Posts by linger
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Ah, crud. I forgot that a long underscore would be read as toggled italics. That should have appeared as:
"Of course ( ) should be illegal, otherwise you're just encouraging it."
Oh, if the case were only that easy to make,
I'm sure we'd all have a little list.Sending your moronic kids to my school
Piddling in a crowded paddling pool
Posing and preaching and pulling flies' wings
These are a few of my most reviled things.(Advisory note: items chosen for rhyme, rhythm and absurdity.)
(Apologetic note: sorry for the bandwidth abuse, which I actually do find annoying myself)
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"Of course __ should be illegal, otherwise you're just encouraging it."
Oh, if the case were only that easy to make,
I'm sure we'd all have a little list.Sending your kids to a single-sex school
Piddling in a crowded paddling pool
Posing and preaching and pulling flies' wings
These are a few of my most reviled things.(Advisory note: items chosen for rhyme, rhythm and absurdity.)
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as to "having fun" -- not really, this is taking far too much concentration. This latest turn is interesting though; I hadn't previously considered whether my own positions about many different issues might actually be governed by a consistently applied set of principles. I'd kind of assumed I'd just made up my mind as I went along.
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Well, at some points in some cultures, personhood has been applied to [selected] animals; and even today, "legal person" is not the same as "human person" (e.g. it also includes corporations). I'm not sure what criterion the law actually uses for "person"; but if it were to use "capacity for self-determination", then ... if you've got compelling proof that a horse has first planned and then carried out the killing of an individual that the law recognises as a person, then yep, I'd be interested in seeing the resulting trial for premeditated murder. But without the proof of planning, it would be difficult to establish the personhood of the horse, without which the law could not apply. Which I suppose would mean that a horse could in effect get away with manslaughter, or an unpremeditated murder. Hmm. Remind me to keep away from horses.
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A criterion is a required condition for some purpose of definition, not a "method" as such (that also needs some agreed test as to whether the condition is present, with some agreed level of certainty as to the conclusion). I've suggested several different criteria by which we could classify organisms as "persons". None of the ones I've suggested are inherently scaleable (though in practice the level of certainty in our measurements or interpretations may seem to add some scale). I make no claims about which of these criteria is "correct" for any given purpose; so to the extent that an organism may pass one criterion test but fail another higher-level test, then, yes, some organisms may be classed as "more like persons" than others. However, since all "people", by definition, must pass the highest criterion that we deem suitable for a given purpose, it is logically impossible to get a result that "some people are more persons than others".
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Oh, nuts... For "the mother" above, please read "the woman concerned". (Even the label "mother" may be read as presupposing a relationship that should not be presupposed by an outside observer.)
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My simple point was that babies do not take kindly to being assaulted
Actually, that's an assertion without evidence (as you yourself acknowledged by prefacing the original claim with "I'm willing to bet...").
people are being killed
[...and again...]
the fact that babies are being killed
But, for at least some stages of fetal development, the description "killing a person" cannot be proven to apply, as "personhood" cannot be definitively established, for reasons we've already discussed. (You don't have to agree with me; and for that matter, the mother doesn't have to agree with me. I merely note that this is an alternative interpretation consistent with the observable data, and leave the choice of interpretation back with the mother.)
What is self determination and how does one test for it? You have invented a definition of person and are willing to act on that definition to the exclusion of the rights of others.
"Self-determination" means the ability to make decisions about your own future. This is a much higher level of "personhood" than the minimum "perception plus memory" definition discussed earlier, and is accordingly to be valued more highly. No-one has ever established that newborns -- let alone foetuses -- are capable of any conscious decision. By contrast, we certainly do know that about the mother!
BTW, the definitions of "personhood" we've been discussing are independent of species. They could also be applied to the ethics of food consumption. Nobody has any ethical qualms about eating cabbage, as we're pretty sure it doesn't have any plans for tomorrow. Most of us aren't that worried about eating lamb or beef, for much the same reason; but if we believe that these animals are capable of self-determination, then that's problematic. Rather more of us are squeamish about eating dogs, horses, whales, or monkeys, largely because there is more evidence that such animals are above the self-determination threshold. Of course, if you're going to go with the minimum definition of "personhood", and apply it consistently, your diet will be that much more restricted. Unless you are a strict vegetarian, you must also be "willing to exclude the rights of others".
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... though perhaps that should be, "Anyone can pretend to speak for the child". Anyone under the impression they were actually speaking for an unborn child would either have to have teh mad mind-reading skillz, or else be seriously deluded.
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Who speaks for the [unborn] child?
Anybody can speak for the child. That's free speech for you.
But nevertheless, nobody else gets to decide for the mother.
I don't want to claim that the life of a foetus isn't also worthy of consideration -- but that, too, is up to the mother (at least until the foetus reaches the point of independent viability, when other solutions become possible).As with the cases of suicide and euthanasia, the opinions of (and the emotional effects on) other people may be worth considering, but should not ever be allowed to override the decision of the person whose body and life are involved, if that person is able to make a decision. That's self-determination for you.
(i.e.: A right to free speech doesn't entail any right to be listened to. The right to self-determination is much more important. And a foetus is not (yet) capable of self-determination.) -
Linger - OK so it's my body I can kill myself if I want to - right?
In principle, yes. There may be other stakeholders, people who know you well, who may be entitled to argue against it; but as a very general principle, you are the majority stakeholder in your own life, and it is ultimately your decision to make.
(Of course, given that one choice means the decision is irreversible, I would hope the decision is a carefully considered one. Nevertheless, I believe all people capable of making that choice should have the freedom to be able to make that choice for themselves.)