Diogenes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 5:22 pm
Purple Knight wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 12:52 pm Let the mother have the abortion and the rapist is the murderer. I imagine if someone throws a baby on a highway, he's the murderer and not the driver of the car that happens to hit it.
I like this argument. I actually like the arguments made in
Roe v. Wade as well. The court there made a reasoned effort to look at how civilizations throughout history have treated the status of the clump of human cells from blastocyte to fetus, setting out 3 trimesters and balancing interests along with the development of the not yet fully human individual organism.
Wootah knows best, I suppose, if he wants to compare himself [actually declared himself to be]
a brainless blastocyte. As I have previously documented, the human fetus does not have a complex, functioning and viable nervous system until six months after conception, and there is still no consciousness even after birth. Part of the problem with so many religious 'thinkers' is that they reject complexity and gravitate to simple classifications such as 'conception' and 'birth,' while refusing to actually deal with issues.
This is the old silliness, the magical and simplistic "It's in the book!" 'thinking' that is rejected by thoughtful religious scholars as well as scientists and philosophers. There is no point in engaging with people who use language so carelessly that they call themselves "blastocytes" or declare contraception or the destruction of a single cell as "murder."
Claiming to be a blastocyte could be a good counter, if we'd fallen into a definitional argument: This gets this because it is
called this, and that does not because it is
called that. This is off-topic but I think it's a good example: I think Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalists fall into definitionalism when they're okay with private security companies punishing criminals, seemingly, because those companies are called private and not called "the government" when they might as well be the government, if they're using force and punishing people for crimes (I'm sorry, for
aggression). If you think the government should only be funded voluntarily fair enough, but when you're not okay with anything the government does because it uses force, then want to let private companies use force, that falls into nonsense, enabled by definitionalism.
I don't think we have fallen into a definitional argument because Wootah can reason (quite well I think) and is meaningfully different from a clump of cells. That is why I would protect him, enforce the word murderer and the commensurate penalty on someone who killed him, and I would not do this for a clump of cells.
Sometimes we need simplistic thinking for rulemaking because we can't have a society where the smart rule over the stupid simply by virtue of their better understanding. The stupid can't understand the basic rule governing what's in- and out-of-bounds, so the lawyerkind bamboozles them, and that's a form of slavery - one class needing permission from another class to act, or being made to act because they think they have to. However I don't think this is an example. It's not because people are too stupid to understand, if it is I'll say it's more important that we have the simple rule;
it's because the issue is unpleasant to think about. What grants rights? If it's reason, we're going to have to start thinking about where that puts people so severely mentally retarded that they can't think or function, and people born without brains.
Wootah wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 5:09 pmIf a couple has tried natural and ivf and finally have a blastocyst they will value that more than all the other children in the world.
They're allowed to make such a valuation under the pro-choice side. It's part of the mother's body. However... I think you do have a good argument here because they are trying to cook up a person, someone who stabs the mother to prevent that clump of cells from becoming a person, has quite intentionally robbed them of a person, yet if she's not terribly injured, under the theory that the cells were not a person, this is simple assault no different than cuts and bruises one might get after being fed up with somebody and getting into a fight with him. That doesn't really scan. You'd have to ad hoc this to death and bandaid it up mummy-style to get a fair rule that takes into account what they have lost, and I admit that.
Wootah wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:10 amBrainless is important because human life is sacred without a brain. For a blastocyst we wait for a person in a coma maybe medical research will work one day.
This is really the issue. You're cutting right to the heart of it. I'm pro-choice because I think life
shouldn't be sacred without a brain, more specifically without the
ability to reason. This gets me lumped in with Nazis and I think that's fair. But I also think I'm right.
."
