuspownens:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "How does basing our democracy purely on sentiment and our public policy-making on the whims of popular emotivism not collapse into mob rule?"
You're right. Democracy shouldn't be based "purely on sentiment," for it leads to mob rule.
Now put yourself in the shoes of a gay or lesbian person. Choose any moment in history prior to the present. What does your community's response look like to you as a homosexual? Is it reasonable? Who secures your human rights against visceral majority repugnance?
In the United States, we have a Constitution, a division of powers, a free press, and a Bill of Rights to tap the breaks on both mob and one man hegemony--and these have recently converged to rationally correct a historic wrong.
The very same rational arguments that were used to break down segregation and advance women's equality were the same ones that swayed the court on gay and lesbian equality. It would have been an act of cognitive dissonance for the Supreme Court to apply equality under the law to blacks and women--but not gays and lesbians.
In briefs to the court, even science was deployed as appeal (science that conservatives irrationally and cynically ignored as irrelevant). Once it was established that gays and lesbians have an inherited biological variation that nudges them with an inner call to pair bond with one another, and that no overriding interest of the state compelled it to deny gays and lesbians their civil liberties, the final ruling had to favor them.
For millennia, gay people--like blacks, women, Jews, and Catholics at various points in history--have been subjected to what Martha Nussbaum calls the politics of disgust. Laws grounded in Lockean and Jeffersonian reason, hard-won over several centuries, are now protecting yet another group of taxpayers as equal citizens in a democratic Republic.
It's not Thomistic reasoning that got us to this point. Lockean and Jeffersonian arguments don't start from the same first principles as Thomistic reasoning. But it is reasoning, not passion, that brought us to civil gay marriage.
And no one--absolutely no one--has changed the religious definitions of marriage that you might find among the different religious sects. It was pure rhetorical demagoguery, appealing to the crassest tribal emotions, to make the hysterical claim that outsiders (gays, lesbians, liberals) were changing the definition of marriage (as if there has always and ever been just one of those). Scapegoating outsiders and demonizing are appeals to the worst sorts of human passions (the worse angels of our nature, rather than Lincoln's "better angels of our nature").
And distinctions between civil and religious marriage were also being ignored for emotional reasons.
Now, post-ruling, what's happened? Religious groups have gone on marrying or not marrying whoever they want. This was always about civil equality; taxpaying citizens' equality. Equal access to the civil law. Civil marriage equality was never a zero-sum game.
All of us ought to be happy and proud to live in America at this historic moment, for the expansion of individual human liberty and equality has been extended to yet another group of citizens--a group that has been, historically, among the most "despised and rejected of men." If even gays and lesbians have access to the courts in our democracy--and can win there deploying rational argumentation--our own access to the courts are all the more deeply secure.
Moduspownens to Santi: You talk of democratic experimentation, yet, for example, cheer the judicially imposed same-sex marriage on the country, undermining our federalism where such experiment could happen.
ReplyDeleteAnd Santi responds by saying that that was to,
...rationally correct a historic wrong.
Which is just another way of saying that the democratic experimentation he champions is fine in talk, but irrational in practice.
Scott comments:
ReplyDelete"He thinks abortion isn't a moral issue, so everyone should accept that and try to convince him it's immoral without addressing his view that it isn't a moral issue? Tell you what—you go first and show us how that's done. "
Bells ring, lights flash, and bonus point tickets spew from the Logic Awards console.
Aquinas unambiguously held that the abortion of a fetus with a rational soul was murder; "backdating" that argument to the moment of conception doesn't change it to some other argument that he rejected.
ReplyDeleteAlthough they use different language a good number of personhood arguments rely upon a stand-in for rational soul: brain complexity and integration, distinctively human EEG patterns, primitive learning; and those are reasons why their arguments cannot be backdated. I could point to a few tons of uranium ore and say it has the same value as a nuclear weapon, but that would be a strange description even when I know that specific ore will be refined and used to create a weapon. Of course at some level of refinement or development it *is* considered to have nearly the same value, but we can't have that argument because the ore itself is being treated as a finished product.
Anti-choicers: are you supporting programs to ensure that each and every single one of these kids are looked after and cared for after birth?
There are a few pro-life charities (not nearly enough) which do provide significant support post-pregnancy. I even made a modest donation to one of them, Real Alternatives.
Chris-Kirk. I’ll get your name right in the future. Sorry I got it wrong earlier.
ReplyDeleteAs for what you wrote, you said this: "[S]ome atheist thinkers seem to be forcing theists to adopt something like al-Gazali's world, wherein nothing moves or changes on its own; everything is run by God directly."
No, no, no. On al-Ghazali, atheists agree with Thomists. Al-Ghazali is wrong. If God exists, God is the ground of being qua being, but does not step in to violate his (her?) own laws. God set the cosmic clock to ticking, then forever ceases to interfere.
The difference between you and I on this is simply one of degree. You allow for exceptions to this rule, atheistic science does not.
And I agree with you that there is, formally, only science (not Christian science, Marxist science, or atheist science), but that doesn't mean that science has no atheistic or theistic sympatico premises. A lawful and predictable universe is (arguably) a theistic-favoring premise, and a demon-free universe is (arguably) an atheistic-favoring premise. Both of these pistons need to be firing for the functioning of science qua science.
Newton and Galileo adopted both of these premises, exactly as Haldane did—and Krauss does.
Scientists work under the assumption that the material cosmos is universally lawful and predictable, and the only confounding variables coming from minds are from those attached to bodies. To bodies. Minds attached to bodies. You can control for minds attached to bodies. You can’t control for invisible men, or spirits unattached to bodies, roaming the Earth and nudging things just beneath the human radar (as Aquinas believed).
But if you have evidence or good reasons for believing that Aquinas was right that demons exist, and we live in a demon-haunted world, and that scientists over the past four hundred years have simply missed this evidence, please share.
Merriam-Webster offers several defintions of 'demon', one of which "a source or agent of evil, harm, distress or ruin."
ReplyDeleteNow all you have to do is:
a) explain why scientists deny the existence of things such as evil, harm, distress and ruin; or,
b) explain why scientists are convinced such things arise, come into being or otherwise exist as a result of spontaneous generation.
You're best bet might be to tackle a), since if scientists are convinced that things such as evil, harm, distress and ruin come about via spontaneous generation, then, in light of the definition above, scientists are convinced that spontaneous generation is a demon.
ReplyDeleteI'm vaguely reminded of an old story about a group of scientists who wanted to show up a witch doctor who thought diseases were caused by demons. They planned to let him take a peep through their microscope and see some actual germs, at which point, they were confident, he would see the error of his benighted ways.
ReplyDeleteThey brought him into the laboratory to show him the microscope, explaining that what he was about to see what the true cause of disease. They looked at each other expectantly.
The witch doctor eagerly set his eye to the microscope—and exclaimed, "Ah, so that's what demons look like!"
To ignore a result call it a pressuposition http://secularhumanist.blogspot.com/2015/10/to-ignore-result-call-it-pressuposition.html
ReplyDeleteGottfried: [T]he fact that the scientific method arose and flourished in a culture where belief in demons was nearly universal should make it obvious that there is no fundamental conflict between them.
ReplyDeleteScott: That's a good point. It's also not as though the Church has never made any reasoned attempt to discern when and how demons really are at work, even if such attempts can't by their nature achieve the mathematical precision of (some) empirical science.
And not just a good point, but it indicates the importance of trying to understand a position from the inside: viewing "demons" as something stapled onto the edge of some opposing viewpoint will of course not make sense. But if you look at it the way people who actually hold that view look at it, it should be clear that the question is no different from, "How could science be possible in a world where human beings can interfere with experiments?" Which is not very puzzling at all.
Modusponens:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "[I]t seems we have competing parties with different passions, i.e. moral convictions. Therefore, might makes right,..."
No. You're referring to Weimar Germany when bourgeois democracy broke down and communists and fascists fought one another in the streets to be the next big thing.
In the United States, key individual liberties are protected by law, not subject to the whims of majorities. And we have separation of powers in place that frustrate totalist power grabs.
In 1789, there were just two experiments in democratic politics. Now half the world's countries are, to a greater or lesser degree, bourgeois democracies, and these tend to be the least belligerent countries on the planet. Bourgeois democracies, with regular elections and strong protections for individual human rights, frustrate totalist “might makes right” politics. It's when we actually have the marriage of religion and state (as in Iran and Putin's Russia), or when political religions (communism and fascism) come to power, that we have the torture of citizens, gulags, and conflicts like the Thirty Years War.
That's why I support both gay and lesbian marriage and Kim Davis. Both frustrate totalist politics.
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteI know I said I was done trying to talk to you, but you have provided further information (finally) that further explains your assertions, so i will indulge.
"I can support abortion and not infanticide and not mob rule and not absolute chaos and tyranny... But get this - to me abortion isn't murder.
We know, and we have accepted that this is what you believe, but it doesn't explain why you believe it, which is what I want from you. You came here as a "questioner" as you put it, and I merely provided you an explanation of why I do see is as murder. As you recall, I didn't just say what my view was, I spent an essay size comment explaining how I got to that point. To which your response was basically to call me inconsiderate of women, and inhumane, and other terrible things. What I want is for you to do the same and explain your position, and you have provided a couple sentences now that cut a little deeper to help me understand how you get to your conclusion, which is why I am biting again.
"Being a person is about experience, communication, memory, and discovering things for yourself. A foetus is not that. However, once they are out of the womb, they start doing all of those things and are thus human beings. Or people."
Now we are finally moving somewhere. Great! You never said anything like these sentences before now. Before this, you kept discussing the placement of the human, from inside the womb to outside it. At no point did you specify was is significant about this change in displacement, until now, which is what I have been asking you to do. Scratch that, you did briefly discuss the first breath, however, but then went away from it to merely being outside the mother. Previous to this, I was focusing on pointing out that displacement by itself is largely arbitrary, and you completely ignored this. If I understand you, its not necessarily the displacement that matters, but with what comes with the displacement, namely the beginning of conscious human experience? Let me know if that is correct, and if you like we can carry on with this discussion.
"So don't send me up Everest or on a killing spree in your fantasies, simply to get your 'point' across. Analogies and comparisions to murder and triumph and other types of human experience are USELESS. Okay? We're talking about abortion, women's rights, and at the very broadest, interpretations of 'God'. Deferring to other topics constantly only shows how poor your point is."
ReplyDeleteYes we are talking about abortion, women's rights, and interpretations of God. The infanticide example is quite moot, I agree, because you don't see the killing of a foetus as murder. But you made the assertion that pregnancy is "awful". The only way you can see the experience of pregnancy as not equivalent to climbing Everest is if you see pregnancy merely as destructive and disordered (which the term 'awful' would apply), like the growth of a cancerous tumor. Is the harshness of a pregnancy closer to that of the harshness of a cancerous growth, than the harshness of climbing Everest? Cancer is the result of a disorder, while climbing Everest is not. I would say that pregnancy isn't either, but what would you say?
"Don't stretch that to a blind, deaf, or otherwise impaired, LIVING person. Okay? They deserve to live."
I agree, and I am happy to explain to you why I think they deserve to live if you want. We agree on this view, but the reasons why are difference, so can you explain why you think they deserve to live? This will help us see where we differ on this.
"You guys think it's immoral to destroy a non-sentient organism. I think it's immoral to force a woman to go through 9 months of physical pain and emotional stress, especially when the outcome dictates (in the 'solution' of adoption) that she won't even keep the baby.
To correct you again, no one here said that adoption was the solution. If the woman wants to keep the baby, that is fine. If she doesn't, she can choose the option to adopt it out if she wants and that is fine too. Adoption is another topic entirely, so we won't get in to that. Just making sure you aren't put words in my mouth.
"Anti-choicers: are you supporting programs to ensure that each and every single one of these kids are looked after and cared for after birth? Or is it simply your goal to ensure that every single baby is born, then move on to the next one? Because for much of America's history, those that have been voting against abortion have been the same ones voting against social assistance, public healthcare, and gun control. Don't call yourself pro-life if you stop supporting these babies once they are born. "
ReplyDeleteI always notice this kind of picture of pro-lifers showing up, yet this represents a complete misunderstanding of pro-lifers. I don't know a single pro-lifer who only cares about the foetus and as soon as they are born, then they are no longer of any concern, yet somehow the pro-choicers have created this picture of pro-lifers. There are roughly 1.2 million abortions in the US every year. If someone is pro-life, and they see the killing of a foetus as equivalent to murder, then this appears horrific to them. I understand its not to you, but just assume for the sake of argument that you did believe this is equivalent to murder(just treat the foetus as a 4 year old simply for the sake of argument). Can you see why the emphasis is on the foetus especially? In general, this many 4 year olds are not killed by their parents in a year, but if that were the case, you can absolutely guarantee that pro-lifers will be out there to aggressively protest that too.
As for the claim about voting against social assistance, public healthcare, and gun control. Thats another misunderstand, but I won't expand because that's another topic.
Modusponens:
ReplyDeleteYou accuse “lefties” of casting “defamatory claims of racist” on opponents, “and whatever epithet that makes us [conservatives] the lowest of the low, demonizing us…”
Certainly this happens, but you're projecting, for the right does it as well. I direct your attention to the above photo of the Stooges that accompanies this very post of Feser’s.
Equating a Jewish public scientist with Nazism and the KKK is, at minimum, tone deaf to the past seventy years. What would one make, for instance, of such an image directed at a secular American Jew five years after the Holocaust? Does seventy years out make it okay?
The original image comes from a 1941 short by the Stooges ("I'll Never Heil Again"). The arm bands on the uniforms of both Moe and Curly were swastikas. The Stooges themselves were Jewish Americans. Deploying Jews against a Jew--and for the purpose of defaming him as akin to Hitler--is ugly and vulgar, to say the least. And no conservative in this thread spoke up to say, “That image is a big bowl of wrong.”
Billy great points, I'll be on in a bit to respond. Got to head to class!
ReplyDeleteBy the way I really appreciate the change in tone here. I believe your collective increase in respect (or rather patience, time, and whatever else) for me is related to my decrease in aggression.
Catch you soon
Hoping to sum up my stance here:
ReplyDelete(I will use the word 'person' to differentiate from the foetus within the womb and the human being living in the real world, whether they were born 12 seconds or 70 years ago.)
First of all, I would like to point out that the status of, and therefore the rights accorded to, a foetus ARE subjective. Dennis and co. like to present this idea that it is an entirely objective matter. That is simply untrue. To say that it is an objective matter, and then to present your opinion while simultaneously 'disproving' my view, is essentially implying that you are right and that is the only way to see it. Something I have been shredded in here for doing many times.
The nature of human life dictates that it HAS to be a subjective concept. How each individual woman feels (I know you guys hate emotions, which is quite sad - they're as real as your theories and concepts) about her developing child depends on the very nature and circumstances of her particular pregnancy. A happy mother in a planned pregnancy will speak of her child as if it is already born. There is a good chance they already know the sex of the baby and will therefore refer to it as "he" or "she". I think at this point it is very clear that that baby is a person to that woman, whether it be 4 months or 7 months since conception. That mother would have a very difficult time aborting that child as she already has a connection to it. THAT is essentially where my argument lies. I have a problem with you all projecting blanket policies that basically imply that every single 'successful' conception should produce a child. You are superficially granting love and affection to that child when it is really a bunch of cells. It is not a person until we make it a person. You guys are going to hate this because it calls for ad hoc, case-by-case analysis. But it really depends on the situation.
Take a woman that has been raped by her mentally-ill uncle. She becomes pregnant, and as she has grown up in a staunch Catholic/Protestant/Muslim household, she is forbidden by her patriarchical family from getting an abortion. She must now go through 9 months of emotional, mental, and physical turmoil. Every single day she must look in the mirror and be reminded of that horrific incident. She will also notice her body changing. That is all very well when you planned it and are excited about your impending parenthood, but what about the woman that is now getting fat, uncomfortable, and is often in considerable pain, who doesn't even keep the baby? You will all point to the fact that it is her choice to give it up, which is quite frankly ridiculous. At that point, you are putting her rapists' rights and the rights of her rapists' unborn child ahead of hers. THAT is definitely ludicrous.
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ReplyDeleteSo, if you accept what I'm saying, you can see that pregnancy, and thus personhood is entirely subjective. However, it is impossible to analyse abortions on a case-by-case basis. How would we discern which abortions are 'right'? I disagree heavily that men have any say in such matters, but as you all disagree with that - who decides which parent to listen to? How do you come to a final decision in a dispute?
That's why I say make (or rather keep - they are in fact legal right now, which is something that seems to be forgotten in this thread...) them legal for everyone. Give every woman the CHOICE. It is her body, it is her foetus. When it comes out, she has waived those control rights. The 9 month period (let's be real, it's 6 month if we stick to the 24week rule) is more than enough time for a woman to discover her pregnancy and make a decision on it. After 24 weeks (current law) or definitely once the baby is born, it is not an equal decision between man and woman. However, until then it is entirely her decision.
"Ohhh but what about the men?" What about them? Guys, we do less than 1% of the 'work' in rearing a child. The 'work' we put in is actually pure pleasure if you're doing it properly. Do we get morning sickness? Do our bellies expand exponentially in size? Bigger breasts? Sore nipples? Hormone imbalance?
And that's not to mention the physical and psychological effects birth has on a woman. Exruciating pain due to the baby's position (like mine when I was born) is common and requires expensive (in the US, haha) and painful surgery.
That's not even close to all the issues women face but I tihnk you et my point. Every time you say "what about men" you are marginalising women's plight on this earth and specifically when it comes to child birth.
So, I meant to explain why I think a foetus is not a person, but I think I actually showed why I think that any assessment of the morality of abortion will be necessarily subjective, as wel as making a good case for women's choice.
The nature of human life dictates that it HAS to be a subjective concept.
ReplyDeleteDe facto.
First of all, I would like to point out that the status of, and therefore the rights accorded to, a foetus ARE subjective. Dennis and co. like to present this idea that it is an entirely objective matter. That is simply untrue. To say that it is an objective matter, and then to present your opinion while simultaneously 'disproving' my view, is essentially implying that you are right and that is the only way to see it. Something I have been shredded in here for doing many times.
Fact or Opinion?
Dennis man I think you're trolling at this point.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you and I disagree on the status of foeti proves that it's a subjective topic. How can there be disagreement over an objective fact? That is simply false. And until you understand that, we will never make any progress in this discussion.
The fact that you and I disagree on the status of foeti proves that it's a subjective topic. How can there be disagreement over an objective fact? That is simply false. And until you understand that, we will never make any progress in this discussion.
ReplyDeleteIs this your argument? That if two or more people disagree on something, it cannot be an objective fact? Or that, if there's a disagreement on something, it is by the very nature of disagreement not an objective fact? If it is not, let me know. Sure, you can consider me to be trolling, please answer the questions.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteScott said: "[C]onvince him [Charlie] it's immoral without addressing his view that it isn't a moral issue? Tell you what—you go first and show us how that's done."
ReplyDeleteNo problem. Charlie has said he's talking about two issues, not one. He's talking about abortion AND women's rights, and he's said the reduction of abortion could be a good thing.
So simply tell Charlie how you hold these two issues in a SINGLE VISION without harming women’s equality, educational opportunities, rights, etc. Charlie doesn't want a woman's right to regulate her own fertility, and the benefits that come from this, dropped from the equation of what to do here; what's moral.
We have, in other words, competing goods.
Tell Charlie why a fertilized egg should trump the autonomy and choices of adult women. How are the goods that normally accrue to women, via the right to regulate their fertility, compensated for if birth control, the morning-after pill, and abortion are no longer available to them?
Fertility regulation is central to women's rights and equality. And it makes a huge difference in the level of education a woman is likely to attain.
Rather than playing the role of King Creon against Antigone, hunkered down on one side of the issue, tell Charlie how a deal might be cut. Show Charlie that you actually notice that the regulation of fertility confers benefits to women's lives.
You can’t just disaggregate these two issue and get him to “focus,” and still convince Charlie there’s something immoral about abortion. The truth is the whole. The truth is in not ignoring that we're dealing with competing goods.
Charlie will go on noticing the aborted prospects of the adult woman’s education and life opportunities, even if you don’t.
Absent the right to regulate one's own fertility, women's equality not only grinds to a halt, but goes into a sharp reversal.
How can there be disagreement over an objective fact?
ReplyDelete..said no rigorous philosopher ever. This is a simple conflation of epistemology and ontology. The cause of much intellectual harm.
Facts are facts, and truth is truth, regardless to whether all people have obtained the necessary philosophical, scientific or moral knowledge.
A fact e.g. supporting the theory of evolution, doesn't cease to be a fact, because there exist a disputing creationist with-less-than-perfect-knowledge-of-biology.
And of course, you don't stay around long enough for the boomerang to hit yourself. If there are no objective facts, then there is exists no objective fact "one should refrain from causing unnecessary harm to a pregnant woman", and your remaining moral claims through the last hundreds of comments, have no validity outside of your own head. You might instead want to consider reciting poems by now.
Your argument pretty much amounts to some version of solipsism, or at least hard relativism. Either way, you would do worse then some more reading just at this blog, refuting that position:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.no/2015/09/the-absolute-truth-about-relativism.html
(Sorry for deleting the previous comment. It was written from a cellphone, so there were many errors. :))
Santi:
ReplyDeleteThe folk here don't need to discuss the public policy side, because this is largely a philosophical forum, not a public policy forum. It's a bit hard of Charlie and you to accuse us of not doing something the forum was never designed for, like accusing a dictionary of poor storytelling. There *is* a place for philosophy; and we *can* separate discussion of the facts of abortion and policy toward it.
On public policy: Pro-abortion folk here keep bringing up rape and incest. These are horrible crimes - that are not typical of the abortions in the US, at least. The vast majority of abortions here derive from sex between consenting, unmarried adults. We can as public policy make exceptions while basing law on the *typical* case. Otherwise "Hard cases make for bad law," so goes the legal proverb.
Pregnancy is not a disease. If I were guiding policy, I would allow abortion to be legal, because it involves ultimately what the pregnant woman's decision, and our culture just won't stand for making it illegal. (The US has never been reconciled to Roe v Wade, but has never gotten close to overturning it. The US people have spoken loudly - out of both sides of the mouth.) Laws that cannot be easily enforced are not good laws. (What really would we do in a strict anti-abortion regime, tie her down for eight months?). On the other hand there is no reason for the typical abortion to pay for it out of state taxes, let alone federal.
Finally, there's public policy v. *moral* policy. Abortion shouldn't be, at all; killing innocent human beings is always wrong, no matter how unformed. If we cannot 'tell' i.e. command or force a woman against aborting the progeny of a rape or incestuous relationship, we can still determine if the act is morally wrong. Then the right people can counsel her in the right way, one that does respect her undoubted human worth and dignity.
So, what about Krauss? This is the combox for an article about Krauss, isn't it? (Lucy to Shroeder: "There' goes Charlie Brown. Good 'ol Charlie Brown . . . How I hate him.")
Chris Kirk
"Tell Charlie why a fertilized egg should trump the autonomy and choices of adult women."
ReplyDeleteWell, there is a *very easy* answer to this:
The embryo is just like a fetus, an infant, a child, a severely retarded man, a bedridden woman with Alzheimer's, and others, in that all are vulnerable human beings. Our culture grants vulnerable human beings extra protections, and forces healthy adult human beings to care for them one way or another.
Furthermore, embryos like fetuses and infants and children are in some sense 'innocent'; they've done nothing to deserve death. Further, they typically have a long future ahead of them; to cut that short is in our culture considered an especial tragedy, even greater than the untimely death of an adult.
So there are *many* reasons to favor even embryo rights over the mother's choices.
Chris-Kirk
In another thread I left a link to the revelation of an attempted deception by Krauss during an informal debate/discussion he had with Craig.
ReplyDeleteKrauss, it seems demonstrated, deliberately elided critical segments of a private e-mail text he was quoting as authoritative and dispositive. Krauss characterized the omitted material - what was in fact a plainspoken stipulation regarding the conditionality of the passage he was quoting - as mere "technical" matters.
I rhetorically asked how he thought he could get away with such deceits.
Yet we see Santi doing something similar right here (deceitfully violating the context and framing) with regard to a remark Scott made; one which I thought was significant enough to comment on myself.
Santi it should be noted is an academic, one who must be fully aware of the conventions for quoting text. Editorial brackets capitalizing a word do not suffice to clearly signify a significantly truncated quote; especially when the clear sense of the original's stipulative nature has been deleted.
It's remarkable how nonchalantly deceptive these people are. You cannot trust anything they say.
Charlie Steele:
ReplyDeleteHow can there be disagreement over an objective fact? That is simply false.
I disagree. So by your own logic, that means you haven't stated an objective fact here.
Aaaand here's Santi:
No problem.…We have, in other words, competing goods.
Ah. Competing goods. I see.
So the way to convince Charlie that abortion immoral without addressing his view that it's not a moral issue is to ignore his view altogether, treat it as a moral issue anyway, and distract him with enough rhetoric that he doesn't notice.
Well, that sounds familiar. But wait—there might be a problem after all, since among other things…
Show Charlie that you actually notice that the regulation of fertility confers benefits to women's lives.
…abortion isn't a method of regulating fertility.
(Sorry: that abortion is immoral.)
ReplyDeleteCharlie Steele.
ReplyDeleteAre you arguing that destroying fetuses is morally acceptable because they
(1)lack personhood,
(2)the woman's prerogatives outweigh a fetus; even if they are a person (but they aren't)
-or-
(3)all reasoning sans empirical observation is merely subjective, and therefore can't be relied upon as justification for imposing on individual rights (in this case, the woman's).
Elements of all three appear in your comments. Your exact position is unclear to me, but that may just be because you espouse all three and have expressed them without precision.
Robert
I understand its not to you, but just assume for the sake of argument that you did believe this is equivalent to murder(just treat the foetus as a 4 year old simply for the sake of argument).
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of argument I should completely disregard my own arguments? How about you disregard your own arguments?
On the other hand there is no reason for the typical abortion to pay for it out of state taxes, let alone federal.
I don't know why you think typical abortions are paid from taxes.
Pregnancy is not a disease.
You are correct, however there are some similarities which are enhanced when the pregnancy is unwanted. For many women morning sickness and pregnancy related diabetes are problematic, and before the advent of modern medicine there was a significant risk of death or permanent injury. There still is a risk of death or injury now but in most cases it is insignificant. My alternative pro-choice viewpoint is a strong version of the castle doctrine. The castle doctrine allows the use of deadly force against a serious threat within the home, so within her own body a woman is permitted to use deadly force against a lesser risk even when she has in some sense provoked the threat. Note that I'm not disputing the innocence of the fetus, but rather I'm claiming the pregnancy causes unintentional harms (and in this sense it can be viewed like a disease) and because it is her body being used as material support she has a greater right to protect her life and health than a homeowner does protecting his home.
Further, they typically have a long future ahead of them; to cut that short is in our culture considered an especial tragedy, even greater than the untimely death of an adult.
I've written before, many times, that the "Future Like Ours" argument is the best pro-life argument. The problem with it is that it circumvents considering the future of the woman, which is also valuable and in many instances fairly young. So even the best argument isn't as compelling as it might seem at first.
Dennis how do you not see that your view on the status of a foetus is subjective? You keep saying that a foetus is a person but that doesn't make it true. The entire abortion debate comes down to this issue, and you are saying that your belief is the objective truth. How arrogant is that?
ReplyDelete- Charlie
Robert I believe 1 and 2 go hand in hand do they not? The foetus is not a person; therefore it is not immoral to destroy it, and in turn the woman's rights trump those of a being who does not possess any rights. So yes, 1 & 2. Final answer.
ReplyDelete- Charlie
Robert I believe 1 and 2 go hand in hand do they not? The foetus is not a person; therefore it is not immoral to destroy it, and in turn the woman's rights trump those of a being who does not possess any rights. So yes, 1 & 2. Final answer.
ReplyDelete- Charlie
If we get serious about opposing abortion, we run up against Charlie's complaint, that women have rights too and we (appear to) ignore that.
ReplyDeleteSometimes our treatment of the unborn is compared to slavery. Here is an article about the systemic problem of slavery from "Dr. Boli". Without going into details, I thought it a good meditation on the the difficulty of what we should do about it:
http://drboli.com/2015/10/04/historical-fallacies-slavery/
A quote from the much longer essay:
"Systemic evil is evil in which we participate merely by living in our complex modern world. There is no little check box to opt out. You broke the shrink wrap; you used the life that was given to you; therefore you agreed to the evil.
"And exploited workers in Asian factories are just one tentacle of the evil that pervades modern life. How about automobile companies that deliberately evade pollution controls? You will boycott them and buy only from non-evil automobile manufacturers? Dr. Boli believes that you are in for a rude surprise when you start trying to find one of those. How about wars and terrorist attacks started by greedy and ambitious politicians who kill thousands as a way of augmenting their own power? You’ll move to Switzerland, which never gets into wars? Dr. Boli suggests you might do a little research on how such wars are financed.
No, the modern world is sufficiently complex that you simply cannot pull evil out by the roots without killing the rest of your crops. This is the meaning of the parable of the wheat and tares . . . ."
'Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine' is very funny at times, and at others quite serious, as in this essay.
C Kirk
Santi,
ReplyDeleteAnd what was the "historical wrong" that Obergefell sought to rectify exactly? What does redefining marriage and the state's understanding of it that must now be implemented upon everyone have to do with any intimation about the pervasive persecution of gays throughout history? Not much.
From my point of view, marriage has an essence that makes it what it is. That, it is a union of persons that is inherently directed to the end of procreation. You can put almost any modifier in front of it -- e.g. "religious," "civil" -- and the object being described must be still a marriage by both metaphysical necessity and logical identity.
Furthermore, I find highly inadequate your allusions to civil rights history about sexism and the racism -- I'm assuming -- of anti-miscegenation laws that have frequented such discourse on this topic. Firstly, the analogy comparing anti-miscegenation statutes of the Jim Crow South and state constitutional amendments is embarrassingly inept for any same-sex marriage advocate making it. As any search from Google will verify, miscegenation's Latin root parts are miscere (mix) and genus (kind), and the whole word refers to genetic interbreeding. So, Santi will you enlighten me as to how homosexual couples, pairings of same (homo) kind, breed exactly, as the appeal to Loving v. Virginia and like implicates them as capable? Additionally, as the Southern anti-miscegenation laws were segregationist in intent, keeping the races separate, so that a child conceived from a black and white couple certainly complicates the implementation of such a racist schema. So, rather this all affirms my position rather than challenges it.
As for charges of sexism, as in discriminating individually against each member of a gay couple, this too fails because marriage necessarily is a union of persons. Appealing to the sexes, the personal characteristics of one or both individual members in a couple is pars pro toto and not applicable.
Once again, Santi, what is the historical wrong here that is similar enough to warrant comparison and inclusion into the monolith of civil rights struggle and catharsis? Gay individuals have been free to live and their lives how they choose without realistic threat of reproach from the state for a good while now. Culturally, as in Hollywood and other media, they're the toast of the land. Companies and organizations are now taking steps to include same-sex partners under insurance coverage. Sure, there are still some discrepancies but none of which required the swift overthrow of the civil recognition and thereby protection of the blood ties between mother, father and child, the bulwark behind the first and thusly pre-political mediating institution of the family.
Rather, it seems to me gay individuals have excluded themselves from the institution of marriage by executing the freedom they are entitled to in their choice of partner. The counterculture that was developed rejected the traditional gendered norm involved in coupling, and now this demand for the state and everyone else to conform to their volitional act of civil disobedience is the height of unreasonableness.
cont...
ReplyDeleteSo, you mention in praise this convergence of the Constitution and -- I'm inferring -- the concomitant authorities and specialists (SCOTUS justices, lawyers, constitution scholars, etc.) with scientists, journalists and grand whole of the intelligentisia being swayed by these insurmountable claims of being the same kindred as these civil rights movements. But I find and show here such claims are easily domitable. So, I'm befuddled as to how elites such as they could be so ensnared and be so intellectually facile to the implied point of dishonesty that they could not dismiss these claims as I have done. Therefore, it doesn't inspire much confidence that their sudden consensus is really the legitimate confluence of inexorable righteous historical forces but the product of politics and ideology, from which I take no pride in nor have any issue expressing dissent against.
So, I find your little account of how same-sex marriage happened a fairy tale, your romantic musings extolling the virtues of open deliberation laughable. It was not a triumph of democratic reason but of partisan will, pure and simple: the will of gay activists and progressives on the left to take what they believed to be theirs and belittle and politically destroy any opposition at all costs in the express hope to sabotage attempts at honest debate, stopping just short of violence, and the lack there of in conservative politicians, the church and the right as a whole to offer any sort of resistance with the zeal to rebuff it.
Charlie Steele,
ReplyDelete(2) is a much "stronger" claim than (1). It contained the additional premise that personhood does not confer the right not to be destroyed. That the woman's right outweighs the fetus' even if it is considered a person with all rights, etc.
Really though, I asked about these three premises to see if I could nail down your position, because you have said things that require interpretation and I'd like to tease out what you really think.
For example, you said that if a woman who plans a pregnancy thinks of her fetus as a child it would be hard for her to destroy it. Does this mean "wrong to destroy it." Does her thinking of it as a person confer personhood to it? In which case would it be wrong to destroy it? Say, if she changed her mind to think of it as merely a bunch of inconvenient cells later, or if she found out that it was likely to have a debilitating disease. Your recent comments imply to me that you consider the fetus to lack personhood objectively.
Robert
You can put almost any modifier in front of it -- e.g. "religious," "civil" -- and the object being described must be still a marriage by both metaphysical necessity and logical identity.
ReplyDeleteUnless you are willing to put incestuous, Levirate, and polygamist in front as modifiers, two of which apply to Abraham and King David, then neither procreation nor the Old Testament is an infallible guide for determining what marriage should be.
The counterculture that was developed rejected the traditional gendered norm involved in coupling, and now this demand for the state and everyone else to conform to their volitional act of civil disobedience is the height of unreasonableness.
Change the word gendered to racial and the comparison to miscegenation writes itself.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification.
The purpose of giving those two extreme examples of pregnancy (for as we know, most fall somewhere along that spectrum, typically towards the more positive end), was to show Dennis that the nature of any individual pregnancy and how a woman feels about the foetus is going to change from woman to woman, maybe even from conception to conception. A woman may have an abortion at 25 because she feels she is not ready (and protection failed, as we know it does), but she may want to have a child at 30. That is why I believe it should be up to the woman to decide.
For me, it should be plainly objective that a foetus is not a person. However, it is very clear that my view represents half of the debate, the other side being presented here. So I'm not sure what you meant by saying I think of it objectively, unless you were calling me a hypocrite. In which case you acknowledge that Dennis is wrong to say that objectively, a foetus is a person.
However you'd still be wrong to call me a hypocrite, as I have very clearly stated that it is my personal belief that the foetus is not a person, and I completely understand/respect the opposing argument.
wait why shouldn't gays marry??? (@moduspownens)
ReplyDeleteScott:
ReplyDeleteIf women do not have the power to control when and how many children they'll have in their lifetimes, their collective progress (educational prospects, etc.), since the pill was introduced in 1960, will not just stall, but reverse.
And complicating the competing goods issue here is the impact, in the 21st century, on global ecology. Demographers tell us that human population is likely to peak and stabilize in this century around nine billion people, but that's on the assumption that women will gain increasing control over the number of children they'll have over the course of their lifetimes.
90% of American women (for instance) have at least one child before the age of forty. It's not like humans aren't successful at reproducing themselves in an age of antibiotics and vaccines. When Aquinas was writing, perhaps half of all children died before age five.
If you drop the context in which you're proposing a moral argument, it's no longer really a moral argument, but dogma. This isn't about an easy case of right and wrong, but of competing goods. You have failed to address that directly.
Charlie Steele,
ReplyDeleteThe subjective/objective distinction is a crucial one. As used here, it is not used in the popular sense to indicate that the speaker is non-partisan. But there is another difference. This is why I asked about (3) above. If you are some sort of empiricist and believe that rational thought is merely subjective when not accompanied by observed evidence, then it is possible to dismiss Dennis' (and those of others here) claims as subjective.
However, these commentators typically argue that one can obtain true knowledge through reason alone. For example: 2+2=4. Thus "objective" has been used in this thread to indicate a demonstratable conclusion based on reason sans whim or emotion. Subjective has been used to describe those conclusions based at least partly on feelings or intuition (a loaded word).
Therefore, because of your statements defending emotion as a moral-making property, it is completely reasonable for Dennis to describe such justifications as subjective.
As to Dennis' objectivity: If Dennis' conclusion (that fetus' have rights in the same way that humans have rights) were based on the way he felt that fetuses were cudly, or his outrage at women making choices on their own, then it would be subjective. Even if Dennis wanted to make abortion illegal because it undermined his narrow self-interest in the "patriarchy" it still would not be subjective as long as his rationale was a valid deduction. But, his (and others) claims stem from a rational analysis of the metaphysical status of fetuses, and he can with some justification claim they are objective in this specific sense.
Robert
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteCheers for the response that definitely goes even deeper in to your views :)
"The nature of human life dictates that it HAS to be a subjective concept. How each individual woman feels (I know you guys hate emotions, which is quite sad - they're as real as your theories and concepts) about her developing child depends on the very nature and circumstances of her particular pregnancy."
We don't hate emotions, and I agree, they are real. No one here will deny that I think. However, feelings don't necessarily give us any indication of truth that is why reason and rationality are important. An animal rights activist may feel that animals are persons, but that does not make them so. A racist might feel that black people are less than persons, but that does not make it objectively the case.
"I have a problem with you all projecting blanket policies that basically imply that every single 'successful' conception should produce a child. “
Yes, in the similar way that every successful raising of a 1 year old, should produce a 2 year old.
”You are superficially granting love and affection to that child when it is really a bunch of cells. It is not a person until we make it a person."
You are not making sense here. You said there is nothing objective about this, but then you go on to state (I assume as an objective fact), that the foetus is "really a bunch of cells". The term, 'really', is the same as saying 'actually', or 'objectively'(at least in how we are using these terms here). So which is it? Is it objectively just a bunch of cells, and thus if a woman sees her unborn child as a person instead, she is false? You can’t say it is subjective, then make objective claims about it. As for the last sentence here, say that the mother never feels or subjectively views her child as a person, even after they are born. Does that mean it is not a person? Or do you mean it is a person when we as a people, or the state, decide it is a person? Because there was a time when both didn’t see black people as persons either. It didn’t necessarily make it true though (and I assume you agree).
Also, go back to the second comment I ever addressed to you, because I addressed the assertion that a foetus is just a bunch of cells and explained why this assertion is false, or at least so vague that it could apply to any living thing at all. Go read it again, because I explained the difference between a bunch of cells and a human foetus, and please show me why my distinction is false.
"Take a woman that has been raped by her mentally-ill uncle. She becomes pregnant, and as she has grown up in a staunch Catholic/Protestant/Muslim household, she is forbidden by her patriarchical family from getting an abortion.She must now go through 9 months of emotional, mental, and physical turmoil. Every single day she must look in the mirror and be reminded of that horrific incident. She will also notice her body changing. That is all very well when you planned it and are excited about your impending parenthood, but what about the woman that is now getting fat, uncomfortable, and is often in considerable pain"
ReplyDeleteHer religious family can't force her to do anything. You misunderstand us if you think we are saying that other private individuals can impose our will on her and stop her from getting an abortion if its legal. As I have said, to have to go through all of this for a child that you never wanted, is a disheartening position to be in. I know you grow tired of us presenting equivalent scenarios, but scenarios are good to abstract away from to narrow down the wider situation presented. Here is the situation I believe you are making:
> The person (the woman in this case) is forced, against her will, to be the receiver of an unwanted, painful, and traumatic inducing act.
> As a result of this act, the person begins going through an unwanted, very painful and traumatic process. Added distress comes from the change in appearance.
> This person is being forced to continue this process until the end
If this is correct, let me propose a scenario I believe is equivalent: A woman is set on fire by a possessive ex-partner. She becomes severely burned all over. Being from a religious family(though I don't know why it matters that they are religious), they forbid her to end her own life. Every single day she must look in the mirror and be reminded of that horrific incident. As well as the added stress of seeing the scarring all over her body, it is also uncomfortable, and often times painful.
This scenario also satisfies the premises above. Given that you think people have the right to do with their whole body what they want, do you think she should have the right to end her own life?
"At that point, you are putting her rapists' rights and the rights of her rapists' unborn child ahead of hers. THAT is definitely ludicrous."
ReplyDeleteHer rapists rights are not of concern here. Her rapist doesn't deserve a child, nor is he entitled to one, nor should he have any stake of claim on the child. The rapist, as far as I am concerned deserves capital punishment. This is entirely about the mother and her unborn child's rights. The rapist may be the biological father, but the unborn child is not his, in the sense that he has some unique fatherly authority over how this child is carried or parented, nor is he deserving. He, before committing the abhorrently evil act of rape, may have potentially had this, but as soon as he committed this crime, lost that completely.
But then again, I could be wrong. I cant say that in a rape case, I really have thought too much about the entitlements and deserts of the rapist other than what punishment is deserved.
” However, it is impossible to analyse abortions on a case-by-case basis. How would we discern which abortions are 'right'?
ReplyDeleteWe could ask you the same thing, because you are the one who is saying it is a case by case situation that depends on how the women feels. We are saying, as soon as something distinctly human appears, and that occurs at conception (again, see my second response to you for the details, I’m still waiting for you to show why my reasoning is false), that it is an innocent human and just like every innocent human, has the right to life.
“I disagree heavily that men have any say in such matters, but as you all disagree with that - who decides which parent to listen to? How do you come to a final decision in a dispute?”
Another misunderstanding, Charlie. We agree also that the father has no unique say in the matter either. If the man wanted to have the foetus aborted, but the woman didn’t, we won’t agree with him. You seem to think that we are a bunch of men, private citizens, who believe we should have control over women, and that is what is driving our opposition to abortion. That is false, at least in my case anyway, and I would extend this to others here as well.
All the rest that you said after this was pointless. Have you seen a single person here raise the objection, “What about the men?” No, because that is not even a consideration for pro-lifers. That is a problem within the pro-choice community. You have to be pro-choice to think a man’s choice is of significance.
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteYou said: "The fact that you and I disagree on the status of foeti proves that it's a subjective topic."
No it doesn't. Disagreement does not mean there is no objective fact regarding a topic. Say that someone pours marbles in to a jar. I'm sure you agree there is a certain number of marbles in this jar, and that number is definite and does not change unless marbles leave the jar or more marbles are put in. Neither of us count each marble one by one but I take a look from the outside and think there is 100 marbles. You think there is 150 marbles. The fact that we disagree does not suddenly mean that there is no definite number of marbles in the jar.
"How can there be disagreement over an objective fact?"
As my example above illustrates, there is an objective fact as to now many marbles are in the jar. And yet, here we are with a disagreement.
I think what you are meaning is that unlike the jar of marbles, which you can calculate and quantify the amount by counting each marble one by one, there is no way to calculate and quantify when a foetus becomes a person. I disagree, but I'm assuming this is what you mean. Again, it does not mean there isn't a correct answer.
Santi,
ReplyDelete"If women do not have the power to control when and how many children they'll have in their lifetimes"
But they do have that control. Upon conception, they have a kid. We show pretty well how much we condemn when it is not in their control, we treat that as one of these worse crimes you can commit against another person, possibly murder being the only thing worse. A woman who intentionally has sex and is dumbfounded when she realises she has conceived, thats like jumping in to water and being surprised that you got wet. And then you come along and saying "Woman should have the power to control when they get wet." And the simple answer is, "They do." Kids are taught, at high school, and some times earlier, how babies are made. They know what happens when they have sex, just like they know what happens when they jump in to water.
Billy:
ReplyDeleteIf you are saying that there is an objective way to determine that a foetus is a person, you are saying that your side is objectively correct. You see no problem there?
Your jar of marbles analogy is simply wrong. Because we CAN count. The only thing that's wrong is our guess. So you're saying that the foetus is the jar? And that you can somehow prove your argument scientifically? That's ridiculous. You're essentially saying the entire pro-choice argument is wrong for saying a foetus is not a person (fine) and that you KNOW you're right (not fine).
the point of no case-by-case analysis was meant to show that it has to be the woman's choice... I wasn't advocating case-by-case abortions.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rapist having no rights...so who exactly benefits from this child then? Humanity? Humanity will benefit from having a child conceived through one rapist parent and another than never wanted it but is forced to have it because the law won't let her have an abortion? Again, you're placing someone's rights - of the unborn, the rapist, yourself, or 'society' - above hers. That is dead wrong.
Also your point about conceptions leading to births being the same as a 1 year old becoming 2 is wildly off and proves once again that you're all dead set on ignoring my belief that the foetus is not a person. a year 1 old becoming 2 is literally just surviving for a year. A foetus being born has to develop into a person first and then exit the womb (whereby their personhood is solidified).
ReplyDeleteStop projecting the belief that a foetus IS a person. Okay? I've tried so many times, even the anon has supported me, to tell you guys that this is the very dichotomy of the issue. It comes down to my belief vs yours. Mine being that the foetus is not a person. So stop basing arguments on the foetus being a person because I've heard them all. Try to prove to me that it is actually a person like you and me, like a baby who cries for its mother or a child who experiences hardship or happiness. But don't just assume that it is a person and go from there.
One anon, who knows nothing about the issue, demonstrably. And this is why I keep saying you need to argue for your presuppositions, you, or your anon are welcome to actually tackle the arguments, but you it's all sound and fury here.
ReplyDeletehttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/05/act-and-potency.html
Have at it again.
That's ridiculous. You're essentially saying the entire pro-choice argument is wrong for saying a foetus is not a person (fine) and that you KNOW you're right (not fine).
ReplyDeleteIf only that was what Billy was advocating, and not arguing. Again, personhood is a red-herring, as stated above by lots of people. 'Its' Humanity is what is being considered. Now, you can argue why the A-T view is wrong, or you can complete turn a blind eye to it and continue, "It's your opinion. . ."
Dennis I don't have to prove my point to make your point incredibly arrogant. And I'm gonna be honest man, you suck at reading, or at least comprehension. The quote that you've just posted there was me addressing Billy defending YOU...so you're defending Billy defending you against me...why not just own up to your ideas?
ReplyDeleteI was dealing with your incredibly annoying and insistent desire to approach this in the most narrow way possible.
I said "how can there be debate over an objective fact"
I was wrong. I should have said "How can this topic be objective?" by which I mean "How can the status of a foetus possibly be considered an objectively approached belief if it is the very crux of the abortion debate?"
And again you choose to be pedantic and defer to distracting arguments about what word we're using. You know damn fine what I'm referring to yet you choose to use Humanity (a word with FAR more diverse meanings than 'personhood').
I don't have to argue that your point is wrong. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that you saying it is objectively right is simply incorrect...
To which you answer "personhood is a red herring". Sorry but this whole debate is a red herring. You detract from women's issues, you marginalize their efforts and pain, and you're condescending to anyone who disagrees.
Again, 'humanity' is simply wrong. Humanity refers to the race/species/whatever of humans. I have never tried to say a foetus is a different species. So you're being irrelevant and annoying.
Your focus on what words I use, and then your insistence that they're all just smoke and mirrors is the true sign of your arrogance, Dennis. You are by far the least mature and capable person on here.
Can you tell me how exactly a post from THIS BLOG backs up your point? That's like me pointing to one study by a scientist to prove a study by the same scientist. Or the NRA backing up their point with NRA published propaganda. Or a bible-thumper defending their view on Creation by pointing to the Bible, and then proving their particular verse with other verses.
I'm actually laughing. Thanks Dennis, this is the first time this site has made me feel cheerful :)
Dennis shits on Reddit, Twitter, and the like for not being like this blog. Apparently this blog is the only thing he reads as it's the only source he continues to site ;)
ReplyDeletealso for all of you hating on Reddit, eat your heart out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3mx5r1/scientists_should_tell_lawrence_krauss_to_shut_up/
get off your high horse you self-righteous clown.
I was wrong. I should have said "How can this topic be objective?" by which I mean "How can the status of a foetus possibly be considered an objectively approached belief if it is the very crux of the abortion debate?"
ReplyDeleteIs this your argument? That if two or more people disagree on something, it cannot be an objective fact? Or that, if there's a disagreement on something, it is by the very nature of disagreement not an objective fact? If it is not, let me know. Sure, you can consider me to be trolling, please answer the questions. - I'll say the same thing that was said before.
To which you answer "personhood is a red herring". Sorry but this whole debate is a red herring. You detract from women's issues, you marginalize their efforts and pain, and you're condescending to anyone who disagrees.
This has been dealt before, it is not just women's issues, and the main crux here, for the A-T is about the humanity, you fail to understand this. This is a basic failure.
I don't have to argue that your point is wrong. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that you saying it is objectively right is simply incorrect...
And you say this on the basis of the above?
Can you tell me how exactly a post from THIS BLOG backs up your point? That's like me pointing to one study by a scientist to prove a study by the same scientist. Or the NRA backing up their point with NRA published propaganda. Or a bible-thumper defending their view on Creation by pointing to the Bible, and then proving their particular verse with other verses.
'This' blog, 'that' blog, 'this' book, 'that' book, has nothing to do with it per se. But the rationale of the rationale of the argument, this is why I doubt your sincerity, if you are sincere, you need to learn how to argue.
By demonstrating that the A-T approach to metaphysics is true, and thus the category of a fetus is a human being, has the immortality of a soul, etc. etc. etc. You can't see that? Too bad for you, this is why I said, bring someone else who knows how to argue. Same sound and fury, with the same derogatory notions to continue parading ignorance and scream, unqualified, 'How can it be objective?'
Dennis I'm not talking about "any objective fact" I'm talking about THIS one. The one that people have been debating since abortion became possible, ya know?????
ReplyDeletealso I laugh my ass off at all of these comments since I read "Feser also writes on politics and culture, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective." STRAIGHT FROM HIS WEBSITE
It confirms my original comments about bias. You are all defending Feser as the mayor of your Mecca. Well your mayor just got caught smoking crack (to make a modern reference).
I'm not a philosopher so I have to ask
ReplyDeleteWhy do you all attempt to 'disprove' statements by making up entirely unrealistic/irrelevant/impossible scenarios? Are you not able to deal with the issue at hand?