I knew stem cell research out pay off!

[Mr. Harley]

UR - you are posting many of the reasons that caused me to start questioning my anti-abortion stance when I was a young adult (and in a premed program). The problem with Elok's stance, which has a nice, elegant simplicity and consistancy, is that the real world - in this case biology, which is anything but simple - throws all kinds of zingers at it.

Elok did not answer my query, at least directly, about the severe case of microcephaly, i.e. only the reptile brain exists. Many people, maybe most would grant that is not human. If it is a genetic mutation (it can also be due to in vitro problems), obviously lethal and non-perpetuating, even though the resulting organism shares over 99% of our genes, it will never display and sentience or intelligence. It's a vegetable.

OK, so that's not human - though I suspect to Elok and BK it is, and so has the all the rights accorded to any human, so you and I get to pay very high medicaid taxes to keep it alive. Now you state just let it die naturally. Alright then, how about intervention to save old people? That's the problem with simple black and white ethical definitions. The real world gets tangled up around their ankles and trips them up. That's why I've taken the route I have taken on ethical matters.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


A fetus is clearly alive.

If I can prove that it doesn't fit the typical requirements of a living human then will you admite you are wrong?

[Elok]

UR, how exactly do you define sentience in a way that it can be proven to exist or not exist in a child who can't speak? I've never heard anyone give me a straight answer on that score. The arguments about intellect also apply to sentience, as sentience is generally spoken of as the height of human intellect. Its usual definition is something along the lines of "self-awareness," which aside from being impossible to determine in a child might be argued to be illusory in some adults I can think of. I think the sentience argument idiotically simplistic; intelligence is a very deep and sliding scale, not just sentient or bestial.

Nor do I value people for their intelligence; given the number of fools I meet every day, I would consider roughly one billion of the six on earth to be people worth caring about by that standard. A chimp has greater cognitive ability than an infant, but if somebody wanted to kill a chimp I'd say sure, provided they did it humanely and had some decent reason for it. Yes, it can poke around in termite mounds with a stick and get yummy snacks, clever example of tool use, but I don't care, it's just a chimp, not a human. If it comes to that, a border collie is almost certainly more intelligent than an infant in almost every way and we put dozens of those to sleep every day.

And your tumor example and the like seem to be just a deliberate misunderstanding done for perversity's sake on your part; you know what I meant, or if you didn't, hopefully I've made that more clear to you. Any meaning read into any life beyond "blob of cells," which is a scientifically valid if imprecise definition of a human or indeed any lifeform, is an existential question, not something self-evident. And for the sake of this discussion it doesn't matter if the dead guy is human, as a dead man can't be killed. Honestly, I thought you knew better than to play such childish games.

Shawn, from a legal perspective your example of a mindless child might be abortable simply because it is proven to be nonviable. I think there ought to be exceptions in law for that. It will still be the parents' choice if they want to see the whole thing through, of course, but if they don't there's no sense in legally requiring them to hope for a miracle.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by monolith94
Petite, pert breasts are far sexier than those gigonza things, that are just way too big.

It's not size, it's shape. Torpedo tits aren't nice to look at no matter what size they are. Neither are saggy breasts, and I've seen saggy A-cups.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That is very disingenuous. It's like saying everything is matter. It is a true statement, but it is also a meaningless statement.

You're the one who brought up the whole thing, so that's an argument against you.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Kuci - hello again. You are now looking at why many moralists find ethical systems very uncomfortable. A moral system has no need for the applicability test. A moral system is based on typically a religious text and the maxims contained therein. It then applies various contextual arguments to them, like Elok points out that I use, though I submit I only use them when the broad applicability hits a dilemma, i.e. abortion and the various situations that arise concerning it.

Look at Judaism. If you take a literalist look at the text, you can be Orthodox or Hasidic. If you take a relativist look at the text, you can be reformed. If you try to find some compromise between the two, you are Conservative (I'm oversimplyfying to make a point). However, all used the Torah as the base line and then interpret it.

Thus many Christians have no problems imposing a ban on Sunday alchohol sales even though a non-Christian does not feel the Sabbath is Sunday. Even some Christians disagree, but nevertheless a majority imposed that in many states. From their standpoint that is moral, just like a moslem feels comfortable banning non-moslem men from marrying their woman, but the reverse is acceptable.

In Florida in the 1990's the local Christian town council passed rules to prevent the local Santeria believers the right to make animal sacrifices. Since the zoning changes were blatant, SCOTUS threw them out. My point is that all of these examples I've mentioned passed someone's morality test, but all fail the broad application criteria of ethics. Which is why I find it amusing when moralists claim ethics are all relative and thus inherently flawed. Actually ethics are an attempt to guarantee the moralists have the right to practice their own private morality, as long as it does not interfere with others in their own different practice.

Ethics are anything but relative, and have a much better chance of surviving the passage of time and changes in the culture with many fewer changes. Much of what I espouse has been around in the West since the European enlightenment, roughly three centuries. If you look at Taoism, most of the concepts I discuss here are over two millenia old.

I think we're agreeing but not understanding each other. Ethics are relative in terms of their actual truth; but some ethical systems become more predominant than others, which has nothing to do with their actual truthhood.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oerdin
If I can prove that it doesn't fit the typical requirements of a living human then will you admite you are wrong?

What typical requirements?

It is human genetically - check.

It is alive (there is tons of metabolism and growth) - check.

Ergo, it is a living human being.

I do not equate this with personhood.

[Last Conformist]

@Shawn: Why don't you address my question about who decides what is a genuine disagreement?

[RGBVideo]

I'm so goddamn tired of them... can't we just wipe them all out?

Perverts

[Mr. Harley]

LC - sorry, I wasn't ignoring you, my comment on genuine disagreement with the stress on genuine was answered implicitly. It's a non sequiter as you present it - saying you and the Klan agree that negroes are not people has not validity in an ethical system.

The disagreement, when talking about ethics, has to be tautological, i.e. coming from what ethics are implicitly by their very nature. Thus your statement has no bearing on ethics. You and the Klan can agree on that, it still is not ethical for the reasons stated for a murderer, or for slavery. Genuine disagreement can be fairly easily determined by people having an actual discussion vesus debate, i.e. Elok's post.

Elok meets the criteria for ethical reasoning, which I stated several posts ago. His criteria are self-consistant and as sound as any ethical reasoning can be in the area of Abortion, which sadly has certain areas as I noted that defeat the pure ethical argument. There always has to be a fly in the ointment.

Kuci, a true ethical system will not be relative, and the variability of premises is highly limited. Elok and my disagreement are one of only a few. Many systems claim to be ethical but are not - the internal self-consisty falls apart, just as noted above. The Southerner holding slaves can claim a self-consistant ethical system, but it's not when applying that criteria clearly. That was why Elok tried calling me to task on my premises (quite properly I might add), a true ethical system means you use those sparingly, and only when you reach an unresolvable dilemma in applying true self-consistancy.

This last statement is a practical application. A purist might state then you simply say there is no ethical anwer. Practically that would make ethics useless, so I as well as many other ethicists then try to apply it in the real world.. As I've noted, that's why the Greek philosophers, Chinese Taoist, and philosphers of the European Enlightenment all came to many very similiar conclusions, these are universal concepts embodied by the very definition of ethics. That may be where we disagree, with your feeling that ethics are relative - they are not, they attempt via rational thought to investigate universal concepts and truth. Who decides? The concepts themselves, when carefully examined will become self-evident. "We hold these truths to be self-evident?" That's good company to keep, IMHO. Is ethics easy? No. Is ethics prone to abuse? Good god, yes. Horribly so. That abuse is why so many people believe ethics are relative, when they really are not.

[Spiffor]

Re: I'm so goddamn tired of them... can't we just wipe them all out?

I don't think the kind of post you've written will help.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
LC - sorry, I wasn't ignoring you, my comment on genuine disagreement with the stress on genuine was answered implicitly. It's a non sequiter as you present it - saying you and the Klan agree that negroes are not people has not validity in an ethical system.

The disagreement, when talking about ethics, has to be tautological, i.e. coming from what ethics are implicitly by their very nature. Thus your statement has no bearing on ethics. You and the Klan can agree on that, it still is not ethical for the reasons stated for a murderer, or for slavery. Genuine disagreement can be fairly easily determined by people having an actual discussion vesus debate, i.e. Elok's post.

You lost me somewhere along the way. What's a tautological disagreement? What difference is there between discusssion and debate?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Japher
Once they form an ability to react they are alive and that begins at around 3 mos... Anything after that is murder IMO. If you are going to abort take the morning after pill, or catch it quick. That kid gains awarness fast, and when it does it IS alive.

Common sense sighting!!!

[Provost Harrison]

Brest implants? Jesus, they'd be huge if you put French cities under there!

[Last Conformist]