Dr Rick

lwf, if you still can't understand your errors after they have been explained to you several times in the course of an 8 page thread, it's unlikely that repeating the explanations again is going to help you. Go back and read the thread and see if you can comprehend it better on another try

If you're still confused, take some couses in basic logic so that you'll be able to understand what is meant when your arguements are criticized for containing circular reasoning, false premises, irrelevant conclusions, and equivocation so that you can avoid making these same errors over and over again. A course in logic could help you learn how to analyze issues rationally, which is a critical first step in putting together a logical and convincing arguement.

Read a little about the law, and learn what an article is and does in relation to a preamble. Discover how laws are supposed to be interpreted to mean what they were meant to mean, and not something they weren't meant to mean. Contrary to your implicit assertion, one does not need clarvoiyance to do so, and judges, lawyers, scholars, and law officers spend much time interpreting what others meant by what they said or wrote. Learn that legal interpretations are more than just word-games.

Good luck.

Rick

long winded fool

I see. I couldn’t help but notice that you refer to yourself as Dr. Rick. Are you a medical doctor? You know, back during the civil war period, those pro-slavery human beings who argued the most vehemently and emotionally, who disregarded logic from their moral values and who eventually let their guns do their talking for them, where the ones with the whips and shackles. Would you shoot me if my life threatened to permanently end the legality of abortion? No, of course you wouldn’t. Murder is not legal. You would only take the lives of innocent human beings if there were no legal repercussions and a human being that you could relate to would benefit, isn’t that true? Getting paid to obey the law and allow women the right to abort? Make a profit, while doing a good deed? If abortion were illegal, it would indicate that perhaps it is also immoral, and had been the whole time. What would that do to you Dr. Rick? Would you be haunted by all the lives of boys and girls, men and women, that were denied existnece by a conscious decision made by you, or by doctors and mothers who listened to you? Would your hands suddenly turn red with the blood of countless human beings whose only crime was unconsciousness? Would you start to think that, just maybe, if you had been aborted, lives would have been saved? Ironic, isn’t it, that a small evil can prevent a greater evil? If you could go back in time, would you abort Adolf Hitler? Would taking his life be good or evil? Or Mother Teresa? As a fetus, she was equal to the unborn Adolf Hitler. Is it less evil to kill an innocent fetus who will one day murder or cause the murder a great many innocent human beings than an innocent fetus who will one day become a great humanitarian? Would the answer to this question validate you? Would it frighten you? Condemn you, perhaps?

Or would the abolition of abortion not affect you? Would you live to the end of your long days guilt-free? Would you miss the good old days when women had the choice of abortion? When human lives could be forgotten at the convenience of others? When an annoyance could be sucked away through a plastic tube and disposed of without a second thought? Would you be able to forget about all those millions of humans who never had the chance to grow, become valuable little boys or girls and eventually gallant men or graceful women, and learn to take enjoyment from the gift of the life they were granted by fate? The very gift that was taken away shortly after it was given them by one who had already mastered the gift and learned how to use it to his or her own enjoyment? Would you forget that you shared responsibility in this? Would you overlook the fact that you advocated the eradication of these human beings as though they were pests or undesirable animals? Aren't you overlooking this fact right now? Aren't you using its legality to justify abortion to your conscience? If that is enough for now, will it continue to be as you grow older? Will you be a wiser and a better man then, or will you just be richer, in money or in intellectual agreement with your peers? Are you increasing your wisdom for the sake of becoming a valorous man not touched by fear or insecurity, or are you increasing your imagination and cowing under your fears and insecurities for the sake of profit and/or peer acceptance? The only person who needs an answer to this is the person who asks this question of him or herself. I have my answer, and I expect that you will find your answer soon enough.

Will you accuse me of being the Daedalus who makes your words walk away, not perceiving that there is another and far greater artist than Daedalus who makes them go round in a circle...

-Socrates

Dr Rick

...make that recommendation two courses in logic, lwf.

Rick

The Other Michael

Long winded fool,

In the recommended logic courses you'll also learn about ad hominem attacks. Your last post appears to have at least a taint of ad hom about it, though I'll have to admit that I'm having difficulty deciding if you are justing posing hyperbolic rhetorical questions or actually attempting to impugn Dr. Rick.

Learning a bit more about the use of paragraphs would help make your post a bit more readable.

In any event, try to keep in mind the forum rules on decorum/civil discourse.

thanks,
Michael
MF&P Moderator, First Class

The Other Michael

Hello long winded fool

Murder is not legal. You would only take the lives of innocent human beings if there were no legal repercussions and a human being that you could relate to would benefit, isn’t that true? Getting paid to obey the law and allow women the right to abort? Make a profit, while doing a good deed? If abortion were illegal, it would indicate that perhaps it is also immoral, and had been the whole time.

Using your reasoning, since abortion IS legal, then perhaps it isn't immoral as well as not being murder? And if it were made illegal, perhaps that would be a bad law with an immoral outcome, indicating that abortion may have been moral the whole time?

Would you be haunted by all the lives of boys and girls, men and women, that were denied existnece by a conscious decision made by you, or by doctors and mothers who listened to you?

Does my having had a vasectomy and advocating birth control put me in that same group? After all, I made a conscious decision to deny existence to a number of "boys and girls, men and women", and have encouraged others to do the same.

If you could go back in time, would you abort Adolf Hitler? Would taking his life be good or evil? Or Mother Teresa? As a fetus, she was equal to the unborn Adolf Hitler. Is it less evil to kill an innocent fetus who will one day murder or cause the murder a great many innocent human beings than an innocent fetus who will one day become a great humanitarian?

You might wish to pick your "humanitarian" examples better, as MT has been shown to be anything but a humanitarian. Also, it seems you've just made an argument in re Hitler favoring abortion as a means of saving millions of lives.

Would you be able to forget about all those millions of humans who never had the chance to grow, become valuable little boys or girls and eventually gallant men or graceful women, and learn to take enjoyment from the gift of the life they were granted by fate? The very gift that was taken away shortly after it was given them by one who had already mastered the gift and learned how to use it to his or her own enjoyment?

Potential is all any conceptus has - potential for acheiving the status of good, bad or indifferent.

I'll admit that I've never seen sex characterized as "mastering the gift of life and using it for enjoyment" (a slight paraphrasing there). But then non-procreative sex wouldn't seem to have much "gift of life" about it.

cheers,
Michael
(private citizen)

Jamie_L

Man, that has got to be the best euphamism for recreational sex ever. Bar none.

Jamie

long winded fool

The last post was not an attempt to further my argument, (which ought to have been clear, as it didn't touch on it at all,) it was an attempt to move the discussion from law, which Dr. Rick didn't want to argue about, to a discussion of morals which he may or may not. It was also meant to encourage honesty and critical thinking over personal agenda, even if the agenda is nothing more than fear and the dodging of hurt pride at the expense of logic.

Very true. I was not reasoning a point, I was speculating on Dr. Rick's motives since he was unwilling to accept my logic without communicating why. There was no animosity intended, just rhetorical questions designed to encourage self-examination. (For my own benefit as much as anyone else's.) I seem to have developed a habit of analyzing why someone who disagrees with me but doesn't know or communicate why, might be in disagreement. I don't think people can be honest with others until they are honest with themselves, and I think this habit helps people think more rationally more than it hurts their egos, but thin-skinned people do tend to get offended. It certainly can't logically hurt my credibility, as only ad hominem arguments can address it.

It is true that the legality of a thing has no bearing on its morality. The reason this nation is pro-choice is because it largely believes this to be moral and reasonable. The same goes for when the nation was pro-slavery. Laws ought to follow morality and they ought to be reasonable. My argument is that legal abortion is neither.

Does my having had a vasectomy and advocating birth control put me in that same group? After all, I made a conscious decision to deny existence to a number of "boys and girls, men and women", and have encouraged others to do the same.

I suppose it would. Instead of "boys and girls" I should have said "innocent human beings," and instead of "denied existence" I ought to have said, "consciously destroyed." This would limit the statement to abortion only.

You might wish to pick your "humanitarian" examples better, as MT has been shown to be anything but a humanitarian. Also, it seems you've just made an argument in re Hitler favoring abortion as a means of saving millions of lives.

Not an argument. Just a speculation. I was trying to parallel abortion to murder. Would killing Hitler as a young boy be any different than killing him before he was born? The outcome would be no different. So where is the line? If Hitler was a human being, didn’t he have the inalienable right to life? Didn't he gain this right when he became a human being and didn't he lose it when he became an imminent threat to the lives of other people? If so, aborting him is as great an evil as killing him as a young boy. The only difference is the presence of a law that contradicts equal human rights allowing the killing of some humans for the convenience of others, while another law exists which guarantees all members of the human family equal and inalienable rights.

Potential is all any conceptus has - potential for acheiving the status of good, bad or indifferent.

What about fully developed human beings that are asleep. Do they have anything other than potential? Can you tell whether a sleeping person is good, bad, or indifferent? Can they even be any of these things? Does previously earned status grant rights? If so, infants ought to have the same rights as fetuses, as their status is the same. They are utterly dependent and incapable of being good, bad, or indifferent. Since it is not arguable that law is the thing which grants human beings the inalienable right to life, it is logical to examine law, as I did with Dr. Rick. When law says two opposing things, one ought to be eliminated if the law is to retain any kind of power. Which one should be eliminated? The one that is reasonable. Is it more reasonable in a functioning society to declare that some humans are sovereign and others are devoid of any rights, or to declare all humans are created equal and all have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I'll admit that I've never seen sex characterized as "mastering the gift of life and using it for enjoyment" (a slight paraphrasing there). But then non-procreative sex wouldn't seem to have much "gift of life" about it.

cheers,
Michael
(private citizen)

It's interesting that you interpreted that to mean sex. It was meant to mean any enjoyment a developed human being could possibly have, though sex would certainly be included. We've mastered the gift of life in the sense that we can control our fate. We have power over whether we are happy or sad and what enjoyments we choose to experience. We then take this possibility away from humans who have yet to master it in order to increase the enjoyment of humans who already have. Is this a reasonable behavior in a society of cooperating human beings?

LostGirl

Yes, sleeping people have something other than potential, they have a history of experiences by which you can tell if they're good or bad. Even if you have no information about the person, you can be sure that they've lived an approximate number of decades, and with that length of time on earth, have had an appropriate amount of experience. Until a fetus starts experiencing the world for itself, then it has no independant history.

When does a fetus start experiencing the world for itself? It's most likely individual for each fetus. It is definitely before birth, and it's definitely not directly after conception. Trying to demarcate a border between these two states is futile. You can't envision this like a bar chart where one portion is clearly white and the other portion is clearly black - it's a pretty evenly spread out smudging from white into black. It's a human characteristic to try to separate things into categories, but it can be a failing when trying to ceonceptualize things that happen along gradients. You can say that at one end of the spectrum things are definitely white, and at a certain point there's enough black in the mix to be able to say that it's grey. As long as you set your boundary for "white" before it turns noticeably grey, then you're safe.
But infants (and later term fetuses) have a clear history of experience (including a very formative one: birth itself) that early-term fetuses do not. Previously earned status is one way of putting it, I suppose. But the status comes not from sheer existence, but from experience. And there is no way that as a scientist I can accept that a morula (very, very early term embryo that's just a mass of cells) is able to experience.

So, what about the mother's inalienable right to liberty (she feels pregnancy is a prison) and the pursuit of happiness? What if she's convinced by her doctors that one more pregnancy (the one that's just begun) is going to kill her? What about her right to life? Does a fully experienced, expressed human have fewer rights that a bunch of cells that, given her bodily resources and care, *might* one day experience something but is currently incapable of doing anything other than programmed reactions to orchestrated environmental changes?
You have to reconcile both sides, lwfool.

long winded fool

So then there is a boundary when a human being attains the right to life. Obviously consciousness and self-awareness occur along an arbitrary gradient, but there has to be a boundary for abortion, otherwise you necessarily risk committing murder. If you don't know whether the human being has the right to life or not and you abort it anyway, you are being criminally negligent. Setting the boundary in the safe "white" zone may be a good idea, but if no one can agree on when or where this is, how can this be done? If the life of an innocent human being is at stake, we ought to be absolutely sure. Until we are, it is not reasonable to kill something that will definitely have the legal right to life at some undetermined point and then examine what it was and if it had the right later. A rational society needs a logical examination before abortion is legalized. It is not rational to put the right to liberty of one minority over the right to life of another, simply because the second is unable to understand and vocalize.

But infants (and later term fetuses) have a clear history of experience (including a very formative one: birth itself) that early-term fetuses do not. Previously earned status is one way of putting it, I suppose. But the status comes not from sheer existence, but from experience. And there is no way that as a scientist I can accept that a morula (very, very early term embryo that's just a mass of cells) is able to experience.

On what are you basing this assertion? Why does experience entitle a human being to the right to life? Do more experienced human beings gain more inalienable rights as their experience grows? Where is the cut off and why is it where you say it is? Adults do have more incidental legal rights than children, but they have equal inalienable rights as human beings. The word 'inalienable' connotes no variables in my mind. Inserting the word "human" after it identifies the species to which these rights apply. It is not rational to add an additional variable in a society of cooperating humans. Age, race, mental capacity, nor disability should preclude any human from the inalienable right to life. When you make an exception for one, there is no logical reason not to rationalize an exception for another. This was the purpose of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and declaring that all members of the human family have the right to life. No exceptions.

So, what about the mother's inalienable right to liberty (she feels pregnancy is a prison) and the pursuit of happiness? What if she's convinced by her doctors that one more pregnancy (the one that's just begun) is going to kill her? What about her right to life? Does a fully experienced, expressed human have fewer rights that a bunch of cells that, given her bodily resources and care, *might* one day experience something but is currently incapable of doing anything other than programmed reactions to orchestrated environmental changes?
You have to reconcile both sides, lwfool.

The inalienable rights of the mother are equal to the inalienable rights of a fetus. (At least by one law.) A fully expressed human with millions of cells does not have fewer rights than a human with very few cells. They have equal rights. Thankfully, the number of an individual's cells doesn't determine how many rights we have. And I believe that if the mother's life is put in imminent danger by her unborn child, the child surrender's its inalienable right to life the same as any human being who is threatening the life of another surrenders his. Self-defense is an acceptable reason for killing a human being in this society. The mother's right to liberty and her right to do with her body as she pleases has nothing to do with her child. She is free to never get pregnant. She should not legally be free to destroy a human being because it is an inconvenience. Liberty can be sacrificed to save a human being. Once there is a human being inside her, she is no longer entitled to that kind of liberty until the human is no longer dependent on her support. Once a child is under your responsibility, you cannot kill it, not even to free yourself of a terrible and unfair burden. You can try to get it under someone else's responsibility, and the pregnant mother is within her rights to write up adoption papers, but you can't kill the child before he gets to the orphanage. Women (and men) have the right to their body parts until someone else needs them to live and donating has not put your life in danger. The age, race, sex, etc. of said human being are irrelevant.

LostGirl

As I have noticed is your wont, lwfool, you may have read the argument, but you didn't really internalize it. You don't disagree with what I'm saying, but somehow we reach different conclusions. I wonder why (well, not really. )If you read what I wrote, I said that actual consciousness does not develop immediately upon conception. A few paragraphs later, I asserted that a morula-stage embryo does not have the capacity to experience the world, but only follow programmed reactions to orchestrated environmental changes.
I'm trying to say, here, that it is the capability to notice that we exist, if you will, the capacity to experience the world as a participant (even if only a passive one) rather than an object to be influenced that gives anything independant rights - the right to be considered as an end in itself; and right to have one's own rights considered independantly of others.

I most certainly do not exclude any person on grounds ofHowever, I don't equate a twenty day old embryo with these people. Why? Because it has no capacity to experience. It doesn't know it exists. It wouldn't "notice" not existing. Once it would, then obviously it has passed the boundary of personhood. I don't exclude any being that has knowledge of its existence. I do think that you can include a large number of animals in this category, so, hey, possibly go veggie!

Where is the cut off? Certainly, terminating pregnacy at 40 days is acceptable under this standard. I would hazard to say that any point before neural tube development is "safe", and perhaps even any point before brain activity and neural mapping begins. But you know what? In this case, it's not for me to say definitively, because I'm not an expert at developmental biology. (one third year university course does not an expert make). But then, neither are you. So, I don't think that in the course of this discussion, the two of us could hammer out a safe boundary, as neither of us is qualified to talk knowledgably about it. (I wonder if anyone else monitoring this thread is. Speak up and tell me that I'm full of shit, because you have a basis for knowledge, not opinion.) Still, I think we can evaluate the theory. Already, we can both agree that consciousness is something that develops, and isn't present in a freshly fertilized ovum. So abortion itself isn't the issue, knowing when the upper limit of "safe" abortion is. Given appropriate knowledge about when the capacity to notice existence develops, we could come to an understanding.


What if we put a hold on abortion until this examination was made? Would that satisfy you? I'm not recom mending we do so (I think that's unrealistic), but is you problem really with unexamined abortion, or abortion itself? I thought you were arguing the latter point, but now I'm not so sure.So, the right to liberty is not inalienable, only the right to life is. Fine, I never felt that liberty was inalienable but you used this phrase so I thought it was fair play.
Unfortunately, pregnancy is not just a temporary inconvenience. The act of being pregnant means that, in essence, there is a lifeform parasitically attached to you that not only consuming your bodily resources and grossly changing your physical shape and capacities, but it in essence completely changes every hormone balance, your blood chemistry, even your brain chemistry. It's a wonderful experience, yes, but it is true that being pregnant is not just having to cope with passenger. It's a houseguest that completely rearranges the furniture in every room of the house, builds itself an addition, rewallpapers everywhere and resets the thermostat constantly. It steals your food, and air, and clothing (heh). It requires a great amount of input from the mother in order to realize its potential. Once it notices it exists, one crucial potential is realized, and from that point it would be wrong to kill it. Before that, it's just potential, and if you decide to be selfish and not share your "stuff" with someone else, that's up to you. Keep in mind, there's no killing involved at that point, so only the mother's rights need be considered. After consciousness, obviously it's a different story. Not all embryos are human. Humanity is a developed characteristic of the species homo sapiens.
I take issue with the statement that "women are free to never get pregnant." Exhibit A: rape. Defence rests. Not all types of pregnancies are preventable.

Finally, without specific reference, a few mischaracterizations:
It's not the number of cells that counts, but the ability of those massed cells to be aware of its environment and of its existence. Early stage fetuses have neither one of these capabilities. Something with the potential to develop this capacity should not be given more right than something that has already developed it.

It's not the length of experience that matters, or the type or ability to remember it. It's the ability to experience itself that I am positing as the characteristic by which to evaluate right to continued existence. If you won't notice the cessation of existence, then ending it won't matter to you, it will just happen.

ps: Let me approach this from a different tack: in the book Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper, she envisions an alien race that 'rapes' and impregnates every man who feels that abortion for reasons of "convenience" is morally wrong. These aliens are in mental contact with their offspring at every moment. It's a more than a little bit "out there" for a thought experiement, but really. What would you do?