affect (v.) to cause a change. (e.g.: "Your grammar naziism doesn't affect me!")
affect (n.) emotion or expression thereof (e.g.: "a flat affect" -- meaning a blank expression on the face).
effect (v.) to cause to occur (e.g.: "I want to effect change in the quality of Slashdot vocabulary usage")
effect (n.) The result of a change (e.g.: "This thread had tremendous effects on the way people use words around here. Or not.")
The major difference between affect the verb and effect the verb is the object: the recipient of the change is "affected"; the change itself is "effected."
Genes are only half the story. Environmental stimuli can turn genes on or off, causing proteins to be made or not made, causing abilities to flourish or remain dormant.
Oh, alright, I'll forgive you. But only if you provide a link to a "real authority" that gives a reasonable definition of lifeform. Skepticism is not a way of constructing a philosophy, after all.
That's the problem... I don't think of life as a table.
There's a good reason for that. Any object can undergo a process of creation, as you clearly elucidate. However, some processes take longer than others, and have clearer boundaries than others.
In the case of an embryo, there is a definite moment, spanning a few minutes, in which sperm and egg unite and become an organism. A genetically human, genetically distinct organism. At that point, from the legal standpoint that existed until Roe, all human organisms get the same basic rights: the right to not be killed by others, for example.
If you wish to argue that the embryo does not have that right, the burden of proof should reasonably be on you to show it, not simply to appeal to skepticism of the form "when does it become human, anyway?"
Your fingernail clippings aren't an organism. That's the issue at stake. If you have a collection of human cells that functions as an organism, then the burden of proof is on you to show that this organism somehow has a different status from you.
As it turns out, an embryo *does* qualify as an organism. Check out "lifeform" on the Wiki, for starters.
Very possibly. OTOH, American Christians grasp one point clearly: the scientific establishment has no more patience for theistic evolution than it does for ID or Creationism. So... why bother trying to be respectable in their eyes?
Doh! You try to proofread and the errors still slip through!
"...the lack of any such numbers in your list is a failure of imagination on your part." [strike "the" in original].
However, from a legal and moral perspective, we have consistently held that articles XIII, XV, and XIX were enacted because we finally realized that we had been artificially restricting the rights of some humans because we did not properly recognize their humanity. Few now would argue that blacks did not actually have a moral right to vote prior to the passage of Amendment XV. Rather, our collective understanding is that the right for blacks to vote was implied in the Constitution and Declaration, but went undiscovered until 1869, when XV was adopted. We did not expand society in 1869; we righted a fundamental injustice that had previously gone uncorrected. It was our failure to correctly empathize with women and blacks that kept us from granting them full rights from the beginning, in 1789.
On the other hand, look at the woman in this situation, who suffers unquestionably. It's not like carrying around a backpack for 9 months than taking it off, after all. Pregnancy means serious hormonal and physical changes (some irreversible). It means a risk of required surgery or death even if the health of the mother is otherwise perfect. Even if she plans to give up the child up for adoption, that doesn't help with post-partum depression. It doesn't help with the trauma of giving birth (one occasional "side-effect" of giving birth is diagnosable Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome)...
Agreed on all points, and the ones which follow that paragraph. I would never argue that pregnancy is a simple inconvenience -- having recently supported my wife during two of them -- nor that we should outlaw abortions without providing a support structure for moms.
When you say "human" as in, "draw me a picture of 5 humans and 2 canines in a room", what would you draw? When we hear the word in "the Chinese are violating basic human rights", we think of fully functional, living adults, not even children.
If I asked you to choose 5 numbers, would you choose any non-integers? How about any irrational numbers? Transcendental numbers? Complex numbers? If not, it is still crystal clear that the lack of any such numbers in your list is a failure of imagination on the your part, not a limitation of the scope of the word "number."
It's not actually useful to say "all humans should have equal human rights" -- which sounds reasonable -- then decide that a scientific definition of the word human must include X, Y, & Z, and assume that our original statement must true for those...The reason human rights exist in the first place is because we, adults, know or can imagine what it is like to suffer pain and humiliation, to have our freedom of movement restricted unjustly or our bodies violated, etc., and we feel empathy for other beings like us who are undergoing these things. It's simply not logical that we can extend this empathy to a single-celled, newly fertilized egg. [Argument reordered for clarity within this post]
Your argument is valid, assuming that (a) your account of human rights is correct (and specifically, that "human rights" is not a notion that applies analytically to all humans), and that (b) I am truly extending the set of humans rather than removing an artficial restriction on it. I want to argue that (a) is wrong morally and historically, and that (b) is wrong historically.
(~a) Human rights do not exist to affirm our empathy towards the pain, suffering, humiliation, etc. of others. Instead, human rights exist in order to provide a check against our *lack* of empathy towards some people. If human rights were a function of empathy, then we would
(1) extend more rights to those who are more pathetic (i.e., able to arouse empathy), (2) extend human rights to animals who also suffer, (3) increase the rights of those who suffer more.
Historically, the basis for human rights in America is that all humans are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Even those skeptical that humans were specifically created (Jefferson, Paine) signed on to these principles, because they believed that to be human meant having human rights. In this, they were guided by the philosophical Realism of Locke. And, they were specifically arguing against the idea that rights are derived from the sympathies or laws of a particular society (such as England), but instead are universal and transcendental.
In short, for the Founding Fathers, "human rights" are possessed by virtue of being human.
It was, and is, important to base human rights on an objective property because we lack the proper empathy towards those who deserve it. The FF recognized that legislators tend to favor sympathetic causes. The Constitution was established to check that
You're right in terms of negligence re: Windows, but I would point out that *allowing* a large company to deliberately 'bot' users' computers with not even a mention in the EULA would be a significant step in a really bad direction. He's right to draw a line here.
It doesn't matter what the 'bot does; it matters how thoroughly companies are allowed to p0wn other peoples' computers.
Right-to-life advocates push the all-or-nothing line of humanity out to include the unborn, back to the moment of egg fertilization. Some also want the definition to include brain-dead adults. The problem with the embryo situation is that it's not yet an independant organism -- it's attached to the mother and cannot survive separate from her. Her right to control her own body is irreconcilably in conflict with the newly granted right of the fetus to its life.
I want to break this apart into several separate statements:
(1) Right-to-life advocates push the all-or-nothing line of humanity out to include the unborn. True. My own basis for doing so is that any other line assigns the quality "human" to an organism based on either (a) utility -- that is, a definition based on a particular theory of ethics, or (b) location of the organism relative to some other organism. The first is abhorrent; the second is ad hoc. The only scientific way to procede that makes sense to me is, Species? Human. Living in a biological sense? Check. Living human being = person.
(2) Some also want the definition to include brain-dead adults. Possibly true, but most are willing to concede that a brain-dead adult is non-salvageable. The Terri Schaevo case was remarkable because (a) her wishes were not in writing, (b) her function was clearly minimal, (c) the needed amount of life support was also minimal, and (d) both sides had potential interests in the outcome. It was, in other words, a horrible test case. I would have pulled the tube, myself.
(3)The problem with the embryo situation is that it's not yet an independant organism -- it's attached to the mother and cannot survive separate from her. Well, we agree that the attachment is what causes the problem. Unfortunately, the attachment is not a sufficient cause to declare non-humanity. For one thing, no organism is truly "independent" of others, regardless of attachment. My two-month-old Elizabeth would die very quickly without my wife or me. "Independence" (a murky concept at best) is clearly not a necessary condition for humanity.
One might argue that the embryo is non-detachable from her particular mother, but this fares no better. If in the year 2050 it became possible to transplant embryos from one womb to another, or to a special incubator, then the embryo *would* be able to survive without attachment to a particular woman. If detachability is the criterion for humanity, then embryos would suddenly become human in 2050 -- an odd result, indeed.
(4) Her right to control her own body is irreconcilably in conflict with the [...] right of the fetus to its life.Agreed. Which is why I would ban abortions *except* in situations for which the rights of the mother are enhanced (aggravated conditions, such as rape; threat to life; serious threat to physical health). Put another way: if we want to balance the rights of mom and baby in any way whatsoever, the right approach is to make abortions illegal, with exceptions. Any other position (no restrictions, OR no abortions without exception) fails to balance competing rights.
(5)...the newly granted right of the fetus to its life. Historically, this is false. There have been some questions about the beginning of life, but there has never been a doubt that a living fetus has the right to not be killed. Roe invalidated abortion restrictions because it disagreed with Texas on its theory of life. What you may have meant is "its newly granted status as being alive", but my argument there is that the fetus was simply not recognized by the courts as being alive.
"If we have an avian flu outbreak here and it is even half as bad as the 1918 flu epidemic, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the infrastructure functioning is a matter of life and death and we take it very seriously."
The discussion threatens to mushroom at this point. Numbering your responses above, I would say that your points 1, 6, and 7 appear to be responding to (honest) mis-readings of what I wrote. Regarding other points,
>>I've argued that genetic makeup does.
What about chimeras - they're people with two different sets of dna. Are they two people?
It's fairly clear that chimeras are single organisms, so No. Certainly, a doctor seeing a chimera as a patient doesn't get confused about how many patients he's seeing. Nor do we in common language experience any confusion about "him" or "her" over against "them."
By contrast to the chimera, a pregnant woman is clearly seen to be two separable organisms:
(a) the zygote and not the woman directs implantation, placental growth, and differentiation and development.
(b) There are clear biological barriers between the woman's body and the fetus: they do not share a circulatory system, for example, and transmission of molecules across the placenta is highly regulated. Biologically, the inside of the uterus is *outside* of the woman in the same sense that the GI tract is outside of a person.
(c) at any point, the fetus may be removed from the woman and will develop, if the proper support technology exists, as any other human organism.
The technically genetically distinct cells of the chimera have none of those characteristics.
The current defenses of abortion appeal to the woman's right to protect herself from an "invader", which grants the notion that the fetus is a separate organism.
The real "teaser" is not chimeras, but Siamese twins, in which case I would probably count the number of people to be the number of separable organisms.
>>Yes, but that's the rub; ethical theories take on a life of their own, and get abused in undesired ways.
Are you trying to come up with a hijack-proof ethical system? Good luck. Any ideas can be twisted.
>>What now if Son-of-Singer tweaks the theory to discount the pain of blacks, or Jews, or left-handed Eskimo pipe-welders, because they are of lesser utility?
Any ideas can be twisted. Further, he does not discount the "value" of the terminally ill embryos or whatever because of their "utility to society". If that were the case, it would be morally equal to kill a young baby and a fetus on the grounds that there is no substantial difference in their utility to society.
Oh yes, that's exactly how Singer argues. He argues for the right of parents to kill their baby up to 30 days after birth, on the grounds that it is morally equivalent to abortion.
Hijack-resistance is a desirable trait; ideas which can morph from "intuitively good" to "intuitively monstrous" with small tweakings of non-essential parameters are unstable.
>>Nevertheless, I would endorse Theological Perspectivalism
Sorry man, you're talking with an athiest. Can you recommend a theory that doesn't rely on God?
Sorry, man, you're talking to a theist. Can you appeal only to ethical theories that explictly rely on God's revelation?
It doesn't work that way. You cannot demand that a person recommend theories that contradict a central premise of his thought.
You can, however, *read* people who disagree with you. It is entirely possible for an atheist to read Theological Perspectivalists with profit, just as I have read Hume and Nielson with profit. Technically, you are "unconvinced of God's existence", yes? Then it should be possible for you to entertain the notion "what if God did exist? what effects would that have on ethics?" And then read thoughtful people who take that approach.
That was my real point about the Bible being a non-discredited source.
Actually, I find Singer's arguments to be a very accurate description of what we value in life.
I don't know about "we." Certainly, "some" or "many of those currently in power in most developed countries." But I would not agree in the least with a utilitarian approach to ethics, and most people don't live like that in practice.
Blood and guts do not make the person.
I've argued that genetic makeup does. Specifically, my approach to rights begins with the notion of limits: we are limited in what we are allowed to do to others, according to our status relative to those others. As one human being, I am limited in what I may do to another human because we are of equal status, unless he has forfeited his rights in some way.
What do you think of him elevating some of the animal world to the human level?
It's an interesting approach, but it fails to address the basic question: why *should* the utility to animals be considered along with the utility of people? Singer seems to postulate it. I would rather approach animal rights from the "limits" perspective.
Using his standards of value, slaves never would have been considered sub-human.
Yes, but that's the rub; ethical theories take on a life of their own, and get abused in undesired ways. Just as Hitler hijacked Heidigger and Marx hijacked Hegel, so also Singer is vulnerable to hijacking because of his utilitarian stance.
Essentially, utilitarianism has to assign a "score" to people's happiness and pain. Singer discounts the pain of, say, infanticide, because the infant has not yet attained the right to be considered a full person. Similarly, he discounts the pain of euthanizing, even forcibly, the terminally ill and elderly because they are of lesser utility to society. What now if Son-of-Singer tweaks the theory to discount the pain of blacks, or Jews, or left-handed Eskimo pipe-welders*, because they are of lesser utility? Once you crack open the door, there's no way to keep the orcs and trolls out.
Side note: this is a "slippery slope" argument. However, it is not a fallacious one because the mechanism is clear: the underlying assumption that utility determines value has already been accepted; it is unquestionable that those in power will discount the value of groups they happen not to like. Therefore, Singer's ideas, if accepted, will inevitably lead to abuses by those in power.
Further, the vast majority of the pro-life position is communicated, "That goes against God." Let alone the fact that there is no prohibition against abortion in the bible. Or stem cell research for that matter.
I'm OK, in principle, with arguments from the Bible. As a Christian, I find the Scripture to be binding on my conscience. However, even were I an atheist, I would have to ask: Is there a reason that the Bible should be a discredited source? Not really. Therefore, an argument from the Bible is at least as valid as an argument from Singer, unless you really believe that Singer has acheived a truly rational basis for ethics, like Kant wanted.
Then the question is, can we make a case against abortion from the Scriptures? Only in part. The case for the humanity of a fetus is really a biological one. The case against murder, OTOH, is Scriptural, which is why Christians make it... tacitly taking the personhood of the fetus for granted, which is rather sloppy on their parts. I'm not prepared to discuss stem-cell research here because of the chimera-like nature of the issue.
If utilitarianism is a discredited ethical theory, would you mind suggesting a credited one? Perhaps there is something you find lacking with it, but its still very commonly used.
Touche. Nevertheless, I would endorse Theological Perspectivalism as both more practical *and* less self-defeating than utilitarianism. John Frame is well worth reading.
I don't read it your way; it seems to me that he's saying "all of the research shows small-to-moderate correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior and lesser correlation between media violence and violent behavior."
That's not inconclusive or indeterminate -- it's a small-to-moderate effect in a multiply-caused behavior. Throughout the report, you read statements like "the effect was significant" or "statistically significant effect." It's an abuse of statistics to confuse a small effect with inconclusiveness.
I have no opinion about the JAMA article. It was subscription-only, and my wife is asleep, so I'll ask her in the morning (she's a pediatrician).
Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating censorship or even supporting a rating system (worse than useless idea!). In fact, I enjoy Warcraft along with the rest of them, and I'm relatively decent at it. It's just important to be honest about the research, which seems to be clear about the effect, if not the magnitude of the effect, that video violence has on real aggression and violence.
One final thought: is it really reasonable to suppose that we can "train" our reactions and emotions using simulators, which is what video games are, and then expect those reactions and emotions to disappear entirely in real life?
Just to be precise, the question for Singer is not "is it human?", since the species is undubitably homo sapiens, a not-vague-at-all definition. Instead, the questions are "Is this living human a person?" and "does this human being actually have value?"
If you find Singer's argument "that living human beings are not necessarily people" disturbing and eerily reminiscent of pre-Abolition America, then you understand the beginnings of the pro-life position.
My own criticism of Singer is that he relies far too heavily on an already-discredited ethical theory, Utilitarianism.
I have no problem with parts of your argument -- basketball v. Nethack, e.g., but you are factually incorrect about the AMA and Surgeon General as far as I can tell.
See this link and notice that the statement is jointly signed by officials of the AAP, APA, AMA, AACAP, and AAFP. Theselinks state clearly that the Surgeon General considers video violence an encouragement to violent behavior.
If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be interested in seeing it.
There are a large number of studies which show direct causation: that violent games and movies lead to measurable physiological responses and increased aggressive behavior in children.
The studies do *not* show, naturally enough, that video violence causes *violent* behavior, because such studies would be prohibited. Nevertheless, there are studies that show strong correlations between video violence and violent behavior.[1]
a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence
Once again, in slow motion: a fetus is a member of the human species (gene check!). The members of the human species can exhibit all of the following phenomena at least once during their existence: (list #1 - 5 above). Ergo, the fetus is a lifeform (and, by definition, "alive").
You seem to be reading the definition as "in order to be alive, you have to be able to exhibit 1 - 5 right now", which is ludicrous. Almost no larvae in the animal kingdom are capable of reproduction, but no biologist in the world would argue that larvae are not alive.
Note -- a vain attempt to forstall the trolls here -- that a cancer cell is *not* a member of the human species because it is not an organism. How can we tell? Because a cancer cell cannot ever, in its existence, exhibit the characteristics of a lifeform.
If the pro-lifers really want to achieve their goal they just need to put their money where their mouth is and provide some support to women who would have otherwise had abortions to keep and bring up their children.
Actually, many pro-lifers do exactly that. Two facts back me up here:
1) The existence of crisis pregnancy centers, funded entirely by donations, whose work is to care for the mother until delivery, then help her as she decides whether to give the baby up for adoption or keep it. Links hereand here
2) The waiting time for adoptions in the U.S. is nine months or more. That indicates what all hopeful adoptive parents know to be true: demand for adoptive kids is greater than supply.
While we're on the topic, which is more caring: giving donations to help pregnant moms to be able to carry to term, or taking money from pregnant moms in return for "terminating their pregnancies"?
Slashdot Mirror
affect (v.) to cause a change. (e.g.: "Your grammar naziism doesn't affect me!")
affect (n.) emotion or expression thereof (e.g.: "a flat affect" -- meaning a blank expression on the face).
effect (v.) to cause to occur (e.g.: "I want to effect change in the quality of Slashdot vocabulary usage")
effect (n.) The result of a change (e.g.: "This thread had tremendous effects on the way people use words around here. Or not.")
The major difference between affect the verb and effect the verb is the object: the recipient of the change is "affected"; the change itself is "effected."
Sheesh -- did I really just waste time on this?!
discussion here.
1) To check the professor's facts, and
2) To quickly Google for related information.
If I had the ability to Bookmark related pages during lecture, it would have doubled my academic output. Maybe.
Let me know if you find the solution. I've just resigned myself to reading only the first and last comments on a multi-page discussion.
Oh, alright, I'll forgive you. But only if you provide a link to a "real authority" that gives a reasonable definition of lifeform. Skepticism is not a way of constructing a philosophy, after all.
There's a good reason for that. Any object can undergo a process of creation, as you clearly elucidate. However, some processes take longer than others, and have clearer boundaries than others.
In the case of an embryo, there is a definite moment, spanning a few minutes, in which sperm and egg unite and become an organism. A genetically human, genetically distinct organism. At that point, from the legal standpoint that existed until Roe, all human organisms get the same basic rights: the right to not be killed by others, for example.
If you wish to argue that the embryo does not have that right, the burden of proof should reasonably be on you to show it, not simply to appeal to skepticism of the form "when does it become human, anyway?"
My $0.02
As it turns out, an embryo *does* qualify as an organism. Check out "lifeform" on the Wiki, for starters.
Very possibly. OTOH, American Christians grasp one point clearly: the scientific establishment has no more patience for theistic evolution than it does for ID or Creationism. So ... why bother trying to be respectable in their eyes?
"...the lack of any such numbers in your list is a failure of imagination on your part." [strike "the" in original].
However, from a legal and moral perspective, we have consistently held that articles XIII, XV, and XIX were enacted because we finally realized that we had been artificially restricting the rights of some humans because we did not properly recognize their humanity. Few now would argue that blacks did not actually have a moral right to vote prior to the passage of Amendment XV. Rather, our collective understanding is that the right for blacks to vote was implied in the Constitution and Declaration, but went undiscovered until 1869, when XV was adopted. We did not expand society in 1869; we righted a fundamental injustice that had previously gone uncorrected. It was our failure to correctly empathize with women and blacks that kept us from granting them full rights from the beginning, in 1789.
On the other hand, look at the woman in this situation, who suffers unquestionably. It's not like carrying around a backpack for 9 months than taking it off, after all. Pregnancy means serious hormonal and physical changes (some irreversible). It means a risk of required surgery or death even if the health of the mother is otherwise perfect. Even if she plans to give up the child up for adoption, that doesn't help with post-partum depression. It doesn't help with the trauma of giving birth (one occasional "side-effect" of giving birth is diagnosable Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome)...
Agreed on all points, and the ones which follow that paragraph. I would never argue that pregnancy is a simple inconvenience -- having recently supported my wife during two of them -- nor that we should outlaw abortions without providing a support structure for moms.
When you say "human" as in, "draw me a picture of 5 humans and 2 canines in a room", what would you draw? When we hear the word in "the Chinese are violating basic human rights", we think of fully functional, living adults, not even children.
If I asked you to choose 5 numbers, would you choose any non-integers? How about any irrational numbers? Transcendental numbers? Complex numbers? If not, it is still crystal clear that the lack of any such numbers in your list is a failure of imagination on the your part, not a limitation of the scope of the word "number."
It's not actually useful to say "all humans should have equal human rights" -- which sounds reasonable -- then decide that a scientific definition of the word human must include X, Y, & Z, and assume that our original statement must true for those...The reason human rights exist in the first place is because we, adults, know or can imagine what it is like to suffer pain and humiliation, to have our freedom of movement restricted unjustly or our bodies violated, etc., and we feel empathy for other beings like us who are undergoing these things. It's simply not logical that we can extend this empathy to a single-celled, newly fertilized egg. [Argument reordered for clarity within this post]
Your argument is valid, assuming that (a) your account of human rights is correct (and specifically, that "human rights" is not a notion that applies analytically to all humans), and that (b) I am truly extending the set of humans rather than removing an artficial restriction on it. I want to argue that (a) is wrong morally and historically, and that (b) is wrong historically.
(~a) Human rights do not exist to affirm our empathy towards the pain, suffering, humiliation, etc. of others. Instead, human rights exist in order to provide a check against our *lack* of empathy towards some people. If human rights were a function of empathy, then we would
(1) extend more rights to those who are more pathetic (i.e., able to arouse empathy),
(2) extend human rights to animals who also suffer,
(3) increase the rights of those who suffer more.
Historically, the basis for human rights in America is that all humans are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Even those skeptical that humans were specifically created (Jefferson, Paine) signed on to these principles, because they believed that to be human meant having human rights. In this, they were guided by the philosophical Realism of Locke. And, they were specifically arguing against the idea that rights are derived from the sympathies or laws of a particular society (such as England), but instead are universal and transcendental.
In short, for the Founding Fathers, "human rights" are possessed by virtue of being human.
It was, and is, important to base human rights on an objective property because we lack the proper empathy towards those who deserve it. The FF recognized that legislators tend to favor sympathetic causes. The Constitution was established to check that
It doesn't matter what the 'bot does; it matters how thoroughly companies are allowed to p0wn other peoples' computers.
(1) Right-to-life advocates push the all-or-nothing line of humanity out to include the unborn. True. My own basis for doing so is that any other line assigns the quality "human" to an organism based on either (a) utility -- that is, a definition based on a particular theory of ethics, or (b) location of the organism relative to some other organism. The first is abhorrent; the second is ad hoc. The only scientific way to procede that makes sense to me is, Species? Human. Living in a biological sense? Check. Living human being = person.
(2) Some also want the definition to include brain-dead adults. Possibly true, but most are willing to concede that a brain-dead adult is non-salvageable. The Terri Schaevo case was remarkable because (a) her wishes were not in writing, (b) her function was clearly minimal, (c) the needed amount of life support was also minimal, and (d) both sides had potential interests in the outcome. It was, in other words, a horrible test case. I would have pulled the tube, myself.
(3)The problem with the embryo situation is that it's not yet an independant organism -- it's attached to the mother and cannot survive separate from her. Well, we agree that the attachment is what causes the problem. Unfortunately, the attachment is not a sufficient cause to declare non-humanity. For one thing, no organism is truly "independent" of others, regardless of attachment. My two-month-old Elizabeth would die very quickly without my wife or me. "Independence" (a murky concept at best) is clearly not a necessary condition for humanity.
One might argue that the embryo is non-detachable from her particular mother, but this fares no better. If in the year 2050 it became possible to transplant embryos from one womb to another, or to a special incubator, then the embryo *would* be able to survive without attachment to a particular woman. If detachability is the criterion for humanity, then embryos would suddenly become human in 2050 -- an odd result, indeed.
(4) Her right to control her own body is irreconcilably in conflict with the [...] right of the fetus to its life.Agreed. Which is why I would ban abortions *except* in situations for which the rights of the mother are enhanced (aggravated conditions, such as rape; threat to life; serious threat to physical health). Put another way: if we want to balance the rights of mom and baby in any way whatsoever, the right approach is to make abortions illegal, with exceptions. Any other position (no restrictions, OR no abortions without exception) fails to balance competing rights.
(5) ...the newly granted right of the fetus to its life. Historically, this is false. There have been some questions about the beginning of life, but there has never been a doubt that a living fetus has the right to not be killed. Roe invalidated abortion restrictions because it disagreed with Texas on its theory of life. What you may have meant is "its newly granted status as being alive", but my argument there is that the fetus was simply not recognized by the courts as being alive.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
Moreover, a bot that changed its own name (and the name linked to by the icon on the desktop) at every use would be undetectable.
"If we have an avian flu outbreak here and it is even half as bad as the 1918 flu epidemic, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the infrastructure functioning is a matter of life and death and we take it very seriously."
Makes reasonable sense to me.
I wish there were a +10 Funny. You deserve it. Best laugh on Slashdot in a year. (*bows in respect*)
Um... flip a coin? You call it in the air. Heads, he's not. Tails, he isn't.
>>I've argued that genetic makeup does.
What about chimeras - they're people with two different sets of dna. Are they two people?
It's fairly clear that chimeras are single organisms, so No. Certainly, a doctor seeing a chimera as a patient doesn't get confused about how many patients he's seeing. Nor do we in common language experience any confusion about "him" or "her" over against "them."
By contrast to the chimera, a pregnant woman is clearly seen to be two separable organisms:
(a) the zygote and not the woman directs implantation, placental growth, and differentiation and development.
(b) There are clear biological barriers between the woman's body and the fetus: they do not share a circulatory system, for example, and transmission of molecules across the placenta is highly regulated. Biologically, the inside of the uterus is *outside* of the woman in the same sense that the GI tract is outside of a person.
(c) at any point, the fetus may be removed from the woman and will develop, if the proper support technology exists, as any other human organism.
The technically genetically distinct cells of the chimera have none of those characteristics.
The current defenses of abortion appeal to the woman's right to protect herself from an "invader", which grants the notion that the fetus is a separate organism.
The real "teaser" is not chimeras, but Siamese twins, in which case I would probably count the number of people to be the number of separable organisms.
>>Yes, but that's the rub; ethical theories take on a life of their own, and get abused in undesired ways.
Are you trying to come up with a hijack-proof ethical system? Good luck. Any ideas can be twisted.
>>What now if Son-of-Singer tweaks the theory to discount the pain of blacks, or Jews, or left-handed Eskimo pipe-welders, because they are of lesser utility?
Any ideas can be twisted. Further, he does not discount the "value" of the terminally ill embryos or whatever because of their "utility to society". If that were the case, it would be morally equal to kill a young baby and a fetus on the grounds that there is no substantial difference in their utility to society.
Oh yes, that's exactly how Singer argues. He argues for the right of parents to kill their baby up to 30 days after birth, on the grounds that it is morally equivalent to abortion.
Hijack-resistance is a desirable trait; ideas which can morph from "intuitively good" to "intuitively monstrous" with small tweakings of non-essential parameters are unstable.
>>Nevertheless, I would endorse Theological Perspectivalism
Sorry man, you're talking with an athiest. Can you recommend a theory that doesn't rely on God?
Sorry, man, you're talking to a theist. Can you appeal only to ethical theories that explictly rely on God's revelation?
It doesn't work that way. You cannot demand that a person recommend theories that contradict a central premise of his thought.
You can, however, *read* people who disagree with you. It is entirely possible for an atheist to read Theological Perspectivalists with profit, just as I have read Hume and Nielson with profit. Technically, you are "unconvinced of God's existence", yes? Then it should be possible for you to entertain the notion "what if God did exist? what effects would that have on ethics?" And then read thoughtful people who take that approach.
That was my real point about the Bible being a non-discredited source.
Last word goes to you...
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
I don't know about "we." Certainly, "some" or "many of those currently in power in most developed countries." But I would not agree in the least with a utilitarian approach to ethics, and most people don't live like that in practice.
Blood and guts do not make the person.
I've argued that genetic makeup does. Specifically, my approach to rights begins with the notion of limits: we are limited in what we are allowed to do to others, according to our status relative to those others. As one human being, I am limited in what I may do to another human because we are of equal status, unless he has forfeited his rights in some way.
What do you think of him elevating some of the animal world to the human level?
It's an interesting approach, but it fails to address the basic question: why *should* the utility to animals be considered along with the utility of people? Singer seems to postulate it. I would rather approach animal rights from the "limits" perspective.
Using his standards of value, slaves never would have been considered sub-human.
Yes, but that's the rub; ethical theories take on a life of their own, and get abused in undesired ways. Just as Hitler hijacked Heidigger and Marx hijacked Hegel, so also Singer is vulnerable to hijacking because of his utilitarian stance.
Essentially, utilitarianism has to assign a "score" to people's happiness and pain. Singer discounts the pain of, say, infanticide, because the infant has not yet attained the right to be considered a full person. Similarly, he discounts the pain of euthanizing, even forcibly, the terminally ill and elderly because they are of lesser utility to society. What now if Son-of-Singer tweaks the theory to discount the pain of blacks, or Jews, or left-handed Eskimo pipe-welders*, because they are of lesser utility? Once you crack open the door, there's no way to keep the orcs and trolls out.
Side note: this is a "slippery slope" argument. However, it is not a fallacious one because the mechanism is clear: the underlying assumption that utility determines value has already been accepted; it is unquestionable that those in power will discount the value of groups they happen not to like. Therefore, Singer's ideas, if accepted, will inevitably lead to abuses by those in power.
Further, the vast majority of the pro-life position is communicated, "That goes against God." Let alone the fact that there is no prohibition against abortion in the bible. Or stem cell research for that matter.
I'm OK, in principle, with arguments from the Bible. As a Christian, I find the Scripture to be binding on my conscience. However, even were I an atheist, I would have to ask: Is there a reason that the Bible should be a discredited source? Not really. Therefore, an argument from the Bible is at least as valid as an argument from Singer, unless you really believe that Singer has acheived a truly rational basis for ethics, like Kant wanted.
Then the question is, can we make a case against abortion from the Scriptures? Only in part. The case for the humanity of a fetus is really a biological one. The case against murder, OTOH, is Scriptural, which is why Christians make it ... tacitly taking the personhood of the fetus for granted, which is rather sloppy on their parts. I'm not prepared to discuss stem-cell research here because of the chimera-like nature of the issue.
If utilitarianism is a discredited ethical theory, would you mind suggesting a credited one? Perhaps there is something you find lacking with it, but its still very commonly used.
Touche. Nevertheless, I would endorse Theological Perspectivalism as both more practical *and* less self-defeating than utilitarianism. John Frame is well worth reading.
*Credit to Gary Trudeau.
I don't read it your way; it seems to me that he's saying "all of the research shows small-to-moderate correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior and lesser correlation between media violence and violent behavior."
That's not inconclusive or indeterminate -- it's a small-to-moderate effect in a multiply-caused behavior. Throughout the report, you read statements like "the effect was significant" or "statistically significant effect." It's an abuse of statistics to confuse a small effect with inconclusiveness.
I have no opinion about the JAMA article. It was subscription-only, and my wife is asleep, so I'll ask her in the morning (she's a pediatrician).
Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating censorship or even supporting a rating system (worse than useless idea!). In fact, I enjoy Warcraft along with the rest of them, and I'm relatively decent at it. It's just important to be honest about the research, which seems to be clear about the effect, if not the magnitude of the effect, that video violence has on real aggression and violence.
One final thought: is it really reasonable to suppose that we can "train" our reactions and emotions using simulators, which is what video games are, and then expect those reactions and emotions to disappear entirely in real life?
Links here and especially here.
If you find Singer's argument "that living human beings are not necessarily people" disturbing and eerily reminiscent of pre-Abolition America, then you understand the beginnings of the pro-life position.
My own criticism of Singer is that he relies far too heavily on an already-discredited ethical theory, Utilitarianism.
You may be right. Serves me right for depending on Internet news:1 /205139.shtml s p
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/2
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel051403.a
See this link and notice that the statement is jointly signed by officials of the AAP, APA, AMA, AACAP, and AAFP. These links state clearly that the Surgeon General considers video violence an encouragement to violent behavior.
If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be interested in seeing it.
The studies do *not* show, naturally enough, that video violence causes *violent* behavior, because such studies would be prohibited. Nevertheless, there are studies that show strong correlations between video violence and violent behavior.[1]
Links here and here.
The evidence is compelling enough that the American Academy of Pediatrics has made a policy statement.
[1]"aggressive" behavior is pulling hair, biting, hitting; "violent" behavior is causing real damage to someone.
a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence
Once again, in slow motion: a fetus is a member of the human species (gene check!). The members of the human species can exhibit all of the following phenomena at least once during their existence: (list #1 - 5 above). Ergo, the fetus is a lifeform (and, by definition, "alive").
You seem to be reading the definition as "in order to be alive, you have to be able to exhibit 1 - 5 right now", which is ludicrous. Almost no larvae in the animal kingdom are capable of reproduction, but no biologist in the world would argue that larvae are not alive.
Note -- a vain attempt to forstall the trolls here -- that a cancer cell is *not* a member of the human species because it is not an organism. How can we tell? Because a cancer cell cannot ever, in its existence, exhibit the characteristics of a lifeform.
1) The existence of crisis pregnancy centers, funded entirely by donations, whose work is to care for the mother until delivery, then help her as she decides whether to give the baby up for adoption or keep it. Links hereand here
2) The waiting time for adoptions in the U.S. is nine months or more. That indicates what all hopeful adoptive parents know to be true: demand for adoptive kids is greater than supply.
While we're on the topic, which is more caring: giving donations to help pregnant moms to be able to carry to term, or taking money from pregnant moms in return for "terminating their pregnancies"?