And here’s the full text of the editorial justification [MS Word]:
They both have doctorates.
I agree, and I read the paper in full. Reckon they’re doing the ol’ switcheroo.
I want to clarify why I think that they’re being disingenuous:
Why did they make this choice? They could easily have said “early life infanticide”, which merely clarifies the pre-existing term that they acknowledge. Instead, they created an unnecessary neologism that not only alters the primary meaning of the cardinal word, but happens to include one of the most hot-button topics in recent political debate (in the US, anyway).
Unless they truly live in ivory towers, I can’t see that two philosopher PhDs with international experience would have failed to have predict the shit-storm that their argument would foment; and use of in the argument provides all the marketing they could possibly want.
The only thing I could think of that explain why they’re not pulling everyone’s pizzle is that they chose the term because they naively thought that the use of the word ‘abortion’ would actually tone down the more pejorative term ‘infanticide’ for a European audience. However I think my earlier speculation is more likely.
It seems to me that this is a useful exercise to examine your postulate and take it to its logical conclusion and see where this conclusion ends. I certainly agree that given their definitions and postulates that the end conclusion is valid. I also agree that the conclusion is not a desired end result for me so the study leads me to examine the postulates and definitions used to come to the conclusion.
That study allows me to refine and better apply the ethical postulates I live my life by. A wonderful philosophical exercise useful to refine and define the postulates used in bio-medical ethics.
Umm, y’all are aware that one of the benefits of putting an argument, like Giubilini & Minerva’s, on the table is it allows those who disagree to make strong arguments showing exactly why they’re wrong.
Maybe y’all would like to at least try to present one?
I mean if it’s that clear to you then a good argument why should be easy, right?
CMC fnord!
and totally overcooking that placenta!
Because regardless of arguments for and against abortion, infants can survive independently. And I find it curious you’re so calm-where’s all the liberal outrage when the Bell Curve got published-its argument is distasteful but far less so that this one? Would you just say let’s disprove it rather than foam at your mouth in rage and scream “RACIST! RACIST! RACIST!”?
I stand corrected on that they did not work at Oxford. And I don’t have anything against Oxford or intellectuals-what I have a problem is with intellectuals who are basically sophists and seek to undermine civilized values.
:rolleyes: Because no one not on the Right thinks that people are going to go start stabbing two year olds because of this paper, while plenty of the Right will and have used books such as the Bell Curve to justify their bigotry. The Right is dominated by racists; the middle and left are not dominated by baby killers. Scum like the Right is judged by different standards than non-scum.
The Bell Curve was published before you were born (and in a very different Internet age), so I’m doubtful that you can assess how much it outraged people. I would suggest a couple of differences: The Bell Curve proposed a serious theory, and the ethicists being discussed here don’t propose killing infants - they say it’s ethical to do so if we define life in a particular way. A lot of people actually believe there are racial differences in IQ and were happy to feel vindicated by The Bell Curve; other people were upset with its theories and with the idea that it would bolster the beliefs of racists. Just about everyone in our culture disagrees with the theory being proposed here, and that actually can have the effect of lessening the outrage. It just gets dismissed.
However I’m very disappointed that you did not find a way to call anyone a Nazi in this post. :smack:
I tend to lean toward the position that they are trolling. Especially the part where where they argue that killing a newborn infant may be less traumatic for the mother than putting the baby up for adoption.
This was my first thought, and I haven’t yet read anything here to knock me off that opinion. It’s no different than the folks who argue that allowing gay marriage is the same as allowing multiple marriage, bestial marraige, pedophilia, and so forth. Slightly more subtle, but not by a lot.
She should just eat it - otherwise it’s a waste of perfectly good protien.
If it is Chinese will you be hungry again after a half hour?
Well, mostly because usually when I foam at the mouth it’s because I’m brushing my teeth.
I think Marley23’s mostly covered this, but I’d add that The Bell Curve made arguments that the authors claimed were backed by objective science while Giubilini & Minerva’s After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? simply didn’t (not that I have, or will be, reading either).
But moreover I’ve gotten old, and while at times I would describe myself as a leftist, in the Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Smedley Darlington Butler tradition. Mostly these days I’d describe my politics as Apathist Anarchist (the real deal, I’ve actually read Prince Kropotkin and Lady Emma, but in the end I see that it’s all a joke and just don’t give a fuck anymore).
But I thank you, with your limited actual knowledge of me and my politics, for thinking you have clue one as to what makes me “rage and scream”.
Now for what I actually thought was worth responding to,
Really? I think you really need to brush-up on the care and feeding of newborns and infants. ‘Cause the notion that “infants can survive independently” would lead one to conclude that at this point no one should actually leave an infant in your care . . . unless they want it dead. Human infants are pretty fuckin’ high on the list of animals that are in no way equipped for independent survival.
Maybe you’d like to take another try at presenting an argument against Giubilini & Minerva’s position? 'Cause right now they’re still winning this argument! 
CMC fnord!
Really, after nine months of growing that baby…like Grandma always taught, that to waste is a sin.
I myself am vegan, but I have heard it tastes like pork.
I’m not so sure. One author, Alberto Giubilini, has written and published at least one article defending abortion (here, in the abstract of which he writes “(1) abortion is not only morally permissible but sometimes even morally mandatory and (2) abortion is morally permissible even when the potential person’s life is foreseen to be worth living”). He’s also on record as defending euthanasia, something deeply religious people are often pretty iffy about. If this is all meant to build up to some reductio then it’s a bit of a long con.
That’s not to say the authors aren’t being cagey or playful in the interest of gaining attention and stimulating debate. If you feel that abortion should be permissible by reasons of fetal non-personhood, then IMO this is an issue you’ll have to confront at some point.
Specifically, I think some people attempt to maintain an inconsistent set of positions rather like the following tetrad:
- A fetus is not a person (or not fully a person, or only potentially a person).
- An infant child is a person and possesses all rights thereof.
- Beyond a difference in environment a later-term fetus and a newborn infant are effectively identical.
- An entity’s current location alone has no bearing on the question of its personhood.
A robust defense of the permissiveness of abortion needs either reasons unrelated to fetal personhood (e.g. greatest-good utilitarianism, or the parasitic nature of pregnancy), or to set the point at which a fetus becomes a person. But that’s a difficult problem for sorites-like reasons: surely if at instant x I’m a person then I was a person at instant x minus one nanosecond? And if we punt and deny (4) — claiming that a fetus is not a person simply because it’s unborn — then the question of infanticide really can’t be avoided.
I dunno, you’re a legal voter at age 18, but not one at 18-minus-one-nano, so I fail to see the problem. There are lots of legal benchmarks relating to arbitrary lines drawn in time and space and the system hasn’t collapsed as a result.
Do we really need to construct an argument as to why murdering newborn babies is wrong?
I propose torturing and then eating 5 year old Asian children. Please write a 30 page research paper, with endnotes, telling me how my proposal is wrong and don’t simply dismiss it out of hand.
No, just that the ethical argument is flawed.
Thank you for sharing, and perhaps I should clarify a bit, it is her decision because she is the child’s world and universe which puts her in the role of God for her child, which gives her the right as I see it. For one who believes in God, it is a incredible powerful role of creator that God has given women in this very decision. And who can judge a god but God, so the decision is between her and God alone.
That said I really hate the characterization of a fetus as a parasite.