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Sorry, haven't been able to get back to you for a while
No problem. I quite like the leisurely pace of our discussion.
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But the women, no doubt, would have to look at the situation and think raising the child better than adoption. In terms of benefits, I don't see how this decision is different from abortion.
Well, by forcing women to come to term a percentage would then decide to keep the child, those women would have been better off if they hadn't been forced to come to term in the first place as they would then be able to have a child when it was more suitable to them (and indeed the child would probably be happier too). Additionally i would think that giving up a child for adoption would be a traumatic process compounded by the fact that the child would always be out there somewhere. An abortion can also be traumatic but i don't think of the same magnitude (during birth a whole bunch of hormones get released designed to bond mother and child). And finally undergoing pregnancy for 9 months and then childbirth if forced is surely reducing the Quality of life of the mother.
The other angle is looking at the children, there are already more children up for adoption than there are takers, many of these children do not have exactly stellar childhoods, by forcing all people who want an abortion to carry the baby to term, more children will be without homes and families. Another factor is the increased tax needed to create more orphanages to house all these extra children. (The tax argument strikes me as minor but all other things being equal one would anticipate the QoL function of a soceity that pays less tax -hence earns more- to be greater than a society that pays more tax -hence pays less-).
Overall i think allowing abortion equates to a higher quality of life.
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Quality of life is difficult to gage. Not merely is it determined by money or food. For that matter, how is a child to learn to save if his or her parents have all the money in the world? And how is a child to learn to share if his or her friends have everthing the world offers?
I don't quite understand what your point is here, certaintly QoL is not simply determined by money or food but statistically if you have a population where money and food is relatively plentiful and a population where money/food is relatively scarce one would expecty the former to have a higher QoL then the latter.
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Personhood can also be arbitrarily defined. In fact, some prolifers consider the fetus a person.
Personhood can be arbitrarely defined to an extent but then that's simply because one must draw the line somewhere, but generally placing importance in "personhood" relates to placing importance in the faculties that distinguish humans from other forms of life.
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But, the way I see it, it's a matter of common sense. The spetus and the fetus cannot be the same being. While they might have the same composition of matter, the fetus' DNA is different from the sperm and egg's DNA. The fetus is a different organism than the spetus.
I have three points:
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Identical twins have the same DNA and yet they two "beings", not all your cells have the same DNA many will have somatic mutations yet presumeably they are not all defined as seperate "beings". So it seems that using DNA clashes with our normal concept of identity in the world of human people.
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Again we come across the point that classification is our end, human beings make it up, nature does not care. Ultimately reality consists of stuff and laws that govern stuff, if we want to seperate reality into diffferent objects we can do that, but it does not alter reality itself. Certainly from a _pragmatic_ point of a view it is often very useful to consider "individuation" starting at fertilisation. But it's not _inherent_, a point of view that human 'beings' begin at birth is no less justifiable in absolute terms than a point of view that human 'beings' begin at fertilisation. In both instances the choice is essentially arbitrary, and seperable only in terms of pragmatic applications, to the biochemist it may well be very usefull to consider fertilisation the start, but an immunologist would probably choose the point when the fetus ceases to be dependent on the maternal immune system, a psychologist would choose a different point etc. etc.
3. And finally from an ethical point of view what is the significance of the DNA? Why does a set of biochemical reactions, DNA polymerase stitching together some nucleotides make our system worthy of ethical consideration, it's does not think, or reason, it does not have a personality, indeed it lacks all of the faculties that define us as individuals, it's not even aware, it's simply a biochemical factory.
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I'm not sure what you mean by convenient
Well if the ethical axioms ultimately boil down to definitions used for the purposes of convenience (rather than reflecting a real aspect of reality), then ultimately we ar emaking an appeal to pragmatism, in which case, the larger pragmatic argument (ie it's useful) favours allowing people to have abortions.
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Anyway, where the line is drawn now, a women could have a C-section and the same fetus be called a "person." And where the line is drawn now, that same fetus could be aborted. What matters, say the pro-choicers, is not this fetus but the mother.
Well, a C-section could only occur in late pregnancy past the point where you can have an abortion on grounds other than medical considerations.
But i do think what matters is the mother she is more aware, more capable of suffering, etc. the newly born child gets elevated in its ethical status (vs. the unborn fetus) because of her attachment to it.
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Yet no human life can be defined circularly by other human beings.
Well defined in terms of ethics i think it can, but again this comes down to the significance of "human life", skin cells are human life, my foot is human life the ethical importance of the cells in my foot are directly linked to the ethical importance of me as a person.
I think a fertilised egg become less like a skin cell and more like a person as it develops into a fetus, the fetus is born and the child then relatively rapidly gains the remaining faculties we associate with humans (language, etc.)
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The fetus is a different life form than both the sperm and the egg. Science tells us that human life begins at conception, the meaning of conception.
As i mentioned above, that's not what 'science' says persay, where we choose to define the beginning of a new human is up to us, it is usefull to consider fertilisation the beginning in many instances, but that does not extend to ethics, it is more usefull to in terms of ethics to not think either _human being_ or _not human being_ but rather a gradual climb towards personhood.
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Allowing embryo stem cell research will give the precidence to mine human embryos, something prolifers don't want
Well at the moment that's not true, in the US people just want to use stuff that's going to be chucked anyway, what it would lead to is uncertain. But that's somewhat by-the-by in terms i was addressing the point you made when you said:
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Well, you have a possible benefit to real people. At some point in a future, a person with a disease might achieve a healthy life. An embryo may also achieve this same way of life. All considered, the future consequences of killing one embryo but finding a cure and killing one diseased person might be the same.
Ie. we have one for one exchange, one future possible person for one future real person, but we wouldn't because the embryos used would not exist except for the purposes of research thus they cease to become possible future people at all, they become _never weres, and never will bes_.
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If that person had foreknowledge of what Hitler was going to do, then killing Hitler would be defending those Hitler would kill
Fair enough it was a poor example since people don't have forknowledge in that manner, and it relates to your views regarding when its ok to remove people's rights .
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If that person was innocent and not directly harming someone, then killing that person is wrong. But in some cases there's justification to kill someone who's not commiting any wrong. For example, if you're fighting a war, you can in self defence shoot the guy who's pointing a gun at you. Killing this guy is morally right because your stopping the prime-mover--you're acting in self-defence. You cannot, however, go directly shooting innocents Even though killing innocents might cause your opponent to surrender, even though killing innocents might save lifes, killing innocents is intrinsically wrong. But, in defending yourself, you may accidently kill innocents provided the intent was not to harm the innocents. Now, in a matter of speaking, when a natation such as the US goes to war, it is known innocents will be killed. But if the intent of the US is not to kill innocents but to rather stop evil, then whether going to war or not is based upon analysis of the consequences; that is, asking the question: will going to war, possibly killing innocents, achieve more good than not going to war?
I'm afraid you do actually refute yourself here, i said:
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I mean do you really think it is wrong to kill one person if doing so would save the entire human race?
Because i don't think any system of ethics can avoid what you call the double principle that you referred to earlier here:
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Furthermore, ethics merely on a consequence level will always have problems with the double principle, whereby a person could do evil to achieve what he or she thinks is a good thing
but now you're saying:
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will going to war, possibly killing innocents, achieve more good than not going to war?
Which is exactly the same thing!
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Well, no. Any person attempting to have an ethical system must have evil, the things not allowed by the ethical system. Every person's ethical system is determined by certain premises and beliefs, he or she believes all humans should have. In this respect, what is evil is derived from the ethical system, derived from the person.
As mentioned above you seem to be appealing to greater good to overcome actions that are evil, but that was your justificaiton for avoiding what you called consequence based ethics.
Utilitarianism which is what i base my ethics on (atleast broadly) is based on the idea of best for most, actions that lead to an increase in the quality life function of a population are ethically "good", and actions that lead to a decrease in QoL function are ethically "evil".
I should say that Utilitarianism is equivalent to your views on rights, and fairness, it simply provides a higher level theoretical framework that justfies those axioms, indeed you made an appeal to a form of Utilitarianist thinking when you explained your justifications for war.
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Yes, but I believe a provision of fairness is all that is necessary. By jeopardizing another's life, this individual steals from the liberty of another person. Holding this individual accountable to what's taken is not wrong, though we have due order of law in this respect. That is, if the individual has put someone's life in risk, then that individual's life might also be at risk. In effect, self-defence can reasoned much like criminal punishment, where an individual who has committed a crime as stolen something which must be repaid.
My point is simply that one cannot say violating someone rights is wrong, fullstop, unless one does not wish to have any kind of punishment for those who do wrong. Only by appealing to violation of rights being wrong on a statistical level, ie. factoring in the greater good can one then justify locking up criminals: by violating their rights you prevent the violating of a greater number of people's rights.
But once again that involves taking into account the greater good, and thus invoking the double's principle. The point is somewhat mute since you seem to have accepted this. But with that acceptance comes the loss of your argument against consequence based ethics.
I think consequence based ethics as you call it, is the most justifiable, defendable, the least arbitrary and the most inline with underlying themes governing the biological basis of ethics: empathy. I still cannot see why we should treat a single cell, or indeed a ball of cells the same way we treat a talking, thinking, feeling human, the axioms you use to justify that view seems to be arbitrary in basis.