iwpoe wrote:

I don't know how you can have a culturally relative "practically possible" invincible ignorance.

First, if we're talking about the incident I think we're talking about, Trump was referring to a world in which abortion was illegal. In such a world it's very hard for me to see how a woman procuring an abortion could be naive about what she was doing.

I'm sorry, Poe, I think I misread your original replies. I certainly wasn't intending to make any appeals to invincible ignorance.

iwpoe wrote:

Second, let's keep to the present context. I'm simply in full doubt about both the ignorance and the relevance of the sort of ignorance in question. Are you're telling me that what's required is a lack of ignorance about the metaphysical personhood of the fetus?

No.

iwpoe wrote:

The arguments for metaphysical fetal personhood are stipulative and tendentious. I think they're much stronger than opponents treat them, but it's not as if there's any culture in which that argument is going to be indubitably settled- and that gos for the doctors as well as the mother. That burden seems far too high for any sort of culpability- akin to requiring that there be a final metaphysically decisive account of what property is before someone can be charged with theft.

I mean, maybe you meant something else. Even so, your prior post seemed to me to put a lot of weight on women being told that the fetus is a clump of cells, and, I mean, for big parts of the first trimester that's a fair description, and even by the end of the first trimester a fetus has translucent skin and is quite odd looking. This all seems besides the point because the argument against abortion is meant to apply even when it's quite reasonable even for a doctor to call it "a clump of cells"- from say 1 to 7 weeks. It's not all that difficult to become aware of the pregnancy 2 to 4 weeks in and procure an abortion immediately without having been mislead by that description in the least. The whole point of the metaphysical argument is that clump-of-cell-hood and personhood are not mutually exclusive categories. So whatever sort of ignorance being told that the fetus is "a clump of cells" might constitute it doesn't seem relevant to the wrong.

I actually violently reject this 'well look how baby-looking' it is pro-life propaganda approach, since the personhood argument the whole thing hinges on applies just as well to zygotes, blastocysts, etc, and would prohibit abortion even if it was easy to perform in the first week of pregnancy (which isn't impossible to make regular practice, especially given medical technology dedicated to the task, just difficult). It's a red herring with nothing but rhetorical value.

So what exactly is your defense of the women here? I know they're stressed, but so what? I know that the process and fetus may have been described to them in certain ways, but that seems irrelevant.

I'm not sure why you think I'm making a defense for any abortion. I insist that it is simply natural for people to understand that conception = human life. I think an emphasis on personhood would arguably even be misplaced. It takes sophistry more than anything to confuse the issue.

You are correct in your previous post that any number of things are by nature revolting to us. But the opposite sex will normally not be anything like revolting once one passes through puberty; the slaughter of war, however, will remain revolting.

I disagree absolutely with your claim that abortion cannot be virtually intuited by people - even and perhaps especially young people - to simply be morally wrong. I have to stress yet again that by nature children typically will identify with the womb. It's hard to imagine a child not seeing their own destruction as something simply wrong. Most children are pretty cocksure of their own innocence and goodness.

Tim, that was a reply to Greg. I should have quoted him I guess, but I didn't really have anything I wanted to take line by line.

He and I are having an argument about weather women are presently in general guilty of something they in principle deserve punishment for. I'm inclined to think that if the metaphysical argument works, then yes, they are, and that most defenses of them are implausible and would not wash for other crimes.

I mean Trump is right: the metaphysical argument construes abortion as the killing of an innocent person. If the metaphysical argument is right, then you have a woman who is contracting to have somebody kill an innocent person.

The usual defenses for the mother are stress and ignorance. But these are not even adequate defenses for much lesser crimes, nevermind murder. Even if I grant Greg's arguments that the usual descriptions of abortion are sufficiently misleading to free a woman from having intentionally killed an innocent person, I don't see why she wouldn't thereby be guilty of some kind of manslaughter and negligence.

Timocrates wrote:

I disagree absolutely with your claim that abortion cannot be virtually intuited by people - even and perhaps especially young people - to simply be morally wrong. I have to stress yet again that by nature children typically will identify with the womb. It's hard to imagine a child not seeing their own destruction as something simply wrong. Most children are pretty cocksure of their own innocence and goodness.

Children are assholes, Tim. They're not sure of their goodness, they're just sure that you should give them whatever they say. I think that you are just sentimental and inclined to interpret that as the working of the natural law in their innocence in a case that you agree with. Since children say all sorts of things are wrong, including a lot of things that obviously aren't but would just bother them for stupid child reasons, I'm not particularly impressed by the argument.

I'm not disagreeing with you that children manifest some kind of repulsion do a lot of things, it's just that I disagree with your interpretation of moral intuition. That's not moral intuition because there has been no proper distinction made between disgust as a passion and moral intuitions prompted by disgust.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/01/2016 6:52 pm)

You make some fair points, Poe. I'll try to prepare a response possibly in a modified spirit this week.

iwpoe wrote:

Tim, that was a reply to Greg. I should have quoted him I guess, but I didn't really have anything I wanted to take line by line.

He and I are having an argument about weather women are presently in general guilty of something they in principle deserve punishment for. I'm inclined to think that if the metaphysical argument works, then yes, they are,

Yes, they are. But retroactive punishment is wrong. The women and the men who participated in abortion will have to answer for it. Frankly, that's half the reason homosexuality is so popular. It's perfect. All pleasure and no consequences.

iwpoe wrote:

Children are assholes,

Okay Poe. You're wrong, but okay.

It is worth noting that, I've just found out, women are, in fact, presently charged for self-induced or presumed self-induced abortions or some ancillary activity related to self-induced abortions in many states. I apologize for the source, but the aggregator does link to the original articles:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2016/03/women-are-already-being-prosecuted-for-having-abortions.html

So, Trump wasn't even merely, as I argued, right on principle. He's just in fact right. If you're all bumping against the consequence of the policies that fall out of the pro-life movement rather straightforwardly, it's hard to see what hope there is for the movement popularly when this fact catches on.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/08/2016 11:14 pm)