Morality is not defined from logic or common sense. Logic only operates by arguing from one or more established premises. You can’t use logic to establish those premises; they have to be granted or you have nothing to argue from.
The syllogism that is being pushed here seems to be:
[ul][li]A person has such and such a list of characteristics[/li][li]A fetus lacks one or more of those characteristics[]Ergo, a fetus is not a person[/ul]The problem is that we don’t agree on the characteristics. By denying the list, and supplying others, we get an equally valid (or invalid) argument.[/li][ul][li]A person is any living being with a uniquely human DNA []A fetus is a living being with a uniquely human DNA[]Ergo, a fetus is a person[/ul] [/li]
Thus the syllogism:[ul]
[li]A fully adult person has white skin []Black people don’t have white skin[]Ergo, black people are not fully adult persons[/ul]is logically valid in the same sense that [ul][]A person is always visible[]A fetus is not visible[]Ergo, a fetus is not a person[/ul] is logically valid. [/li]
The premise of either argument, however, has to be established in some other way.
Wait, what is that difference? You’ve merely asserted that the difference exists, not shown that a difference exists.
Look, this claim in particular is even more nonsensical than the others. You claim that a fetus can’t be a person because you can’t SEE the baby when it’s inside its mother’s womb? If a woman had a baby under her coat does that mean the baby is no longer a human being? If I put a baby under a blanket would that mean I can kill the baby?
The abortion debate cannot be solved by semantic games. You aren’t interested in other people’s actual opinions, you merely declare them irrelevant. That’s your right, but that’s not a debate, that’s a rant. If you want to rant, ask for the thread to be moved to the Pit.
I did not ever argue that a fetus cannont be a person because it can’t be seen. I understand why you would very much like to refute that argument; everyone would prefer it if their opponents only served up stupid arguments. However, you don’t get to change your opponents’ positions into stupid positions just because you want to. As Donald Rumsfield might say, you dispute the arguments you have, not the arguments you wish you had.
Now, since you apparently didn’t take it i[nto your head the first time, let me repeat:
Or to rephrase: Only those things which have physically independant bodies are eligible for being classified as people. This is true by accepted agreement in our society. When in the course of day-to-day activity we want to judge whether a thing qualifies as a person, we check to see whether that thing has a physically independant body, and then whether that body behaves in such a way as to indicate the necessary mind as well. The baby is a blanket and the man behind the couch have the physically independant body. The fetus does not.
When I wrote the “room” example, I was making a basic assumption that the theoretical room was set up so that the theoretical person doing the counting could see everyone in the room. The possibility that anyone would try twisting that example in the way you did never entered my mind. If it had, I would have been more specific. ShodanI agree fully with your statements about logic. That’s why I used the phrase “logic and common sense”. A logic is a system of rules operating on statements. In logical classes we usually focus on propositional variables, but those aren’t ocmplext enough to describe the muddle of human existence.
So I am indeed making an argument of this form:
[ul]
[li]A person has such and such a list of characteristics[/li][li]A fetus lacks one or more of those characteristics[/li][li]A person has certain characteristics[/li][/ul]
However, in addition to that argument, I make a common sense argument about why the definition of a person is what I claim it is. Specifically, I say that everybody intuitively and automatically, uses that definition of a person. The assumption, as we go about our day-to-day lives, is that only those things with physical human bodes and functioning human minds qualify as people. We know that through evidence, such as the fact that everyone classifies a pregnant woman as one person rather than as two people.
That is the premise that, together with the logical argument, proves the point.
If everybody automatically and intuitively used your definition of a person, there would be no debate about abortion. Since there is, they must not. And the various counter-examples presented seem to demonstrate that the definition you are insisting on does not always work.
And common sense is not so infallible as you seem to be implying. A Newtonian universe is common sense, but it doesn’t fit the observations as well as quantum physics. This seems to depend on level of detail.
Same thing, perhaps, on abortion. If you are riding an elevator, or counting heads, perhaps one common sense notion works. If you are deciding who lives and who dies, perhaps not so well.
While I think your definition might work in general, I think you would have great difficulty in applying it to this specific case. Using your definition it would be ok to perform an abortion right up until birth and I think most pro-abortionist would say that was going to far. By then the fetus is capable of an independent existance, even if they have not achieved that yet.
You are going about your argument the wrong way by bringing some forced defintion of “person” into it. You would be better off just saying that you believe abortion is ok as long as the fetus does not have an independent existence. Your reliance on how words are used is spurious at best. Words have been known to change their meanings.
My wife is 18 weeks pregnant. My common sense tells me that our baby is a person already. When my wife had a miscarriage I felt as if a person had died, when the baby was born she looked like a very small person. My common sense told me she was a person. When I look at my pregnant wife my common sense tells me that there is a small person inside her. How can my common sense and your common sense tell us different things?
So much for appealing to common sense. Better stick with logic:
A person has a physically independant body
A fetus lacks has a physically independant body
Ergo, a fetus is not a person
My common sense tells me that your major premise is not true, therefore your conclusion is not true. If my heart or liver or kidneys failed and I was physically dependent on machines to live, I’d still be a person. Now start constructing a syllogism of the form:
???
???
Ergo, a person has a physically independant body
Where my common sense cannot help but assent to your major and minor premises. Good luck.
Or you could ditch the “physically independant body” and start talking about brains and consciousness…as long as you didn’t allow the murder of sleeping people and such.
Round here we call this “begging the question.” By definition, a person has a physically independent body. How do we know this? Because during a pregnancy there can’t be a second person existing as a part of a woman’s body. How can we be sure of this? Because a person only begins at the moment of birth.
See how easy this is? You can play along at home, gang! Come on, give it a try!
Let’s consider a few more gems:
That’s right, sports fans, a pro-life person observing an obviously pregnant woman would not at all suggest another human being was in the vicinity. What’s that you say? What if the woman wasn’t obviously pregnant? Oh! The old, “can’t see him, he isn’t there” argument, eh? Well, let’s take a gander at one, shall we?
Absurd in the extreme! That would be like saying a lone survivor of a shipwreck, a guy who washes up on a deserted island and lived there alone, was still actually a person. This is ridiculous, of course. The outside world has no evidence of his existence; therefore, he does not exist.
Actually, the law does contemplate the fate of the fetus. In your state (TN) there was a case called Davis v. Davis which involved the disposition of frozen embryos after a divorce.
The court in this case made some interesting rulings. They were concerned that the embryo did not fit into the legal categories of property or persons. They decided that some measure of respect should be given to an entity which is potentially connected to the ‘person’ category.
The point is that your argument is flatter than it seemed even before this point.
See, this is what I find just plain weird. For the sake of a “perhaps”, suddenly the right to control trumps the right to life? Clearly?
I’m not sure I buy that “mother is … independent of other life forms” line, either. That’s a palpable untruth unless you define what you mean as “not bound to another lifeform via an umbilicus”, but in that case you’re hip-deep in sophistry.
I was about to post the same idea, Malacandra. I see the Exploding Kitchen’s ideas exactly opposite, in that even the possibility of someone’s life would outweigh a temporary infringement on the mother’s right to control her body. Especially since one is so final.
Would an apple blossom be called an apple? Would a fertilized egg be called a chicken? Does one eat a scrambled chicken? I think it is a matter of semantics, or religious view, No one should be forced to have an abortion, and if a woman cannot bear a child because of mental, physical, economical,emotional reasons that should be her decision, unless the pro birth people are willing to support, educate,and help raise her other children(if she has any), then perhaps her mind set would take a different course.
Most pro-Life people that I know are just pro-birth and once a child is born they forget the child, I have yet seen any who would go to the woman’s house, help her with her work or raising of her child( or children). Are they willing to pay the taxes it would take to raise a child to adulthood, see that they have the money’s for proper clothes,housing ,etc. One just need to look at the starving children in the Sudan,and such places, not to mention places here in the US where children are neglected. Giving a few dollars a year does not cover the costs, nor the mental help of the mother. Until these issuse are resolved I would not say being pro-choice is a bad thing any more than just pro-birth.
Ignoring the canard that pro life folks never support the mom or child after birth…
Are you willing to take in battered women…women who have been beaten by their husbands? Are you willing to provide for whatever needs that they may be missing as a result of lost income? Just donating a few dollars to the shelter now and then does not “cover the costs”. Until these issues are “resolved”, I can’t see why you (or anyone else) would want spousal abuse to be illegal. Because THAT litmus test is the measure of whether an act should be illegal or not, right?
Some people believe that a person’s life begins at birth. Others believe it starts earlier, usually at conception.
We have laws, social norms, language conventions, economic policies, regulations, and more, all of which make sense only if a person’s life begins at birth.
If people truly and seriously believed that a fetus was a living person, they would not accept all the rules and conventions which contradicted that stance.
As the bulk of people holding that life begins at conception do so for religious reasons, let’s just consider the religious attitude towards those questions. Most religions have ceremonies related to new people coming into the world: baptism, circumcision, etc… These occur as soon after birth as possible in most cases, not as soon after conception as possible. Or consider Christmas. It’s a celebration of Jesus’s birth, basically when Christians thank God for sending His Son to the world, for the purpose of redeeming the world. But if we accept the fetus as a person argument, then the soul, or the essence, that was Jesus surely entered the world at conception. That’s when God truly placed His Son in the world. So we should be getting ready to party on March 25 instead, and that’s going to have some bizarre effects on this year’s economic numbers.
I find no small measure of irony that the person who is complaining about the misuse of “personhood” is confusing “personhood” (a philosophical notion) with “life” (a biological notion).
So…life does NOT begin at conception? An embryo and fetus are not alive?
Laws that grant rights to all persons may not grant them to foeti, agreed, but I submit that this is not because a foetus is considered a non-person but because it cannot exercise those rights. Arguing about baptism or circumcision is just silly: it is physically impossible to do either of these to a foetus, without going to absurd extremes. We don’t do it, not because a foetus is not a person, but because there is no sensible way to do it. Again, economic policies, regulations and so on, exclude foeti because there is no meaningful way to apply them, not because of any tacit admission that the foetus is non-human. None of these criticisms apply to recognition of personhood for the sake of considering the right to life.
