I believe Goodall’s observations show that chimps largely co-operate within their own band. If I recall correctly there was one documented observation that a group of male chimps out on patrol (working co-operatively) encountered a chimp that was in their territory. The killed it. Goodall recognized this errant chimp to have previously belonged to the same family as the patrol group but had left to join a neighboring family of chimps.
This shows a couple of things, in my opinion:
Chimps are murderous motherfuckers.
They are not always murderous motherfuckers. Sometimes chimps will adopt chimps from another group. Therefore, sometimes they find there is intrinsic value to the life of a fellow chimp.
No. Will elaborate below, but a lot of pro-choice people file our disagreement in terms of Item #3 – not that it shouldn’t be “rare, prohibitive and restrictive” but that pregnancy is a specific, unique situation that that abortion (or, rather, the lack of legal intrusion into the decision of the pregnant woman to have one) does not violate Item #3.
We don’t do so lightly but yes we do those things. And we abort pregnancies when it seems necessary. ** nods ** Go on…
A bit more cynically put than I would state it. More to the point, there is a central pro-choice argument that you have not addressed; it’s not a response to the pro-life arguments but is its own moral imperative: Interfering with women being able to abort their pregnancies when they deem that to be necessary creates a specific social situation: it polarizes young males and young females as adversarial opponents. It makes all potentially-reproductive sex a risky endeavor for women in a way that they can’t offset sufficiently. It may not affix a scarlet “A” to the blouse of every fornicating young woman but via her inability to decide if and when to carry a pregnancy to birth, it accomplished 90% of the same thing. We’ve had this system and we know what it is like and it is immoral and does great damage to people. Women are able to function on a far more equal social basis when they have authority over their own reproduction.
When pro-choice people accuse pro-life people of having a real agenda of wanting to interfere in women’s freedom and equality, we are perhaps making a… how did you put it? “bad argument” … if it is offered as a response to the pro-life arguments, because it is admittedly a nonsequitur. BUT, pro-life people tend to refuse to respond to the above item which, by itself, is a morally legitimate reason for being pro-choice.
I think the obvious rebuttal is that if there was some inherent and well established moral framework built into us through biology and evolution than all societies would have the same basic values.
They don’t. Not even close. Cannibals don’t place much intrinsic value on human life. Tons of societies grant no status or recognition of humanity outside of their society. Some have even placed a premium on killing of outsiders. Far from a proscription in killing, some have placed a moral imperative on killing outsiders. IIRC correctly when Jefferson’s delegation went to ask the Barbary Pirates to please stop with their killing and raiding, and general reign of terror, apparently the slightly puzzled response was “but that’s how we get into heaven. Why wouldn’t you want us to get into heaven?” (Yes, you can’t put a 30 year war into a couple of sentences, but I think what I said is reasonably fair.)
Still other societies place little or no premium on the lives of their own members.
Confusing to Western values is the whole suicide bomber thing, and violent murderous martyrdom in general. Apparently it makes sense and is morally upright to those who hold other values.
The point is that if Harris is right, you would not see these huge differences in basic values between cultures.
Then too, Western culture likes to claim that when Greek reason, Judeo Christian ethics, and the Enlightenment came together it produced a radical new morality that was quite revolutionary and had not been seen before.
More to unpack here ;), but yeah, let’s leave it for now.
The reason this remains unconvincing is that the best religion has to offer for god’s actions is, “Well, God works in mysterious ways”. I’d rather like an explanation for why god, despite an excellent PR machine, seems to be a sociopath that particularly enjoys his work.
This leads me to conclude that dogma (particularly of the religious kind) ruins everything. (Shout out to Christopher Hitchens, here.)
Successful societies in terms of the current state of the world?
I blame religious dogma. There is plenty of evidence that many are brainwashed into this world view and some have been reasoned out of it.
Culture and dogma plays a huge role in influencing human social advancement. Some populations stagnate while others surge and then fall back again. There are man made, economic and natural disasters that can affect the success rates and outcomes of social advancement.
Flash in the pan!
I’m working on a new philosophy that will knock your socks off.
What I get when I turn it backwards is ‘all four of those anti-abortion arguments are bad arguments because none of them directly addresses the rights of women to bodily autonomy.’
No. They don’t. They ignore it.
You say later on that they counter it. But the four points as first given don’t contain it; they don’t say anything about it. Countering it would not be the same thing as containing it. And not everyone agrees that they counter it; not to mention that they don’t even apply to it unless the first point is conceded.
(By the way, or maybe not so by the way: as you’re claiming that the first applies from the moment of conception, you really ought to be saying “zygote”, not fetus.)
The zygote, blastula, embryo, and at at least some stages the fetus are dependent in an entirely different fashion, in that they’re dependent upon a specific person. We don’t kill babies and invalids, no – but we most certainly provide ways for an individual person to hand them over to somebody else.
I wasn’t responding, at that point, to your OP. I was responding, as I quoted at the time, to this:
If you have no right to preserve your bodily autonomy by depriving someone else of theirs, then you have no right to kill in self-defense, in defense of others, or in war: because doing so would also deprive other people of their bodily autonomy.
It is unique. Every egg and sperm cell contains a unique combination of genes. The genes of the person whose body produced them contain a different combination, not only because the germ cells don’t contain the full set but also due to the recombination process during meiosis.
The point I was trying to make is that you’ve set up an odd situation that can’t possibly apply to any actual humans.
If you’re going to make up characteristics, so am I. That farmer’s daughters, as well as the farmer, have all trained from early childhood in fighting techniques that your group never even got the chance to hear of. They’re also all intelligent, and have excellent hearing. Mama, who shares those characteristics, is behind you right now listening to your conversation; and young brother, who was with her, has already gone off to rouse the neighborhood. The reason you shouldn’t have reacted this way in the first place is that you’re all about to be dead; but it’s probably already too late.
Even aside from all of that: Quicksilver, with his highly active brain, realizes that having a person in his group whose reflex thought on seeing something he wants is ‘let’s kill that guy so we can have it’ poses a danger to Quicksilver himself, as there’s no way Quicksilver can be sure that you’ll actually keep your social compact if you think you see a reason to violate it. Therefore, he’s now going to kill you first the first chance he gets. That, of course, may well scare Andy off; now one of you is dead and the other two each on their own. Probably the same result as in the previous paragraph, though it may take a little longer.
Now I’ll combine the two: Quicksilver not only is a fast thinker but he realizes there’s somebody behind him and another person just ran off, presumably to get help. He clobbers you immediately and surrenders to the farming community, saying that he killed you because you wanted to attack and rape them and he knew that would be wrong. Quicksilver and possibly Andy get adopted into the community and eventually wind up happily married and with all the pig they can eat – long-term sex and food availability, and lots of help defending it if necessary.
You don’t get convinced in any of these scenarios, of course. You don’t get any descendents, either.
So it would stand to reason that a band that does not welcome/befriend outsiders and takes a hard line approach might be seen as ultimately operating against its longer term self interests. (?)
I’m not going to address your abortion points because they are just wordier versions of the same arguments we have here all the time (don’t forget the violinist one!). However, regarding morality without religion, chimp and bonobo societies display all kinds of morals (or maybe ethics is more accurate), including altruism, protecting the weak, shunning those who violate ethics. Ethics (or morals) seem to be instinctual, and probably have to be for any higher social animal, in order for those animals to live in groups. Probably less important for solo animals like tigers, for example. Anyway, Fresh Air did a great episode on a scientist who spent loads of time with a society of chimps in captivity that makes it really clear that chimps and bonobos have ethics, morals, emotions, and so on. We’re not really all that different.
The religious argument is that we are not supposed to kill people because God says so. Fetuses are people, so don’t kill them.
This sort of stance is based on values and beliefs that don’t seem to follow from enlightened self-interest, so I consider the pro choice argument fundamentally religious in nature based as it is on the sanctity of human life. Pro life atheists will need to speak for themselves, but absent their presence my take is that they are building off of religious values.
I am going to abandon further discussion of the “where do our values come from” variety. It is a fascinating and fun topic, but really belongs in it’s own thread.
One of the biggest arguments used by the fundamentalist, hard core anti-abortion Christians is “God chose you for the mother of that baby.” I point out that God lets gays and lesbians have children, so God must be okay with gay parenting, so let a gay or lesbian couple adopt your children.
Oh, sorry… I think I see what you were getting at.
I think I agree. I think “intrinsic value” of a chimp’s life is relative to the utility it confers on the larger group. It may rise and fall. There are times when resources are scarce and one more mouth to feed is just not a good survival strategy. On the other hand, it must be balanced with the utility that additional member offers in the way of defending what few resources are available. It’s an intricate balance but I submit that accepting a new member carries a better long term benefit than the possible immediate benefit of killing him. We can argue that on the basis of a biological/genetic benefit model as well.
Right. Showing Chimps think Chimp lives have intrinsic value is tough.
Barring a chimp selflessly sacrificing himself against the self interest of his own band for the life of a sworn enemy, or some such, it will be hard to infer.
I know you acknowledged this in a subsequent post, but I really think you’re glossing over the fact that an abortion ban compels a woman to allow her body to be used in a way that no other human can be so compelled under any other circumstances.
Suppose a child needed a blood transfusion to survive, and suppose his father was a match. There is no legal basis in any country I’m aware of to force the father to give the child his blood. I donate blood regularly, though it isn’t easy for me and I always have to ask for their most experienced person to do the blood draw so I don’t pass out. I’ve also been pregnant for about 8 weeks once and would take blood donations every two months for the rest of my life over that experience. (Morning sickness is a joke. My “morning” lasted 24/7 throughout my entire pregnancy.)
Perhaps a more apt analogy is bone marrow donation, something I admit I haven’t done. But a friend of mine has, and based on her description it sounds somewhat similar to giving birth in terms of the degree to which it incapacitates you. Unlike with blood donation, where there are many potential donors with your blood type, there might be only one person on the donor registry who’s a match for a child dying of leukemia, kind of like how there’s only one pregnant woman who can choose to carry a particular pregnancy to term. Yet no one ever has seriously suggested making bone marrow donation compulsory. What’s especially interesting is that, once a donor has been identified and has consented, the recipient begins a series of treatments to prepare for the transplant that unfortunately make them more vulnerable should the transplant not occur. Essentially, if you agree to donate and then back out at the last minute, that person is going to die. Yet you still have the right to do it. In fact, my friend reports that at every point leading up to her surgery, she was given the opportunity to back out. Because doctors take patients’ bodily autonomy seriously, and society does too. At least, when that body could be male.
Do you know how many people die each year waiting for organ transplants? Do you know how many people are not signed up to be organ donors? And do you hear anyone clamoring to change this system, even just to make it opt-out instead of opt-in, so that people can still choose to be buried with their lifesaving organs while others die but they have to take the affirmative step of filling out a form at the DMV? Why do we respect the bodies of dead men more than living women? Why is “my body, my choice” just empty rhetoric in the abortion debate, when it goes without saying in every other context?
OK, I’ll wade slightly into the abortion topic, because that recent Alabama case really got me thinking about the implications of those personhood laws.
First, I don’t agree that a fertilized egg, embryo, zygote, etc., are morally equivalent to a person, and neither do pro-lifers. If the pro-life-iest firefighter ran into a burning fertility clinic, there is zero chance that she would try and rescue the hundreds of frozen embryos in the fridge before bringing out the crying 5 year old in the corner. And, if she did, and the child died because of the delay, she would certainly be fired, and probably charged with a crime. No one would say she’s a hero for sacrificing the one life to save hundreds of others.
Second, even if I did agree with that, I would still put more weight on a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. Pregnant women have been charged with endangerment for taking illegal drugs while pregnant, but if the fetus is a child, where does that really stop? Arrest her for drinking? Smoking? She certainly couldn’t take her child sky diving – is she prohibited from doing so? May she ride a roller coaster without being arrested? How about prescription drugs that may harm a fetus but are required in order to save her own life – can she chance it with the fetus and take the drugs? A woman as a morally important entity is >>> than a fetus. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have to stop taking life saving drugs, or stop living her life as she wishes, really, just because she’s pregnant. She may choose to stop drinking, but, morally, doesn’t have to.
Anyway, the second post in this thread really should have ended it – Canada has literally no abortion law and seems to be chugging along just fine, with this medical decision remaining between a woman and her doctor. To me, that’s the right approach – abortion is a medical decision between those two.
That’s a far better point against the religious explanation. If the reason for morality is ‘God said so’, why would God have not clarified things better?
The evolutionary explanation allows a far better explanation for such differences. What’s evolved is that human societies need to have rules about causing significant injuries and about killing, rules about sex, and rules about access to resources; so that members of those societies don’t have to spend all their time guarding their backs against random assault or murder, fighting over who they can and can’t have sex with, and guarding their resources against each other. What, exactly, those rules are can vary widely. As long as the rules chosen don’t finish the society off in the short run, they’ll continue for a while. As situations change, the rules are likely to change, though the rules may lag behind the change in circumstance.
Our drastic worldwide population rise is a major change in circumstance, as is the massive change in speed of transportation; and among other things these changes require us to change rules that allowed killing or thieving from anyone who’s outside a relatively small in-group. Significant changes in medical care mean that we now have available both better birth control techniques and when those fail much safer and more effective abortive techniques; and mean in addition that a much higher percentage of infants who are born will survive to adulthood. These changes mean both that we need a smaller number of pregnancies and that we can control the number of pregnancies by means other than controlling the sexual behavior of women, which was a method which always had major downsides. None of this means that human societies now don’t need rules; the underlying evolved requirements for society to function still apply. But we do need different rules.
Not really an answer, is that?
And you’re the one who put yourself (and two other posters) in that scenario by name.
I could swear that I’ve read about chimps attacking leopards that they could have avoided, at serious risk to their own lives, in order to drive the leopards off from the group as a whole. I’m having trouble right now finding a cite, though. Maybe it wasn’t chimps but some other primate, or maybe my googling is lacking; or, I suppose, maybe I’m remembering it wrong.
