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Post by Terrapin Station on Feb 4, 2018 21:38:31 GMT
I do not agree that it can possibly be a stance held without any other thought process to back it up On what basis are you disagreeing with that, just that it's different than how you think?
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 21:40:26 GMT
Take my murder stance, It seems that people are separate entities, and for one to take away the life of another is wrong based on that observation. I guess you could say that people being separate entities is an opinion though. No, people being separate entities is as close to factual as things get. What's an opinion is that "therefore it is wrong to take the life of another". Nothing about that fact leads to that conclusion. If, for example, I am of the opinion that I should be the only entity in the universe then the logical conclusion that would follow from observing that other people are separate entities is that I should kill them. Terrapin really is right. If you take any moral stance and keep saying "But why do I feel that?" then sooner or later you will always get to the point where you say "I just do". The closest thing you will ever get to an explanation is along the lines of "I was raised to believe it". But he's not just saying that this is true for him on this particular moral opinion. He's saying that it's true for everyone on every moral opinion. Including your opinion that it's wrong to kill people. I see what you (and he are saying), I just find it really hard to comprehend that this particular stance (the abortion demarcation) is held without reference to another stance, or some piece of information. I may be kidding myself when I say that I hold my stances based on observation, I suppose it could be said people could make the same observation and come to a different stance, but this one in particular of terrapins seems like an odd place to start a base stance.
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 21:41:45 GMT
tpfkar As always Ben has a beguiling way of making statements, but they tend to be just his opinion presented as fact. Personally I find his presentation to be the very antithesis of "beguiling". And his content ever a mixture of noncontroversial truism as lead-in to his meat of high-pitched rabid demagoguery. Not that I think you were necessarily using "beguiling" as a compliment in this case. Johnny, Angry JohnnyNo, he is glorious gordon godfrey, but he often gives the impression of having come to his conclusions through deep thought and is able to make convincing statements that support that impression, until you dig a bit further.
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Post by cupcakes on Feb 4, 2018 21:41:46 GMT
tpfkar No I am having trouble figuring out how you came to that foundational stance, I do not agree that it can possibly be a stance held without any other thought process to back it up, but that seems to be what you are saying. Well you probably got yours by being around, interacting with, and holding/protecting the wee fragile things. Last Caress
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 21:43:55 GMT
I do not agree that it can possibly be a stance held without any other thought process to back it up On what basis are you disagreeing with that, just that it's different than how you think? That is seems too far advanced down the moral path to be an opinion held aside from anything else, like I would have expected you to say, that the baby being born represents complete separation from the entity of the mother or something like that in which you tell me why you hold this foundational stance, but you seem to be just saying you decided that stance in complete separation from all other considerations.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Feb 4, 2018 21:44:25 GMT
No, people being separate entities is as close to factual as things get. What's an opinion is that "therefore it is wrong to take the life of another". Nothing about that fact leads to that conclusion. If, for example, I am of the opinion that I should be the only entity in the universe then the logical conclusion that would follow from observing that other people are separate entities is that I should kill them. Terrapin really is right. If you take any moral stance and keep saying "But why do I feel that?" then sooner or later you will always get to the point where you say "I just do". The closest thing you will ever get to an explanation is along the lines of "I was raised to believe it". But he's not just saying that this is true for him on this particular moral opinion. He's saying that it's true for everyone on every moral opinion. Including your opinion that it's wrong to kill people. I see what you (and he are saying), I just find it really hard to comprehend that this particular stance (the abortion demarcation) is held without reference to another stance, or some piece of information. I may be kidding myself when I say that I hold my stances based on observation, I suppose it could be said people could make the same observation and come to a different stance, but this one in particular of terrapins seems like an odd place to start a base stance. It makes sense to say that your moral stances are based on observation in the sense that, say, "I'm observing this person strike that person" is an observation, and then you'll feel some way about that, but the reason that you feel the way you do isn't the observation, and it's not implied by the external facts or the observation. The reason is basically that that's how your brain works--your brain being structured and working a particular way is you feeling however you feel about what you observed. Moral stances can be a(n implicational) consequence of other moral stances, but they're not a consequence of something that's not a moral stance.
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 21:55:29 GMT
I see what you (and he are saying), I just find it really hard to comprehend that this particular stance (the abortion demarcation) is held without reference to another stance, or some piece of information. I may be kidding myself when I say that I hold my stances based on observation, I suppose it could be said people could make the same observation and come to a different stance, but this one in particular of terrapins seems like an odd place to start a base stance. It makes sense to say that your moral stances are based on observation in the sense that, say, "I'm observing this person strike that person" is an observation, and then you'll feel some way about that, but the reason that you feel the way you do isn't the observation, and it's not implied by the external facts or the observation. The reason is basically that that's how your brain works--your brain being structured and working a particular way is you feeling however you feel about what you observed. Moral stances can be a(n implicational) consequence of other moral stances, but they're not a consequence of something that's not a moral stance. I read this to imply that moral stances are not affected by anything other than moral stances, but surely you have to observe something in the world to make a moral stance based around it. Or rather you have to know what the characters who are affected by this moral stance are and have some feeling as to why you are happy for x to happen to y but not z? right? do you see what I am driving at, it seems to me that you are saying your stance on demarcation is happening in void that there is nothing affecting it except personal opinion. But I am saying you must have a more specific opinion than that (like an opinion on whether the baby can feel or think or something) to make this call on your demarcation line. Hell I could be completely wrong, but I just find it hard to believe that this is the most granular you have on this stance.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2018 22:10:23 GMT
No, people being separate entities is as close to factual as things get. What's an opinion is that "therefore it is wrong to take the life of another". Nothing about that fact leads to that conclusion. If, for example, I am of the opinion that I should be the only entity in the universe then the logical conclusion that would follow from observing that other people are separate entities is that I should kill them. Terrapin really is right. If you take any moral stance and keep saying "But why do I feel that?" then sooner or later you will always get to the point where you say "I just do". The closest thing you will ever get to an explanation is along the lines of "I was raised to believe it". But he's not just saying that this is true for him on this particular moral opinion. He's saying that it's true for everyone on every moral opinion. Including your opinion that it's wrong to kill people. I see what you (and he are saying), I just find it really hard to comprehend that this particular stance (the abortion demarcation) is held without reference to another stance, or some piece of information. I may be kidding myself when I say that I hold my stances based on observation, I suppose it could be said people could make the same observation and come to a different stance Exactly. Well the trouble with this whole idea is that it does allow one to simply draw a line under whatever belief one has. "Why do you think it's immoral to eat green-coloured food on Sundays in July?" "I just do, it's a foundational principle." In general, I'd say that most morality is built on foundational principles which are just opinions... but they are opinions which are shared by almost everyone. Most arguments about morality boils down to trying to pick apart a particular moral question and break it down into more fundamental moral principles that are so widely held that they seem to have an authority to them. Unfortunately what often happens is that people actually have different foundational moral principles, so they wind up arguing past one another. And that's often what's going on with the abortion issue. Pro life types often assume that pro choice people are pro choice because they just don't understand that "a baby is being killed" in an abortion. They think if they could just convince us of this we'd change our minds, because it's so obvious that killing a baby is always completely wrong. Similarly, pro choice people often think that if we could just convince the pro life crowd that it's a massive violation of bodily freedom to force a woman to remain pregnant, they'd change their minds. In reality it ain't necessarily so, because the person you're talking to may well just not place the same value on those particular moral principals that you do. Hence each side thinks the other are morally bankrupt monsters.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Feb 4, 2018 22:12:38 GMT
It makes sense to say that your moral stances are based on observation in the sense that, say, "I'm observing this person strike that person" is an observation, and then you'll feel some way about that, but the reason that you feel the way you do isn't the observation, and it's not implied by the external facts or the observation. The reason is basically that that's how your brain works--your brain being structured and working a particular way is you feeling however you feel about what you observed. Moral stances can be a(n implicational) consequence of other moral stances, but they're not a consequence of something that's not a moral stance. I read this to imply that moral stances are not affected by anything other than moral stances, but surely you have to observe something in the world to make a moral stance based around it. Or rather you have to know what the characters who are affected by this moral stance are and have some feeling as to why you are happy for x to happen to y but not z? right? do you see what I am driving at, it seems to me that you are saying your stance on demarcation is happening in void that there is nothing affecting it except personal opinion. But I am saying you must have a more specific opinion than that (like an opinion on whether the baby can feel or think or something) to make this call on your demarcation line. Hell I could be completely wrong, but I just find it hard to believe that this is the most granular you have on this stance. First, * B is affected or influenced by A * B is the reason for A and * B is an implicational consequence of A are all different ideas. Re observing things, well, one thing I'm observing is that babies can be wholly contained in mothers, right? And I'm observing that babies emerge from mothers, so that they're no longer wholly contained inside of them. And I'm observing that mothers can decide that they don't want babies, and that it's possible to kill them while they're still inside of mothers, and so on. That should all be pretty obvious. Re this: "have some feeling as to why you are happy for x to happen to y but not z?" Imagine that you say, "I'm happy for x to happen because that results in t." Well, we can then ask, "Why are you happy for t to be the case?" And we're back at what I was talking about earlier. At some point, the person we ask is going to run out of answers. They might say, "Because if t's the case then p." "So why are you happy that p?" And so on. They'll run out of answers at some point. But wherever they'd run out of answers is what they could have started with. And then when we ask, "Why are you happy that p," they'll be stuck already. Because they started where they'd run out of answers. No chain like that can extend infinitely back. People are only alive a finite time. Even if all they did their entire life was go through a chain like that, they had to start somewhere (or trace it back to somewhere that's the furthest they've traced it back), and they don't have an answer prior to the starting point. You can say the starting point first. It's a pet peeve of mine when people don't seem to get this very simple fact. "it seems to me that you are saying your stance on demarcation is happening in void that there is nothing affecting it except personal opinion." I'm obviously not saying that I didn't observe anything for example. But insofar as it's a moral stance, it can only BE a personal opinion. That's what moral stances are, after all. "But I am saying you must have a more specific opinion than that (like an opinion on whether the baby can feel or think or something) to make this call on your demarcation line." Sure, I have opinions about whether babies can think or feel, etc. But in my opinion, that's irrelevant to whether it's moral to have an abortion. The only thing that's relevant is whether the baby is wholly contained inside the mother. My view isn't based on personhood or anything like that that many other people base their view on. It's based on containment. Asking why is like asking why someone's view is based on personhood. Ultimately, it just comes down to how they feel, or you could say their "moral intuition."
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 22:13:11 GMT
I see what you (and he are saying), I just find it really hard to comprehend that this particular stance (the abortion demarcation) is held without reference to another stance, or some piece of information. I may be kidding myself when I say that I hold my stances based on observation, I suppose it could be said people could make the same observation and come to a different stance Exactly. Well the trouble with this whole idea is that it does allow one to simply draw a line under whatever belief one has. "Why do you think it's immoral to eat green-coloured food on Sundays in July?" "I just do, it's a foundational principle." In general, I'd say that most morality is built on foundational principles which are just opinions... but they are opinions which are shared by almost everyone. Most arguments about morality boils down to trying to pick apart a particular moral question and break it down into more fundamental moral principles that are so widely held that they seem to have an authority to them. Unfortunately what often happens is that people actually have different foundational moral principles, so they wind up arguing past one another. And that's often what's going on with the abortion issue. Pro life types often assume that pro choice people are pro choice because they just don't understand that "a baby is being killed" in an abortion. They think if they could just convince us of this we'd change our minds, because it's so obvious that killing a baby is always completely wrong. Similarly, pro choice people often think that if we could just convince the pro life crowd that it's a massive violation of bodily freedom to force a woman to remain pregnant, they'd change their minds. In reality it ain't necessarily so, because the person you're talking to may well just not place the same value on those particular moral principals that you do. Hence each side thinks the other are morally bankrupt monsters. Just to be clear I don't think anyone is a morally bankrupt monster in this conversation, I was interested in hearing how Terrapin came to this stance in regard to the demarcation line, I felt it was too specific (and unique, I have not heard anyone else with that stance) to exist in a void.
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 22:17:47 GMT
I read this to imply that moral stances are not affected by anything other than moral stances, but surely you have to observe something in the world to make a moral stance based around it. Or rather you have to know what the characters who are affected by this moral stance are and have some feeling as to why you are happy for x to happen to y but not z? right? do you see what I am driving at, it seems to me that you are saying your stance on demarcation is happening in void that there is nothing affecting it except personal opinion. But I am saying you must have a more specific opinion than that (like an opinion on whether the baby can feel or think or something) to make this call on your demarcation line. Hell I could be completely wrong, but I just find it hard to believe that this is the most granular you have on this stance. First, * B is affected or influenced by A * B is the reason for A and * B is an implicational consequence of A are all different ideas. Re observing things, well, one thing I'm observing is that babies can be wholly contained in mothers, right? And I'm observing that babies emerge from mothers, so that they're no longer wholly contained inside of them. And I'm observing that mothers can decide that they don't want babies, and that it's possible to kill them while they're still inside of mothers, and so on. That should all be pretty obvious. Re this: "have some feeling as to why you are happy for x to happen to y but not z?" Imagine that you say, "I'm happy for x to happen because that results in t." Well, we can then ask, "Why are you happy for t to be the case?" And we're back at what I was talking about earlier. At some point, the person we ask is going to run out of answers. They might say, "Because if t's the case then p." "So why are you happy that p?" And so on. They'll run out of answers at some point. But wherever they'd run out of answers is what they could have started with. And then when we ask, "Why are you happy that p," they'll be stuck already. Because they started where they'd run out of answers. No chain like that can extend infinitely back. People are only alive a finite time. Even if all they did their entire life was go through a chain like that, they had to start somewhere (or trace it back to somewhere that's the furthest they've traced it back), and they don't have an answer prior to the starting point. You can say the starting point first. It's a pet peeve of mine when people don't seem to get this very simple fact. "it seems to me that you are saying your stance on demarcation is happening in void that there is nothing affecting it except personal opinion." I'm obviously not saying that I didn't observe anything for example. But insofar as it's a moral stance, it can only BE a personal opinion. That's what moral stances are, after all. "But I am saying you must have a more specific opinion than that (like an opinion on whether the baby can feel or think or something) to make this call on your demarcation line." Sure, I have opinions about whether babies can think or feel, etc. But in my opinion, that's irrelevant to whether it's moral to have an abortion. The only thing that's relevant is whether the baby is wholly contained inside the mother. My view isn't based on personhood or anything like that that many other people base their view on. It's based on containment. Asking why is like asking why someone's view is based on personhood. Ultimately, it just comes down to how they feel, or you could say their "moral intuition." And this is the question I have been trying to ask, Hmm interesting stance, I have to say I disagree with it as I do not think it takes into account the experience or possible future of the entities involved, which I would consider strange for a moral stance. I accept that morality is all opinion, in fact I argue it when it comes up, but I just was finding it hard to comprehend how this can be your base, in that I feel like you need a more granular base than this, but I guess that is just an opinion
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Post by Terrapin Station on Feb 4, 2018 22:32:01 GMT
And this is the question I have been trying to ask, Hmm interesting stance, I have to say I disagree with it as I do not think it takes into account the experience or possible future of the entities involved, which I would consider strange for a moral stance. I accept that morality is all opinion, in fact I argue it when it comes up, but I just was finding it hard to comprehend how this can be your base, in that I feel like you need a more granular base than this, but I guess that is just an opinion Well, one of the upshots of the subjectivity of morality is that different people care about different things, where they can feel that some things are completely irrelevant that other people care greatly about. And people can be very unusual about that. For a particular individual, their views could be just about anything imaginable, no matter how weird it is relative to other folks. I'm pretty weird on a lot of stuff (and not just when it comes to ethics/morality, but when it comes to aesthetic and other tastes, lifestyle choices and all sorts of things), which is probably one of the main reasons that the subjectivity of this stuff was so cemented in my mind from a very young age.
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 22:38:31 GMT
And this is the question I have been trying to ask, Hmm interesting stance, I have to say I disagree with it as I do not think it takes into account the experience or possible future of the entities involved, which I would consider strange for a moral stance. I accept that morality is all opinion, in fact I argue it when it comes up, but I just was finding it hard to comprehend how this can be your base, in that I feel like you need a more granular base than this, but I guess that is just an opinion Well, one of the upshots of the subjectivity of morality is that different people care about different things, where they can feel that some things are completely irrelevant that other people care greatly about. And people can be very unusual about that. For a particular individual, their views could be just about anything imaginable, no matter how weird it is relative to other folks. I'm pretty weird on a lot of stuff (and not just when it comes to ethics/morality, but when it comes to aesthetic and other tastes, lifestyle choices and all sorts of things), which is probably one of the main reasons that the subjectivity of this stuff was so cemented in my mind from a very young age. ok. Thanks for the conversation, it was interesting to see the formal definitions.
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Post by Cody™ on Feb 4, 2018 22:59:45 GMT
This is why people like you are not worth discussing anything with. You can never acknowledge that you could be wrong about anything. Go and read the wiki i linked earlier on Goznell. I read the wiki. He is not a prolific serial killer. In any case it may not be the guy that Shapiro is talking about as far as I am aware he does not mention who it is, at least he had not when he introduced the idea, so it could be anyone. The context of him introducing it implied that he thought doctors performing abortions were serial killers. He mentions his name 1.38 into the video.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2018 23:12:36 GMT
Just to be clear I don't think anyone is a morally bankrupt monster in this conversation, I was interested in hearing how Terrapin came to this stance in regard to the demarcation line, I felt it was too specific (and unique, I have not heard anyone else with that stance) to exist in a void. Understood, and I wasn't really talking about you. Just rambling, lol.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2018 23:15:23 GMT
Anybody else consider it ironic that in a thread based on an anti-abortion video, the pro choice arguments have pretty clearly emerged unscathed?
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 23:15:34 GMT
I read the wiki. He is not a prolific serial killer. In any case it may not be the guy that Shapiro is talking about as far as I am aware he does not mention who it is, at least he had not when he introduced the idea, so it could be anyone. The context of him introducing it implied that he thought doctors performing abortions were serial killers. He mentions his name 1.38 into the video. Missed that, then my point stands, he is demonstrably wrong, the doctor in question is not a prolific serial killer.
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Post by gadreel on Feb 4, 2018 23:16:09 GMT
Just to be clear I don't think anyone is a morally bankrupt monster in this conversation, I was interested in hearing how Terrapin came to this stance in regard to the demarcation line, I felt it was too specific (and unique, I have not heard anyone else with that stance) to exist in a void. Understood, and I wasn't really talking about you. Just rambling, lol. Feel free to, it was interesting to read.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2018 3:19:35 GMT
During this "pre-personhood" period after birth, does the infant have a right to life? Not an intrinsic one, in my opinion. But legally, it does. There are no such things as intrinsic rights, only legal rights.
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Post by Isapop on Feb 5, 2018 11:10:52 GMT
Not an intrinsic one, in my opinion. But legally, it does. There are no such things as intrinsic rights, only legal rights. If you're right (and let's say you are) it doesn't materially change the conversation. Phludowin, instead of answering as he did, could say, "An infant has a legal right to life, but shouldn't have." Then we'd just proceed as we did. But your point is an interesting topic of its own.
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