Why is that a valid or useful comparison, and also, why is that particular belief one worthy of condemning the person for?
'Condemn' is an emotive word, I know, and I perhaps shouldn't have used the word damning.
I'm hoping this can not turn into a full-on abortion argument - I'm never going to convince you, you're never going to convince me, it's the condemnation of the people who hold the view that I'm asking about.
(I was hoping you meant the view that abortion is wrong, but the death sentence isn't. That is not a view that I can understand or have any part in, nor am I attempting to defend it at this time, although I've argued some pretty despicable things in the name of debate in the past, and expect to do so again)
Both are ideological views, lacking in any kind of compassion or common sense; both are plainly wrong; both end up stereotyping a larger group of people than the handful of extremists who espouse them.
I guess that's a reason which makes sense. Not one I can agree with; neither are *plainly* wrong or lacking in compassion, otherwise people wouldn't believe either thing. The second I can't see the commonsense in, but that's less relevant, I think.
I don't think I am ever going to see why you condemn me for having no compassion merely because I think it's wrong to kill, always.You can have another go at explaining if you like, though
(oh, and if I chose it because the analogy is very close were obvious to me, I wouldn't have asked. I did not think the analogy was close, but then, I'm not in your head.)
Well, if you wish to take an entrenched and dogmatic view (about anything, really, not necessarily abortion), then I guess that's your perogative.
But doing so will lead to problems, and will give rise to inconsistencies that leave you trying to defend the indefensible, sooner or later. People will think less of you as a result, and you'll end up being part of the problem, not part of the solution.
So a foetus has an absolute right to life, eh? You'd defend the right to life of the unborn child, even when it results in the mother's death? Even when the child is so deformed that there is very little prospect of live birth anyway? Even though when the mother dies because you denied her an abortion, the child consequently dies anyway?
Of course not. That would be an evil, despicable, stance to take.
Conversely, of course, hardly anyone would condone gratuitously killing a completely healthy foetus just as the mother-to-be went into labour.
The question is surely where to draw the line between those two extremes. The interesting and difficult cases are always in the grey area between the black and the white; the line has to go between the very darkest of whites and the very lightest of blacks. Dogmatic stances that deny the existence of shades of grey seldom lead to reasonable points of view.
Well, if you wish to take an entrenched and dogmatic view (about anything, really, not necessarily abortion), then I guess that's your perogative.
Thankyou. My problem, you see, is not, on the whole, that your opinions are different to mine. It's that you seem prepared to consider my opinions on one matter sufficient to damn me as a person.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. 'The problem I have with what you are saying is that you seem prepared to consider my opinions on one matter sufficient to damn me as a person.'
I think at this point we have to merely accept that we're never going to agree, and you should feel free to ignore me at any relevant parties.
"Wrong to kill, always" is an appeal to emotion, a purely rhetorial approach.
If you use contraception (or, actually, abstinence) you are willing to condemn to death sperm and eggs. These are living tissue, non-sentient, with human genetic material, which left to themselves may eventually develop into a human being.
Likewise, an immediately fertilised egg is living tissue, non-sentient, with human genetic material, which left to itself may eventually develop into a human being.
Why is it acceptable to kill the former but not the latter? Surely being in pieces is not the fundamental issue here...
"Wrong to kill, always" is an appeal to emotion, a purely rhetorial approach.
I, too, believe in trying my hardest to avoid unnecessary killing (primarily of animals rather than plants etc). I don't see what is so bad about basing how I try to behave on how I feel.
Where I am responsible* for something being killed, it doesn't make it right, it just makes it necessary. If I don't have a viable alternative then there's not a lot I can do about it. But I still think it's important for me to try to avoid killing.
(*Usually by a failure to act rather than by an act)
Why is it acceptable to kill the former but not the latter? Surely being in pieces is not the fundamental issue here...
Being useless, I'll not answer it directly, I'll just ask: Well, what is the alternative?
Your approach does not seem to depend on a hypothetical distinction between two microscopic pieces of tissue and one such piece of tissue; and isn't being used as a purely rhetorical technique. Act on your emotions, sure; but if you try to justify actions that affect others (such as compelling women to continue with unwanted - even involuntary - pregnancies) purely on the basis of an appeal to the audience's emotions, you can't expect that to work.
The alternative, I think, is to recognise that there is a continuum; a just-fertilised egg is not a human life any more than a sperm and an unfertilised egg in close proximity are; a baby on the point of being born is a human life; the states in between should be assessed as to their degree of sentience. The law has to draw a line, but that line will of necessity be drawn on a shade of grey; there's no one point at which we can say "up to this point this is not a human, but after this point it is".
How do you define a human being here? This is the interesting part. I don't know at what point a sperm and an egg become something other than 'a sperm' and 'an egg'. I think it's wise to err on the side of caution, and therefore, I don't say 'this is a human' when, for example, it's born, or when the heart starts beating, both of which could be obvious cut-off points. The former has, of course, the obvious consequence that one baby at 38 (28, whatever) weeks is a human, and a similarly aged foetus is not. I don't quite see how that works as a theory. The latter, well, maybe. Maybe before 6 weeks, that really isn't a human, but a collection of cells with the potential and likelihood of becoming a human.
What are the characteristics of a fertilised egg that a sperm/unfertilised egg pair lack? A sperm or egg without external stimulus will almost certainly die off, and never develop any further. A fertilised egg, left to its own devices, will implant in the womb, and grow into a baby. That's slightly simplistic, of course.
When you write that you don't know at what point things change, you appear to be backing down from the earlier position that at the point of fertilisation it must necessarily become a human.
"it's born" is a straw man, I'm afraid, because (almost?) no-one would contend that humanity begins at that point; and equally a heartbeat does not define humanity.
I would feel that sentience is what defines humans, and as such we may reason about what is sentient. A fertilised egg is manifestly not sentient; a baby about to be born is equally manifestly sentient. Now there is, yes, a grey area; but that does not mean that there is not a period where the foetus is without doubt non-sentient - as an extreme example, before recognisable brain tissue has been developed - and it might therefore be killed without moral qualms, because there never was a human being there.
So I think what it comes down to is that one must first arrive at a definite idea of what it means to be human, not an animal, and extrapolate from that. Hence; what, for you, defines a human?
A fertilised egg, left to its own devices, will implant in the womb, and grow into a baby.
This is dangerously close to the "potential" argument you rejected earlier; and, of course, a sperm/egg pair in the right positions, left to their own devices, are very likely to fertilise and do all that - so, again, one has to ask what the difference is.
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Re: Careful wording time...
Date: 2004-01-12 05:23 am (UTC)Why is that a valid or useful comparison, and also, why is that particular belief one worthy of condemning the person for?
'Condemn' is an emotive word, I know, and I perhaps shouldn't have used the word damning.
I'm hoping this can not turn into a full-on abortion argument - I'm never going to convince you, you're never going to convince me, it's the condemnation of the people who hold the view that I'm asking about.
(I was hoping you meant the view that abortion is wrong, but the death sentence isn't. That is not a view that I can understand or have any part in, nor am I attempting to defend it at this time, although I've argued some pretty despicable things in the name of debate in the past, and expect to do so again)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 05:51 am (UTC)If an American religious idealogue says "abortion is unacceptable, even early in pregnancy before the foetus is independently viable, even if the mother's life is at risk", that creates the same kind of bad press for the West as "schoolgirls prevented from leaving burning building because they were dressed inappropriately to be seen in public" creates for Arabs.
Both are ideological views, lacking in any kind of compassion or common sense; both are plainly wrong; both end up stereotyping a larger group of people than the handful of extremists who espouse them.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 06:12 am (UTC)I don't think I am ever going to see why you condemn me for having no compassion merely because I think it's wrong to kill, always.You can have another go at explaining if you like, though
(oh, and if I chose it because the analogy is very close were obvious to me, I wouldn't have asked. I did not think the analogy was close, but then, I'm not in your head.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 11:32 am (UTC)But doing so will lead to problems, and will give rise to inconsistencies that leave you trying to defend the indefensible, sooner or later. People will think less of you as a result, and you'll end up being part of the problem, not part of the solution.
So a foetus has an absolute right to life, eh? You'd defend the right to life of the unborn child, even when it results in the mother's death? Even when the child is so deformed that there is very little prospect of live birth anyway? Even though when the mother dies because you denied her an abortion, the child consequently dies anyway?
Of course not. That would be an evil, despicable, stance to take.
Conversely, of course, hardly anyone would condone gratuitously killing a completely healthy foetus just as the mother-to-be went into labour.
The question is surely where to draw the line between those two extremes. The interesting and difficult cases are always in the grey area between the black and the white; the line has to go between the very darkest of whites and the very lightest of blacks. Dogmatic stances that deny the existence of shades of grey seldom lead to reasonable points of view.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 06:28 am (UTC)Thankyou. My problem, you see, is not, on the whole, that your opinions are different to mine. It's that you seem prepared to consider my opinions on one matter sufficient to damn me as a person.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 07:40 am (UTC)In fact, it's entirely reasonable to damn you as a person for your opinions on one matter.
The real problem is your opinions on that one matter.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 07:46 am (UTC)opinions on one matter sufficient to damn me as a person.'
I think at this point we have to merely accept that we're never going to agree, and you should feel free to ignore me at any relevant parties.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 03:46 pm (UTC)If you use contraception (or, actually, abstinence) you are willing to condemn to death sperm and eggs. These are living tissue, non-sentient, with human genetic material, which left to themselves may eventually develop into a human being.
Likewise, an immediately fertilised egg is living tissue, non-sentient, with human genetic material, which left to itself may eventually develop into a human being.
Why is it acceptable to kill the former but not the latter? Surely being in pieces is not the fundamental issue here...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-13 06:11 am (UTC)I, too, believe in trying my hardest to avoid unnecessary killing (primarily of animals rather than plants etc). I don't see what is so bad about basing how I try to behave on how I feel.
Where I am responsible* for something being killed, it doesn't make it right, it just makes it necessary. If I don't have a viable alternative then there's not a lot I can do about it. But I still think it's important for me to try to avoid killing.
(*Usually by a failure to act rather than by an act)
Why is it acceptable to kill the former but not the latter? Surely being in pieces is not the fundamental issue here...
Being useless, I'll not answer it directly, I'll just ask: Well, what is the alternative?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 06:08 am (UTC)The alternative, I think, is to recognise that there is a continuum; a just-fertilised egg is not a human life any more than a sperm and an unfertilised egg in close proximity are; a baby on the point of being born is a human life; the states in between should be assessed as to their degree of sentience. The law has to draw a line, but that line will of necessity be drawn on a shade of grey; there's no one point at which we can say "up to this point this is not a human, but after this point it is".
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 06:31 am (UTC)But we've done this argument before, and got nowhere, and it's not really relevant here.
Can we skip to the agreeing to disagree bit?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-14 06:37 am (UTC)How do you define a human being here? What are the characteristics of a fertilised egg that a sperm/unfertilised egg pair lack?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 04:50 am (UTC)How do you define a human being here? This is the interesting part. I don't know at what point a sperm and an egg become something other than 'a sperm' and 'an egg'. I think it's wise to err on the side of caution, and therefore, I don't say 'this is a human' when, for example, it's born, or when the heart starts beating, both of which could be obvious cut-off points. The former has, of course, the obvious consequence that one baby at 38 (28, whatever) weeks is a human, and a similarly aged foetus is not. I don't quite see how that works as a theory. The latter, well, maybe. Maybe before 6 weeks, that really isn't a human, but a collection of cells with the potential and likelihood of becoming a human.
What are the characteristics of
a fertilised egg that a sperm/unfertilised egg pair lack? A sperm or egg without external stimulus will almost certainly die off, and never develop any further. A fertilised egg, left to its own devices, will implant in the womb, and grow into a baby. That's slightly simplistic, of course.
Does that help?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-22 08:26 pm (UTC)When you write that you don't know at what point things change, you appear to be backing down from the earlier position that at the point of fertilisation it must necessarily become a human.
"it's born" is a straw man, I'm afraid, because (almost?) no-one would contend that humanity begins at that point; and equally a heartbeat does not define humanity.
I would feel that sentience is what defines humans, and as such we may reason about what is sentient. A fertilised egg is manifestly not sentient; a baby about to be born is equally manifestly sentient. Now there is, yes, a grey area; but that does not mean that there is not a period where the foetus is without doubt non-sentient - as an extreme example, before recognisable brain tissue has been developed - and it might therefore be killed without moral qualms, because there never was a human being there.
So I think what it comes down to is that one must first arrive at a definite idea of what it means to be human, not an animal, and extrapolate from that. Hence; what, for you, defines a human?
A fertilised egg, left to its own devices, will implant in the womb, and grow into a baby.
This is dangerously close to the "potential" argument you rejected earlier; and, of course, a sperm/egg pair in the right positions, left to their own devices, are very likely to fertilise and do all that - so, again, one has to ask what the difference is.