Here Is An Interesting Scenario

[singinbeauty]

Hello All!
Ok, so I came across something very interesting last night that I would like your opinion on. There are some people out there who are considered mentally unstable because of a desire they have to have certain limbs or parts of their bodies surgically removed. The parts are perfectly fine and normal. The person just feels like they don't need it, the feel it's a nuisance, or it is causing them to feel like it's hindering them in some way. It is against the law for a surgeon to perform these surgeries and they can lose their lisence for it. Is this any different then say a woman wanting to abort her baby because, with nothing being wrong with the baby, she just feels like it's going to hold her down, she doesn't need it, or it's going to be a nuisance? I mean this is a part of her and is very attached to her. Let me know what you think!

[Jose]

After the first trimester of pregnancy, the child has all the parts he will ever have. During the next trimesters, those parts just get bigger!

This is true only on a superficial level. None of the parts has enough cells, with enough specialized cellular functions, to work. It's kind of on a par with a coloring book that has the outlines but has not been filled in. You can tell what it might be if it's potential is realized, but you have no idea what will actually happen.

With a baby, it is growing and recovery is not an issue. Why pull the plug on someone who is totally healthy and growing?

We don't know that an embryo is healthy. If we did, it might be easier to decide. Even so, there are a great many people who don't like the idea of aborting embryos that have been tested, and shown to be unhealthy and incapable of growing normally. It's the same reasoning: the embyro is human.

Of course, each of our individual somatic cells is human. We now know that each one can be reprogrammed to develop into an entire human being, just by fusing the cell with an enucleated egg. Thus, each of our trillion or so cells is a potential human being. As Piper said, we kill these potential humans all the time.

It really is a matter of compexity and sentience.

Still, the bottom line, for me, is that it is immoral for me to force my will upon someone else. Even if I don't want an abortion for myself (unlikely, given that I'm male), I have no right to force someone else not to have one if she believes it is the right decision for herself. I might express a stronger opinion if it were my child, but I would still consider it immoral for me to make that decision for her.

[TQWcS]

Still, the bottom line, for me, is that it is immoral for me to force my will upon someone else.

Essentially what you are saying is that it is immoral to try and stop someone from doing something immoral... We do it all the time. It is illegal to kill. It is illegal to steal. et cetera.

[Jose]

Essentially what you are saying is that it is immoral to try and stop someone from doing something immoral... We do it all the time. It is illegal to kill. It is illegal to steal. et cetera.

Very cleverly done! Let's see....maybe if I extract just the right words, I can extrapolate in a different direction, and make it sound like a really dumb thing to have said. I bet we could get some really weird discussions going if we tried to do that with every post. It might be fun.

I guess the crux of the matter is which immoral acts you decide are more immoral than others. It's hard to do, if you're an Abolute Moralist (and scoff at moral relativists). Still, with this one, you have to. I base my decision on the rights of the existing, actual human, the woman, rather than the potential rights of the potential human that she must nurture. Heaven knows that women have been treated shabbily for a long time--even the bible says that the husband should "rule over" the wife. That's nuts. What if she's smarter than I am? So....you might look back at your statement, and ask yourself, "in what circumstances would I do something immoral to stop someone from doing something that is even more immoral?" You might also ask, "at what point is it none of my business?"

In the case of the "interesting scenario" that started this thread (we have to get back to the topic once in a while), it has been decided that it would be more immoral to allow the person to remove their body parts than to intervene and prevent them from doing so. "It's for their own good." [Aha, you say. He's just said that body parts are more important than entire humans! Not so--a body part is bigger and more complex than a blob of cells, and has actually reached its potential, which a mere blob of cells has not. Admittedly, though, neither of them has full sentience, and neither can survive on its own.] Do we think that it is "for the good of the mother" that we want to forbid her from having an abortion? No. We want to forbid it because we want to enforce our view or morality upon her--"rule over her," so to speak. If carrying a baby to term is right for her, I trust her to make that decision herself.

[singinbeauty]

Still, the bottom line, for me, is that it is immoral for me to force my will upon someone else. Even if I don't want an abortion for myself (unlikely, given that I'm male), I have no right to force someone else not to have one if she believes it is the right decision for herself. I might express a stronger opinion if it were my child, but I would still consider it immoral for me to make that decision for her.

But consider this... that "embryo" that she is carrying (if you are the father) is a part of you also... Does this not give you the right to not want your own flesh and blood to be killed? Right now the father, who is just as much apart of the child as the mother, has no rights in the matter. If the mother wants to kill the child then she can without the permission of the father. I think there is something terribley wrong with that.

I also want to note that while I do not agree with abortion and I do think that it is morally wrong... I don't condemn anyone who has done it. In the end we are all just responsible for our OWN actions and no one elses.

[Piper Plexed]

But consider this... that "embryo" that she is carrying (if you are the father) is a part of you also... Does this not give you the right to not want your own flesh and blood to be killed? Right now the father, who is just as much apart of the child as the mother, has no rights in the matter. If the mother wants to kill the child then she can without the permission of the father. I think there is something terribley wrong with that.

Ya know I believe this is a great point, and honestly would love discussing this further, if you like, start a thread and I will join you there.

[Corvus]

emphasise that euthanasia laws in America already allow parents or spouse to kill a person - a grown adult that looks as human as a human can - if they are in a comatose state and have no hope of recovery.

Granted, we do have to laws that allow us to "pull the plug" if need be but in your quote above you say that if there is no hope for recovery. With a baby, it is growing and recovery is not an issue. Why pull the plug on someone who is totally healthy and growing?

I have already stated why. Because it has no will in which pulling the plug is seen to be conflicting with its interest. If someone is knocked unconscious and has a hope of recovery, we are not entitled to kill him because this person has previously aspired to consciousness, and because of that, his will persists indefinitely. For a sentient creature, in modern society, a will is considered to persist even after death, as our wishes are carried out and are corpses are protected from descration. But a creature who has no such will, who has never had it, has not formulated any wishes. One cannot murder something that has no expectations and which is not yet capable of being grateful or resentful for an existence of which it never desired to be a part. Just as well to ask the tree whether the axe can bite it. It is not aware of existence and never has been. The only difference is that a foetus might acquire consciousness eventually, which still leaves us with a creature without a will and with no opinion on the matter.

But consider this... that "embryo" that she is carrying (if you are the father) is a part of you also... Does this not give you the right to not want your own flesh and blood to be killed? Right now the father, who is just as much apart of the child as the mother, has no rights in the matter. If the mother wants to kill the child then she can without the permission of the father. I think there is something terribley wrong with that.

A good point, and I do think that if the woman is in a relationship, the father should at the very least be consulted. The problem is that it is the woman that has to carry the offspring for nine months, which makes things immensely difficult if the father disagrees to an abortion.

Like Piper Plexed said, start a new topic on it and I'll be sure to be there, though this is a subject upon which I have no solid opinions as of yet.

The social contract can only protect those who can tacitly or explicitly agree or acquiesce to it.

If you could, please cite the authority or deduction by which you assert that a supposed social contracted only applies to "those who can tacitly or explicitly agree or acquiesce to it"

I don't need to. The very definition of a contract is an agreement. The definition of the social contract, to paraphrase Rousseau, Hobbes and others is "governance by the consent of the people", an idea which influenced the creation of the American constitution. I am honestly baffled by the question. It is evident that democratic societies recognise that you are entitled to rights, as per the contract, and if you breach the contract, some of those rights may be stripped from you.

If this is so then, by your argument, infanticide would be perfectly acceptable under the "social contract" because infants cannot tacitly or explicitly agree to anything.

But they can tacitly acquiesce to it. Since their survival is dependent on the existence of both a parent and a state, and, being a conscious thing, it has a will to live, which is more than the mechanical reactions of, say, a fly, a then the social contract extends its benefits towards it. The government is not permitted to abuse an authority over something that has a will that it has not been permitted - through breach of social contract - to control or oppose. Simply being born is a country is enough to agree to the social contract, however unfair people consider that to be.

Since you place social contract in quotation marks and call it "supposed", suggesting to me you don't believe in its existence, or have no faith in one, then why do you believe laws to be binding? With what authority are they enforced?

Here is a good quote from Wikipedia on "Constitution":

Having a codified constitution gives the advantage of a coherent and easily understood body of rules. In democratic systems, the constitution is considered a fundamental social contract among citizens (following Rousseau's writings), where government receives its powers from the people, not the monarch or a parliament, and is bound by an express set of human rights.

You may also wish to read the article on the social contract.

[virago81]

The arguments trying to justify abortion by means of social contract theory don't work because of a class of human beings that causes the argument to fall apart - namely, human infants. You can't justify abortion through this means without giving sanction to infanticide.

One cannot murder something that has no expectations and which is not yet capable of being grateful or resentful for an existence of which it never desired to be a part...The only difference is that a foetus might acquire consciousness eventually, which still leaves us with a creature without a will and with no opinion on the matter.

A human infant has no expectations or any of the other things mentioned here. It is also totally dependant for its survival on its parents , just as the fetus is. So by the arguments being given here, if it is acceptable to kill a fetus, it would similarly be acceptable to kill an infant.

The only qualitative difference between a healthy 36 week old fetus and a healthy newborn baby is that one is sustained by an umbilical cord and the other is sustained by air and mother's milk. Yet for some reason, we are to believe that one is protected by the social contract and the other is not? Should we then allow for the killing of scuba divers and not people walking around on dry land?

The social contract can only protect those who can tacitly or explicitly agree or acquiesce to it.

If this is so then, by your argument, infanticide would be perfectly acceptable under the "social contract" because infants cannot tacitly or explicitly agree to anything.

But they can tacitly acquiesce to it. Since their survival is dependent on the existence of both a parent and a state, and, being a conscious thing, it has a will to live, which is more than the mechanical reactions of, say, a fly, a then the social contract extends its benefits towards it.

"Acquiesce" and "agree" are synonyms. A newborn infant has no more consciousness or will to live than the many thousands of cows that are slaughtered every day for food. Yet, the infant is legally protected and the cows are not. Both are sentient, warm-blooded mammals, with about the same degree of consciousness, but only one is protected. Why? Because one has a certain quality called 'human'. One cannot strip that quality away from an adult, an infant or a fetus any more than one can strip the quality of "sitting-down thing" from a chair.

The government is not permitted to abuse an authority over something that has a will that it has not been permitted - through breach of social contract - to control or oppose. Simply being born is a country is enough to agree to the social contract, however unfair people consider that to be.

Again, an infant cannot agree tacitly (or by any other means) any more than a fetus can. Both the infant and the fetus have a demonstrable will to live, but being born is not agreeing to anything because agreements are willful. Saying that being born is equivalent to willful agreement is not unfair; it's simply undemonstrable and untrue. This is the point where the argument from a social contract simply does not work. We can either look this fact square in the face or avoid it or take off on a tangent, but let's not resort to sophistry.

Since you place social contract in quotation marks and call it "supposed", suggesting to me you don't believe in its existence, or have no faith in one, then why do you believe laws to be binding? With what authority are they enforced?

I believe in explicit contracts not implied ones. I do not believe that I have tacitly agreed to something just because Rousseau says I have. I believe that explicit laws are binding to the degree that they protect inalienable rights, i.e. rights that are endowed to us by virtue of the quality "human" (not by government fiat.) Rights are enforceable not by the authority of an implied social contract, but by explicit laws written to protect the underlying inalienable rights of all humans.

[Corvus]

One cannot murder something that has no expectations and which is not yet capable of being grateful or resentful for an existence of which it never desired to be a part...The only difference is that a foetus might acquire consciousness eventually, which still leaves us with a creature without a will and with no opinion on the matter.

A human infant has no expectations or any of the other things mentioned here. It is also totally dependant for its survival on its parents , just as the fetus is. So by the arguments being given here, if it is acceptable to kill a fetus, it would similarly be acceptable to kill an infant.

A human infant has no expectations? My argument is that as soon as a will is present in a human, then that human is deserving of the title of person until that human loses its will indefinitely. Will is synonymous with consciousness, and if I remember correctly, the sort of brain activity associated with higher thought is said to occur at around the 20th week. With the development of thought, we can presuppose the idea of self exists, rather than the foetus being simply a reactive machine - even if the thought is simply "I am hungry" or "I am uncomfortable". These thoughts are desires, subconscious or conscious, as suggested by the existence of mind. Do you believe an infant has a mind? What about the thing that appears on conception? They are two very different things.

Whether the foetus is totally dependant on the survival of its parents is irrelevant.

The only qualitative difference between a healthy 36 week old fetus and a healthy newborn baby is that one is sustained by an umbilical cord and the other is sustained by air and mother's milk. Yet for some reason, we are to believe that one is protected by the social contract and the other is not? Should we then allow for the killing of scuba divers and not people walking around on dry land?

I sincerely doubt you could find someone who supports abortion who believes a 36 week old fetus should be aborted. My argument on sentience argues that I would be morally opposed to that. I am not sure why you are making such an argument. Perhaps it is due to what I said later, that being born is enough for the social contract to protect a person. I will withdraw that statement and say "being a person is enough to be protected by the social contract". I define person further on in this post.

The social contract can only protect those who can tacitly or explicitly agree or acquiesce to it.

If this is so then, by your argument, infanticide would be perfectly acceptable under the "social contract" because infants cannot tacitly or explicitly agree to anything.

But they can tacitly acquiesce to it. Since their survival is dependent on the existence of both a parent and a state, and, being a conscious thing, it has a will to live, which is more than the mechanical reactions of, say, a fly, a then the social contract extends its benefits towards it.

"Acquiesce" and "agree" are synonyms.

Yes, but I was using it to differentiate between compliance and agreement, which, though similar, have slightly different meanings.

A newborn infant has no more consciousness or will to live than the many thousands of cows that are slaughtered every day for food. Yet, the infant is legally protected and the cows are not. Both are sentient, warm-blooded mammals, with about the same degree of consciousness, but only one is protected. Why? Because one has a certain quality called 'human'. One cannot strip that quality away from an adult, an infant or a fetus any more than one can strip the quality of "sitting-down thing" from a chair.

I deny the quality is that of being human alone. I claim the quality is that of "personhood", which includes for its criteria both "the quality of being a human" and "the quality of being aware" as both necessary. As has been already noted, a very human human can be lawfully killed by your euthanasia laws just as well as by abortion.

The government is not permitted to abuse an authority over something that has a will that it has not been permitted - through breach of social contract - to control or oppose. Simply being born is a country is enough to agree to the social contract, however unfair people consider that to be.

Again, an infant cannot agree tacitly (or by any other means) any more than a fetus can. Both the infant and the fetus have a demonstrable will to live, but being born is not agreeing to anything because agreements are willful. Saying that being born is equivalent to willful agreement is not unfair; it's simply undemonstrable and untrue. This is the point where the argument from a social contract simply does not work. We can either look this fact square in the face or avoid it or take off on a tangent, but let's not resort to sophistry.

But I don't agree that an agreement must be willful, otherwise land rates, taxes and copyright have no foundation in the law. The social agreement is what we expect from a government. Its duty is to the people within its borders, and like rights, it secures those expectations from life that every conscious creature has - survival - then agreement is taken as given until that person forfeits them. The existence of rights assumes that I want them even if I don't, much like the existence of rights by contract. I can also confidently say that because the government is doing the child a service, and the child has no responsibilities towards the government, then agreement is not necessary. The government has a duty of care to those persons who are fortunate enough to be in the area where it exercises its authority. A similar example is that as soon as one steps into an industrial workshop, or is even invited into another's home, the owner is liable for any harm that comes to you, which is another demonstration of an implicit contract.

If I were to take the social contract on a different spin, I could also say that even if there is no "contract" between government and foetus, there is a contract between government and parents or government and surgeons that can prevent the killing of sentient foetuses by its citizens.

This is the first time that I have introduced to social contract into the matter, previously only arguing for the rectitude of abortion based on sentience, so my thoughts on the matter are far from definite.

I add that the existence of an implied social contract may be undemonstrable, but it is just as undemonstrable the existence of rights by quality of being human.

Since you place social contract in quotation marks and call it "supposed", suggesting to me you don't believe in its existence, or have no faith in one, then why do you believe laws to be binding? With what authority are they enforced?

I do not believe that I have tacitly agreed to something just because Rousseau says I have.

Neither do I. But I do believe I have tacitly agreed with or condoned the terms of the social contract simply because I have done nothing that shows disagreement. I disagree that I should pay such a vast amount of tax when I work. I still comply with it because it is within my best interests to do so.

If I were American, I would not believe that the Creator has endowed by with human rights just because some Deist wrote about it in the Declaration of Independence.

I believe that explicit laws are binding to the degree that they protect inalienable rights, i.e. rights that are endowed to us by virtue of the quality "human" (not by government fiat.) Rights are enforceable not by the authority of an implied social contract, but by explicit laws written to protect the underlying inalienable rights of all humans.

This would mean laws that do not pertain to such inalienable rights can be discarded as being without foundation. Case in point is the Body Identity Disorder mentioned in the first post. There are many more, some of which have already been mentioned earlier, but since to discuss these would take the subject away from "legal ethic", I will not bring them up again.

I am not sure why you italicise "explicit", since the laws of a social contract are also explicit - agreement is simply taken for granted, much like the existence of "rights". At core, rights are simply the understanding that all entitlements and basic desires should be mutual, and every person expects the same basic things, which makes it not too different or incompatible with the social contract. It is very comforting to think they exist in objective terms by virtue of being human, but, I think, untenable. History shows otherwise. Inalienable is also a pretty strange word, since the existence of a gaol term, death penalty and recent wars show they are as alienable as ever, and need to be in order for them to be maintained. Heck, I have to pay taxes just so I can keep my right to property! Your Declaration of Independence states that "governments are instituted for these rights to be secured", which is as much of an admission that without a specific kind of government, rights can't exist.

[virago81]

My argument is that as soon as a will is present in a human, then that human is deserving of the title of person until that human loses its will indefinitely. Will is synonymous with consciousness, and if I remember correctly, the sort of brain activity associated with higher thought is said to occur at around the 20th week. With the development of thought, we can presuppose the idea of self exists, rather than the foetus being simply a reactive machine - even if the thought is simply "I am hungry" or "I am uncomfortable". These thoughts are desires, subconscious or conscious, as suggested by the existence of mind. Do you believe an infant has a mind? What about the thing that appears on conception? They are two very different things.

The will to live observable in a human infant (and fetus) are also readily observable in cows, chickens, lambs and other mammals we kill for food, so why the special protection for the infant? As I have observed, the human infant and these animals are at the same basic level of consciousness, but for some reason your theory only protects the human infant. Why is that?

Honestly, I don't know if an infant has a 'mind' or when a fetus might develop a 'mind'. And the thing is that no one else can say for sure "mind develops at exactly day 140". So a hypothetical: If you were given a black box and told, "Well, there might be a human being in here and there might not be", would you smash it with a hammer? If you can't be certain what is in the box, would it be responsible to destroy the box because it happens to be inconvenient.

And isn't this really what the topic is about - some people claiming the right to kill other 'inconvenient' people simply because they are small and have no ability to speak for themselves? Who will speak for them?

I sincerely doubt you could find someone who supports abortion who believes a 36 week old fetus should be aborted. My argument on sentience argues that I would be morally opposed to that.

Oh, I can find plenty. And not just the common folk. Check out the number of US Senators who voted against a bill that would have outlawed a special form of late-term abortion known as "partial-birth abortion".

My problem with the sentience argument is that it is not consistent because there many many classes of sentient animals in the world, but inexplicably, the sentience argument only protects one type of animal - humans.

I deny the quality is that of being human alone. I claim the quality is that of "personhood", which includes for its criteria both "the quality of being a human" and "the quality of being aware" as both necessary. As has been already noted, a very human human can be lawfully killed by your euthanasia laws just as well as by abortion.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but by that definition a sleeping human is not a person and might be targeted for extermination. If the notion of killing sleeping humans is rejected, then I would say that fetuses are simply a special class of sleeping human beings who like other sleeping human beings will eventually become aware if only given time to 'wake up'.

(The second part of the statement is irrelevant to the current conversation because I have never indicated my agreement with US euthanasia law.)

It's interesting that the debate about pulling the plug on people in a coma (another class of unaware people) usually centers around whether the comatose human has a chance of having consciousness again. In the case of a fetus, it's almost a certainty that it will indeed gain consciousness if it is simply left alone, but for some strange reason it is given less consideration than the comatose by some.

"To him who has, more will be given. To him who has not, even that will be taken away"...Indeed!

But I don't agree that an agreement must be willful, otherwise land rates, taxes and copyright have no foundation in the law.

Tax laws and copyright laws are indeed willful agreements in democratic republics. (You are right that such laws are not willful in fascist states or dictatorships). In a republic, people live in the state willfully, they are not prisoners and may leave at any time. If they decide to stay, then they determine their own tax laws and copyright laws by means of the ballot box. If elections don't go the citizens way, then they are free to (1) stay and live with the result anyway or (2) leave. Everything is willful.

...I do believe I have tacitly agreed with or condoned the terms of the social contract simply because I have done nothing that shows disagreement. I disagree that I should pay such a vast amount of tax when I work. I still comply with it because it is within my best interests to do so.

I think much of this is covered in the previous section. In the words of the great Geddy Lee: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Passivity is a choice. In a republic, unfairly taxed citizens need not simply sit passively, though they may if they choose to.

If I were American, I would not believe that the Creator has endowed by with human rights just because some Deist wrote about it in the Declaration of Independence.

Touche! But I didn't write anything about rights being endowed by a Creator. I simply said that I believe that humans are endued with inalienable rights. It is not necessary to say how for the purposes of defining societies and government.

Note that this is much like Descartes', "I think therefore I am". Descartes realized that he could not even prove that he himself existed, but he did realize that if there were to be any progress in philosophy then some starting point must be agreed upon. It turns out that most people rejected solipsism in favor of Descartes' proposed starting point of "I exist" and "You exist". As a result, considerable progress has been made.

Similarly, a basic unprovable axiom must be the starting point for discussions of society and government and most people will agree to the starting point: "I have an inalienable right to life and freedom and so do you". If we can't agree on each other's right to exist in freedom, then it's going to be a bit hard to make progress in coming up with a mutually beneficial society, wouldn't you agree?

This would mean laws that do not pertain to such inalienable rights can be discarded as being without foundation.

Yes, absolutely. Inalienable rights are the foundation of all just law. Unjust laws should be overturned and, failing that, conscientiously disobeyed as in the case of the US Civil Rights Era and Ghandi's Freedom Movement in India.

(For more information on just law, do a quick search for the treatise "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat (French Lawyer - 1800s))

I am not sure why you italicise "explicit", since the laws of a social contract are also explicit - agreement is simply taken for granted, much like the existence of "rights".

My experience is that "the social contract" is implied and not explicit. If it were explicit, it would be codified in the law. Something like: "All wealth shall be redistributed equitably by any means necessary". But it is never codified like this, but is instead used as the justification for unjust laws such as confiscatory tax rates. When asked: "What basic rights are confiscatory tax rates protecting?" The lawmaker responds: "Oh, none, but it is part of the social contract". The part of the "social contract" he is referring to is "the right of some to live at the expense of others" which, of course, is totally contrary to the basic human right to his own life (and the products thereof)

Inalienable is also a pretty strange word, since the existence of a gaol term, death penalty and recent wars show they are as alienable as ever, and need to be in order for them to be maintained. Heck, I have to pay taxes just so I can keep my right to property! Your Declaration of Independence states that "governments are instituted for these rights to be secured", which is as much of an admission that without a specific kind of government, rights can't exist.

Inalienable means that the rights are not forfeitable (except as the penalty for violating the rights of others.) If someone steals your car, it does not mean that you have forfeited your right to your property. It simply means that someone has violated those rights. Your inalienable right to your property is why the police will listen to your complaint and assist you in recovering your car.

You have to pay taxes to keep your property until you vote for representatives who repeal your property taxes. The people who passed the land tax laws are your representatives whom you elect.

The last statement is false. The Declaration of Independence says that governments are established to secure the rights of man, not create them. The bold point is that men have been endowed with rights, government or no government. The corollary is that those governments that protect the endued rights of men are legitimate and those governments that do not are illegitimate. It may not be a provable assertion, but again, what other axiom would you propose to begin with?

[Corvus]

My argument is that as soon as a will is present in a human, then that human is deserving of the title of person until that human loses its will indefinitely. Will is synonymous with consciousness, and if I remember correctly, the sort of brain activity associated with higher thought is said to occur at around the 20th week. With the development of thought, we can presuppose the idea of self exists, rather than the foetus being simply a reactive machine - even if the thought is simply "I am hungry" or "I am uncomfortable". These thoughts are desires, subconscious or conscious, as suggested by the existence of mind. Do you believe an infant has a mind? What about the thing that appears on conception? They are two very different things.

The will to live observable in a human infant (and fetus) are also readily observable in cows, chickens, lambs and other mammals we kill for food, so why the special protection for the infant? As I have observed, the human infant and these animals are at the same basic level of consciousness, but for some reason your theory only protects the human infant. Why is that?

I addressed this when I got to my statement on Personhood.

Honestly, I don't know if an infant has a 'mind' or when a fetus might develop a 'mind'. And the thing is that no one else can say for sure "mind develops at exactly day 140". So a hypothetical: If you were given a black box and told, "Well, there might be a human being in here and there might not be", would you smash it with a hammer? If you can't be certain what is in the box, would it be responsible to destroy the box because it happens to be inconvenient.

I can't say when a foetus definitely has a mind, but I think it can be pointed out when it definitely cannot possess one. That is, when the brain is fairly rudimentary and before any large-scale linking of neurons. The first trimester up to around the middle of the second trimester sounds very safe to me.

And isn't this really what the topic is about - some people claiming the right to kill other 'inconvenient' people simply because they are small and have no ability to speak for themselves? Who will speak for them?

My definition of person is different to yours.

I sincerely doubt you could find someone who supports abortion who believes a 36 week old fetus should be aborted. My argument on sentience argues that I would be morally opposed to that.

Oh, I can find plenty. And not just the common folk. Check out the number of US Senators who voted against a bill that would have outlawed a special form of late-term abortion known as "partial-birth abortion".

I believe the reason many voted against the bill is that the amount of abortions by choice at such a late stage of pregnancy are minuscule, while an overwhelming number are necessary due to injurious complications that might arise that affect the mother. The bill limited the procedure to life or death situations and ignored any disability the mother might incur by going ahead with an unsafe pregnancy, not to mention the amount of anxiety it would induce in surgeons about even touching a mother at such a late stage. Partial birth abortions are definitely not used for birth control.

http://www.korrnet.org/choicetn/late.term.html

Statistics compiled by the Alan Guttmacher Institute's research confirm the 600-per-year figure and indicate that abortions in the third trimester (the 7th, 8th and 9th months) of pregnancy are indeed very rare, accounting for fewer than 0.04% of abortions. Third trimester abortions are done when necessary to protect a woman's life or health, in many cases when there are severe fetal abnormalities that make it risky to continue the pregnancy. A large percentage of second trimester abortions, particularly those in the late second trimester, are performed for the same reasons.

My problem with the sentience argument is that it is not consistent because there many many classes of sentient animals in the world, but inexplicably, the sentience argument only protects one type of animal - humans.

Because only humans can be "persons". See following:

I deny the quality is that of being human alone. I claim the quality is that of "personhood", which includes for its criteria both "the quality of being a human" and "the quality of being aware" as both necessary. As has been already noted, a very human human can be lawfully killed by your euthanasia laws just as well as by abortion.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but by that definition a sleeping human is not a person and might be targeted for extermination. If the notion of killing sleeping humans is rejected, then I would say that fetuses are simply a special class of sleeping human beings who like other sleeping human beings will eventually become aware if only given time to 'wake up'.

Since I knew this would come up, I explained why it is different:

If someone is knocked unconscious and has a hope of recovery, we are not entitled to kill him because this person has previously aspired to consciousness, and because of that, his will persists indefinitely. For a sentient creature, in modern society, a will is considered to persist even after death, as our wishes are carried out and are corpses are protected from desecration. But a creature who has no such will, who has never had it, has not formulated any wishes.

I think of the will as a passive subconscious desire arising within the mind of a foetus, cannot exist until the mind exists. Implicit in just one moment of consciousness is the expectation that another moment of consciousness will follow. That, I argue, persists indefinitely. Will persists from the moment it is born with mind until the moment the person's brain ceases to function or the direction of his will changes. Euthanasia law presupposes that partners and parents know the wishes of the comatose, or that the mind is completely gone.

(The second part of the statement is irrelevant to the current conversation because I have never indicated my agreement with US euthanasia law.)

I know. I hadn't expected you to. But I thought it might be nice to provide what law calls a precedent, though, since I think it was a law made after Roe vs Wade, it should probably be correctly called an antecedent. Evidence of philosophical consistency in US law or somesuch.

It's interesting that the debate about pulling the plug on people in a coma (another class of unaware people) usually centers around whether the comatose human has a chance of having consciousness again. In the case of a fetus, it's almost a certainty that it will indeed gain consciousness if it is simply left alone, but for some strange reason it is given less consideration than the comatose by some.

Because, as I have explained, recovery is different to a newfound thing. To do it before any will arises is to me the most moral, since that subconscious expectation of living is not there. The "will" to which I keep alluding is what determines a crime. A suicide is not a criminal if he hangs himself. Neither is a physician who assists at a suicide. A thief isn't thieving if he is given something. Admittedly their consciousness is more sophisticated than that of a foetus, but the same principle operates.

But I don't agree that an agreement must be willful, otherwise land rates, taxes and copyright have no foundation in the law.

Tax laws and copyright laws are indeed willful agreements in democratic republics. (You are right that such laws are not willful in fascist states or dictatorships). In a republic, people live in the state willfully, they are not prisoners and may leave at any time. If they decide to stay, then they determine their own tax laws and copyright laws by means of the ballot box. If elections don't go the citizens way, then they are free to (1) stay and live with the result anyway or (2) leave. Everything is willful.

If you believe this to be your included as a willful agreement, then you have just demonstrated how the social contract is entirely legitimate. Copyright laws are implicit in that even if no publisher is approached, a poem or piece of writing is the intellectual copyright of its writer, and a reader, even if he sees no copyright, has a mutual understanding with the writer that he cannot abuse the privilege of being able to read it by passing it off as his own work or reproducing it without consent.

This would mean laws that do not pertain to such inalienable rights can be discarded as being without foundation.

Yes, absolutely. Inalienable rights are the foundation of all just law. Unjust laws should be overturned and, failing that, conscientiously disobeyed as in the case of the US Civil Rights Era and Ghandi's Freedom Movement in India.

(For more information on just law, do a quick search for the treatise "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat (French Lawyer - 1800s))

No, I think you misunderstood me. I was not speaking of unjust laws, but laws that, for example, force one to wear a seatbelt, not smoke drugs (though forcing one not to drive a car while smoking drugs is permissible), be married only to members of the opposite sex or, indeed, allow one to married at all etc, etc.

As an aside, aren't civil rights normally considered to be granted by government, thus the separate distinction from human rights? Surely here we have left the shaky ground of human rights and are on a territory where the social contract provides a more reasonable explanation.

"To him who has, more will be given. To him who has not, even that will be taken away"...Indeed!

Him who has nothing, has nothing to take away.

My experience is that "the social contract" is implied and not explicit. If it were explicit, it would be codified in the law. Something like: "All wealth shall be redistributed equitably by any means necessary". But it is never codified like this, but is instead used as the justification for unjust laws such as confiscatory tax rates. When asked: "What basic rights are confiscatory tax rates protecting?" The lawmaker responds: "Oh, none, but it is part of the social contract". The part of the "social contract" he is referring to is "the right of some to live at the expense of others" which, of course, is totally contrary to the basic human right to his own life (and the products thereof)

I see now why you are against the social contract, though I think you are labouring under a misapprehension. The social contract isn't supposed to be justification for anything, but an explanation of how a democratic system with publicly elected officials functions. What you would be arguing against is the terms and clauses of the social contract. A social contract which enlists the services of the government for the securing of human rights and only human rights is still a social contract, and the one you most favour. But as far as your disagreement with the clauses go, such as a confiscatory tax rate, you have already shown that you willingly comply with it:

Tax laws and copyright laws are indeed willful agreements in democratic republics. (You are right that such laws are not willful in fascist states or dictatorships). In a republic, people live in the state willfully, they are not prisoners and may leave at any time. If they decide to stay, then they determine their own tax laws and copyright laws by means of the ballot box. If elections don't go the citizens way, then they are free to (1) stay and live with the result anyway or (2) leave. Everything is willful.

The confiscatory tax law is explicit. I concede that the reason for the law is not, but this is the fault of lawmakers, not the social contract itself. They could just as readily respond to your question by saying "because this is a democracy, silly!" and that would be as invalid and seemingly arbitrary as the decision to implement a welfare state would be. I have to state, though, for the record, I am not really averse to considerable taxes or a welfare state.

Touche! But I didn't write anything about rights being endowed by a Creator. I simply said that I believe that humans are endued with inalienable rights. It is not necessary to say how for the purposes of defining societies and government.

Certainly, but it is necessary if we want to give any sort of justification for their actions. One would also hope that the foundation for a society is quite solid.

Note that this is much like Descartes', "I think therefore I am". Descartes realized that he could not even prove that he himself existed, but he did realize that if there were to be any progress in philosophy then some starting point must be agreed upon. It turns out that most people rejected solipsism in favor of Descartes' proposed starting point of "I exist" and "You exist". As a result, considerable progress has been made.

I don't believe no progress would have been made if Descartes had not first thought of the axiom. I also believe Descartes did prove to himself that he existed, though only as "a thinking thing". "I think" proves that "I am", but does not demonstrate in what form. It also doesn't prove to others that Descartes exists. I don't really understand why "I think therefore I am" is an unproven assumption like rights, or that solipsism and Descartes' axiom are mutually exclusive.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm
In introducing 'methodic doubt' into philosophy, Descartes created the backdrop against which solipsism subsequently developed, and was made to seem, if not plausible, at least irrefutable. For the ego which is revealed by the cogito is, Descartes held, a solitary consciousness, a res cogitans which is not spatially extended, which, as such, is not necessarily located in any body, and which accordingly can be assured of its own existence exclusively as a conscious mind. (Discourse on Method and the Meditations). This view of the self is intrinsically solipsistic, and Descartes evades the solipsistic consequences of his method of doubt only by the rather desperate expedient of appealing to the benevolence of God. Since God is no deceiver, he argues, and since He has created man with an innate disposition to assume the existence of an external, public world corresponding to the private world of the 'ideas' which are the only immediate objects of consciousness, it follows that such a public world actually exists.

Similarly, a basic unprovable axiom must be the starting point for discussions of society and government and most people will agree to the starting point: "I have an inalienable right to life and freedom and so do you". If we can't agree on each other's right to exist in freedom, then it's going to be a bit hard to make progress in coming up with a mutually beneficial society, wouldn't you agree?

Now you've come to the heart of the issue; that rights are devised for the purpose of "coming up with a mutually beneficial society"! If another method could be proposed that allows a mutually beneficial society, then surely it would be just as valid as an unprovable axiom.

I say the life of a man living like a beast does in nature is short and violent, and one in which one man is entitled to slaughter another. To overcome this, man forms societies and consent to an authority for their own mutual benefit. The authority puts limitations upon their actions in return for a greater security or protection for all. Being a democracy, we decide on the extent of the protection - whether it covers just the basic needs, like life, liberty and the pursuit of pie, or whether it encompasses a whole range of entitlements, like welfare and other disputable policies. The government cannot take liberties with our liberties or our life because this is contrary to the principle on which this covenant is based, and they cannot abuse something over which they have no ownership. The people have the "right" to rebel - amongst other things - if oppressed.

Inalienable means that the rights are not forfeitable (except as the penalty for violating the rights of others.)

Why the except? The except does not appear anywhere in the definition of inalienable but is taken as a given. What is so bad with taking the alternate view that rights are entitlements and those who abuse the privilege of living in a society that exists for the benefit of its members can have them taken away? The social contract fits the data perfectly here.

You have to pay taxes to keep your property until you vote for representatives who repeal your property taxes. The people who passed the land tax laws are your representatives whom you elect.

No disagreement from me.

The last statement is false. The Declaration of Independence says that governments are established to secure the rights of man, not create them.

I stated quite clearly what the Declaration of Independence says, then proceeded to give an opinion on its implications. Feel free to point out where I stated the Declaration creates rights:

The Declaration of Independence states that "governments are instituted for these rights to be secured", which is as much of an admission that without a specific kind of government, rights can't exist.

The bold point is that men have been endowed with rights, government or no government. The corollary is that those governments that protect the endued rights of men are legitimate and those governments that do not are illegitimate. It may not be a provable assertion, but again, what other axiom would you propose to begin with?

Why must it be an axiom?