As promised:
I. The argument
1) If individual human life begins at conception then a living foetus is a living human individual.
There's nothing here to disagree with. The consequent contains nothing more than the antecedent.
2) If the foetus is a human individual, then it is an innocent human individual.
A foetus is obviously unable to commit any crimes, and the fact that its existence makes life difficult for its mother is no fault of its own.
3) Abortion is the killing of a foetus.
Again, there's nothing here to disagree with.
4) Therefore if individual human life begins at conception then abortion is killing an innocent human individual.
This follows by simple logic.
5) To kill an innocent human individual who poses no threat to the life of anyone else is murder.
This principle seems so immediate to the human conscience that it's hard for me to understand why anyone would object to it. Moral principles in general are subject to exceptions in very weird cases. This one is as straightforward and evident as any other moral principle I can think of. [Kevin points out, in his Dec 21 comment, that this principle ought to say something about the intention of the person doing the killing. This lacuna becomes what I regard as a serious but not fatal difficulty for my argument]
6) Therefore, if individual human life begins at conception, abortion is murder except perhaps in those rare cases in which the mother's life is endangered.
Again, this is a very simple logical conclusion. In the majority of cases, the foetus poses no threat to anyone's life. All that remains is to determine whether life does in fact begin at conception.
II. Is it more plausible to regard life as beginning at birth or much earlier, such as at conception?
Birth is not plausibly regarded as the coming-to-be of a new entity; it is rather a change of state. We speak of the foetus being born, implying that the same entity that was in the womb is now outside. And "same" here means the same individual. A newborn baby is a living human individual, and is the same living individual as it was before being born. (These observations are not particularly esoteric.) Conception on the other hand is plausibly regarded as the coming-to-be of a new entity. A foetus is not the same individual as either the sperm or the egg from which it was formed. The latter have the DNA of the parents. But the foetus has, from conception, its own unique DNA that will distinguish it from every other living individual to the day of its death. Identical twins are an exception to this, and if there is any murkiness to the question of when life begins it is here: does life begin at the very instant of conception, or shortly thereafter, when twinning occurs? This question should not distract us from the clarity of the fact that a baby at the time of its birth has already been in existence for more than eight months.
Furthermore, parents throughout the world and throughout history have loved their children before they were born. Their attitude is fundamentally different from that of those who are hoping to have a child, but have not yet conceived. The latter have a desire, a wish, or a hope for some possible future. But they do not yet have love for a living child, since there is no child there for them to love. They eagerly look forward for the time when there will be a child for them to love—at conception. Now, no parent can love a child while at the same time believing that child to be nothing but a part of the mother's body, like her heart or her spleen. You cannot love a spleen the way you love a child. Only a person—an individual human being—can be loved in that way. And children can be loved in that way long before they are born. Therefore, life begins at conception or shortly thereafter.
To reject these arguments is to run counter to the plainest common sense and to make the outrageous claim that all parents who love their unborn children are hopelessly deluded, thinking they can love what is in fact more like a spleen than a human being. If everything I've said so far be granted, abortion is murder in almost every case. This is about as strong a conclusion and as solid an argument as one can find in moral reasoning.
III. Objections
Some attempts have been made to avoid this conclusion by pointing out some of the differences between the unborn and the rest of us. For instance, the unborn must rely on the biological functions of their mothers to sustain their life. This distinguishes them from infants who must rely on their parents for food and shelter, but not for respiration and digestion. But it's hard to see how such differences are relevant to the question at hand. Are they supposed to show that a foetus is not a human individual? Or that, even if it is a human individual, it's still OK to kill it? Why would they show this?
In fact, these objections are brought against the personhood of the foetus. I have framed the argument in terms of individual human life rather than personhood not because I think personhood is unclear or ambiguous, but because my opponents seem to be confused about it, and so the question "what do you mean by 'person'?" becomes a distraction. But there can be little doubt about what we mean by "living human individual", and it doesn't seem to me that the moral principle (5) loses any of its force for that, instead of using the term 'person', it uses terms even clearer and more precise. But whichever terms are used, consider how strong an argument would have to be in order to refute the judgment that life or personhood begins at conception (or shortly thereafter). If this judgement is false, it would follow that parents who love their unborn children are hopelessly deluded in thinking they can love what is in fact not a person at all, but something more like a spleen. Even if you think these objections are stronger than I have made them out to be, they are nowhere near strong enough to establish this kind of conclusion.
Others have claimed that it is up to us, as individuals or as a society, to determine who is and who is not a person; so that a foetus only counts as a person, or as a human individual, if its parents think of it as such. In defense of this strange theory, proponents speak of how odd it seems that what is, in their minds, merely a biological event (conception) should have such profound moral implications, quite apart from how human beings choose to think of it.
Consider a homeless beggar who has no family and no friends—a man who, through no fault of his own, is unloved and outcast. Is he not a person? Is it not murder to kill him? Of course it is. Even proponents of this strange theory recognize the wickedness of those societies that have attempted to deny personhood to one or another group of human beings: the Third Reich's treatment of Jews: the ancient Roman custom of exposing unwanted infants (the closest parellel to the case at hand). Proponents of this theory must admit that biological facts place some kind of limits on what is morally acceptable. Indeed, virtually the only time when, according to them, we may choose to regard a living human individual as a non-person is prior to its birth. This means that the biological event of birth has enormous moral significance. It imposes as a moral duty what was before only an optional choice. There are no grounds for giving this kind of moral significance to birth while withholding it from conception. On the contrary, there is every reason to think conception is more significant than birth, from a moral perspective, as argued above. Human beings—before and after birth—are not caused to be persons when someone deigns to love them; on the contrary, they are capable of being loved because they are already persons.
These specious objections to the personhood of a foetus should not distract us from the established fact that a foetus is a human individual. If there is any cogent defense of abortion, it must directly attack the fundamental moral principle that to kill an innocent human individual who poses no threat to the life of any one else is murder.
Moral principles do not admit of a mathematically precise formulation. Hence any particular formulation of a moral principle is open to exceptions in weird and unnatural cases. A cogent objection to a moral principle ought to do more than illustrate the imprecise nature of moral discourse. A cogent objection ought to be relevant to the question at hand: Is abortion, in almost all cases, murder? In this instance, we are looking for a case that is analogous to abortion in a morally relevant way, and in which it is clear that killing an innocent human individual who poses no threat to the life of anyone else is not murder.
J. J. Thomson has formulated what is widely regarded as the best such objection. She asks us to consider a violinist who is in a coma and will certainly die unless he is connected, for nine months, to someone who has a particularly rare blood type. Friends of the violinist kidnap the only woman in the world who has that blood type and connect her to the violinist. Instead of remaining confined to a hospital bed for nine months, the woman disconnects herself from the violinist, leaving him to die.
Tomson asserts repeatedly that what the woman did was morally permissible, but gives nowhere the least shred of a defense for this assertion. Certainly her assertion is contrary to the teaching of Jesus that we are morally obligated to go out of our way to help our neighbors (Tomson explicitly rejects this teaching, when she discusses the parable of the Good Samaritan). But one need not accept the authority of Jesus in order to see that this is hardly a clear counterexample. It is not flat obvious to any human with a conscience that what she did was morally permissible. Now, when we are not clear about an individual case, we ought to look to those general moral principles that are clear. In this instance, we ought to draw from the general principle—to kill an innocent human being who poses no threat to the life of anyone else is murder—the conclusion that the woman in question did indeed commit murder, unless we argue that she did not actually kill him. And this argument seems plausible: it was the disease that killed him, all she did was withhold from him an artificial means of preserving his life. But then the case is not analogous to abortions, in which the foetus is killed—actively cut off from its natural life, sometimes by cutting it to pieces, or by poisoning it with salt as if it were a slug, or by crushing its skull.
There are a number of other disanalogies between this imaginary story and most abortions, disanalogies that are plausibly regarded as morally relevant. Most women who have abortions have voluntarily done something that by its very nature tends to result in pregnancy. The biological purpose of sex is reproduction, and it is at least plausible to think that this might be morally relevant. (Rape covers only a minority of cases, and we are interested in the majority of cases.) Moreover, the violinist is not the child of the woman, and parents are usually thought to have special moral responsibility for their children.
The story can be modified so that it is more analogous to most abortions, but the closer the analogy, the less plausible the claim of moral permissibility becomes. Alternatively, the story can be modified so that the claim of moral permissibility becomes less implausible, but the resulting disanalogies make the story irrelevant to the question at hand. There is no reason to believe that abortion is morally permissible in most cases.
Can we say that, though it is immoral, it is not murder? No, for we have established that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being. And the immoral killing of an innocent human being is murder.
In summary, I have argued that
7) Life begins at conception (or shortly thereafter).
From 6 and 7 it follows that
8) Abortion is, in almost every case, murder.
Pro-choice arguments usually appeal to the rights of the mother, but it is clear to everyone that my right to swing my arm stops where your face begins. If abortion is murder then all talk of rights is out of place.
IV. Corrolaries
9) Millions of abortions occur in America as part of a billion-dollar industry.
An undisputed fact.
10) Therfore, our society is guilty of institutionalized mass murder.
This follows directly from 8 and 9. We are if not morally equivalent then at least morally comparable to Hitler's Germany. Nazis were motivated by a paranoid ideology. We have different motives. The selfish desire to avoid responsibility may not be our only motive, but it is one of them. I don't see that this difference in motivation renders us the less guilty. On the contrary, one might argue that since the infamous "final solution" was imposed by the Nazi leadership without consulting the nation as a whole, the German people were, if anything, less guilty than are we, with our capitalistic democracy of death.
11) It is the duty of the civil authority to protect the innocent by outlawing murder.
I trust there are no anarchists in the audience.
12) Therefore, abortion ought to be illegal.
I am quite baffled by people who know that abortion is wrong, and yet think that other issues are more important when it comes time to vote. Some of them even ridicule those of us for whom the issue of institutionalized mass murder is more important than anything else, calling us "one-issue voters," as if that were obviously narrow minded and foolish. But if abortion is murder (and given that it is the immoral killing of an innocent human being, what else could it be but murder?) then nothing can come close to the importance of this issue unless it be a matter of life and death on a massive scale.
Can matters of war and peace outweigh the issue at hand? Certainly not. The leaders of nations have a rightful authority to wage war. They may make poor judgements. They may even go to war unjustly. But they are not murderers. In war, the soldiers on each side pose a threat to the lives of those on the other, and the killing they do, as ugly as it may be, is not murder. If the Kaiser was guilty of warmongering, his crime against the nations of Europe was not as great as Hitler's crimes against humanity. It is to the latter that our society must be compared.
If you agree that abortion is wrong, is our society not guilty of mass murder? If our society is guilty of mass murder, should not this fact loom larger in our minds than anything else when we cast our votes? In this past election, John Kerry, was not only in favor of keeping abortion legal, he wanted to use public funds to pay for abortions (he was quite clear about this in the second debate). In other words, he was in favor of state-sponsored murder. Those who voted for him would give him the power that they knew he would use to commit murder if he could.
Would I sound like a fundamentalist if I said that it was a sin to vote for Kerry? Well, I don't want to sound like a fundamentalist, but I can see no way to escape the conclusion with intellectual and moral integrity. It is a sin to give someone power that you know he intends to use to commit murder.
Posted by mccartney at December 10, 2004 5:14 PMSee, this is where it gets messy. Let me start this way:
1) I think abortion is wrong.
2) I think abortion ought to be illegal.
Okay, so we've got that out there. The thing is, your arguments for human life beginning at conception are problematic. You are assumming a clearly defined definition of what constitutes a human being. I don't think you've got one. Here's why:
You make reference to having a unique genome. Okay, then what are we supposed to think about the upwards of 60% of embryos that never implant on the uterine wall? Because it's currently thought that at least that percentage of fertilized eggs wind up getting passed out of a woman's body through the normal menstrual process. Are these human beings? If they are, you're going to have a hard time coming up with an argument for why we aren't morally bound to save each and every one of them. Their physical characteristics are no different than any other embryo.
Unless, of course, you wish to add qualifying criteria to the simple definition of a fertilized egg being a human being. Say we were to add the qualifier of it implanting on the uterine wall. Two problems with that: first, it complicates a definition that is intended to be simple, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a simple definition, doesn't it? Second, if you go that way, we can fertilize and dispose of as many embryos as we want, as long as we don't implant them. I can't see you buying that argument, and I don't either.
And then there's the really thorny issue of cloning. A cloned body is not the result of a fertilized egg. It is the result of chemically teasing a cell to revert to an earlier, more potent state from which an entire body can be produced. If you're going to hold to the embryonic definition of human life, then clones aren't human, and we can thus do anything we want to them. I can't see you buying this either. Every single unambiguous definition of the human being that I've heard of is either too inclusive or too exclusive, and I don't think you've got a better one.
Your argument about parents loving unborn children are actually pretty scary. Humans love a lot of things that aren't human, and human emotions are not answerable to logical syllogisms, as much as you might wish that they are. The fact that we are given to love our unborn children does give emotional weight to your argument, but does little to classify the biological organisms in question. If a given entity is going to be considered human, it must be because of something about the entity, not the way in which it is treated or perceived. I'm sure the Rwandans, Armenians, Jews, and Bosnians would agree.
But what I like least about your line of reasoning has little to do with your conclusion, as much as that it leaves no room for the circumstantial ambiguity that we all experience and in which the participants must rely on the guiding presence of the Holy Spirit, something we as Christians are instructed to seek and trust. You've come up with a syllogism that doesn't require you to trust anyone. I don't like that.
Furthermore, your political conclusions are drastically oversimplified to the point of being completely bogus. Every culture has blood on its hands. There are no innocents, historically speaking. And if you want to blame anyone for the current state of affairs, blame the Framers who set up a Constitution that can be consistently interpreted to allow for such atrocities. It's hard to actually hold them accountable for this, them being dead and all, and I don't really see the need to blame them for two and a half centuries of legal evolution. They did their best, and it's worked decently well for a long time. The fact that we can do things that they couldn't imagine isn't their fault.
The fact is that like it or not, the use of public funds for abortions is consistent with the current legal system. Calling it immoral doesn't really matter, because legality is at issue here. You want to change that, there's a way of doing it, but refusing to play the game by making simplistic arguments like the one you've made is not the way. You've already given lip service to the centrality of legality by declaring unborn children "innocent", when you know as well as I that there are no innocents in the eyes of God.
I can see my hypothetical masters thesis shaping up right now...
Posted by: ryan at December 10, 2004 10:40 PMWe are agreed that abortion is wrong; however, I fail to see where it is automatically sinful to vote for someone who disagrees. It might be different if there were a direct correlation between a candidate's views and the actual occurence of abortion. But, in our system of government, how much real power does a president have to inact his wishes? Even if I knew that a particular candidate would quickly be able to make abortion illegal, this would not necessarily be the best outcome. Christians may legitimately disagree on whether the sinfulness of abortion best translates into making it illegal or making it rare. Both would be optimal, but a rush to outlaw it at all costs could very well make the latter option virtually impossible. There are also those times when the desire of those in power to limit abortion has the potential for making things worse. In my opinion, this would have happened had the ban on partial birth abortions not been overturned. The intent of the ban was to reduce the number of abortions performed, or, at the least, to be make them more humane. In reality, however, neither goal would have been accomplished. It would still have been legal to abort the fetuses in question by some other means and the other means chosen would have been even more barbaric.
Now to back up and look at the arguments for life beginning at conception. You haven't made your case. First, it is not less abiguous to frame the discussion in terms of individual human life rather than personhood. It is not clear what is meant by "individual human life." Your attempt to equate human life with personhood fails as soon as you admit the possibility that this life may begin shortly after conception. You move from a point on which there is unanimous agreement-that a fetus, as soon as it has been conceived, is a living, individuated object with a human genome-to raising the question that it may not be a living, individuated subject. It will not do to backtrack and declare the existence of a human subject from conception. The distinction is legitimate. That being the case, so is the debate over when a fetus should have the rights of a person. This is not to say that any opinion is legitimate. I do not see any moral basis for aguing in favor of the legal doctrine that personhood begins at birth. But I need to be more tolerant toward those who, for instance, would place this at the quickening. The fact that a fetus has an inherent right to life is not going to be found in the fact that it is alive, individuated, or has human DNA. There is an additional factor that must be taken into account. Personhood is very much at issue.
Response to Ryan's comment:
First, There can't be any problem with my argument that life begins at conception for the simple reason that I'm NOT arguing that life begins at conception. Rather, I'm arguing that life begins at conception or shortly thereafter. Neither am I assuming a clearly defined definition of what constitutes a human being. I do think it is clear that a newborn baby is a human being. And it is also clear that if a baby is a human being at birth, then it is a human being prior to birth. Things don't get murky until we get back to pretty early in the pregnancy.
Yes, I said that conception is plausibly regarded as the beginning of human life, but I did not deny that it might also be plausible to regard the beginning of life as coming somewhat later. I only said it was implausible to regard human life as beginning at birth.
Do we need a precise definition of human life in order to see that a two-year old is a human being? Of course not. The fact that there is some murkiness involved in the question "does life begin at conception or shortly thereafter" does not make the question "Is a two-year old a human individual" unclear. Neither does it make the question "Is a foetus a human individual, say, three months after conception?" unclear.
Cloning: it is clear that a cell from my body is not a human individual. After that cell has been artificially manipulated to make it a clone, it is plausible to regard is as a human individual. But things are not crystal clear yet. They become clear well before the clone is born.
Love: I don't know whether it is possible to love as a person something that is not a person, but it certainly is possible to FEEL that kind of love toward a non-person. Those who do so are deluded. Parents who love their unborn children are not deluded.
You write, "If a given entity is going to be considered human, it must be because of something about the entity, not the way in which it is treated or perceived" My point exactly. In fact I said so explicitly: "human beings--before and after birth--are not caused to be persons when someone deigns to love them; on the contrary, they are capable of being loved because they are already persons." The fact that they are capable of being loved (truly) is EVIDENCE of their being persons, not the CAUSE of their being persons.
Trust and syllogisms: My trust in my creator is bound up with my trust in the mental faculties he placed in me, including my ability to use syllogisms. But many non-Christians also trust reason and conscience (whether or not they have a right to). And the badness of abortion is something that I think follows from things that non-Christians typically believe (such as, that murder is wrong). However, I also provided argument that requires trust in the teaching of Jesus (the good samaritan). But I wanted to make it clear that the other arguments are sufficient too, so that non-Christians don't write it off.
"Tired with all these, for restful death I cry... simple truth miscalled simplicity"
your words "oversimplified" and "bogus" are mere insults and question begging epithets. I believe these issues are relatively simple. If I'm wrong, show me what mistake I've made in my reasoning. (I hope I don't sound rude in saying so. But I do feel a little bit unfairly treated ... as if you haven't really payed attention to the substance of my arguments ... as if you've written them off because the conclusions are things that you had already decided were oversimplified and bogus. [I mean conclusion (10), and the bit about it being a sin to vote for Kerry] However, I realize that a piece of writing that seems clear to the author is not always as clear as he thinks, so I do want to apologize if the failure to comunicate my reasoning is my fault).
"Every culture has blood on its hands" but not every culture is guilty of institutionalized mass murder, and even if it were, that wouldn't let us off the hook ("but Mom, eveyone else is doing it!")
"Calling it immoral doesn't matter" ??? I've done more than call it immoral, I've called it murder. And that does matter. How exactly am I "refusing to play the game"? My purpose in this post is to convince my readers that abortion is murder in most cases, and that it ought to be our biggest concern when we cast our votes. What game is it that I'm not playing? And what conclusion of mine is thereby threatened?
Can the Constitution be consistently interpreted...? Or, a better question, Can the Constitution be rightly interpreted in that way? This is an important question to ask. It is not the question I'm dealing with here. I can't do everything in one post. My point is that our society is guilty of institutionalized mass murder. Whether the fault is in the Constitution or the Supreme Court or the Legislators is a separate question. (Probably most of the blame lies with those who acctually perform the abortions, or who pay to have them done). Should the solution should be through judicial appointments or constitutional amendment or whatever? This question presupposes that there is a problem with our laws. And the only thing I'm trying to establish is that there is such a problem, and that this is our biggest such problem.
Morality and Legality: They are distinct but not unconnected, and I'm dealing with both. The legal innocence of the unborn has moral implications. The moral status of murder has legal implications. Giving someone legal power which you know he intends to use to commit murder is immoral. If you think I have at some point confused the two, please show me precisely where I have done so.
Posted by: chris at December 11, 2004 5:13 PMResponse to Kevin:
You wrote, "We are agreed that abortion is wrong; however, I fail to see where it is automatically sinful to vote for someone who disagrees." I fail to see that too. In fact, I don't believe it is sinful to vote for someone who is not pro-life. I did not intend to suggest that it was. I did suggest that it might be sinful to vote for someone who intends to use public funds to pay for abortions. There is a difference between paying for a murder, and failing to use your authority to outlaw murder. If I were to vote for Kerry it seems that I would be implicated in giving him the use of funds that he intends to use to commit murder, and I'm not sure how I could do this without implicating myself in those murders (the ones payed for with public funds), if there is some real chance that he may succeed in using his power to lobby Congress to effect that kind of legislation. (I don't see anything in your first paragraph that disagrees with what I wrote.)
Is there unanimous agreement that a fetus is a living individuated object with human genome? Individuated, meaning it is not a part of a human, but a whole human? That was all I was arguing for. I never made use of the notion of a "subject", nor did I need to, for that notion does not occur in my fundamental moral principle: To kill an innocent human individual (a whole human being) who poses no threat to the life of anyone else is murder. Certainly, there's no disagreement about the fact that a newly conceived embryo is human and alive. But is it crystal clear that it is an individual, not just a part of its mother's biology? I think it is plausible, but not crystal clear.
You write, "The fact that a fetus has an inherent right to life is not going to be found in the fact that it is alive, individuated, or has human DNA." This is correct as far as it goes. To say otherwise would be to commit the is-ought fallacy. But I am not commiting that fallacy. I am arguing from one purely descriptive premise (it is alive, individuated, human) AND one premise in which the subject is descriptive and the predicate moral (to kill what is alive, individuated, human ... is murder) to a moral conclusion.
The point is that at some point you need a premise that links biology to morality. Instead of using "every living human individual is a person" I have used "To kill a living human individual ... is murder." It seems to me that this way of proceding does more justice to the fundamental clarity of the issue, because instead of having two premises to argue about (Is every human individual a person?, and is killing a person murder?) we have only one (Is killing a human individual murder?) This keeps us from being distracted by those other aspects of personhood not relevant to the right to life.
Now I fear you will accuse me of begging the question with my principle (5). And there is a sense in which you are right. SOME people simply do not see (or at least claim not to see) that (5) is true. And I cannot prove to them that it is. I believe that (5) is immediate to conscience and a starting point for moral reasoning. I cannot prove it from merely discriptive ("factual") premises, for no moral conclusion can be got from merely descriptive premises. Neither can I prove it from something more immediate to conscience, for there is nothing more immediate to conscience. Those who, due to their morally degenerate passions, simply don't see it cannot be argued with. I can, however argue with those who take the more reasonable course and admit that (5) at least SEEMS to be true, but then offer some argument for why it isn't really true after all. I can respond to those arguments, showing that they haven't met the bruden of proof.
Posted by: chris at December 11, 2004 7:05 PM"Individuated" is not the word I wanted then. In principle (1) of your argument, the consequent does contain more than the antecedent. While those who are pro-life might see it as a tautology, there is some bit of equivocation going on for those who need to to be convinced. "Living human individual" has all the moral implications of "living person." But "individual human life" does not need to mean anything more than it's alive, it has a unique human genome, and there's only one of 'em. There's a big difference here between "individual" used as a noun and as an adjective. If you want to avoid begging the question, then the discussion of personhood is necessary.
I have no problem with priniciple (5) as it is stated. However, if I may assume a pro-choice position for now, you have not convinced me that a fetus actually is a human individual, innocent or not. I am convinced by your point that birth is a change of state as opposed to the coming-to-be of a new entity. On the other hand, I will contend that the murkiness, which you grant to the question of life's beginning, is not confined to the period between conception and twinning. The creation of unique DNA does not necessarily coincide with that of a new entity. It might, but we may still be dealing with nothing more than human building blocks up until the point of twinning, or quickening, or brainwaves, or viability. If I were to state the question in religious terms, at what point does ensoulment take place?
As to your political conclusions, I'm still lost. I could see it if you were writing why it would be a sin for you to have voted for Kerry, but there seemed to be an across the board implication. Your conclusions do not follow strongly enough for that. Why is public funding the deciding factor? Why is it okay to vote for someone who, if he can, will keep abortion legal using private funds made possible by my participation in the free market economy but not for someone who, if he can, will use public funds made possible by my taxes?
"individual" is meant to be a purely descriptive term. And "individual dog" means the same as "canine individual." Either phrase would apply to a dog, but not to part of a dog, nor to a dog's sperm, etc. If there are any moral implications to being a canine individual, these are not contained analytically in the phrase. So we can determine whether something is a canine individual without thereby making any determination w/r/t to moral status of a canine individual. Similarly, as I use the terms, "individual human" = "human individual." No moral implications follow unless we add a moral premise like (5).
You grant that birth is not the generation of a new entity. From this I inferred that the foetus, just prior to birth is the same as the newborn. I then claimed that "same" in this context means "same individual." From this I inferred that the foetus is a living human individual. You "contend" that the question of whether life begins prior to birth is still murky, but what grounds do you have for this contention. What is wrong with my argument in which I went step by step from "birth is not the generation of a new entity" to "a foetus, just prior to birth, is a human individual." Which step is wrong?
The first of my two arguments for the individuality of a foetus is, I think, not as strong as the second.
The first is an argument based on plausibility. It is implausible to regard birth as the generation of a new entity. It is plausible to regard conception as so. It is also plausible to regard implantation as so (why? because there is at least some degree of plausibility to the claim that all those embryos that never implant are not human individuals. I don't think this is quite as plausible as some people think, but I recognise it has some degree of plausibility) It is plausible to think that human life does not begin until after the point where twinning no longer occurs naturally. All of these claims have some reason behind them. I know of no reason to think it plausible that individual life begins at birth, and I gave an argument for why it is implausible. Similar argument could be brought against the claim that individual life begins at viability or quickening.
However, the second argument is, I think, stronger because it is not only implausible to say that parents who love their unborn children are deluded; it is absurd and ridiculous.
(Of course, I have "made my case" if either argument is sucessful. So, since I assume you would attack what you regard as the stronger of the two arguments, I take it we disagree about which of my two arguments is stronger.)
As for my suggestion (I don't call it a conclusion--I'm trying to avoid too strong language here: note my frequent use of the word "seems") that it might be sinful to vote for someone who intends to use public funds to pay for abortions: The centrist who wants to keep abortion legal does not himself use private funds to pay for abortion. The only people using those funds are the private individuals who have abortions--that's why they're called "private funds". The only people commiting murder are private individuals. Yes, the government should stop them, but by not doing so the government is not itself committing murder. But it seems that for the government to use its own money to pay to have a murder committed IS to be guilty of murder. Someone who pays a hit-man to murder can be justly convicted of murder himself. And that, it seems, is just what the government would be doing if it were to use its own funds to pay for abortions.
Posted by: chris at December 13, 2004 10:56 AMLook, Chris, let's just do a formal analysis here. Your first premise is a standard implication proposition, right? I'm denying the andecedent. A false premise makes a valid argument, but not a sound one. The antecedent of your first line of argument is stated above as "individual human life begins at conception". In order for the rest of your argument to be sound, that has to be true. Also note that "individual human life begins at conception" is absolutely not logically equivalent to "human life begins at conception or shortly thereafter". That's a qualifier you've not earned the right to use.
If you want to add that qualifier to your first premise, go right ahead. But if you want to move the cut-off earlier than birth but sometime after conception, you're either going to have to be arbitrary about it (which would defeat the purpose of your argument entirely) or you're going to have to come up with readily identifiable criteria for justifying the cut-off. You have not done this, as far as I can tell.
And don't go throwing accusations of circularity at me. I know perfectly well when I'm being derogatory. I am of the opinion that your final political conclusion is worthy of derision, and I believe I communicated that fairly clearly. You could strike that line from my response and the structure of my argument would not be affected in the slightest. But in your response "Love: I don't know whether it is possible to love as a person something that is not a person, but it certainly is possible to FEEL that kind of love toward a non-person. Those who do so are deluded. Parents who love their unborn children are not deluded." is an example of a circle with an immeasurably small radius. Why aren't they deluded? Because the unborn are human? Does anyone else see a circle here? Because I'm definitely seeing one. You've made the same argument two or three times now, and don't seem any closer to avoiding circularity than you were the first time. It is only implausible to say that parents who love their unborn children are deluded if you've already assumed the truth of the proposition you're trying to prove by offering their love up as evidence.
As an aside, I don't think argumentation can really get you much of anywhere, faith-wise. As far as I'm concerned, the trifecta of existentialism, Goedel, and Gettier destroyed the Enlightenment project entirely. We've got no clear definition of knowledge, all logical systems are incomplete, and they wouldn't be useful even if they were. Syllogisms are fun to play with, and can be helpful in exposing the underlying structure of our thought processes, but they are not uniquely or even particularly useful in things regarding the faith. In fact, they quite often obscure the truth rather than bring it to light.
My point about legality and morality was not intended as exposing a flaw in the chain of your argument, but an attempt to say that your argument isn't helpful or useful. You've said that abortion is murder. The courts disagree with you. You can shout all you want that the courts are wrong, but that doesn't give you a legal leg to stand on, which you're going to need if you actually want to do something about the situation. That's just the way the system works. If it returns a result you don't like, the proper response is to gather support and change the system from within, not, as you seem to be attempting to do, to fall back on extra-systemic principles and say that the system is broken and needs to be changed.
By saying that abortion is "institutionalized mass murder" and saying that it is the single defining issue upon which we must cast our votes, you remove yourself from the realm of productive political discourse. Whether or not you're right ceases to matter, because you're making yourself irrelevant. The legal process has returned a result that you don't like. Making an argument that is completely outside our legal system - as you have done - may be a fun exercise, but doesn't accomplish all that much. You want to make a Constitutional argument, please do so. That I would love. That gives us both something concete to work with.
Frankly, there's a really good argument to be made there. The courts' treatment of the unborn is pretty schizophrenic right now, allowing abortion on one hand while penalizing those who assault pregnant women and injure the fetus on the other. This is a fantastic starting place for a productive line of argument. The vaguely Cartesian approach your taking accomplishes nothing at best, and is counterproductive at worst.
In summation, I think that your argument is unsound based on an unsupported antecedent in line 1. You've yet to do anything about that, despite your protestations to the contrary. Furthermore, I think that regardless of the validity/soundness of your argument, it's unproductive and unhelpful.
Posted by: ryan at December 13, 2004 7:00 PMOn being derogatory:
I believe in arguing with conviction. I believe in arguing with passion. I believe this can and should be done without insulting your oponents. I believe this can and should be done without being derogatory. I'm not talking now about the soundness of an argument. I'm talking about the manner in which two persons--you and I--engage in an argument. And I'm expressing the way your derogatory tone makes me feel. It makes me feel as if you're not really listening to the substance of what I'm saying. And I begin to wonder what your purpose is in having this discussion. Do you want to convince me of something? Do you think I'm more likely to be convinced if you take a derogatory tone? I'm trying to pay attention to the substance of your argument. By serving your argument with a a bitter sauce, it's as if you were trying to make it hard for me to do that--as if you wanted me to reject your arguments on irrational grounds.
You believe my opinions are worthy of contempt. I hope you want me not to believe garbage. So shouldn't you fashion your rhetoric to be as effective as possible in showing me the error of my ways? Being derogatory does not seem to me a very effective way to convince someone to change his mind. Rather, it seems to get in the way of the argument. I appeal to you as a brother in Christ. Do not put stumbling blocks between me and the truth.
Legal or moral argument:
Will my argument change the system? No. But what if I were to do as you suggest and post a Constitutional argument on this blog. Will that change the system? No. I'm not on the Supreme Court and neither are you, and neither is anyone who reads this blog. There are only a handful of people who read this blog, and they aren't going to make a difference either in the democratic arena or in the legal one. So is there any point in blogging at all? Well, what if I were to convince one person. Suppose one person who might otherwise have been inclined to vote in a sinful manner is convinced not to. Is this worth anything? Is it worthwile to prevent one sin, even if no unborn children are saved from death?
Syllogisms:
Section I of my post gave a formally valid syllogism. Why? Because, as you say, syllogisms are "helpful in exposing the underlying structure of our thought processes." This seems like a useful thing to do in the present context, and I'm not sure why you're so down on syllogisms generally.
After that first section, I stopped trying to be formally valid--in other words, I gave myself the right to use enthymemes. Why? Because, as you say, syllogisms sometimes "obscure the truth." Once the structure was clear, it seemed pedantic to insist on formal validity everywhere. Perhaps I misjudged. Suppose I add the premise
7.1) If (6) and (7) then (8).
My argument is now formally valid. Is this premise false or question-begging?
If I have sucessfuly shown that (6) and (7) are true, then it seems beyond doubt that if life begins at, say, implantation, every abortion that takes place after implantation is murder, minus those cases where there is a threat to the life of the mother. If I can move from "life begins at conception" to "abortion is murder" Then I can move from "life begins at implantation" to "abortion after implantation is murder". Now, I think this is most cases. If it's not most cases, at least it's a very large number of cases. Enought to qualify as mass murder, assuming that I'm right in asserting (6) and (7).
Now, suppose that life begins at some time X, and we don't know exactly when that time is, but we do know that it is within the first two or three weeks of pregnancy. If I'm right in asserting (6) and (7) then abortions occuring after the first two or three weeks of pregnancy are murder, Do most abortions occur after this time? I have been assuming that they do, but perhaps I am wrong. But I'm not really interested in showing that abortion is murder at least 50% of the time. Suppose only 10% of abortions occur after the first two or three weeks of pregnancy. The number of abortions in America is in the millions. Thus the number of abortions that are murder is in the hundreds of thousands. I think that qualifies as mass murder ... IF I've sucessfully shown that 6 and 7 are true.
In sum: attacking (7.1) only distracts us with logical details. In this response, I've pointed towards how these details can be dealt with, though I haven't dealt with all of them. I wanted to do justice to the fundamental clarity of the issue. Too many logical details would distract us from that. My method calls for a judicious use of logical precision: I use it when I think it increases clarity; I ignore it when I think it a distraction.
Vaguely Cartesian???:
What about my argument is Cartesian? You seem to be saying that the fact (and I wholeheartedly agree that it is a fact) that the Enlightenment is bankrupt somehow makes my argument problematic? I don't see how.
Circular:
There are quite a few people who are open to the possibility that the unborn are not human individuals but are only part of the mother's biology. At any rate, the falsehood of this is not flat obvious to most people. But I think most people would be very uncomfortable with saying "parents who love their unborn children are deluded." Far more uncomfortable than they would be with saying that a foetus is not an individual. And that's why I don't think my argument begs the question. The truth of the premise is more clear in the minds of most people than is the truth of the conclusion.
If something is determined to be a canine individual, then no moral implications need follow. These are added after the fact as a consequence of property rights or endangered species laws. In the case of a human individual, the moral implications follow from an inherent right to life. No premise (5) need be applied. Furthermore, if this premise is added apart from the assumption of such an inherent right, then it is, at best, a legal doctrine. Implications of sin would not follow unless these were found in breaking the law (which wouldn't apply here since abortion is, in fact, legal).
You may use the terms "individual human" = "human individual," and this would be correct. But your first premise was different. Not "individual human," but "individual human life." Again, there is a difference between 'human' as adjective or as noun. There is no reason why "individual human life" could not be applied to part of a human: a freshly removed spleen, for example. Considering the number of people who maintain that a fetus is not yet a whole human, there is still an equivocation in your first premise. I'm still insisting that the debate over abortion needs to directly address the issue of personhood. If anything, because this is also the legal crux. Contained within the text of Roe v. Wade is an admission that if a fetus were legally a person, then its right to life would take precedence over the mother's right to privacy.
You have made the case that a fetus, just prior to birth, is the same living human individual as that after birth. There's nothing wrong with your argument there. The murkiness was not intended over the question of whether life begins before birth, but when life begins before birth. Nevertheless, if you have only established the status of the fetus just prior to birth, but not at any other point, you do have grounds for broaching your position concerning the vote. But I'm still not convinced. To echo Ryan, your conclusions are unproductive. If I were to be convinced by your argument that voting for a candidate who advocated public funding for abortion would be sinful, then my actual convictions regarding the status of any fetus (it is a person from the moment of conception), would bar me from any beneficial public discourse.
Given a choice between a candidate who understood and would follow the law or one who would let his moral convictions undermine the law, I would vote for the former. The law, as it now stands, does not recognize the personal status of the fetus. From a legal standpoint, the public funding of abortions should be no more problematic than the public funding of any other medical procedure. I would sooner vote for a candidate who, although he would fund abortion, would also listen to arguments for moving the legal definition of personhood to some point before birth than for a candidate who, in his zeal to protect those whom we agree are persons, would advocate legislation that, ignoring the underlying legal principles, is doomed to failure under judicial revue. The former has potential for a substantial and long lasting reduction in the number of abortions, the latter does not. That being said, I would not consider it a sin for someone to take the opposite position. Not politically or legally astute, perhaps, but still within the pale of Christian liberty.
"moral implicationns follow from an inherent right to life" ... In other words, they follow from a MORAL premise (Not (5), but something LIKE (5); something that is, like (5), a MORAL PREMISE) namely:
"Whatever is a living human individual has an inherent right to life."
My question is: what is the best moral premise to use?
a) whatever is a living human individual has an inherent right to life?
b) Whatever is a living human individual is a person?
c) It's murder to kill a living human individual (etc.)?
d) It's morally wrong to kill a living human individual?
e) Living human individuals are in the image of God?
Now, you can see why I wouldn't want to use (e). A non-Christian would never grant (e). A full understanding of personhood or the right to life requires the concept of the image of God. But non-Christians can see intuitively that a normal adult is a person and has a right to life, even without understanding why. So, in this context talking about the image of God would be a distraction. Similarly, the notion of a "right" seems to have developed in modern Europe, and there are all sorts of perplexities about what a "right" is. Some people think that the very notion of a "right" is problematic. So I don't want to use (a) either. Nor do I want to use (b), because there are perplexities involved in the notion of "personhood" which I don't want to be distracted by. I can't use (d) because that doesn't get me where I'm going. It won't get me proposition (10). So the most sensible thing to use is (c). It's intuitively plausible, and the only moral predicate involved is the one ("murder") that shows up in my conclusion. Thus there is no possibility of being distracted by any confusions that someone might have about other moral predicates such as "right", "image of God", "personhood," etc.
"murder" is not merely a legal notion, and I CAN ESTABLISH THIS WITHOUT MENTIONING THE WORD "PERSON" or "RIGHT". Everyone admits that Hitler murdered Jews. But Hitler's killing was legal. See? Nobody could respond to that argument by saying "what do you mean by 'person'?", since I never used the word. The argument is persuasive and immune to quibling distractions.
Yes, I agree that personhood is the legal crux, but I'm not making the legal argument. Dred Scott, like Roe v. Wade, was a legally groundless decision. But abolitionists were right not to limit themselves to legal arguments. Just as they argued that slavery was, not just immoral, but a heinous crime that cast guilt on our whole society; so, I argue, is abortion. Just as the first Republicans argued that the issue of slavery was in their day vastly more important than any other political issue; so, I argue, is the issue of abortion today.
"Individual" cannot be applied to a spleen, at least, not as I use the term. A spleen is a part of an individual, not an individual itself. Removing the spleen makes it a detached part, not an individual. I realize that the term "individual" has a number of different senses, some of which might apply to a detached part (like a spleen), but this is not the sense in which I use it. This is simply a matter of stipulation.
I'm still confused by your noun/adjective distinction. Whichever grammatical form is used, all I intend to say is that the fetus posesses all three of the following properties:
Biological life (what plants and animals have, but rocks, angels and corpses lack)
Biological humanity (what Bill Clinton has but Kermit the Frog lacks)
Biological individuality (what Bill and Kermit have, but hands, feet, blood, sperm, detatched spleens, France, and the Church lack)
Any time I talk about a living human individual, or individual human life, or living individual human, OR ANY EXPRESSION THAT USES THOSE THREE WORDS IN ANY ORDER WITH ANY GRAMMATICAL FORM, I am, by stipulation, signifying the conjunction of those three properties.
(I feel like I'm shadow boxing here. I've been accused of equivocation, but I don't understand where the ambiguity is suppose to be.)
I'm also confused by "Considering the number of people who maintain that a fetus is not yet a whole human, there is still an equivocation in your first premise." How does this follow? There are indeed people who maintain that a fetus is not a whole human. They reject the antecedent of (1). Why does the fact that some people reject the antecedent make it equivocal?
I have, you say, made my case that a fetus just prior to birth is the same living human individual as that before birth. Good. Now I'm going to repeat that argument with a few words changed.
Becoming-viable is not plausibly regarded as the coming-to-be of a new entity; it is rather a change of state. We speak of the foetus becoming viable, implying that the same entity that was non-viable is now viable. And "same" here means the same individual. A viable fetus is a living human individual, and is the same living individual as it was before becoming viable. Furthermore, parents throughout the world and throughout history have loved their children before they became viable. Their attitude is fundamentally different from that of those who are hoping to have a child, but have not yet conceived. The latter have a desire, a wish, or a hope for some possible future. But they do not yet have love for a living child, since there is no child there for them to love. They eagerly look forward for the time when there will be a child for them to love—at conception. Now, no parent can love a child while at the same time believing that child to be nothing but a part of the mother's body, like her heart or her spleen. You cannot love a spleen the way you love a child. Only a person—an individual human being—can be loved in that way. And children can be loved in that way long before they become viable.
If I've made my case w/r/t birth, then I've made my case w/r/t viability. The arguments are exactly parallel.
My conclusions are unproductive? Unproductive of what? Can I respond by saying "I'm not trying to be productive?" I'm simply not sure what you mean by "productive" and why being unproductive is a problem for my conclusions.
You say believing my conclusions would "bar you from any beneficial public discourse." Does this make my conclusions false? I assume you aren't saying that. But then what is your point? If believing the truth bars one from public discourse, then shouldn't we say "so much the worse for public discourse?"
But anyway, I'm not sure why it bars me from public discourse. Is there no one in the "public" who will follow an argument where it leads instead of dogmatically refusing to listen to anyone who holds views that are "outside the pale"?
And anyway, if you believed what I suggested, why couldn't you, for the sake of argument, stay within "public discourse" and argue that, for instance, Roe v. Wade is a misinterpretation of the Constitution, without relying on your more "extreme" views to make your case?
In your last paragraph, you are correct: In a situation in which electing candidate A is more likely to lead to a substantial and longlasting reduction in the number of abortions than electing candadate B, it is not a sin to vote for candidate A, even if candidate A is in favor of public funding of abortion pro tempore. Why? Because there is here a conflict of prima facie moral duties. I have a moral duty not to give someone power that he intends to use to commit murder, but I also have a moral duty to try as best I can to bring it about that fewer people are murdered.
All formulations of moral truth come with an implicit "ceteris paribus" clause. It's a sin to lie. But it's not a sin to lie when Nazis ask you if there are Jews in your house. The prima facie duty not to lie conflicts with the prima facie duty to preserve human life. Similarly, it's a sin (if my suggestion is right) to vote for someone who intends to fund abortions. But it's not a sin to vote for such a person in the situation you mentioned. ... or in a number of other exceptional situations.
If I'm to avoid those political conclusions without abandoning intellectual integrity, I'd need to know which premise is false, or which inferential step is invalid. So let's start with (8). I know you agree that abortion is wrong, but do you agree that it is murder?
Posted by: chris at December 20, 2004 8:47 PMOkay, (8): Do I agree that abortion is, in almost every case, murder? Not necessarily. The question of murder goes not so much to deed as to intent. There is no argument that all active participants in an abortion intend to deprive something of life; however, it remains to be determined whether they know that this living thing is a human being and, if they do not, whether this ignorance is willful or counts as an ameliorating circumstance. To the first point, I will grant that some people know precisely who and what they are killing. But I don't believe this to be true in most cases, and so the second point. I doubt that many exist who are not at least aware of the claim that a fetus is human. Yet, does an awareness of this claim imply that they must grant the possibility of its accuracy enough credence to err on the side of caution? No, anything can be claimed. Does it imply, then, that they must seek out and wrestle with arguments against their position? Do such arguments exist? Consider your own argument. You believe that you have demonstrated (8). But I don't believe that you have sufficiently argued (7), a premise upon which (8) depends. At most, you have made the case that abortion is, in some cases, murder. Namely, those cases that are closer to the end of term.
The charge of equivocation is sidetracking the debate. I did not mean this in regard to your intent, but to how it may be possible to understand the antecedent of (1). Either way, though, whether they reject both the antecedent and consequent of (1), or whether they misunderstand and accept the antecedent while claiming that the consequent does not follow, your opponents have rejected the whole premise. The question now is whether your defenses of (1) in (II) are strong enough to overcome their objections. I've already agreed to the first defense, but only enough to classify a fetus just prior to birth as a human being. You have responded by restating the argument in terms of viablity rather than birth. It's not the same, though, even if the forms of the arguments are parallel. I grant the first form of the argument because a viable fetus is simply changing location. Viability may imply that the same non-viable entity has now become viable. On the other hand, it could also imply that a blob of flesh once sustained by the life of the mother has now been endowed with its own life. This endowment of its own life, and not the prior existence of living human building blocks, would constitute the coming-to-be of a new entity. Perhaps it is too much to argue that the point of viability itself constitutes the beginning of a new entity. After all, improved medical technology has been capable of pushing the point of viability back. This shows that it is not sufficient for viability that a fetus have its own life. It is, however, necessary. If a fetus is viable, it is the same entity that is subsequently born. But the further back in time that we go, from viability to conception, the more difficult it is to determine just whose life we're talking about and, consequently, whether an entity distinct from the mother actually exists.
As to your second defense, yes, I do consider it to be the weaker of the two. The fact that there are parents who love their unborn offspring is no more an indication that these are living human beings than is the fact that there are parents who do not love their unborn offspring (as evidenced by having them aborted). It isn't that they are incapable of parental love, since they very much love those children who have been born. You consider it outrageous to claim that the former set of parents are hopelessly deluded. But why can't this also be true of the latter set? Unless, of course, it has already been decided that the unborn are, in fact, living human beings. But then, we have a tight little circle instead of an argument.
The conclusions are unproductive towards the goal of actually reducing the number of abortions. This may, however, be a moot point since you have agreed with my last paragraph by inclusion of a "ceteris paribus" clause. But, for that matter, when have things ever been equal? It seems to me that such exceptional situations are actually the norm. This is my main objection to your statement that it would be a sin to vote for someone who intended to use public funds for abortion. If I maintained a solid "a vote for Kerry is a vote for sin" (and I realize now that this is not what you were implying), then, by implication, I would be so strong in my conviction that life begins at or near conception so as not to budge. The other side would respond in the same way. Neither side would communicate and the legal abortion status quo would be in no danger of changing.
I agree, in principle, with (12). But then, I would rather have a rarity of abortion where it is legal than a booming black market where it is not. As to your conclusion that voting for Kerry would have been a sin, I do think that this is false. There are just too many other factors to make things unequal. There are too many differences that I am failing to see. Public funding generated by taxing me vs. private funding generated by the capitalistic system of which I am a willing participant. A candidate who wants public funding vs. a candidate who does not but can't or won't stop the practice of abortion. Furthermore, I do not understand why abortion has to be the most important issue. I do not see why war cannot be at least as important. Why is a leader who unjustly goes to war not a murderer? And, even if I do grant that a particular war is just (which I do of the current war), should I not, from a pro-life position, still be concerned at the number of civilian deaths? It isn't just soldiers wiping each other out. In the case of the current war, is it not conceivable to think that, although the war was begun for just reasons, those goals have been accomplished and we need to get out? That there are too many people dying for what remains to be done? Could it not be a matter of conscience as a Christian to vote for the candidate more likely to withdraw the troops even if, on another front, he was more likely to fund abortion? If I can't make up my mind which is worse, do I just abstain from voting?
"Viability may imply that the same non-viable entity has now become viable. On the other hand, it could also imply that a blob of flesh once sustained by the life of the mother has now been endowed with its own life."
What makes that claim more plausible than the claim that birth is the coming-to-be of a new entity? If I understand you correctly, you grant that it is at least plausible to say that a viable fetus is the same individual as the pre-viable fetus. If it is, and if the opposite is not plausible, then I have made my case. I've never heard any explanation of how it might be plausible to say that a pre-viable fetus lacks biological individuality and is thus a different entity from the viable fetus that comes to be out of it.
"The further back in time that we go, from viability to conception, the more difficult it is to determine just whose life we're talking about." I don't think you're suggesting that simply going further back in time by itself make things murkier. Things would only start to get murky if there were some reason to think it plausible that there is a coming-to-be of a new entity at some point well after conception (or, conversely, if there were some reason to think it implausible that we're dealing with the same entity--meaning the same individual). But where these reasons?
"The fact that there are parents who love their unborn offspring is no more an indication that these are living human beings than is the fact that there are parents who do not love their unborn offspring."
The cases are not parallel. You can fail to love a person without thereby thinking that he is not a person. If you really want to justify your ill-treating him, you can fool yourself into thinking he is not a person. This is motivated self-deceit: a very common psychological phenomenon. It's not at all implausible to say that lots of people suffer from this kind of delusion. But to be deluded to the degree of loving, as if it were a person, what is in fact more like a spleen, is to suffer from a much deeper kind of delusion. That such a vast proportion of the human race should, without any apparent dysfunctional motivation, be so utterly deluded in doing what seems so natural to most people (loving their own unborn children): that is indeed absurd.
Many of those who think abortion is permissible would be quite uncomfortable with this absurd claim. Most of them, perhaps, do not realize that their belief in the permissibility of abortion entails the uncomfortable proposition that all parent who love their unborn kids are deluded in that severe way. I know there are some people who don't feel even a little bit uncomfortable with this absurd proposition. But such people, it seems to me, have made up their minds with such finality that they aren't likely to listen to reason at all.
"I would rather have a rarity of abortion where it is legal than a booming black market where it is not."
Me too.
"Public funding generated by taxing me vs. private funding generated by the capitalistic system of which I am a willing participant."
The problem isn't so much that the funding comes from my taxes as that I myself authorized that use of my taxes by voting for the candidate who proposed using taxes in that way. I've explain why doing that would, ceteris paribus, implicate me in the murder (and since I know the unborn are human individuals I would be guilty of murder even if the candidate were not). I also think it is misleading to speak of my "willing participation in the capitalistic system" that funds abortions. In the capitalistic system, it's not the capitalistic system that funds things, it's private individuals. I'm a willing participant in only those free exchanges of goods and services that I myself provide or pay for. The rest of the capitalistic system chugs along entirely apart from my will. I'm not forcing anybody or any system to fund abortion, nor am I forcing them not to. I am not willing that anybody or any system fund abortion, but people are doing so against my will.
My claim that abortion should be the most important political issue for us stems from (10). No other political issue is as important for our society as the fact that we are committing mass murder. Since you aren't persuaded that abortion is usually murder, I can understand why you wouldn't accept my political conclusions. And you do have a good point there: murder includes intentions. So (5) is actually false, unless I add the word "intentionally". Thanks for pointing that out. To get my conclusions I would need to argue that people who don't know the truth in this matter are culpably ignorant (they ought to know, and their guilt in not knowing renders them responsible for the consequences of their actions as if they did know), or else that they really do know, deep down. I do believe this, but I haven't argued for it as I should have.
However, considering just the consequences in abstraction from the intent, I think we can still say that the death of millions of innocent people is more important than any other political issue except matters of war and peace.
Supose someone were to say: "I understand that abortion is the deliberate killing of innocent human individuals who pose no threat to the life of any one else, and that would make us guilty of mass murder, except that our ignorance might mitigate our crime. However, I also think not only that the present war is imprudent, and not only that it is unjust, but that the killing our side does actually counts as murder (or at least some of it does). So I face an agonizing moral dilemma. As much as I hate having to make such a decision, I'm going to vote for Kerry." I see no grounds for accusing that person of sin. Folly, yes. And there comes a point where a position seems so foolish that you start to wonder if the person who claims to hold the position is just making excuses, and that his underlying motivations are not what he claims. But if someone honestly takes that kind of extreme view of the war, I see no grounds for accusing that person of sin.
However, I think most people who voted for Kerry were not thinking that way. Most, I think, would not appeal to the ceteris paribus clause, they would reject the principle. They simply weren't taking the issue of abortion as seriously as they should. It was with these kinds of voters that I was primarily concerned.
Posted by: chris at December 26, 2004 5:51 PMSomewhere within The Chronicles of Narnia (where, I can't be sure since I don't have access to a copy to look it up) there is a scene in which some of the characters are horrified to find that they have been eating, not just any animal flesh, but that of a talking animal. Or, on the more secular side of things, take Star Trek, in which innocent sentient beings have an inherent right to life. This applies even to artificial intelligence (such as Data) or to the occasional piece of crystal. Sentience, not biology, is the determining factor. Even though the writers of the latter have used this distinction in a thinly veiled allegory of their approval of abortion rights, there is, in both cases, the recoginition that, once we step behind the story, a human being is distinguished by something other than DNA. Within the church and among fellow Christians, I can argue for the sinfulness of abortion by appealing to the presence of a soul. But in the political/legal arena, where not all paricipants are bound by such considerations, this appeal to religion just won't work. Fortunately, even though it may it may be distorted, there is a general recognition that there is something special about human life: something that makes a life human (other than mere biology). Now, while I do believe that this distinction is legitimate, I do not believe that a consistently biblical perspective allows me to separate biological individuals from individuals possessing a soul.
I am committed to the proposition that life begins at conception. If it is my purpose to point out a society's sin and call it to repentance, I will maintain this position. However, I believe that I can simultaneously work within the legal system to change abortion laws and that the most effective means of doing this is by searching for common ground: hence, my appeal to the commonly recognized "something." However anyone else may want to think of ensoulment, I am willing to enter into a dialogue as to when this happens. The first step is mutual recognition of the inaneness of the line made legal in Roe v. Wade: personhood begins at birth. The law needs to be changed to fit common sense. Birth is not a plausible coming-to-be of a new entity. A corollary to this is that a viable fetus is not plausibly a non-person. There remains a question as to the plausible status of a pre-viable fetus. Yes, I do believe that it is plausible to say that a viable fetus is the same individual as the pre-viable fetus. However, I do not grant that the opposite is not plausible (remember that this is plausibility within a secular framework). But as a practical means for long term reduction of abortions, I'm not all that interested in what may or may not happen at the point of viability. All I want is agreement that, when it comes to preserving life, a viable fetus should be deemed a legal person and have all the protection therof. Step 2 would be to make sure that the definition of viability is tied to medical advancement.
Maybe I'm more cynical in this area than you are, but I just don't think it's possible to overestimate the stupidity of the masses. It doesn't bother me a bit to think that a vast proportion of the human race could be deluded about something. I don't believe that parents who love their unborn children are thus deluded. This is due, however, not to my distaste for mass delusion, but to the fact the unborn really are people. I am reminded of those who argue for God's existence on the basis that life is otherwise meaningless. This is, at best, a psychological explanation for belief. The existence of God is proof of the significance of life. The insignificance of life without him is not proof of the existence of God. Parental love is no argument for the status of the fetus. Rather, the status of the fetus argues for the legitimacy of parental love.
I realize that a capitalistic system itself does not fund things, but, if culpability is tied to funding, then it isn't so easy to claim that it wasn't my money. I buy products manufactured by company x and discover that this company uses its private money to fund employee abortions and support Planned Parenthood. Am I at fault if I don't boycott? What if I need what they're selling? Do I refuse to pay my medical bills at a hospital that I know will use part of this to fund abortions? How many degrees back do I need to go in order to be exhonorated? Perhaps the point is moot because, even if I allow that abortion is the most important political issue, I don't see where funding, however this is achieved, is nearly as important as the fact that there are abortions. Unless public funding would actually increase the number of abortions, I can't see this as the deciding factor.
I don't dispute (9). Suppose, though, that I were persuaded of (8). I still would not believe that (10) follows. I'm not convinced that a society, as such, is capable of guilt or sin. This isn't due to hyper-individualistic tendencies on my part: I do believe in corporate guilt, but only if the group in question meets the criteria for a covenantal entity. The family and the church come to mind, but not modern nation states. The example of ancient Israel does not apply because it is fulfilled in the church, not in America or any other country. I think you could have skipped (10) all together and gone on to (11) and (12). It is not necessary to believe in societal guilt in order to believe that a particular action on my part relating to my society, voting for a pro-abortion candidate, might be sinful for me.
But we're back to ceteris paribus again. I won't deny the importance of abortion, in itself, as a political issue. But I can't think of a single presidential election in which my vote would have made a difference either way. If there were a candidate who would undeniably outlaw and reduce abortion, then I'd be a lot more comfortable telling my fellow Christians who they should vote for. The same would apply if the situation were reversed and a candidate would definitely introduce the practice. I could tell people who not to vote for. The choice between Kerry and Bush (or any other candidate) was not so clear cut.
I don't believe that "sentience", in the StarTrek sense (or the traditional one), is the determining factor. If we're talking about the truth of the matter, the image of God is the determining factor. A non-sentient human embryo bears God's image; an intelligent robot does not. (The talking beasts of Narnia, of course, bear Aslan's image).
But if we're talking about the soundness of my argument, I'm not sure why you are asking about the determining factor. My argument doesn't pretend to identify the determining factor. It simply says that to deliberately kill a biologically human individual who is innocent ... etc. ... is murder. It doesn't say WHY this is murder, nor does it seek to identify the SOURCE of any "right to life". It simply says what most people can see pre-theoretically: that it IS murder. Almost everyone has a very strong awareness of basic moral truths like (5), even if they have a very weak understanding of the determining factors behind this moral truth. You yourself give evidence of this in the way you talk about your proposed common ground: "a commonly recognized 'something':" vagueness unparalleled. If you can find a way to argue convincingly from such a vague concept, I'll be the first to congratulate you, but personally I'm more comfortable with the kind of clarity involved in (5).
"Yes, I do believe that it is plausible to say that a viable fetus is the same individual as the pre-viable fetus. However, I do not grant that the opposite is not plausible (remember that this is plausibility within a secular framework)."
But why? What could be plausible about the claim that when a fetus becomes viable it is actually not something coming to have a new characteristic, but the coming to be of a new entity? All I've heard is the bare assertion that it is plausible, not any reason or explanation, whether in a secular framework or not.
I have no objection to your proposed legal/political arguments. That seems to me to be a good way to proceed given the stated goal of reducing the number of abortions. I share that goal. But I also have the related-but-distinct goal of presenting an argument against abortion that does justice to the moral clarity of the issue (moral clarity even given secular assumptions). And it is this goal that motivated my post. (I also allow that your way might be a good way to reach my goal--there's more than one way to get there from here)
"It doesn't bother me a bit to think that a vast proportion of the human race could be deluded about something." Really? Even if you add that, as far as we can tell, their delusion stems from no dysfunctional motivation, etc.? If so, you are very strange. But then, you agree that life begins at conception, so I'm not too bothered that my argument wouldn't convince you if you happened to disagree. It should convince most people who actually disagree.
You suggest an analogy between my argument and the following: If God does not exist life is meaningless; life is not meaningless; therefore God exists. I agree that this is not much of a theistic proof. However, the problem is in the major premise, not the minor. People can know that life is meaningful without knowing why; and if, starting from the agreed upon assumption that life is meaningful, you could convince them that God is the reason why life is meaningful, you would have a good argument. The problem is actually convincing them that only God could give life meaning. But if you could do that, you'd have a good argument. (Of course, it would beg the question against those who don't agree that life is meaningful, or who believe that life is meaningful only if God does not exist, but not against those who feel in their bones that life is meaningful without knowing why). While I would agree that the lack of delusion is DUE TO the personhood of the fetus, I think the former is often more clearly known than the latter. So we can argue from the former to the latter without begging the question. (What is prior in the order of being may be posterior in the order of knowing.)
"I just don't think it's possible to overestimate the stupidity of the masses." An overstatement perhaps, but I won't object to it. The pertinent fact is this: the masses don't read "Credo Ut Intelligam." I expect everyone who reads my blog has at least above-average intelligence.
"Am I at fault if I don't boycott?" Is this a problem for my argument? I suggested that voting for someone who proposed to use public money to fund abortion might be a sin. If a similar line of reasoning could show that boycott is morally obligatory, then I would conclude that boycott is morally obligatory. My only reason for thinking boycott might not be morally obligatory is that I can't think of an argument for that conclusion that is as strong as the argument I can think of for my suggestion. Someone might argue that once the purchase is made, the money belongs to x, not me, and x alone is responsible for what x does with the money. I wouldn't exactly agree with this, but it certainly seems that I am less responsible for the way people I do business with use their own money than I am for the way money is used by an institution of which I am a member with full voting rights. I am a citizen of a nation governed "by the people." This gives me a degree of responsibility for what the government does with its money (there's some truth to that facon de parler in which we speak of public funds as "our" money, as if the government is merely our steward)--a degree of responsibility greater than whatever responsibility I might have for how Sears and Wal-mart spend their money. But if you think that the degree of responsibility is the same in both cases, then you ought to boycott. I wouldn't see that as a problem for my argument.
You can read (10) as "Institutionalized mass murder occurs in our society." I'm not too concerned about questions of social guilt.
"But I can't think of a single presidential election in which my vote would have made a difference either way" What of this past one? Bush proposed working together with rational people to help reduce the number of abortions. There's at least some chance that he might be partially successful. Kerry proposed public funding for abortions. There's at least some chance that he might have been sucessful in that. If you grant the prime importance of the issue, the decision seems RELATIVELY clear cut. Not as clear cut as the unrealistic situation you mentioned. But why would it have to be?
I'm not sure why you think the ceteris paribus clause can bear so much. Assuming that abortion is of prime importance and that it is ceteris paribus sinful to vote for a candidate who would publicly fund abortion, can you give a normal, common example of how someone would be justified in voting for Kerry? An example that doesn't involve extreme views like the extreme views about the war in the example I gave? If not, then my ceteris paribus clause is nothing more than a recognition of the imprecise character of moral/political discourse. It doesn't otherwise weaken the force of my suggestion that it might be a sin to vote for Kerry.
Posted by: chris at December 28, 2004 1:54 AMBTW: it's in The Silver Chair.
Posted by: chris at December 28, 2004 2:04 AMThere are two accounts of the creation of man in Genesis. In the first, God creates man in his own image. In the second, God forms man out of the dust of the ground. He then breathes the breath of life into him and man becomes a living being. There is no mention of the image of God in this account. Consequently, without further scriptural support, the question is open as to whether the image of God obtains when he is formed from the dust or when he is given the breath of life. It is true that the man formed from dust was not alive until God breathed into him; consequently, one might note that a fetus is alive from conception. But this misses the point. Adam's situation was unique. The question should be over what kind of life God breathed into Adam. Was it mere biological life common to animals and plants? Or was it a life that constitutes the image of God? If the latter, then it is at least possible that a fetus is not given this kind of life until sometime after conception but before viability. To say that something is a biologically human individual begs the question of what kind of life. If the life is not a specifically God breathed life, if it is only, for instance, a by product of the mother, then it cannot be murder to end this life. There is no image of God.
Okay, so I'm being vague with the commonly recogonized 'somethings.' Still, I am appealing to the same pre-theorietical knowledge that you mention. The difference is that I start from birth, where there is no question that killing this life would constitute murder, and work my way back. You start at conception, well back into the area of disagreement. Disagreement, not over the pre-theoretical knowledge concerning murder, but over whether the object in question qualifies as a biological human individual or whether "biological human indivual" even qualifies as a sufficient descriptor for a being that can be murdered.
Since viability can be pushed back in time with advancing medical technology, then, if there is any question of the coming-to-be of a new entity, this will have to be in terms of absolute viability- that moment before which a fetus postively cannot survive outside of the womb. Since this has not been reached, it is a theoretical concept. Personally, I'd like it if it were shown to be moot by pushing it all the way back to conception. As of now though, such a point is plausible. It is also plausible that the creation of the soul is not simultaneous with that of the body, that this creation constitutes the coming-to-be of a new entity, and that this creation takes place at the moment of absolute viability.
If the unborn are not in fact people, then I don't see why the delusion of those parents who love them as though they were needs to arise from a dysfunctional motivation. Faulty information will do just fine. The actual status of the unborn aside, people tend to believe what they have been taught. If they think of their unborn children as people, they will love them. If they don't, they will not. Your argument will work for those people who have loved their unborn children before and might be considering an abortion. It will not work for those who have never considered the unborn as persons nor loved them.
I can see how one might think it a sin to do business with an establishment that he knew would use the money for abortions. I can see how one might think it a sin to elect a candidate whom he knew would use tax money to fund abortion. I am not, in fact, convinced that either one of these is the case. Nevertheless, if I were to opt for the weaker argument, it would be that in which the removal of my money was compulsory- taxes. I don't agree with the common idea that the taxes are our money. Once the government has them, it's their problem. More importantly for myself though, before I start to consider whether or not a certain choice for president might constitute a sin, I want to know that candidate A will equal X abortions and that candidate B will equal X-Y abortions. It is not sufficient that either candidate Aor B will equal X (or even X-Y) abortions, but that candidate A will publically fund some of those abortions while candidate B will not. As to the past election, Kerry's proposed public funding of abortion, even if succesful, does not automatically translate into more abortions. And if Bush's proposal to reduce abortions is no more well thought out than the attempted ban on partial-birth abortions, then I can't be too optimistic about the results.
The ceteris paribus clause does nothing to weaken the force of a suggestion that it might be a sin to vote for Kerry. But I don't recall your original argument being so qualified. You wrote, "Would I sound like a fundamentalist if I said that it was a sin to vote for Kerry? Well, I don't want to sound like a fundamentalist, but I can see no way to escape the conclusion with intellectual and moral integrity. It is a sin to give someone power that you know he intends to use to commit murder." No imprecise mights or mabies about it. You're right, though, moral/political discourse does have an imprecise character, which is why I do not have trouble seeing the other side of the argument.
In your first paragraph, are you talking about the truth of the matter or the soundness of my argument? If we're talking about the truth of the matter, then don't we agree that from conception people bear the image of God and are thus persons? So if we agree then what are we arguing about? If we're talking about the soundness of my argument, then the whole thing is irrelevant, because my argument didn't get involved in the question of what constitutes spiritual life or personhood, or even where the badness of murder comes from. So, once again, what are we arguing about?
I asked for some indication of the reasons why it might be plausible to regard biological individality as occuring at viability. I couldn't perceive any such reason in your post. It seemed like you were saying "I don't object to your claim that the pre-viable fetus is biologically a living human individual, but I do object to some other claim you made..." but I'm not sure what other claim that might be.
"You start at conception, well back into the area of disagreement."
You seem to be saying that some of the propositions I start with (propositions about conception) are subject to disagreement. Which ones? You mention disagreement about "whether 'biological human indivual' even qualifies as a sufficient descriptor for a being that can be murdered." I think this is just my premise (5), which I thought you didn't have a problem with. At any rate, I dealt with that in the last paragraph of my Dec 11 comment. Of course, there's disagreement over my conclusions, such as my conclusion that, as you put it, "the object in question qualifies as a biological human individual," but the same is true for any interesting argument. Only disagreement about premises could be problematic for an argument.
"If they think of their unborn children as people, they will love them."
No. That does not follow. I believe that Bill Clinton is a person. I don't have the kind of personal love toward him that parents can have toward their unborn children. Moreover, parents were loving their unborn before anybody even asked the question "are the unborn persons?" The delusion occurs naturally, and it is not a matter of false belief. In the movie, "Castaway", the character played by Tom Hanks feels personal love for a volleyball, even though he knows that "Wilson" is not really a person. His delusion is comprehensible given his strange and unnatural situation. If someone in a normal situation were to feel that way about a volleyball, we would call him crazy, not for his false belief (he doesn't have false belief, he knows Wilson isn't a person, he just treats Wilson as if he were a person), but for his insane emotions.
"if I were to opt for the weaker argument, it would be that in which the removal of my money was compulsory- taxes."
This may indeed render some argument or other weak, but it is irrelevant to the argument that I actually presented. In my argument, it doesn't matter that the tax-money came from my pocket rather than someone else's. It would work just the same if I payed no taxes. The problem, as I think I stated before, is that I authorize that use of funds when I cast my vote.
"I don't agree with the common idea that the taxes are our money. Once the government has them, it's their problem."
I'm with you on that. And in anything other than a democracy, that would be the end of it. But in a democracy, we who are citizens are also involved in the government, so "their problem" means "our problem". As a voting member of that institution known as the federal government of the United States of America, I incur guilt when I authorize the government's evil use of its money (regardless of where that money came from). Such has always been my argument. And there is no parallel with Sears and Wal-mart, since I'm not on the board of directors, and hence do not vote to authorize anything those institutions do. It is not as taxpayers (involuntary) but as voters (voluntary) that we incur guilt.
"I want to know that candidate A will equal X abortions and that candidate B will equal X-Y abortions."
I want to know that too. But I see no way of knowing such a thing. Here we can only talk about what's more or less likely. Both of these positions might be reasonable:
a) there is a significant (but not overwhelming) possibility that a win for Kerry would have resulted in more abortions than a win for Bush
b) There is no significant probability either way, at least as far as we can tell.
But the following, I think, is unreasonable:
c) a win for Kerry would likely result in fewer abortions.
Now, I believe (a), but nothing in my argument depends on that, so I won't try to defend it. All I'm officially claiming is that (c) is unreasonable.
"It is not sufficient that either candidate Aor B will equal X (or even X-Y) abortions, but that candidate A will publically fund some of those abortions while candidate B will not."
I find the syntax of that a bit confusing, but it sounds like you're saying that the public funding issue is just irrelevant (unless public funding leads to an increase in overall abortions). But I have argued that it is relevant, not because it leads to an increase in overall abortions, but because I could become guilty of some murders that I otherwise would not be guilty of.
I stand by my original suggestion without the explicit "ceteris paribus". I would even say that such a statement is precise. The term "precise" means different things in different contexts. To an engineer, pi=3.14159265358979323846 is precise. To a mathematician, it is imprecise. In the present context, "It is a sin to give someone power that you know he intends to use to commit murder" is relatively precise. If there were good reason to think electing Kerry would result in fewer abortions long-term, then the context might require more precision, but there isn't.
Now, in my original post, I never stated (in the indicative mood) that it is a was a sin to vote for Kerry. I rather stated the general principle, "It is a sin to give someone power that you know he intends to use to commit murder." I suggested that it seems to follow from this that it was a sin to vote for Kerry, and I didn't know how to escape this conclusion with intellectual and moral integrity. (And I still don't.) However, I was distressed at how fundamentalistic it sounds, so I wasn't ready to assert it in the indicative mood. I think I ought first to discuss it with people who disagree with me. It may be you will show me some way to avoid the conclusion while retaining my integrity. But as yet I don't see how.
You've suggested that I could escape the conclusion by pointing to the ceteris paribus implicit in all moral discourse. But that doesn't seem relevant in the present context. All things may not be exactly equal (they never are), but I don't see how they are RELEVANTLY unequal. We both agree that moral/political discourse is imprecise, but we also both agree (I assume) that some moral/political issues are nevertheless clear-cut. If we were arguing about Hitler's political policies, I doubt you would say things like "I do not have trouble seeing the other side of the argument." Well, I'm actually more baffled by the the reasoning of the pro-abortion camp than by the Nazi's reasoning. Nazis are at least consistent, for they don't value individual human life apart from the interests of the nation. Pro-choice people, however, do value individual human life. They react with moral horror to what the Nazis did. But then they turn around and disregard this value when it comes to the unborn.
Now, you have convinced me that there is at least one serious hole in my argument, something that would need to be patched up. But nothing you've said convinces me that the issue itself is really less clear than it has always seemed to me. I may have failed to argue every step as carefully as I should have, but I've at least got a very good case that abortion is in most cases extraordinarily horrendus and should be considered an extremely important issue when it comes time to vote. The pro-choice camp, as far as I can tell, can't give even one good reason to think their position is even plausible, let alone true.
Posted by: chris at January 1, 2005 12:24 AMIf you're trying to argue the sinfulness of a particular vote with those (including myself) who readily agree that, from conception, abortion takes the life of a person made in the image of God, then there is nothing to argue about here. Whether all those involved in abortion had no idea that they were killing someone, or whether they were all admitting to open genocide, my culpability in the matter, if any, would be the same. I know what's happening. Our agreement on this point, however, is despite your argument. As it is set up, you have not made the case that abortion is wrong in all instances (barring life of the mother). Your argument has not addressed such questions as spiritual life or personhood- all of which makes for it being tidy. But this is also its weakness. Until these questions are addressed, you cannot simply assert that to intentionally take the life of a biological human individual is murder. If you're going to make the case for the sinfulness of certain votes for anyone who might cast them, then you need to show that they actually do know that all biological human individuals are persons or, if they don't, that this ignorance is vincible. I guess, then, that my first paragraph is about the truth. Just because we happen to agree on the significance of conception doesn't mean that what we think is true.
If I read you correctly, your belief that the image of God goes back to conception is based on the premise that this is inherent in a biogical human individual. I don't know if I believe that or if this image, even though it coincides with conception, is superadded. For me, it's all tied to my indecision between creationism and traducianism. If the former is true, then it is plausible to believe that this takes place at some point well removed from conception. I don't believe this because the guilt of original sin is attatched from the moment of conception. The ability to be guilty implies personhood. The thing is, not all Christians believe this and I'm certainly not going to get non-Christians to comply.
Actually, I thought you had asked for some reasons why it might be plausible to regard viability as the coming-to-be of a new entity; which I took to be a distinct concept from the occurence of biological individuality. I'll take biological indivuality back to conception but I'm not yet willing to jump on board and say that biological individuality is necessarily the same thing as personhood. This requires a soul.
Parental love for the unborn is based on two premises: 1)This is a person and, 2) this is my child. Bill Clinton is not your child. Unless one is truly insane, the question of the personal status of a volleyball has been settled. We are safe to regard any attatchment as an emotional delusion rather than a false belief. The personal status of the unborn is the point in question; consequently, the situations are not parallel. Perhaps an extra-terrestial observing Chuck Noland's considerations of Wilson would wonder whether or not volleyballs are people too.
I think I get what you're talking about with the public funding. The guilt is found in the vote to use the money, not in the source of the money. I don't completely agree. I'm with you on the source of the money, but I do not believe that mere appropriation of funds is sufficient to incur guilt. I need to expect that there will be a use of those funds such that something, which would not have been the case, now is. Road funds should be used in such a way that roads appear. Education funds should be used in such a way that schools are improved or, conversely, that they don't disappear. Postal funds should be used in such a way that I continue to receive mail. Abortion funds, however, turn out to be a wash. The money is appropriated and spent on abortions. Even though I agree that abortion is horrendous, I still must ackowledge that nothing happens that wouldn't have happened anyway. If I vote for someone who proposes to fund abortions and I believe that, even if this funding goes through, nothing except the source of funding for abortions will have changed, then I am perfectly free, and, if I wish to be a responsible voter, I would argue required to consider other factors in voting.
Posted by: Kevin at January 4, 2005 4:40 AMIt doesn't matter whether the image of God is inherent to biological humanity or not. I think "inherent" here means the same as "essential": so that to say "bearing God's image is inherent to biological humanity" means that it is impossible for a biological human to lack the image of God. But I'm not talking about what's possible or impossible, I'm only talking about what's actual. And in actual fact, every biological human does bear the image of God.
If you and I agree to this then we also agree that this is true. (It doesn't make sense to say "p, but I'm not sure p is true") Of course, the fact that we agree doesn't mean what we think is true. I'm not inferring the truth of p from the fact that we agree. I'm simply asserting the truth of p with the understanding that I don't have to try to convince you, because you already agree. So I take it you were objecting to the soundness of the argument rather than the truth of the statement. -- I call an argument unsound if it commits an informal fallacy such as begging the question, even if it is formallly sound. -- Inotherwords, you're saying that you agree with the statement that all biological humans in fact bear the image of God, but I haven't given a good (sound) argument for that conclusion?
And of course you would be right. I haven't given a sound argument for that conclusion, for the simple reason that I haven't given ANY argument for that conclusion. The image of God is my answer to the question: Why is human life so valuable that destroying it is so wrong? But I'm claiming that we can see that destroying human (i.e. biologically human) life is wrong, without explaining why it is wrong.
And I fail to see where the weakness in my argument lies. You write, "you cannot simply assert that to intentionally take the life of a biological human individual is murder." But why not? Isn't this plausibly true--I mean from the perspective of someone who hasn't made up his mind about why human life is valuable, but knows that it is. Suppose someone were to say: "I don't believe in any spiritual or supernatural realm. Humans are just animals of a certain kind. I don't know how morality fits into this, but I do believe that certain things are morally wrong. I share the moral intuitions of the human race." To such a person, talk about "image of God" or "ensoulment" or even "something more than biology" is going to be unconvincing. But he can recognize that (5) seems plausible on the face of it. I don't understand why you think this begs the question.
Parental love is not based upon any premises. Parental love is not the result of a syllogism. Castaway illustrates the distinction between false belief and delusional emotion. You seem to be claiming that once the "false" beliefs are in place (this person is my child) the emotions follow automatically, and are therefore no more delusional than the beliefs. But this seems doubtful to me. Emotions are more like willful and disobedient children than dutiful servants. Nature often sets our heads and our hearts in the same direction, but give the mind a belief that isn't natural to the emotions and the emotions throw a temper-tantrum. If the love parents feel toward their unborn children were not in itself natural, I doubt it could be produced by the mere belief that this is a person and this is my child.
Moreover, as I said before, parents were loving their unborn children before anybody asked the question "Are the unborn persons?" So as a matter of fact, the emotions were not produced by the belief. -- Unless you want to say they believed implicitly, but it's hard to see how implicit beliefs could have much power over the emotion, given how little power explicit beliefs have over them.
On public funding of abortions: Suppose Jim hates Carl and wants to pay a hit man to kill him. But Jim's dad wants to protect his son from any possibility of being prosecuted, and so he, Jim's dad, pays a hit-man to kill Carl before Jim gets around to doing it himself. Now, Carl would have been killed anyway. But I say Jim's dad is still guilty of murder. Now replace Jim's dad with a corporation whose board of directors votes to use money in that way. I say the directors who voted the measure up are guilty of murder. Paying for murder is murder, regardless of whether or not the murder would have happend anyway, and regardless of whether you are using your own funds or voting to use those of a corporation or government.
Posted by: chris at January 21, 2005 5:10 PMNo, you don't need to convince me that p is true. I'm thinking, though, of all the people on the pro-choice side whose position you have stated you don't understand. It's as if you expect that they, too, agree with p. If this were the case, then I would also be baffled at their acceptance of abortion for anything other than a threat to the life of the mother. If p is axiomatic, a thing to be asserted, then the pro-choice side has no coherent arguments. But, if it is a thing not immediately understood, a thing to be argued and defended, then they may have some valid points. In any event, I am compelled to listen as they present their case.
For the most part, the pro-choice position is not that pre-natal life is unvaluable. It is not that they have no moral intuitions regarding the simple disposal of such life. It is, rather, that they also have moral intuitions on a number of related issues. Is it right to force full term pregnancy upon rape and incest victims? Is a threat to the mother's mental health any less valuable than a threat to her life? Should anyone require the birth of a baby who will be severely handicapped, either physically or mentally? What if the mother has no means of support? If these questions are asked with the understanding that the fetus is created in the image of God, then, no matter what degree of tragedy they represent, it is even more wrong to take the life of the unborn. However, without a clear understanding that p is true and why it is true, then abortion easily begins to look like the lesser of two evils. By looking at the other side and trying to understand what would compel someone who otherwise believes in the value of unborn human life to choose abortion, I am forced to reevaluate what comprises a consistent Christian response to abortion. It certainly has nothing to do with the tactics of the militantly minded, whose hatred fo all involved in abortion is clear and who will even kill in the name of life. But it also needs to be more than a collective, "Abortion is a sin. Repent."
I do not deny that parental love for a child, born or unborn, is natural. It is not the result of mere belief, but it cannot be separated from belief. Parental love, no matter how natural it is, cannot be exercised apart from the belief, whether articulated or not, that this person is my child. Take, for a example, a man who is given to natural affections- if he has children, he will love them. He has a passing aquaintance with the neighborhood children and his opinions range anywhere from mild annoyance to kind of liking them. He does not know that one of these children is actually his. The child had been given up for adoption by his mother, who had never told the man that she was pregnant. If the man ever does find out the truth, his feelings for the child will change. They will result from natural parental love; however, the fact that the child was his all along was not sufficient to produce this love apart from the belief. Even though I agree that parental love is natural, it seems that the belief that one has a child is greater determining factor for this love than is the relationship itself. It is possible that the history of the man is just as it has ben told, except that, by honest mistake or deception, the wrong child has been identified. It is also possible to convince the man that he has a child, thereby producing feelings for this child, when, in fact, no such child exists. I remain unconvinced that the existence of parental love, or of something empirically indistinguishable from parental love, can even be used to prove the existence of the object loved, much less the identity or nature thereof.
If Carl dies, either Jim or Jim's father would be equally guilty depending on who hired the hit man. I don't know that this analogy works, though. The voter is neither Jim nor his father. The voter is the one who decides which one gets access to the funds to pay the hit man. Besides that, if this is going to be closer to the scenario of only one candidate who will fund abortion with public money, then only one man can potentially hire a hit man. Jim hates Carl and would use the public funds to hire a hit man. Jim's father couldn't care less about Carl and would not fund his murder. However, he indulges Jim. Even though it would be in his power to stop Jim, he lets Jim hire his own hit man. Jim could even kill Carl himself, for that matter. Carl is going to die anyway. Why is the voter more to blame if he elects to office someone who will use public funds to kill Carl rather than someone who will not use his power to prevent Carl's death or to punish his killers? Either way, there is a serious breach of justice on the part of Jim or his father. If it is a sin to elect one, it should also be sin to elect the other.