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shawnmmcc
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Kuci - I didn't say the religious texts don't have an internal consistancy - once you grant their premise of being THE divine word. The internal consisteny starts with a series of "god says" premises, and there is no internal consistency, just tautology in that case. That is why Moslems and Christians can kill each other with moral internal consistency - and they have with exactly those claims. Multiple times. Ethically the behavior is bankrupt.
None of my statements are based on a religious text - please find a detailed cite. Every maxim I have quoted is based on internal self-consistancy, i.e. my example of the murderer. There is a premise - that all behaviors you are willing to enforce, reduced to their basic premise (tricky one that - my example of the religious moralist imposing his texts on everyone), are ones you do not mind having enforced on you. No god, no texts, etc.
It also is not relativist at all. The jailer example is a red herring. The person in jail violated those ethical maxims, i.e. he tried to kill someone. The jailer has not. Simple, end of story. In fact ethical laws DO NOT assume all inidividuals are morally equal - you wouldn't need laws then, would you (if it's a high standard we are talking). The fact you must pass laws presupposes people are not morally, or ethically equal. The ethical code of law essentially prevents the criminals' behavior from involuntarily impacting you, i.e. DUI, assault, fraud, murder, etc. However, personal behaviors that do not affect others are not criminalized in an ethical system, that is the individual's problem. Want to have a duel? As long as it IS voluntary, go at it. Want to wear a head scarf, or only associate with fellow believers. Go for it.
I didn't accuse you of being pro-life - I explained why it is an ethical problem and brought it up as the big thorny issue in ethical systems in the modern world. Kuci, I've obviously hit a hot button. Whether using red herring concerning slavery, or saying quote:
Why? Every answer you give is ultimately based on some unjustifiable statement - either a religious text or that "everyone thinks it's true" |
when I use neither. Pause a second, I need to get back to bed anyway - and I normally enjoy our discussions - and please try and figure out what hot button I'm obviously pushing. Then let's try this discussion again, I'll check the thread tonight.
Oh, and Elok - we agree to disagree. You are posting the ethical flipside of the whole abortion issue. However, are you willing to truly live with those consequences? As I've stated to BK, have you worked with those handicapped children that will result from if your interpretation is implemented? As a minimum are you willing to pay the higher taxes because of how long we can now keep them alive with medical science - for example individuals with Down's syndrome used to die by early adulthood due to other problems stemming from the extra chromosone - now they live into middle age. The hydrocephlic example will cost well into six figures before it dies. I have a suspicion you are one of those who might just do that (i.e. be willing to pay those taxes). If you are, I'll respect you while opposing you, while I err on the side of choice, for the reasons I've explained.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:23
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Fair enough WRT agreeing to disagree, but surely you realize that I'm not going to leave it be in the real world...don't you?
I think I see what Kuci's getting at though, as I've argued it often enough. Any system of ethics must be based on certain assumptions even before it can be logically consistent. The assumptions can be questioned with regards to palatability, and if the internal consistency is flawed, that too, but otherwise a system of ethics is not assailable, because the system by definition establishes its own right and wrong.
I don't distinguish between morals and ethics for that reason. Both are extrapolations from certain core assumptions, and no such basic assumption is of more worth than any other from an "empirical" perspective, if such a thing even exists for existential questions. You can try to make the assumption unpalatable, but it all depends what you have faith in.
In your case, the assumptions seem to be the fairly basic "people should be treated respectfully for no reason beyond respect itself," "personhood is defined by self-awareness," and so on. I'm not arguing against those points, I'm willing to ATD as you suggested, I'm just noting their existence.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:23
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Kuci - I didn't say the religious texts don't have an internal consistancy - once you grant their premise of being THE divine word. The internal consisteny starts with a series of "god says" premises, and there is no internal consistency, just tautology in that case. That is why Moslems and Christians can kill each other with moral internal consistency - and they have with exactly those claims. Multiple times. Ethically the behavior is bankrupt. |
Elok hasn't made a single religious argument...
quote:
None of my statements are based on a religious text - please find a detailed cite. Every maxim I have quoted is based on internal self-consistancy, i.e. my example of the murderer. There is a premise - that all behaviors you are willing to enforce, reduced to their basic premise (tricky one that - my example of the religious moralist imposing his texts on everyone), are ones you do not mind having enforced on you. No god, no texts, etc. |
I never said they were religion-based - what I said was that they reduced to a unjustifiable statement, that it's OK to enforce behaviors that you don't mind being enforced on you. There's no
quote:
It also is not relativist at all. The jailer example is a red herring. The person in jail violated those ethical maxims, i.e. he tried to kill someone. The jailer has not. Simple, end of story. |
The person in jail was black, the jailer was not. Simple, end of story.
The fact that you can specifically define the distinction doesn't make it objectively valid.
quote:
In fact ethical laws DO NOT assume all inidividuals are morally equal - you wouldn't need laws then, would you (if it's a high standard we are talking). |
I didn't mean in terms of action, I meant in terms of rights. I said morally identical, that is, you could switch the two people and the morality of the situation would be the same. This is not true of any ethical systems, and so it's not an argument against Elok's.
quote:
I didn't accuse you of being pro-life - I explained why it is an ethical problem and brought it up as the big thorny issue in ethical systems in the modern world. Kuci, I've obviously hit a hot button. Whether using red herring concerning slavery, or saying when I use neither. Pause a second, I need to get back to bed anyway - and I normally enjoy our discussions - and please try and figure out what hot button I'm obviously pushing. Then let's try this discussion again, I'll check the thread tonight. |
You do base yours on an unjustifiable statement - ALL moral systems are, because there's (obviously) no a priori way to determine the "true morality", and it's equally clear that there's no experiment you can perform. Morality is relative
quote:
Oh, and Elok - we agree to disagree. You are posting the ethical flipside of the whole abortion issue. However, are you willing to truly live with those consequences? As I've stated to BK, have you worked with those handicapped children that will result from if your interpretation is implemented? As a minimum are you willing to pay the higher taxes because of how long we can now keep them alive with medical science - for example individuals with Down's syndrome used to die by early adulthood due to other problems stemming from the extra chromosone - now they live into middle age. The hydrocephlic example will cost well into six figures before it dies. I have a suspicion you are one of those who might just do that (i.e. be willing to pay those taxes). If you are, I'll respect you while opposing you, while I err on the side of choice, for the reasons I've explained. |
This is an argument from a completely different angle, and it is valid - whether or not fetuses have these rights, can our society function with a complete abortion ban?
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shawnmmcc
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Very close, Elok. The assumption, and actually it is tautological to the term itself, is internal consistency over a broad application. Which is what ethics is/are.
So all rules within a system of ethics must be applicable to whatever situation ensues. Saying "I am always right, make me world dictator" obviously does not have the broad application, it applies to that one individual, and cannot apply to any other. Ditto for slavery, which is why I hadn't used it, it's a straw man - the application is so direct that it doesn't really present any actual issue at all for the ethicist.
I have agonized over abortion, etc. for decades, and been on the receiving end. I would have a little boy, well actually an adolescent, except while I wanted the child, she did not (barrier methods do fail - I learned belt and suspenders after that). However, it is in some of the grey application areas that ethics have problems. For a moralist it is simple, the divine text says otherwise.
Your ethical examination of the entire IV-F, abortion, stem cell issue is internally consistant. I am quite familiar with it, it is the same one I came over two decades ago, which is why Roe vs. Wade is a bad decision either way - medical technology cannot be the indicator for when life begins. That really has grotesque implications, for example, a moving bar to define murder?
However, as I noted, you ethical conclusion, while internally consistant as to what is human, ends up with certain results that I simply find absurd, the actual problem with the purest form of Libetarianism (in response to other posters comments, not yours). My examples of some of the more extreme birth defects, and all some genetic diseases, makes even your very simple, straight foward definition of human produce some horrendous results, i.e. the Tay-Sachs child who is going to have a horrendous death. I would abort in a heartbeat, but while my wife may be a carrier, I am not.
That is why, and I cannot remember the quote in any kind of detail, or who said it, but essentially it states that philosophers are the most dangerous, and heartless, people. They can lay down maxims without regard to the results, all in the name of internal consistency. Which is why, as you noted, when I come to certain areas where internal consistency comes to an unsolvable dilemma, i.e. abortion and the well-being of the parents versus the rights of the embryo/fetus/unborn child - I then add the additional corrollary standards that you note I apply.
In fact I would simply describe my rules that I attempt to apply in cases like that are respect and choice. I also attempt to test my ethical conclusion via reducio ad absurdem (reduced to the absurd, taking it to the most extreme conclusion for some of the other posters who may not know) which is why I abandoned the line of reasoning you currently apply to this genie in the modern technical lamp. That reducio ad absurdem test of ethics is actually the biggest difference, I expect, between your ethics and mine. You are probably a more pure ethicist than I, in that you take the internal consistancy and apply it come what may in this case. I do apply a certain relativist examination of the consequences, making my ethical system much more complex, but I hope a little less harsh in the application.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
Assigning value to anything beyond "glob of cells" is highly subjective. |
Either you are very confused, or you are trying to confuse others.
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
We're all globs of cells, some more complex than others |
That is very disingenuous. It's like saying everything is matter. It is a true statement, but it is also a meaningless statement.
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
First of all, nobody can define what it means decisively |
Nobody can precisely define probability either, it doesn't mean it is useless.
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
and even the imprecise definitions rely on methods of measurement which can't be proven when the subject is an infant or fetus. |
How do you prove a measurement? 
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
Notice how this establishes one's right to live as something to be proven or earned with time. |
No kidding. Even if it is by your DNA method, you still need to show the subject in question carries human DNA and is distinctively different from the its parents. So how is yours different? It is still a test that establish boundaris.
Not that I agree with this test.
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
So at least some aspects of the intellect come from life experience combined with the emerging abilities of the developing brain |
Sentience != intellect.
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
Thirdly, even out of the womb a child is far from developed into the intelligence we associate with "humanity," as anybody who's read the names Piaget or Erikson knows. Even in adolescence the brain is not developed entirely, and choosing a point along the spectrum of growth in the meantime cannot be anything but arbitrary. |
Again, you are either confusing sentience with intelligence, either because you don't know the difference, or you are trying to confuse others.
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shawnmmcc
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Kuci - hello again.  You are now looking at why many moralists find ethical systems very uncomfortable. A moral system has no need for the applicability test. A moral system is based on typically a religious text and the maxims contained therein. It then applies various contextual arguments to them, like Elok points out that I use, though I submit I only use them when the broad applicability hits a dilemma, i.e. abortion and the various situations that arise concerning it.
Look at Judaism. If you take a literalist look at the text, you can be Orthodox or Hasidic. If you take a relativist look at the text, you can be reformed. If you try to find some compromise between the two, you are Conservative (I'm oversimplyfying to make a point). However, all used the Torah as the base line and then interpret it.
Thus many Christians have no problems imposing a ban on Sunday alchohol sales even though a non-Christian does not feel the Sabbath is Sunday. Even some Christians disagree, but nevertheless a majority imposed that in many states. From their standpoint that is moral, just like a moslem feels comfortable banning non-moslem men from marrying their woman, but the reverse is acceptable.
In Florida in the 1990's the local Christian town council passed rules to prevent the local Santeria believers the right to make animal sacrifices. Since the zoning changes were blatant, SCOTUS threw them out. My point is that all of these examples I've mentioned passed someone's morality test, but all fail the broad application criteria of ethics. Which is why I find it amusing when moralists claim ethics are all relative and thus inherently flawed. Actually ethics are an attempt to guarantee the moralists have the right to practice their own private morality, as long as it does not interfere with others in their own different practice.
Ethics are anything but relative, and have a much better chance of surviving the passage of time and changes in the culture with many fewer changes. Much of what I espouse has been around in the West since the European enlightenment, roughly three centuries. If you look at Taoism, most of the concepts I discuss here are over two millenia old.
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shawnmmcc
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UR - you are posting many of the reasons that caused me to start questioning my anti-abortion stance when I was a young adult (and in a premed program). The problem with Elok's stance, which has a nice, elegant simplicity and consistancy, is that the real world - in this case biology, which is anything but simple - throws all kinds of zingers at it.
Elok did not answer my query, at least directly, about the severe case of microcephaly, i.e. only the reptile brain exists. Many people, maybe most would grant that is not human. If it is a genetic mutation (it can also be due to in vitro problems), obviously lethal and non-perpetuating, even though the resulting organism shares over 99% of our genes, it will never display and sentience or intelligence. It's a vegetable.
OK, so that's not human - though I suspect to Elok and BK it is, and so has the all the rights accorded to any human, so you and I get to pay very high medicaid taxes to keep it alive. Now you state just let it die naturally. Alright then, how about intervention to save old people? That's the problem with simple black and white ethical definitions. The real world gets tangled up around their ankles and trips them up. That's why I've taken the route I have taken on ethical matters.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:23
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UR, how exactly do you define sentience in a way that it can be proven to exist or not exist in a child who can't speak? I've never heard anyone give me a straight answer on that score. The arguments about intellect also apply to sentience, as sentience is generally spoken of as the height of human intellect. Its usual definition is something along the lines of "self-awareness," which aside from being impossible to determine in a child might be argued to be illusory in some adults I can think of. I think the sentience argument idiotically simplistic; intelligence is a very deep and sliding scale, not just sentient or bestial.
Nor do I value people for their intelligence; given the number of fools I meet every day, I would consider roughly one billion of the six on earth to be people worth caring about by that standard. A chimp has greater cognitive ability than an infant, but if somebody wanted to kill a chimp I'd say sure, provided they did it humanely and had some decent reason for it. Yes, it can poke around in termite mounds with a stick and get yummy snacks, clever example of tool use, but I don't care, it's just a chimp, not a human. If it comes to that, a border collie is almost certainly more intelligent than an infant in almost every way and we put dozens of those to sleep every day.
And your tumor example and the like seem to be just a deliberate misunderstanding done for perversity's sake on your part; you know what I meant, or if you didn't, hopefully I've made that more clear to you. Any meaning read into any life beyond "blob of cells," which is a scientifically valid if imprecise definition of a human or indeed any lifeform, is an existential question, not something self-evident. And for the sake of this discussion it doesn't matter if the dead guy is human, as a dead man can't be killed. Honestly, I thought you knew better than to play such childish games.
Shawn, from a legal perspective your example of a mindless child might be abortable simply because it is proven to be nonviable. I think there ought to be exceptions in law for that. It will still be the parents' choice if they want to see the whole thing through, of course, but if they don't there's no sense in legally requiring them to hope for a miracle.
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:23
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Kuci - hello again. You are now looking at why many moralists find ethical systems very uncomfortable. A moral system has no need for the applicability test. A moral system is based on typically a religious text and the maxims contained therein. It then applies various contextual arguments to them, like Elok points out that I use, though I submit I only use them when the broad applicability hits a dilemma, i.e. abortion and the various situations that arise concerning it.
Look at Judaism. If you take a literalist look at the text, you can be Orthodox or Hasidic. If you take a relativist look at the text, you can be reformed. If you try to find some compromise between the two, you are Conservative (I'm oversimplyfying to make a point). However, all used the Torah as the base line and then interpret it.
Thus many Christians have no problems imposing a ban on Sunday alchohol sales even though a non-Christian does not feel the Sabbath is Sunday. Even some Christians disagree, but nevertheless a majority imposed that in many states. From their standpoint that is moral, just like a moslem feels comfortable banning non-moslem men from marrying their woman, but the reverse is acceptable.
In Florida in the 1990's the local Christian town council passed rules to prevent the local Santeria believers the right to make animal sacrifices. Since the zoning changes were blatant, SCOTUS threw them out. My point is that all of these examples I've mentioned passed someone's morality test, but all fail the broad application criteria of ethics. Which is why I find it amusing when moralists claim ethics are all relative and thus inherently flawed. Actually ethics are an attempt to guarantee the moralists have the right to practice their own private morality, as long as it does not interfere with others in their own different practice.
Ethics are anything but relative, and have a much better chance of surviving the passage of time and changes in the culture with many fewer changes. Much of what I espouse has been around in the West since the European enlightenment, roughly three centuries. If you look at Taoism, most of the concepts I discuss here are over two millenia old. |
I think we're agreeing but not understanding each other. Ethics are relative in terms of their actual truth; but some ethical systems become more predominant than others, which has nothing to do with their actual truthhood.
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shawnmmcc
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LC - sorry, I wasn't ignoring you, my comment on genuine disagreement with the stress on genuine was answered implicitly. It's a non sequiter as you present it - saying you and the Klan agree that negroes are not people has not validity in an ethical system.
The disagreement, when talking about ethics, has to be tautological, i.e. coming from what ethics are implicitly by their very nature. Thus your statement has no bearing on ethics. You and the Klan can agree on that, it still is not ethical for the reasons stated for a murderer, or for slavery. Genuine disagreement can be fairly easily determined by people having an actual discussion vesus debate, i.e. Elok's post.
Elok meets the criteria for ethical reasoning, which I stated several posts ago. His criteria are self-consistant and as sound as any ethical reasoning can be in the area of Abortion, which sadly has certain areas as I noted that defeat the pure ethical argument. There always has to be a fly in the ointment.
Kuci, a true ethical system will not be relative, and the variability of premises is highly limited. Elok and my disagreement are one of only a few. Many systems claim to be ethical but are not - the internal self-consisty falls apart, just as noted above. The Southerner holding slaves can claim a self-consistant ethical system, but it's not when applying that criteria clearly. That was why Elok tried calling me to task on my premises (quite properly I might add), a true ethical system means you use those sparingly, and only when you reach an unresolvable dilemma in applying true self-consistancy.
This last statement is a practical application. A purist might state then you simply say there is no ethical anwer. Practically that would make ethics useless, so I as well as many other ethicists then try to apply it in the real world.. As I've noted, that's why the Greek philosophers, Chinese Taoist, and philosphers of the European Enlightenment all came to many very similiar conclusions, these are universal concepts embodied by the very definition of ethics. That may be where we disagree, with your feeling that ethics are relative - they are not, they attempt via rational thought to investigate universal concepts and truth. Who decides? The concepts themselves, when carefully examined will become self-evident. "We hold these truths to be self-evident?" That's good company to keep, IMHO. Is ethics easy? No. Is ethics prone to abuse? Good god, yes. Horribly so. That abuse is why so many people believe ethics are relative, when they really are not.
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19-02-2005 01:36
I guess that makes you Pro-Death. 
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