That’s not an argument against SSM but against government-sanctioned marriage in general. Hell, under your scenario, gays would be getting married in every state of the union.
…
So, apparently, they don’t teach philosophy (nor logic) in Canada. I’d believe it, given my arguments with Bryan. Have you never heard of John Rawls or the veil of ignorance? If not, then there you go. These are not “bizarre hypotheticals”. The veil of ignorance, especially, is a well-known part of the social contract, which we all know and love.
Excuse me? They’re called thought experiments. You know… Like the violinist argument pro-choicers just love to death (which has been cited numerous times on this board). I mean, if we’re going to start discrediting arguments because they’re not “real world”, then about 99% of the pro-choice arguments would go poof!.
I’m really starting to believe that the pro-choice position is the intellectually inferior one, since I often feel like I’m trying to explain differential calculus to a first grader.
Oh, and I’m still waiting for an explanation.
The violinist argument?
We can and it won’t be good for you.
(Actually, I often do, and it’s never good for you sooo…)
Indeed, you did. Are you really unable to click a link. Since you’re too lazy to click a link and see what your “higher authority” line was in response to, I’ll help you out. It was in response to this:
Go figure.
Yeah… No. I “kinda” dismissed individual rights if the individual is seeking to do to another, a distinction you continually consider to be irrelevant.
But, Bryan, by your own standard, since you do not see a stable level of support for abortion for any reason, all but those who would allow a woman to have an abortion at any time during pregnancy for any reason are dumb, . But that’d be a rather large paintbrush to use, now wouldn’t it?
I didn’t know it was an attempt to “rile you up”. I thought I was just pointing out the reality of how it is.
I’m not sure either, but it doesn’t much matter, now does it?
To be quite honest, I’m curious as to the answers you would provide, so take a stab at it.
You might want to reread what I said again, since I was asking you a question. How many examples would you like (and make it something reasonable)? It’s better to do it this way, so you can’t later claim, “Well, that’s only <X> examples. You’ll have to provide more than that!”.
Simply because you don’t understand logic, philosophy nor thought experiments does not make them “ridiculous hypotheticals”. Waking up with a violinist attached to you and clones who need your kidney are also “ridiculous hypotheticals”, but they are oft used examples in defense of abortion.
Oh, don’t worry. Your refusal to honestly engage the question already demonstrates that, given a veil of ignorance in regards to abortion, you would not argue that abortion should be legal (only looking at “always” or “never”). I mean, who would?
Yup. I’m always 100% serious.
Well, if you’re going to blatantly lie about how an argument went down, then expect much of the same.
You keep using the “in her body/out of her body” argument, but it ignores the reasons why any specific women has an abortion, which goes right back to the morality of an action, which you continue to ignore.
So again I ask, how many examples would you like?
The whole thing?
Yes, look it up.
Well, I guess it’s not important, then.
So, we’re all agreed that OMG is a fucking fruitcake, right?
By the way, here is my argument for abortion:
Humans have value based on their consciousness. A brain dead person has no value. The only argument for keeping a brain dead person alive is based on sentimentality. A fetus, is effectively brain dead up to around 20 weeks. The only argument for baring removal of a fetus up to 20 weeks is sentimental in nature.
That the fetus will eventually attain value is irrelevant. It does not yet have it. Just like it might be against the law to cut down an oak tree, but you can throw an acorn into the fire.
That’s an argument even someone as stupid as OMG can understand, right?
Not important enough to look up, no.
You could all agree 2 + 2 = 5. That wouldn’t make it true.
This is demonstrably false.
Careful there, sport. I don’t think you want to start pitting the US education system against, well, any other country. Regardless, no I did not take philosophy in university because it was well outside my major. If you did study philosophy I’d be curious to find out what college (if any) you attended, but you might not want to mention their name as you are doing them a grave disservice at the moment.
Anyways, The Veil of Ignorance is generally assumed to mean ‘try to picture the outcome of whatever social change you’re proposing without taking into consideration your personal position in this society’. It doesn’t mean you can make up crazy hypotheticals where a thinking, feeling person should imagine that they might be a fetus. One of these things is not like the other. You may as well say ‘imagine you are a tree and someone was going to cut you down - don’t you see now that chopping wood should be illegal!’. Your mother-in-law hypothetical got equally ridiculous - ‘imagine I kidnapped my MIL, but kidnapping is not illegal, and she can’t leave, but it’s not wrongful imprisonment, and she’ll die without me - what would you do then, hmmm?’. No. Just no. If you really don’t see why that’s different than saying ‘imagine you are an unwed pregnant teenage girl’, well I just don’t know how I can help you with stupidity that runs that deep.
I can pretty much guarantee he can’t understand that, even though it makes perfect sense. Whether this is strictly due to stupidity or if there is an element of willful ignorance, I couldn’t say.
An explanation of what, exactly?
Then demonstrate this.
A corpse isn’t a man. A brain dead person isn’t a man. A heart beat isn’t a man. It’s the consciousness and the sense of self that we love. Once that’s gone forever it’s not a person. It’s a fleshy monument. And before it’s there, it’s nothing but a potentiality.
I would, especially since we’re talking about the college level.
Please. I went to the University of West Florida. Got a BS in Marine Biology and a minor in religious studies (purely accidental). I’m not ashamed to say it and, I assure you, I’m doing the school no disservice.
1.) This is like saying you can’t use the veil of ignorance to argue against infanticide up to a week after birth. It’s nonsensical. The veil of ignorance is not constrained by such details as whether or not you would be able to argue a certain position at the period of time you choose (in this case, up to a week old). The veil of ignorance is applied to ethical issues and, last I checked, abortion is an ethical issue. As it is, I’ll be sure to tell all those people who have bothered to use the veil of ignorance to argue the permissibility of abortion that you deem them to be in error and they don’t really know what they’re talking about.
2.) Yes, the veil of ignorance could be applied to being a tree except for one, teeny tiny detail; at no point in your life were you ever a tree. On the other hand, you were a fetus, just as you were once a neonate just as you were once an infant and so on and so forth with every stage of development. Not that that’s important or anything.
…Yeah…
It’s kind of funny how pro-choicers get to engage in all these weird thought experiments that could never happen, yet I can’t do the same. Now why is that? It’s called a thought experiment for a reason.
…Yeah… I’ll get to this below.
This, which I’ve posted three times now.
I’ll wait.
Let’s put your theory to the test. Find someone who was involved in a horrific accident and, for whatever reason, has fallen into a coma-- losing consciousness in the process-- and kill him or her. Even though that person is not conscious, you will be charged with homicide/murder. Why do you think that is?
Huh. He can probably explain the life cycle of harp seals, can’t figure out why women don’t like to be told what to do with their bodies. Go figure.
Do you not understand what brain death means? You know, I don’t think you do. I think you’re so fucking ignorant, you’ve been operating under a cloud of muddled confusion all this time.
Allow me to explain this in a manner that even a willfully ignorant person might understand:
Consciousness doesn’t mean when you’re awake. Consciousness means the sense of self and intellect you have. The thing that’s frowning at the screen right now, trying to suss out the complicated words, that’s your consciousness.
I’m not talking about being conscious in the sense of being awake, you silly billy. I’m talking about the part of you that is better than a dog.
If you were brain dead, a chunk of your brain would be damaged, but perhaps you would be still able to generate a beating heart. Sometimes, the thing that makes us men, our consciousness, is destroyed by stroke, or trauma, or whatever.
At those times we allow people to die. They take away the feeding tube, like they did for Terry Schaivo. I am hesitant to mention here, because you’re so fucking stupid, you probably think that the husband murdered her, because you didn’t understand that the person called Terry was gone, and her corpse would twitch once in awhile.
A heartbeat doesn’t make you human. Your working brain does.
So I can’t just kill someone in a coma. Because people get out of comas sometimes. But if that person is brain dead, that is to say the part of their melon that does the thinking is dead as disco, then doctors can pull life support legally.
You fucking fringe.
It’s wrong to kill someone in a coma because they sometimes get out of it but it’s permissible to kill the unborn even though they will be “conscious” in the future?
…Really?
If it’s wrong to kill someone in a coma because they “will be” conscious in the future, then why isn’t it equally as wrong to kill the unborn because they “will be” conscious in the future? If it’s wrong to kill someone in a coma who “will be” conscious in exactly nine months time, then why isn’t it equally as wrong to kill the unborn because they “will be” conscious in exactly nine months time?
It’s clearly evident you do not understand the things of which you’re trying to argue speak. Aside from the above, it’s important to note that brain death is irreversible. It denotes the loss of brain function. It means that there will be no brain function tomorrow, the day after it, the day after that or any time in the future. By definition, the unborn cannot be brain dead-- especially since you are merely arguing what they do not have right now, rather than what they will have in the future, which is an important distinction involved in being brain dead.
Now call me an idiot again so I can laugh.
(I had some link detailing consciousness and awareness as it relates to being asleep, being in a coma, being in a vegetative state and being asleep, but I’d have to look for it again.)
I know nothing about animals.
are you under the impression that Canada’s universities are inferior to universities in the US? With the exception of the Ivy Leagues, that is a totally unsupported assertion. I’ve never even heard of the University of West Florida, but if you’re an example of their finest, I think I’d stick with a Canadian university.
The point is that just as you can’t imagine how you would feel or what you would want if you were a tree, you also can’t imagine how you would feel or what you want if you were a fetus. Because fetuses don’t have thoughts or feelings.
Did you not read post #146, or did you just not understand it?
Well, I see that Biology program must have been * real* comprehensive.
No. What I asked, rhetorically, was if they teach philosophy in Canada. You tried to make a dig as the U.S. educational system and stated that I wouldn’t want to compare the U.S. educational system against any other country. I said I would and still would. That has nothing to do with Canada; that’s me saying I would do what you said I wouldn’t want to do.
You’re Canadian so I wouldn’t expect you to hear of every university in the U.S., much like you wouldn’t expect me to have heard of every university in Canada.
That doesn’t make sense, especially since we’re not talking how you would feel if you were a fetus. We’re asking whether or not, given a situation where you could either be aborted or not aborted, would you allow for abortion and risk being the aborted.
I read it, understood it and present to you that it did not answer the question posed to you. I was not debating what percentage of Canadians consider themselves pro-choice versus pro-life or whatever else you want to go about. In fact, I mentioned nothing about it. My statement was that the idea that the idea that restricting abortion based on gender would be incompatible with the aforementioned three statements, something which you’ve yet to address. And simply because you want it, there you go.
I await your answer.
I had to take zoology, and I promptly forgot everything I learned after I passed the class. And considering that I don’t do anything even remotely involving animals (bioremediation), it’s quite excusable.
Well, he’s got us there. He’d have to be a *lot *worse before he could be considered a disgrace to West Florida U.
Please explain to me how I could decide whether or not to allow for abortion (or anything else) if I were a fetus, being that they are unable to think, feel, or reason. We’re back to the ‘if you were a tree, would you want to be chopped down’ hypothetical. I don’t know how I would feel about being chopped down because there’s no such thing as a tree with feelings on the matter. I don’t know how I would feel about being aborted because there’s no such thing as a fetus with feelings on the matter.
Contrast this with arguments about say slavery, where you can attempt to remove your bias and imagine how others feel and how it would feel if that were you. Do you really not see the difference?
You’re just heaving those goalposts all over the damn place, aren’t you? I said that the people who made those three statements are not necessarily the same people who want sex selective abortion to be illegal. Yes, there are pro-choicers who want limitations placed on when and why a woman can get an abortion. No, not all pro-choicers agree about exactly where the laws should lie. That doesn’t make them not pro-choice, and it certainly doesn’t make them pro-life.
Because the people in the coma were conscious before going into a coma whereas fetuses were not. Or to put it another way, a person is in in a coma and a clump of cells is in a uterus. These two things are not the same.
Do you ever think your posts through before writing them?