Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

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_Darth J
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Darth J »

Droopy wrote:Its just the problem that morality, for you, can be reduced to nothing more that subjective personal preference attainment, whatever that may be, and as defined within particular generation or era.


Oh, so what you're saying is that EAllusion has a testimony of his ideas that he gained through exercising Moroni's Promise.
_EAllusion
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _EAllusion »

Droopy wrote:
I do notice your inability to "think on the hoof" outside of what you appear to believe is a closed canon of textbook definitions and pat answers to philosophical questions and terminology by those you have chosen to see as authorities on these open and contentious subjects, but, after all, this is the Trailerpark, and philosophy in the Trailerpark may not be the same as philosophy in La Jolla.


I've been able to parse what you are saying, which I take as a credit to myself. I've just pointed out the problem with you objecting to the jargon I'm using. At this point, either you still don't understand what it means or you're just being stubborn. Remember the Mississippi measure to legally define personhood to include fertlized eggs that failed?

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1108/ ... Day-neared

You know why they used that word? Because that's the standard term in law and ethics. Hence what I was saying made sense.
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

Populations of organisms are related on a continuum. The species cutoff point is artificial, even on the interbreeding criterion. The borders are fuzzy and if you were to happen upon them, that would create a problem for what you are asserting. I spotted you this problem by saying sufficiently human-like.


A human egg makes contact with and fertilizes a human female egg.

1. What is the genetic identity of the sperm, the egg, and the resulting cell division that is initiated by the fertilization process?

2. Is your sperm human sperm, or is it "human-like?" What other form of organic life can potentially form from the union of a human sperm and egg? Give us some taxonomic possibilities.


The "traits" that you say are worthy of respect are inherent and contained within the sperm and the egg upon their successful combining in the womb.

No they aren't. I'm not sure if you are asserting that blastocysts are conscious beings, but they aren't.


Now you're either being intentionally obtuse or you really aren't up to this discussion. I don't know which but I'll soldier on for the moment, with hope springing eternal.

All human attributes you claim are worthy of respect are already contained, as emergent properties and inherent developmental potential, within the embryo (or fetus, or human being at any stage of in vitro development). Abortion is the termination, or permanent interruption of a developmental process that, unless accident or disease of some kind alters its trajectory, can have no other result than the birth of a human child.

Now, here's the next question: Assuming a child makes its way out of the birth canal, and is lying there on the table in the hospital. Its cleaned up and taken to the mother to nurse and be held and cuddled. At what point, after exiting the birth canal, are moral protections and barriers to be erected around a human infant? Is it a "person" at the time the doctor spanks it? One hour later? A week? Some months? How long, and upon what basis do we make this determination?

If you are saying they have the potential to become one, that's true. This is an argument some people adopt. I don't buy the potential criterion, but I get the arguments in favor of it. Surely you understand the difference between saying that a collection of cells has the potential to develop certain traits and saying that it has them.


I don't recall ever claiming that it has them. Ever. That would be rather ludicrous, don't you think (and I don't know who, if anyone, has ever made that argument, at least anyone who wishes to be taken seriously). If you don't accept that a human embryo is human, and has the inherent (and exclusive) potential to become a human infant, and then a human child, and then a human adult, then please explain why this is the case.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

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- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

You know why they used that word? Because that's the standard term in law and ethics. Hence what I was saying made sense.


I see no source here that links this narrow, politically contested definition with the branch of philosophy known as ethics, which you apparently believe to be a monolith. As to law, this may be the case among a certain sub-group of legal experts.

Frankly, describing a mass of cells, an embryo, or fetus as a "person" from the moment of conception smacks of Protestant fundamentalist influence, which, as a Latter day Saint, you should long ago have figured out I have no stake in supporting, on a wide variety of issues.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_EAllusion
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _EAllusion »

Droopy wrote:
A human egg makes contact with and fertilizes a human female egg.

1. What is the genetic identity of the sperm, the egg, and the resulting cell division that is initiated by the fertilization process?

2. Is your sperm human sperm, or is it "human-like?" What other form of organic life can potentially form from the union of a human sperm and egg? Give us some taxonomic possibilities.


The Loran of the past didn't believe in human evolution and I've seen nothing to suggest you've changed, so who knows what you are thinking. But the reality is there is no essential boundary between genome that is a human and a genome that is not. Humans evolved from organisms that were not humans and their isn't necessarily a hard cutoff point between the populations. It's like trying to say at what temp hot became cold. Likewise, human populations have the ability to evolve into non-humans. An accumulation of enough or the right kind of genetic differences will do that.

All human attributes you claim are worthy of respect are already contained, as emergent properties and inherent developmental potential, within the embryo (or fetus, or human being at any stage of in vitro development).


I understand the potential argument Droopy. I referenced it. I even linked to an example of it. Saying that an entity has the potential to develop certain traits is different than saying it currently possesses those traits. If you think of embryos as persons with potential rather than potential people, great. I'm not disputing that in this thread because that's not what we are talking about.

Now, here's the next question: Assuming a child makes its way out of the birth canal, and is lying there on the table in the hospital. Its cleaned up and taken to the mother to nurse and be held and cuddled. At what point, after exiting the birth canal, are moral protections and barriers to be erected around a human infant? Is it a "person" at the time the doctor spanks it? One hour later? A week? Some months? How long, and upon what basis do we make this determination?


This is more the kind of thread you want to be in.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=21444&p=526081
_EAllusion
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _EAllusion »

Droopy wrote:
I see no source here that links this narrow, politically contested definition with the branch of philosophy known as ethics, which you apparently believe to be a monolith.


First, I said ethics and law. I gave you a link to reference legal personhood. Second, I linked in the previous post Francis Beckwith using it in ethics.

Let's quote him:

As readers of The Catholic Thing are well aware, the Journal of Medical Ethics, a periodical to which I have contributed, recently published the controversial article, “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?”, written by the philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

Throughout the article, the authors refer to fetuses and newborns as “potential persons,” which, I am sure, sounds like an odd neologism for those uninitiated in contemporary moral philosophy. It is, however, a phrase that has been used in the bioethics literature for over four decades.


I also linked wiki earlier pointing this out. So, I did link something that did this. It's almost like Beckwith had you in mind.

But if you want a more formal source here's the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

Here's the IEP:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/abortion/#H2

Personhood is standard terminology, which is why your going all Godwin at me using it is so strange. You know when you are pretending to be an auto-didact who is exceptionally well-read in these topics? This kind of thing really hurts your attempt to craft that image. Just so you know.
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

The Loran of the past didn't believe in human evolution and I've seen nothing to suggest you've changed, so who knows what you are thinking. But the reality is there is no essential boundary between genome that is a human and a genome that is not.


The very fact that you've had to degenerate to this level of rank sophistry to save your argument is quite telling, to say the least.

Humans evolved from organisms that were not humans and their isn't necessarily a hard cutoff point between the populations.


This is pseuodoscientific pap, and another excellent reason not to trust science at all (i.e., AGW) when its being driven by feverish ideological or psychological agendas. Human's evolutionary history is utterly irrelevant to homo sapiens sapiens fundamental taxonomic status and stasis as a unique species bounded by absolute biological barriers relative to other species. Those biological barriers are absolute between species as close as wolves and foxes, or between dogs and coyotes, and human sperm, when combined with a human female egg, can produce no possible outcome than a new human organism. There is no other taxonomic class to which a developing human embryo can be assigned.

This is why intellectual and philosophical Nazis such as yourself must be watched, and watched closely, in their ongoing moral relativist project of the diminution and degradation of humanity qua humanity as only worthy of protection and concern if and only if they - the secular anointed - determine that such is proper. And the reasons for such an anti-human cultural cleansing of the entire Judeo-Christian/classical liberal moral and ethical tradition are the same ones that drive the other manifestations of the leftist impulse to the nihilistic destruction of culture, and indeed, the secular humanist war on culture itself - the environmental movement, the animal rights movement, ideological anti-natalism, the myth of overpopulation, the cult of eroticism etc.

Its all of a piece, and our little god "libertarian" Delusion, worshiping at the pagan alter of "social science," holds court, deciding who shall be considered "human" and who shall not (having already moved well beyond deciding who is a "person" and who is not).

It's like trying to say at what temp hot became cold. Likewise, human populations have the ability to evolve into non-humans. An accumulation of enough or the right kind of genetic differences will do that.


The evolutionary argument is moot. Humans are a distinct and settled taxonomic class, and their humanness is grounded, biologically at least, in that settled, phylogenetic stasis. There are other aspects and criteria of humanness, however, that neither biology nor social science is capable of taking into account.

I understand the potential argument Droopy. I referenced it. I even linked to an example of it. Saying that an entity has the potential to develop certain traits is different than saying it currently possesses those traits. If you think of embryos as persons with potential rather than potential people, great. I'm not disputing that in this thread because that's not what we are talking about.


I see you've lost this aspect of the argument as you're not even paying attention to what I've been saying throughout, regarding this semantic question. Well, we can move along then...


Now, here's the next question: Assuming a child makes its way out of the birth canal, and is lying there on the table in the hospital. Its cleaned up and taken to the mother to nurse and be held and cuddled. At what point, after exiting the birth canal, are moral protections and barriers to be erected around a human infant? Is it a "person" at the time the doctor spanks it? One hour later? A week? Some months? How long, and upon what basis do we make this determination?

This is more the kind of thread you want to be in.


I knew you'd dodge that question, and this is also why I used the term "Nazi" to describe the general philosophical tendency and logical implications of the entire reductionist, scientistic, secular humanist worldview upon which your philosophy, and that of the rest of the western Left, is grounded.

Human beings become both "human" and attain "personhood" if, when, and under those conditions that a tiny coterie of alienated, culturally isolated elitist intellectuals with a deeply adversarial attitude toward the traditions, values, and cultural patrimony of the culture surrounding and supporting them, who's primary test of the truth and legitimacy of their views is the acceptance of those views by their peers within a similar social, intellectual, and professional milieu, determines for the benighted, unwashed masses below them that such classification is warranted.

The acid test of convenience abortion on demand - which is the fundamental question of abortion since Roe, is inconvenience; or, as Tarski said it best already, interruption or distraction from "life goals."

There is no logical or rational delimitation as to what class of human beings the concept of "person" can be removed as the culture develops ever more expansive - and less tolerant - attitudes toward such interruptions and distractions.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Droopy »

Personhood is standard terminology, which is why your going all Godwin at me using it is so strange. You know when you are pretending to be an auto-didact who is exceptionally well-read in these topics? This kind of thing really hurts your attempt to craft that image. Just so you know.


The more you fiddle with your powdered wig and strut around with airs of smarmy intellectual superiority in thread after thread, the more like a particularly spoiled, smug, and petulant member of the Anointed you look.

I'm well aware, and have been for decades, of the standard definitions of "personhood" used by feminist intellectuals and political theorists to justify unrestricted elective abortion. I'm also well aware of the further ideological and political reasons behind such a stance.

I was asking you to adduce a definition and argue for that definition, not source me to standard legal or academic philosophical canons. My position is clear (or should have been): the term "personhood" is, at its very core, vague, slippery, and plastic. Its use by academic and political feminism over the last forty or so years bespeaks is functionality as a moral wedge used to displace traditional concerns regarding human life and its unique sanctity qua human life (which appears to have become equal or greater in importance than the concept of "viability," or the "status of the fetus" which was once the core ethical argument among the Left).

I have long noticed in debating you that you have a great deal of difficulty arguing persuasively for your positions with any degree of philosophical rigor and prefer arguments from authority and retreat to what you consider to be settled, pat answers within narrow academic specialties to a free flowing analysis of the logical and conceptual meat of the case.

Failing this, you call names and drip intellectual smarm.

I suppose all of this makes up for the fact that Morlocks are, by nature, a rather rough looking bunch.
Last edited by Guest on Wed May 16, 2012 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Chap
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Chap »

Will somebody please argue with Droopy?

I don't like the way he is being left on his own in the playground.

If he is ignored like this, he'll be back with an Uzzi when he gets older.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Brackite
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Re: Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

Post by _Brackite »

Tarski wrote: ...

If we are going to go by intuition, then I think the best intuitions come from real women faced with the unwanted pregnancy rather than self-righteous old white men poisoned by ancient magic based conceptual schemes about the nature of human life.

In short, in the contest between an unwanted three or four week old fetus and a full grown adult in a hopelessly tough situation, it is no contest. You may think this is monstrous, but that is only because you have a cartoonical and/or superstitious concept of personhood and because you haven't real life experience to know what you are talking about. My wife had an abortion before we met and given the intractable circumstances I say thank God.


I am Not for making abortion illegal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy . (However, I do believe that abortion should be illegal after the first trimester, except to save the life of the mother.) I was mainly Pointing out the the OP here started a Thread earlier on this Forum calling the death penalty barbaric, and then he goes starting another thread supporting tax payer funded abortions, which I find odd and very partisan.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
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