WJ

TS!

Good point. Though I'm sort of an anti-rationalist, I wanted to see how far common sense would appeal to some of [our] those old arguments that we've all heard at one time or another, before.

In other words, some things are unknown, and some things we know with a higher degree of certainty (ie, existence is a predicate). We must first exist to logicize (postulate the issue)!

I suppose it is the 'interuption' of the process itself that causes all the grief, and has the so-called far reaching impacts (ie Catholicism viz. contraception). It's not easy for sure... .

...as you were.

Walrus

bd-from-kg

Danya:

First false accusation.

Perhaps you need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.

Wow. You definitely need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.

Second false accusation.

I see that you’ve completed the course on “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”. Congratulations.

Ah, you’re improving. Gratuitous insults and false accusations all rolled together. Much more efficient.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s not my practice to respond to people who descend into personal attacks. But I’ll miss your pointers on proper prose style.

Danya

I never considered you a friend or a person (basically I considered you a windbag and nothing else). You aren't exactly on any popularity lists in this discussion so your smug replies really don't work.

[ April 02, 2002: Message edited by: Danya ]</p>

99Percent

To both Danya and bd-from-kg

That is enough. Please maintain the topic at hand and stop the petty insults.

This is my only warning. Next post with any insults will be deleted/edited without any warning.

Jerry Smith

bd-from-kg:

You said...
If you view the fetus as a person, these arguments become a thorny issue. They would be ridiculous except for the existence of such factors as rape and real threats to women's health. I think that you have effectively knocked down my attempt to defend these pro-choice arguments even in cases where there was no rape or major threat to a woman's health. I think this would be a fortuitous time to move this part of the discussion to a different thread. I will take up that effort in the near future and will edit this post to include a link to that thread.

I agree that we should focus more on this question. I will repost my last Personhood post (that you did not have time to reply to last time) on
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000108" target="_blank">this thread</a>.

I know that you are having to carry several arguments at the same time, and I have only one to keep up. Please don't feel that I am trying to rush you, even if I post more than once in a day. And please forgive me that I do not have Malaclypse's clear and concise style. I am obviously clumsy with formulating arguments or ideas into simple and short posts.

bd-from-kg

99Percent:

No problem. Danya’s April 1 (9:08 PM) post accused me three times of intellectual dishonesty in addition to various other totally unprovoked insults. My last post was my way of telling her that she has gone so far out of bounds that I do not intend to respond to any further posts from her.

As for my comments about Danya’s interpretation of Dr. Singer’s position, you need only use the links I provided to judge for yourself whether they were justified.

Now back to the original topic.

bd-from-kg

Jerry Smith:

I’ve already explained why I think it’s inappropriate to consider cases involving rape before resolving the question of what should be done in “ordinary” cases. The same applies to cases that involve serious threats to the mother’s life or health. In the former case there is no real issue. Even the Catholic Church does not oppose abortion under these conditions. As to what to do when only the woman’s health is threatened, this is a thorny issue, but again, it’s one that I think should be deferred until some kind of agreement on ordinary cases has been reached. Again, such cases are quite rare unless (like the SC) you define “health” so expansively as to include the “harm” to the woman’s mental “health” resulting from not being allowed to have an abortion.

Actually I was already preparing a reply to your last post when this one arrived. I had two root canals yesterday, which slowed me down a bit. (They went well.) I’ll probably put up some shorter, simpler posts on the original thread, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten yours.

But since you’ve started another thread I suppose I should move the “personhood” discussion there. I’ll probably copy one or two of my posts there as well to save time for anyone wanting to follow or join the discussion.

bd-from-kg

Jamie_L:

But it would seem that you do not take issue with it, since you use this very phrase a couple of sentences later to explain why you consider a comatose individual a “person”.

Neither does a comatose individual. That’s why he’s not having mental events. To be sure, he has physical structures similar to ones that can produce mental events, but why should that make him a person? He also may have physical structures very similar to those in a brain-dead individual, but that doesn’t make him brain-dead, does it? There is an enormous spectrum of possible physical states, and you have to draw the line somewhere. If you don’t draw the line between physical states that are capable of producing morally relevant mental states and those that aren’t, where do you draw it? If you insist on using physical states in your criterion, why not draw it between physical states that can reasonably be expected to develop naturally into physical states that can produce morally significant mental events, and those that can’t be reasonably expected to do so.

A newborn baby is an excellent test case. Although it has physical structures that can produce mental events of a sort, they are not of the sort that would qualify him as a person. What does qualify him as a person is the fact that he is expected in the future to have mental events of the relevant kind, which will produced by physical structures that, while quite different from the ones he has now, will develop naturally from them.

Anyway, why are you and Jerry so obsessed with physical structures? Why do you insist on drawing up a criterion for personhood in terms of them? Both of you seem to concede that they are only significant as predictors of future mental states. If so, why don’t we talk about what future mental states are morally significant and let our main criterion for “personhood” be based on whether an individual is likely to have them? To be sure, once this question is resolved we still have to turn to the question of how to determine whether a given individual is likely to have such mental states in the future, and the answer to this question will obviously involve physical states. But there would seem to be no reason to define the criterion for personhood in such a way that we have to change it any time our understanding of the relationship between physical states and mental states changes. If the likelihood of certain kinds of mental states in the future is really our reason for regarding certain individuals as “persons”, then why not make this the criterion?

Tristan Scott

Has there been any discussion about underage abortion?

If a sixteen year-old, for example, is pregnant and wants to get an abortion, should she be able to do so without notifying, or getting permission from, her parent(s)?

KJELLMUSIC

Well, if a fetus has rights beyond what the parents want then the 16 y/o should also have rights beyond what her parents want.