Abortion Right Or Wrong

[jezter6]

Human nature/social convention - same diff for me at least.

[Johnny_D]

So hard to answer that though isn't it?

Morally - Of course it's not moral. But then so many things are not. And even within the frame-work of being morally corrupt there are exclusions and exceptions to the rule.

Socially - Yes probably. An overpopulated planet, global recessions, global environmental problems then maybe it has a place within social framework.

The bottom line of this debate has to be an individual's choice of where the social & moral conscious lies. I'm not convinced any debate or argument can resolve this question.

JD

[judgeposer]

So hard to answer that though isn't it?

Morally - Of course it's not moral. But then so many things are not. And even within the frame-work of being morally corrupt there are exclusions and exceptions to the rule.

Socially - Yes probably. An overpopulated planet, global recessions, global environmental problems then maybe it has a place within social framework.

The bottom line of this debate has to be an individual's choice of where the social & moral conscious lies. I'm not convinced any debate or argument can resolve this question.

JD

If you've agreed that it's not moral, I suppose you accepted my argument that abortion is not moral (err, immoral) because it results in the killing of an innocent human person? Assuming then that abortion is immoral, to argue that it nonetheless remains a personal choice to have/commit an abortion essentially says that individuals should have the choice to take innocent human lives. That's the brute fact I think we're left with.

Some behavior may be socially acceptable but immoral, yes, I agree. But I thought we were asking here whether abortion was right or wrong. Asking whether something is right or wrong is not asking whether it's socially accepted, it's asking the moral status of some behavior. The social acceptance of some behavior does not tell us anything about whether that behavior is morally right or wrong. It just tells us how comfortable we've become doing detestable things.

Edit: Prima Facie - as I used earlier, means generally, or at first glance. As JD points out, there are exceptions. This phrase take exceptions into account. So, to say something is prima facie immoral, it means that it is so generally speaking, notwithstanding the exceptions. Edited September 10, 2008 by judgeposer

[Johnny_D]

Your oversimplifying it. It's not a question of right/wrong good/bad. Too many variables and your trying for a yes/no answer.

Is gun ownership good or bad? same difference. too many variables.

Yes, I said that it's not a moral activity. In an ideal world girls would not be fucking every 5 minutes and putting themselves in a position where random and unwanted pregnancies are so common place.
In an ideal world people would not get raped that would give rise to the need for abortion.

It's society in general that is immoral and corrupt in a much large sense than this one debating point. It's not surprising that the end-result to fix the consequences of immorality is often more immoral acts?

Abortion is the end-product of other activities. Weather as a willing participant or otherwise. Fix the problem, not the end result and you eliminate the need for it, or at least reduce it to such proportions as to no longer be such a major debating point.

JD

[Tati]

In my opinion, abortions are wrong. But it should not be up to the government to make that decision.
While the baby is inside the woman, it is using her blood and her nutrients and her oxygen to survive. It is part of her, if she decides to have the abortion, its up to her and no one else.

While the father of the baby should be involved in the situation, he is not the one to make the final decision.


Abortion is not the answer, but I will work my ass off to keep it legal.

[jezter6]

While the father of the baby should be involved in the situation, he is not the one to make the final decision.

Then child support should be the final decision of the father.

[TheScotsman]

I think this has already been answered by the gov'ts of most nations.

They aren't a human until they are born.
As evidence we find the fact that they are neither a tax liability nor a deduction until birth. You don't get to use that deduction until they are out, Hell, many insurance companies don't consider them a family member for insurance coverage until they are out and breathing air.

The abortion question can not be answered until there is a definitive "line in the sand" as to where life begins, and the same standard is applied to all people.

What works for one person isn't going to work for the other, and neither side seems to be able to come up with a valid reason their stance is correct (barring, of course any religious hocus-pocus). In the mean time the gov't has 2 wars, an economy in crisis, and is how many trillion in debt... they need to get out of the citizenry's pants.

[Tati]

While the father of the baby should be involved in the situation, he is not the one to make the final decision.

Then child support should be the final decision of the father.

Child support's final decision is by the court.
If he didnt want the child in the first place, then he should have used a condom.

[jezter6]

While the father of the baby should be involved in the situation, he is not the one to make the final decision.

Then child support should be the final decision of the father.

Child support's final decision is by the court.
If he didnt want the child in the first place, then he should have used a condom.

It sounds like you're putting 100% of the "blame" on the father and 100% of the decision with the mother. Sounds a bit - biased, IMHO.

As a man, you're screwed:
You want a child, the mother wants to abort - you get no say.
You don't want a child, the mother wants the child - you have to pay.

Sounds like a shitty deal to me.

[Canon]

Oh I geddit. Your having a laugh right?

Abortion's left right & Centre because your too stupid to take precautions is wrong, I agree. Steralise the idiots.

However dragging some kid into the world no one wants is allmost as bad. It's quiet potential that the kid is going to end up hated, ignored, pushed to one side and resented in quite an unpleasant, if not illegal, way*.

and i never mentioned someone disabled. I was being funny so don't try the ol' emotional craopla with Johnny!

JD - often funny, often misquoted.

ps - No such thing as 'closed door adoptions'. If might sound fancy, but it's not a reality. If not legal methods of tracing there are 100's of underhand methods.

if you dont want the kid then adopt him out, theres no such thing as an "unwanted" child in this world

you mentioned a child with 3 arms, i was originally thinking disabled, now im thinking surgery. cut that extra arm right off.

[judgeposer]

Since the title of this thread asks whether abortion is right or wrong, I gave an argument that concluded that abortion is immoral - as with nearly every human behavior, we can determine whether it is morally right or morally wrong.

I think this has already been answered by the gov'ts of most nations.

They aren't a human until they are born.
[...]
The abortion question can not be answered until there is a definitive "line in the sand" as to where life begins, and the same standard is applied to all people.

What works for one person isn't going to work for the other, and neither side seems to be able to come up with a valid reason their stance is correct (barring, of course any religious hocus-pocus). In the mean time the gov't has 2 wars, an economy in crisis, and is how many trillion in debt... they need to get out of the citizenry's pants.

Whether the question about when life begins has been answered by our or any other government does not actually determine when it begins. For a about a century, our government considered blacks to equal one third of a white man. Moreover, our government (among many others) did not recognize blacks' full humanity through legally enforced slavery, disenfranchisement, and then overtly discriminatory "separate but equal" laws. Of course these laws changed, but when they did, did blacks only then become fully human or were we denying that fact all along? Legal and political recognition are very different from a philosophical (actual) recognition.

I would add, as a minor legal distinction about life in the womb - our government, by way of laws, has not recognized yet born humans as persons - the only legal entity under our laws afforded rights. This lack of recognition doesn't, in any actual sense, determine those beings humanity. Our laws have just stopped short of recognizing them to an extent that would afford them the same legal protections you and I enjoy. That said, were someone to kill a pregnant woman in many jurisdictions, they would be charged with a double homicide--even if that woman was on her way to procure an abortion. Ironic, I think.

It sounds like you're putting 100% of the "blame" on the father and 100% of the decision with the mother. Sounds a bit - biased, IMHO.

As a man, you're screwed:
You want a child, the mother wants to abort - you get no say.
You don't want a child, the mother wants the child - you have to pay.

Sounds like a shitty deal to me.

It is indeed...

---

Indeed the abortion debate seems intractable, and in a practical sense, it has been. That doesn't mean, however, that we cannot ask whether abortion is morally acceptable. That question remains independent of the legal question of whether it should be legally protected. Merely because we disagree about this issue doesn't prove that the issue is unsolvable. We may just not like to admit that we've accepted something that's morally wrong.

[Bulldog_916]

Morality though is in the eye of the beholder. Muslim men who are fanatically Muslim (not peacefully Muslim, but militarily so), who take every teaching of the Quran seriously, think it's immoral to allow an infidel to live.

We as a species believe it is okay to make entire species of animals extinct so that our lives may be spared or somehow made easier. Under what's right and wrong, that would be wrong. It is wrong to commit specicide.

I think it is moral for a mother to choose to terminate her own pregnancy under her own volition, depending on the circumstances. Rape and incest count as special circumstances to me. On a case by case basis would be the best answer I could give you on what conditions I would consider abortion reasonable.

I agree with Tati, that the fetus inside her is part of her body, breathing her body's air and eating her body's food. Therefore, it should be her choice as to whether she wants to abort the pregnancy. I also agree that men generally do get the shaft in these cases. But they could have said no as easily as the woman could have. He is committing the copulation act on her with her permission of course. He does not have to carry the consequences of that action in his body. He does not have maternal instinct. He does not have breasts with which to feed the baby. He was part of the act. If he WANTS to be part of the decision, then he should inject his feelings into it and allow her to make the choice for herself. Generally, if the mother knows she will have his full support through the whole thing, she is less likely to abort. But as many case studies have shown, he doesnt often support her through the whole ordeal. In cases like that, it should be completely up to the female.

[gaia.plateau]

P.1 - It is morally impermissible to take an innocent human life.
P.2 - Abortion takes an innocent human life.
C.1 - Abortion is morally impermissible.

Here's another, more sophisticated formulation:

P.1 - The unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community.
P.2 - It is prima facie morally wrong to kill any member of that community.
C.1 - Therefore, every successful abortion is prima facie morally wrong.

If an argument's premises are true, and its conclusion follows, then the argument is valid. If the premises of a valid argument are true, then the argument is sound. I believe these are two valid and sound arguments that show that abortion is morally wrong, or is, as the second argument concludes, at least prima facie morally wrong.

Are we arguing from a religious Point of View or a social POV?

Also - what the hell is prima facie?
And what was that last sentence mean?

JD, prima facie is a latern term which is appropriate for formal academic debate, and in this sort of context is generally used only by Starbucks intellectuals with Wikipedia homepages. It means "premiere appearance", that something is self-evident. Why anyone would use this term on a hookah discussion forum instead of simply using the term "self-evident", I can only speculate.

Judgeposer, your premises are subjective at best, which makes them and any attempt at deductive reasoning in this scenario completely irrelevant. I may as well say to you;

*All individuals of a pro-life position are Christian
*You are of a pro-life position
= You are Christian.

*Sin negates innocence
*Christians believe that all people are born in sin by the carnal act of reproduction
= You believe that embryos are not innocent life, and it therefore follows that you in fact find abortion morally permissable.

Or we could say;

*It goes against the ideal of personal freedom and privacy to force a woman to carry an embryo to term
*In Western civilization, it is generally accepted that freedom is a moral imperative
= In Western civilization, it is morally imperative to maintain the legality of abortion.

Or we could say;

*Christians believe that all humans possess souls, and that embryos are instances of human life
*In the first 14 weeks of a pregnancy, it is possible for an embryo to split into twins
= Christians believe that twins only have half-souls, and it therefore follows that triplets only have third-souls, and etcetera.

Indeed the abortion debate seems intractable, and in a practical sense, it has been. That doesn't mean, however, that we cannot ask whether abortion is morally acceptable. That question remains independent of the legal question of whether it should be legally protected. Merely because we disagree about this issue doesn't prove that the issue is unsolvable. We may just not like to admit that we've accepted something that's morally wrong.

But it is unsolvable, because that would mean that one camp could potentially convince the other that their position is correct. If, as you've put forth, we can't consider the state to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as I am now putting forth, we can't consider any religious institution to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as common sense and basic principles of the universe dictate, no individual person is capable of understanding morality with any certainty or from a position outside of their own personal experiences and understandings, it follows that the question of whether or not abortion is morally permissible is impossible to solve with any probability.

Fortunately, we all have the personal choice to live in countries wherein abortion law is in line with our own personal perceptions and predjudices.

I'm entirely Pro-Choice, adopted, and firm in my position. Hey Scots, we agree on something.

[judgeposer]

JD, prima facie is a latern term which is appropriate for formal academic debate, and in this sort of context is generally used only by Starbucks intellectuals with Wikipedia homepages. It means "premiere appearance", that something is self-evident. Why anyone would use this term on a hookah discussion forum instead of simply using the term "self-evident", I can only speculate.

JD - sorry if I made things more complicated; I added an edit within a couple of posts to include what the term means. So you know though, I don't support Starbucks - the majority of their coffee, which is a beverage I don't care for anyhow, isn't fair-trade. I have, however, been known to cruise Wikipedia.

I used the term instead of "self-evident" because that's not what I meant, nor was the premise meant to convey something self-evident; it was meant to convey something that was generally the case.

Judgeposer, your premises are subjective at best, which makes them and any attempt at deductive reasoning in this scenario completely irrelevant.

I'm not sure what you mean by subjective. Do you believe that they're false? Whatever you mean by subjective, how does that render deductive argument in this scenario "irrelevant"?

I may as well say to you;
*All individuals of a pro-life position are Christian
*You are of a pro-life position
= You are Christian.

*Sin negates innocence
*Christians believe that all people are born in sin by the carnal act of reproduction
= You believe that embryos are not innocent life, and it therefore follows that you in fact find abortion morally permissable. [...]

I suppose I see now. You mean that deductive argument is irrelevant in this case because anyone, such as yourself, can lob any number of deductive arguments, some or all of which don't make sense?

I suppose.

Indeed the abortion debate seems intractable, and in a practical sense, it has been. That doesn't mean, however, that we cannot ask whether abortion is morally acceptable. That question remains independent of the legal question of whether it should be legally protected. Merely because we disagree about this issue doesn't prove that the issue is unsolvable. We may just not like to admit that we've accepted something that's morally wrong.

But it is unsolvable, because that would mean that one camp could potentially convince the other that their position is correct.

I'm still not sure why that potential doesn't exist in this debate. You don't believe that any one side can potentially convince the other side? - Forget then any one side actually convincing the other!

If, as you've put forth, we can't consider the state to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as I am now putting forth, we can't consider any religious institution to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as common sense and basic principles of the universe dictate, no individual person is capable of understanding morality with any certainty or from a position outside of their own personal experiences and understandings, it follows that the question of whether or not abortion is morally permissible is impossible to solve with any probability.

So...your argument goes:
P.1 - we can't consider the state to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral
P.2 - we can't consider any religious institution to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral
P.3 - no individual person is capable of understanding morality with any certainty or from a position outside of their own personal experiences and understandings
C.1 - the question of whether or not abortion is morally permissible is impossible to solve with any probability

The "with any certainty" phrase confuses me - because if read without it, the argument means to convey moral relativism. If read with the phrase, but without the portion after and including "or," then the argument mean to convey moral skepticism. If it's skepticism, I just don't know of what kind. Are you claiming that we cannot have knowledge about morals, or are you claiming rather that there is no knowledge about morals to be had? In the first instance, you posit that there exists an objective morality, but we lack the ability to gain any knowledge of it, whereas, in the second, you posit that an objective morality does not exist, and so of course we cannot have any knowledge of it.

[Seanij]

imho the real question is

Sexual Intercourse without wanting a baby, and not taking measures to prevent it, right or wrong?

[Stuie]

*Sin negates innocence
*Christians believe that all people are born in sin by the carnal act of reproduction
= You believe that embryos are not innocent life, and it therefore follows that you in fact find abortion morally permissable.

I just want to point out....NO.

Christians believe we are born into sin because of the First sin by Adam and Eve, when humans lost their innocence, not by the "carnal act of reproduction"

Despite innocent or sinful all life is precious.

/End Thread Jack

[TheScotsman]

Since the title of this thread asks whether abortion is right or wrong, I gave an argument that concluded that abortion is immoral - as with nearly every human behavior, we can determine whether it is morally right or morally wrong.

I think this has already been answered by the gov'ts of most nations.

They aren't a human until they are born.
[...]
The abortion question can not be answered until there is a definitive "line in the sand" as to where life begins, and the same standard is applied to all people.

What works for one person isn't going to work for the other, and neither side seems to be able to come up with a valid reason their stance is correct (barring, of course any religious hocus-pocus). In the mean time the gov't has 2 wars, an economy in crisis, and is how many trillion in debt... they need to get out of the citizenry's pants.

Whether the question about when life begins has been answered by our or any other government does not actually determine when it begins. For a about a century, our government considered blacks to equal one third of a white man. Moreover, our government (among many others) did not recognize blacks' full humanity through legally enforced slavery, disenfranchisement, and then overtly discriminatory "separate but equal" laws. Of course these laws changed, but when they did, did blacks only then become fully human or were we denying that fact all along? Legal and political recognition are very different from a philosophical (actual) recognition.

I would add, as a minor legal distinction about life in the womb - our government, by way of laws, has not recognized yet born humans as persons - the only legal entity under our laws afforded rights. This lack of recognition doesn't, in any actual sense, determine those beings humanity. Our laws have just stopped short of recognizing them to an extent that would afford them the same legal protections you and I enjoy. That said, were someone to kill a pregnant woman in many jurisdictions, they would be charged with a double homicide--even if that woman was on her way to procure an abortion. Ironic, I think.

It sounds like you're putting 100% of the "blame" on the father and 100% of the decision with the mother. Sounds a bit - biased, IMHO.

As a man, you're screwed:
You want a child, the mother wants to abort - you get no say.
You don't want a child, the mother wants the child - you have to pay.

Sounds like a shitty deal to me.

It is indeed...

---

Indeed the abortion debate seems intractable, and in a practical sense, it has been. That doesn't mean, however, that we cannot ask whether abortion is morally acceptable. That question remains independent of the legal question of whether it should be legally protected. Merely because we disagree about this issue doesn't prove that the issue is unsolvable. We may just not like to admit that we've accepted something that's morally wrong.

If you are trying to compare a fetus that could not survive on it's own with racism you have lost that issue out of the gate.
That is exactly the type of unrealistic comparison that makes the pro-life stances hard to swallow.

It's like the pro lifers killing doctors, and supporting the death penalty, and bombing clinics. Hypocrisy at it's finest. My choices are my choices, no loonie has a right to insist I believe as they, nor do they have a right to inflict their morality on anyone else. What you deem morally wrong may not sit the same way with someone else, and until someone proves themselves to be Divine then their opinion is just that, an opinion, and not something they have a moral right to force upon someone else.

People will continue to get abortions, just as they have since the dawn of civilization. By taking a pro-stuck-with-it stance you are saying you want to see women go back to the back-alley warehouse/coat-hanger/toxic-intake abortions. Sure tells me allot about what you think of women.

(Time to get out that IPA, Eh, Gaia?) Edited September 11, 2008 by TheScotsman

[judgeposer]

If you are trying to compare a fetus that could not survive on it's own with racism you have lost that issue out of the gate.
That is exactly the type of unrealistic comparison that makes the pro-life stances hard to swallow.

It's like the pro lifers killing doctors, and supporting the death penalty, and bombing clinics. Hypocrisy at it's finest. My choices are my choices, no loonie has a right to insist I believe as they, nor do they have a right to inflict their morality on anyone else. What you deem morally wrong may not sit the same way with someone else, and until someone proves themselves to be Devinne then their opinion is just that, an opinion, and not something they have a moral right to force upon someone else.

No, my only point was offering an example of where our government defined actually existing humans and less than they were, which we knew to be false then and now - I was saying JUST that the government's definition of things CAN be wrong.

No, I was not comparing racism to abortion - I'm sorry to put it this way, but read my post carefully. You simply argued that the problem of whether to consider yet born humans actual persons was already solved by governments who've defined such beings as non-humans. My counter was that many of those same governments defined some already living persons, for a time in history, as less than such - thus, I didn't think the argument that we should look to government for guidance to solve a moral problem is a good one. Edited September 11, 2008 by judgeposer

[TheScotsman]

If you are trying to compare a fetus that could not survive on it's own with racism you have lost that issue out of the gate.
That is exactly the type of unrealistic comparison that makes the pro-life stances hard to swallow.

It's like the pro lifers killing doctors, and supporting the death penalty, and bombing clinics. Hypocrisy at it's finest. My choices are my choices, no loonie has a right to insist I believe as they, nor do they have a right to inflict their morality on anyone else. What you deem morally wrong may not sit the same way with someone else, and until someone proves themselves to be Devinne then their opinion is just that, an opinion, and not something they have a moral right to force upon someone else.

No, my only point was offering an example of where our government defined actually existing humans and less than they were, which we knew to be false then and now - I was saying JUST that the government's definition of things CAN be wrong.

No, I was not comparing racism to abortion - I'm sorry to put it this way, but read my post carefully. You simply argued that the problem of whether to consider yet born humans actual persons was already solved by governments who've defined such beings as non-humans. My counter was that many of those same governments defined some already living persons, for a time in history, as less than such - thus, I didn't think the argument that we should look to government for guidance to solve a moral problem is a good one.

Point taken,
On rereading it I still didn't get that idea, but clarification helped. I'm suffering one of those days where everything seems to take 3 tries to get right. You know the kind of day, where you swear someone elected you "king Midas O'Crap"... everything you touch turns to crap before your very eyes... Yep, that is today for me

My point was only that before you can say what's right, and what's not, you have to have a consistent, and common point from which to begin. If it's a life from conception, then women who abuse themselves and cause a miscarriage are murderers. People that cause a miscarriage as a result of everything from rough sex, to car accidents, to eating the wrong foods are guilty of murder. That just doesn't work, 3/4 of the women of a child bearing age would be in jail, it's just plain silly.

Before you can determine where the race ends, you have to know where is started, and that standard has to be the same for one event, as the next. Al-la-carte morality is fake at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

[gaia.plateau]

Judgeposer, your premises are subjective at best, which makes them and any attempt at deductive reasoning in this scenario completely irrelevant.

I'm not sure what you mean by subjective. Do you believe that they're false? Whatever you mean by subjective, how does that render deductive argument in this scenario "irrelevant"?

Subjective means of personal interpretation, defined by one's own opinions, experiences and perspectives. Your premises come from your individual, thinking mind, rather than objective thought. Since deductive reasoning, which went out of style in the mid 19th century when people began to realize that it is meaningless, depends entirely on premises being true, your clearly subjective premises such as "abortion takes an innocent life" are irrelevant. Prima facie, if you will.

I may as well say to you;
*All individuals of a pro-life position are Christian
*You are of a pro-life position
= You are Christian.

*Sin negates innocence
*Christians believe that all people are born in sin by the carnal act of reproduction
= You believe that embryos are not innocent life, and it therefore follows that you in fact find abortion morally permissable. [...]

I suppose I see now. You mean that deductive argument is irrelevant in this case because anyone, such as yourself, can lob any number of deductive arguments, some or all of which don't make sense?

I suppose.

Like I mentioned, deductive reasoning depends 100% on premises being true, so that we can know a conclusion is true. Since it's entirely impossible for anyone to be sure that anything is true, we have to rely on probabilities, which fit into inductive reasoning. The "All individuals of a pro-life position are Christian" premise I gave as an example is obviously false, but it could be subjectively true, as true as your supposition that "Abortion takes an innocent life".

Indeed the abortion debate seems intractable, and in a practical sense, it has been. That doesn't mean, however, that we cannot ask whether abortion is morally acceptable. That question remains independent of the legal question of whether it should be legally protected. Merely because we disagree about this issue doesn't prove that the issue is unsolvable. We may just not like to admit that we've accepted something that's morally wrong.

But it is unsolvable, because that would mean that one camp could potentially convince the other that their position is correct.

I'm still not sure why that potential doesn't exist in this debate. You don't believe that any one side can potentially convince the other side? - Forget then any one side actually convincing the other!

Because it's the debate is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. No one knows what morality is, not really. It's something we're socialized to, a worldview that we inherit from our surroundings, and our experiences. If we've rejected both religious and the state policy to serve as evidence for either argument, all we are left with is angry people on one side of the fence and exasperated people on the other, most of whom seem to be shouting. I believe that it is realistically impossible for the Pro-Choice camp to convince people of the Pro-Life camp that abortion is morally permissible, and vice versa.

If, as you've put forth, we can't consider the state to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as I am now putting forth, we can't consider any religious institution to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral, and, as common sense and basic principles of the universe dictate, no individual person is capable of understanding morality with any certainty or from a position outside of their own personal experiences and understandings, it follows that the question of whether or not abortion is morally permissible is impossible to solve with any probability.

So...your argument goes:
P.1 - we can't consider the state to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral
P.2 - we can't consider any religious institution to be a legitimate factor in deciding what is or isn't moral
P.3 - no individual person is capable of understanding morality with any certainty or from a position outside of their own personal experiences and understandings
C.1 - the question of whether or not abortion is morally permissible is impossible to solve with any probability

Again with the useless deductive reasoning formula Let me give you a helpful quote.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. - Alfred North Whitehead Edited September 11, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[gaia.plateau]

The "with any certainty" phrase confuses me - because if read without it, the argument means to convey moral relativism. If read with the phrase, but without the portion after and including "or," then the argument mean to convey moral skepticism. If it's skepticism, I just don't know of what kind.

What you're missing, which may be why you're confused, is that we can't have certainty in anything, especially not in an issue as socially sensitive and morally ambiguous as the right to embryonic life versus the right to freedom of choice. So we can't have any premises.

Are you claiming that we cannot have knowledge about morals, or are you claiming rather that there is no knowledge about morals to be had? In the first instance, you posit that there exists an objective morality, but we lack the ability to gain any knowledge of it, whereas, in the second, you posit that an objective morality does not exist, and so of course we cannot have any knowledge of it.

I have no way of knowing, of course, and in any event they come down to the exact same thing. But try to consider where morality comes from, and look beyond your own front yard. In parts of China, mercy killing is perfectly moral. In parts of the Middle East, female circumcision/genital mutilation is perfectly moral. Morality is socially determined and prescribed, so it's only as objective as are societies. In Canada and the US, we tend to derive morality from a religious position, which essentially amounts to the very same thing as religion is a social construct. We also tend to derive morality from selfish political and economic perspectives, for example, the position of some Americans that the invasion of Iraq was morally acceptable, but the invasion of Georgia was not.

The only truth I've been attempting to reveal is that the acceptability of abortion is something we all have to decide individually, and we can neither make a perfect decision nor know for certain that we've made the right one, because morality is not something that can be proved. Edited September 11, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[judgeposer]

The "with any certainty" phrase confuses me - because if read without it, the argument means to convey moral relativism. If read with the phrase, but without the portion after and including "or," then the argument mean to convey moral skepticism. If it's skepticism, I just don't know of what kind.

What you're missing, which may be why you're confused, is that we can't have certainty in anything, especially not in an issue as socially sensitive and morally ambiguous as the right to embryonic life versus the right to freedom of choice. So we can't have any premises.

We can't have certainty in anything? - except of course in the certainty that we can't have certainty.

[Bulldog_916]

It's a big subject to get your mind around to be sure. Just like the idea that before the big bang, matter didnt exist. Or asking the question if you are religious....what came before God? Who created the creator?

[judgeposer]

It's a big subject to get your mind around to be sure. Just like the idea that before the big bang, matter didnt exist. Or asking the question if you are religious....what came before God? Who created the creator?

While perhaps true, and since the seeming intractability of the problem may have become reality (alas), I now just point out that so long as we did not arrive to this point by slogans about the uncertainty of truth, or the relativity of morality, or some such thing, we can still hope. All of those slogans, which is what they are, suffer the same problem of being self-refuting in some way.

[Johnny_D]

Anyways. What a woman does with her body is her own -ing business.

Said it before, say it again. Society may deem it to be immoral. But as long as it's not illegal there ain't fuck all your going todo about it.

Might as well get back to barking at the moon.

JD