long winded fool

As has been repeatedly pointed out, "all are born free and equal" does not specifically include or exclude fetuses. It says nothing at all about fetuses. "All humans walk the earth free and equal" does not specifically exclude humans who do not walk the earth. It doesn't specifically include them either, but since a human who cannot walk is still a human, and since a human who has not been born is still a human, it is implied that they are included by the declaration, "All members of the human family have equal and inalienable rights." Not all humans are born. This is a false assumption. A human being is a member of the family Hominidae of the group homo according to the dictionary. Changing this definition to something nebulous and then coming to a conclusion based on this unwarranted assumption is completely arbitrary and not logical. Assume that the words "human being" refer to the life form that is classified a human being. Doing otherwise is irrational.

I give up. Please point out my fallacy, because I do not recognize it.

Jinto

Let's do this colloquially then: Your fallacy is assuming that I make omlets out of birds.

Jinto

A cesarean section is still considered a birth. Birth is the emergence and separation of the offspring from the womb: in your micro-surgery example, the umbilical cord is never cut, and therefore such an event cannot be considered birth. Frankly, your (jeez, learn to spell) pseudo-logic needs a little less pseudo and a lot more logic.

dk

So in your opinion cutting the embilocal cord distinguishes a baby from a fetus, makes sense. But, lets say a reckless driver hits a 9 month pregnant women, not hard, but the impact kills the fetus. What crime has been committed?

Dr Rick

Don't worry; you haven't committed a crime, but I suspect you are about to commit another logical fallacy: If A then B; B therefore, A: Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent,

"If a fetus is a baby, then killing a fetus is murder; killing a fetus is murder [at least in some jurisdictions under some circumstances], so a fetus must be a baby."

The flaw here that even though the premises are true, the conclusion is false: as you and others are no doubt aware, the killing of a fetus can result in a charge of murder, but calling the killing of a fetus murder does not necessarily mean that a fetus is a baby.

Rick

Dr Rick

Sure, but first let's correct your grammar; it's your fallacies:

True

True

False, you have illegitimately conjoined two propositions though one does not imply the other, nor does believing one mean that you have to believe the other; this is the complex question fallacy

There is no rule of logic that including non-walking humans under the terms of the declaration "implies" anything about any other group, and even though we could interpret that specific wording to exclude them doesn't mean that we must or even should. Either way, the inclusion or exclusion of non-walking humans has nothing to do with the inclusion or exclusion of fetuses.

Non sequitur fallacy; what the hell are you babbling about?

Quote:

A human being is a member of the family Hominidae of the group homo according to the dictionary. Changing this definition to something nebulous and then coming to a conclusion based on this unwarranted assumption is completely arbitrary and not logical. Assume that the words "human being" refer to the life form that is classified a human being. Doing otherwise is irrational.

Ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant conclusion) fallacy, and a particularly ironic one since your argument shifts definitions, which is the fallacy of Equivocation: You have used the term human family to mean human beings in one sentence, but use the taxonomic meaning in another. Even so, the conclusions here do nothing to support your position that "fetuses logically have inalienable human rights."

Rick

long winded fool

The killing of a fetus may not necessarily be murder, but it is the killing of a human being. Once you've established that a human being has been killed, one must look at the motives to establish whether the killing was justified. The purpose of preserving another human life might make the killing of a human justified. Preserving another human's right to privacy, financial security, long-term health, cosmetic appearance, and/or freedom from pain does not justify the killing of a human being. Is the purpose of abortion always to protect the life of another human? Can abortion for any other reason be logically justified given the legal precedents of equal and inalienable human rights and justifiable homicide? By what logic can the human fetus be excluded from human rights? How can we as a society maintain contradictory laws without eventually softening the foundation of the legal system until it collapses under it's own weight? Why do we think we can safely ignore reason and act on the selfish instinct of fear and insecurity? Because we say so. We can engage in whatever behavior we like. Not only is this an important freedom, it is an enormous responsibility. Misuse of this freedom to ignore reason and pursue instinct historically resulted in the collapse of countless societies much like ours, sociologically. They enforced detrimental laws which privileged the powerful at the expense of the weak. The stubborn and emotional refused reason and objectivity because these things brought temporary inconvenience and each society met a similar fate. These desperate desires to make ourselves feel better about something at the expense of critical analysis are instincts which have become obsolete to human beings living in a civilization. Unless we learn to recognize our irrational fears for what they are, we will never stop warring against each other and sowing the seeds of a disastrous crop which our children will be forced to reap at the end of our latest attempt at establishing a working civilization.

Maybe legal abortion in a free country isn't the end of the world. Maybe there are problems far worse than abortion that need more immediate address. Maybe it is a trivial problem when compared to other atrocities. I would grant any of these in an argument. It IS, without any doubt, a problem. That legal abortion is not a societal problem I cannot grant, because logic clearly shows otherwise. Outlawing abortion is not important to me. That people are able to recognize an irrational notion is vitally important. We can't improve socially if we don't reason and without social improvement society will not survive for very long. Once we learn to ignore our instincts and listen to the voice of reason, the irrational notions will disappear taking their consequences with them.

long winded fool

It is not a complex question fallacy! How did you determine this? It is an an apt analogy. The point was that you can conclude nothing at all about any differentiation between types of human beings from the first article of the UDHR.

There is no rule of logic that including non-walking humans under the terms of the declaration "implies" anything about any other group, and even though we could interpret that specific wording to exclude them doesn't mean that we must or even should. Either way, the inclusion or exclusion of non-walking humans has nothing to do with the inclusion or exclusion of fetuses.

I never claimed that there was a rule of logic that including non-walking humans (or unborn humans if you want) under the terms of the declaration implies anything about any other group. The only reason to not to interpret "all humans walk the earth" as excluding non-walking humans is in the event of a statement elsewhere which declares that all members of the human family are entitled to human rights. Since the exclusion of the non-walking/unborn humans cannot logically coexist with the application of equal rights to all humans, one is wrong. Since nowhere in the UDHR are non-walking/unborn humans excluded, there is no logical dilemma. It is false in the analogous situation to say that non-walking humans are excluded by the statement "all humans walk the earth free and equal..." It is false to say that fetuses are excluded by the statement "born free and equal in dignity and rights." Get it?

Non sequitur fallacy; what the hell are you babbling about?

Perhaps you should have left the statement intact instead of splitting it in the middle and addressing each half.

Ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant conclusion) fallacy, and a particularly ironic one since your argument shifts definitions, which is the fallacy of Equivocation: You have used the term human family to mean human beings in one sentence, but use the taxonomic meaning in another. Even so, the conclusions here do nothing to support your position that "fetuses logically have inalienable human rights."

Rick

It is not a fallacy to use a word with multiple meanings when the meanings are clearly differentiated. I have shown that "all members of the human family" ought not be interpreted "all members of the hominid family." This is a fallacy of applying too broad a definition. Because all humans are members of the hominid family doesn't mean that all hominids are humans. Since human rights only apply to humans by definition, not all hominids have human rights, but all members of the human family, (the family of species which are human) have human rights. A human is a member of the group of species homo. Which, of course, logically would include fetuses of this group, (though legally it doesn't. Hence I give you: the irrational law of legal abortion.)

While I applaud your research into logical fallacies, you are mislabeling. Examples of fallacies are usually supplied in fallacy indexes. You ought to compare these with my arguments before you delcare them fallacious.

Jinto

Dr. Rick, I think that you should note that the phrase "all humans walk the Earth free and equal" does not appear in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so if your argument is based on using their definitions of human beings (I don't know that it is, and frankly I don't want to read back through the thread to figure out how the whole thing got brought up in the first place, so if I'm wrong, just ignore this), then frankly you're in no danger from simply recognizing that claim as a falsehood precisely because it does exclude non-walking humans.

LWF, again, it is just as valid to make a distinction between humans and fetuses as it is to make a distinction between birds and eggs.

To dk:

Depends on the state obviously, but if you're asking what crime I would convict the driver of then the answer is none.

dk

Your response offers the best evidence so far that abortion devalues human life.