Philosophy Experiments
  • I think it would make more sense, or be easier to answer for you, if the soccer player was replaced by R Kelly.
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  • ;)
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  • Now that's a page turn.
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  • Well that raises another interesting problem with it: how I would value one person being attached to my body is different from another. There are many women who would value their internal pre-human more than themselves.
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  • I think as with the recent problems with women rights vs Catholic overlords, the issue for me is that fuzzy ideas about souls or sexual morality from corrupt celibate rapists is not the way for any society to decide on where the line should be. I do think the individual is key, and that activity within somebody's body should be about as far from state intervention as possible. But that doesn't mean that I think having a baby should be treated flippantly, or with comparisons to cancer or some such. That's battle language--like a lot of the arguments around Gay marriage re: born like this--and reduces the complexities in an unhelpful way. It does people like Savita Halappanavar, and the many people who battle with the choice, a disservice.
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  • How do we define life? Thats the real crux of it.
  • Hulka T wrote:
    How do we define life? Thats the real crux of it.

    Is it? Not some sort of sentience and self awareness?
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  • What about some coma dude? Should we kill them because they lack both sentience and self awareness?!

    I think its a tricky one but with abortion its fairly acceptable to me to destroy some cells. The worry is when do those cells become a baby? Surely 15 mins before birth is too late but where is the switchover?
  • I think as with the recent problems with women rights vs Catholic overlords, the issue for me is that fuzzy ideas about souls or sexual morality from corrupt celibate rapists is not the way for any society to decide on where the line should be. I do think the individual is key, and that activity within somebody's body should be about as far from state intervention as possible. But that doesn't mean that I think having a baby should be treated flippantly, or with comparisons to cancer or some such. That's battle language--like a lot of the arguments around Gay marriage re: born like this--and reduces the complexities in an unhelpful way. It does people like Savita Halappanavar, and the many people who battle with the choice, a disservice.
    Bless. I love your first sentence. And can't help but agree with the second. I'm probably showing my ignorance re the third. I'm not aware of "cancer" analogies. I've heard parasite analogies. As far as what's going on biologically, it seems a reasonable enough kind of comparison, or at least more an accurate reflection of how pregnancy works, but I can see how it's possibly not constructive.
    What about some coma dude? Should we kill them because they lack both sentience and self awareness?!

    Um, yes?*

    *We start to get into assisted suicide and what not here, but we do, in fact, by turning off life support/food etc, kill people in comas. If I was in a coma, particularly if it was, to the best of our current knowledge, irreversible, get to it and knock me off.

    What if it was a baby in a coma? And there was no chance of it recovering? What if it's a baby that is born with severe MS, who can be kept alive indefinitely with medical intervention but won't be able to speak, or move, and will be in pain? (Example blatantly stolen from a Peter Singer book I read a month ago.)
    I think its a tricky one but with abortion its fairly acceptable to me to destroy some cells. The worry is when do those cells become a baby? Surely 15 mins before birth is too late but where is the switchover?

    Well, I believe the current arbitrary line seems to be third trimester is a very late term abortion, and the one most people would only condone on medical grounds, and the baby would be very definitely recognisable as a baby.

    But heck, I would have thought even a latish first trimester abortion would rate as slightly more than "some cells."
    I'm still great and you still love it.
  • Some of the more severe positions do position the fetus as just a glob of this or that, and as an unwanted intruder in the mode of cancerous cells. Dubbing a fetus a parasite has emotive connotations which again ignore the context in which pregnancy often takes place, and the eventual result from pregnancy should one choose to see it through. Initially a parasitic relationship, perhaps, but people can and do gain from the effort. Perhaps it describes the use of resources between the body and the fetus, but it has that misleading tone which makes me suspicious and kind of conflicts with, in my experience, much higher number of women to whom it is genuinely an issue taken with much consideration. Like the "We are born this way" argument with gay rights, it plays into the preferred tone of the opposition.
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  •  Like the "We are born this way" argument with gay rights
    This has always baffled me a tad. It shouldn't fucking matter if you choose to be a gay long after the fact of your birth or not.

    "But it's not natural!!" yuh well neither is the automobile, brain surgery or ketchup.
  • Well, this made me feel bad as a person. Thanks.
  • Spoiler:
  • I think, to be fair, most of the inconsitencies stem from my response to what gives life value, which I personally found to be the hardest question to justify my response. I flip-flopped for a while on that one.
  • Brooks wrote:
     Like the "We are born this way" argument with gay rights
    This has always baffled me a tad. It shouldn't fucking matter if you choose to be a gay long after the fact of your birth or not.
    I know. I understand why it was done, as a tactical move to battle religious privilege by also making claims about what God thinks one way or the other about Gays. If he made them, then your argument is compromised, forcing the move into the horrendous circular nettles of the Problem of Evil defense. But in doing so you're tacitly confirming that an individual can't rightly choose to be with a person of their own sex, which is just batshit crazy.
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  • You're not a human til you're in my phone book.
  • You must have a very big phone book.
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  • Fentonizer wrote:
    I think, to be fair, most of the inconsitencies stem from my response to what gives life value, which I personally found to be the hardest question to justify my response. I flip-flopped for a while on that one.

    Damn fents, they paid out on you! ;)

    tbf, on the whole miscarriage thing, it's not like those numbers are widely reported.
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  • Try asking a religious person when a fetus gets a soul. Never seen so much shuffling of feet and side ways glances in my life..
    Sometimes here. Sometimes Lurk. Occasionally writes a bad opinion then deletes it before posting..
  • Wouldn't it depend on the religon? Or even the person?

    Some people believe that morning after pill is murder or whatever. I think they would consider the cell glob to have a soul.
    "But it's not natural!!" yuh well neither is the automobile, brain surgery or ketchup.

    I always find it funny when people proclaim something is good because its natural, like anthrax, arsenic and the not!
  • And of course murder :)
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  • Facewon wrote:
    Fentonizer wrote:
    I think, to be fair, most of the inconsitencies stem from my response to what gives life value, which I personally found to be the hardest question to justify my response. I flip-flopped for a while on that one.

    Damn fents, they paid out on you! ;)

    tbf, on the whole miscarriage thing, it's not like those numbers are widely reported.

    It's obviously awful, but yeah, as per the question, I didn't respond based on the emotional impact these issues have, just the cold, clinical value of "human life" lost. It's a bit harsh, because I have seen first hand the emotional toil of miscarrage on more than one occassion, so when it told me I didn't give the seriousness of it much weight, it upset me a bit.
  • Side-note: Where the fuck is the male pill? It's 2013.
  • Doesn't viagra do that?
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  • EvilRedEye
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    Can't you do all this without wanky notions of the value of human life, blah blah blah? I don't really believe that human life has any inherent value. Things like human rights are imaginary constructs. But I still support human rights - I have imagination, I have the ability to imagine what it might be like to suffer in various ways through my own previous suffering and hearing about the suffering of others. I don't want to be murdered by the state or tortured by the state etc., so I support acting as if people gain inherent rights through their status as a human, as it's the most effective way of ensuring those things don't happen to me. So we all agree that murder and killing each other is wrong and illegal etc., basically out of selfishness. How do you make that work, like, administratively? I might not believe that an unborn baby capable of surviving out of the womb has any magical human value, but it's too difficult to distinguish from human beings like me so I find the idea of it being killed uncomfortable and would regulate against it.
    "ERE's like Mr. Muscle, he loves the things he hates"
  • Brooks wrote:
    Side-note: Where the fuck is the male pill? It's 2013.
    I read somewhere a while back they were developing an injection that would block your sperm tubes with some kind of gell effectively giving you a vasectomy then when you wanted rid you just popped a pill to dissolve it. Sounded like a great idea to me.
  • davyK
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    When it comes down to it would a woman trust a man to have taken it when she's ultimately left holding the baby?
    Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009.
  • Depends what its for. A couple in a relationship might think its worth a punt if the other pill is disagreeable (a physical block seems far more acceptable than a hormonal one to me)

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