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@AtlasFreeman So as someone who would never be a hypocrite I presume you are adamantly against both the death penalty and abortion?
Because our legal system is such a mess, I mostly agree. No death penalty.
Philosophically, I believe every human has a right to life, #liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If one human tries to impede on one of those natural rights, there are consequences. The consequence of intentionally and maliciously taking another's life is justification for the death penalty.
So you see, there is no hypocrisy, as an unborn child cannot murder..
@AtlasFreeman Not my legal system, yourself. I got myself a house in the netherlands and got the fuck out of dodge.
Not sure of the relevance of if an unborn child can murder or not though. Your original post pointed out hypocrisy in opposing a death penalty and supporting abortion. Obviously the inverse of that is equally hypocritical.
@freemo @AtlasFreeman It may or may not be hypocritical.
Taking the life of an innocent and taking the life of the guilty aren't moral equivalents.
I think both have to be thought through. Obviously taking the life of a "criminal " as in the meme isn't right, there's lots of crimes and the meme's big fault, I think, is that it implies there's people out there saying all criminals should have their lives aborted. No one says that that I've heard.
When it comes to mass murderer or serial killer, there's other opinions,and if we value human life and human rights, should we treat the innocent differently than one who goes around repeatedly taking away people's rights and lives by murdering them. Those are the only death row considerations I'm aware of.
But if someone supports taking the life of only those guilty of the most serious crime, of repeatedly murdering others, yet they think we should protect the lives of the innocent, I don't see hypocrisy there.
@SecondJon
Neither is taking the life of something that , depending on when, may not even have a brain.
the very fact that the two aren't equivalent on any level points out why your original post was poorly thought out.
Either way your logic seems selective and failed.
@SecondJon No in the first few months there is literally no brain, no neurons of any kind. You cant even say it isnt fully developed. It literally is non existent.
It literally is little different than sperm in the first few months.
You are welcome to whatever religious beleifs you want, but thats not how we create law, nor should it be. In the end we make murder illegal because it means someone who wants to live can not, or someone will suffer.
I think a very obvious line where it i is and should be legal is int he early period before there is any sort of brain.
@freemo @AtlasFreeman I don't think we outlaw most because it causes human suffering. There's plenty of ways to kill people without causing them to experience suffering.
I don't think I've referenced and religious belief here at all, so we can move past that.
I said all human life is ought to be protected, which is scientifically defined by DNA. I think you're saying only life that we decide on their behalf wants to live and will also experience suffering is worth protecting, which is a standard, but I think a more subjective and less scientific one.
Neither is inherently hypocritical though.
@SecondJon
Thats not what I said. I said "because it means someone who wants to live can not, or someone will suffer." Notice I specify two different reasons we make it illegal. ONE is suffering, the other is because someone wants to to live and we violate that free will.
If someone wanted to die, AND they wouldnt suffer by doing so, then we would be ok killing them. BOTH factors are relevant. Neither factor applies to a fetus without a brain.
@freemo @AtlasFreeman I think the weakness of the standard is that the closest we can actually get is:
If WE THINK /DECIDE THAT someone wants to die and they wouldn't suffer by doing so, then we would be ok killing them.
The human mind is so complex, a person often doesn't really know what that person really wants. To assume that I can truly understand what someone else wants may be impossible. That's fine when it's a choice of what's for dinner. It's not as fine if I'm going to kill them.
A lot of us have thought at some point or other, "I'd rather die" - my seven year old said that to me the other day...would rather die than wear the only pants available that day because he doesn't live denim. I don't think I would have been okay to painlessly kill him because he wanted to die. I'm glad that all of us who have thought this way even as adults weren't killed because that's what we thought we wanted at the time.
It's further complicated because we can't always communicate even even what we think we want. Someone asleep, in a coma, preverbal, or with any number of medical or psychological conditions will have a hard time declaring that they don't want to be killed. I don't think that babies 5 minutes before or 5 minutes after birth are communicating that they'd like to be killed - I think we agree on that one.
I think you may have an argument for legalizing suicide - I don't find it a convincing argument for taking the life of another.
The other argument, that human brains are worth saving, is probably worth a different toot...but it'll have to wait, about to start a conference call.
@freemo @SecondJon @AtlasFreeman I feel like either life is valuable or it isn't.
At the same time, there are questions of personhood. At what point does a fetus become a person? At what point do we consider it a human being with rights?
In the first few weeks, surely not- it's just a bundle of cells that certainly can't survive on its own, right?
After birth, absolutely- not a fully, mentally developed person but a person none the less.
That in between time, though. That, for me, is where the ultimate question lies.
It only gets more complicated when you start talking medically necessary abortions. Do the rights of the existing life to continue living trump the rights of the potential life to begin living?
As for the Death Penalty, I'm mostly against it except in the most heinous of cases. It should be a punishment of very last resort, rarely if ever used. In an ideal world it never be used- but it's always nice to have it in your back pocket in case someone comes along that really needs to be removed from the population.
I feel like this is a super complicated thing that can't be easily put through a meme.
@Surasanji @freemo @AtlasFreeman
I don't think being able to survive on one's own is a good measure of whether one life should be protected. Babies, kids, anyone with any kind of medical issue, etc., would not survive on their own. That risks making the standard of protection of life on whether you can protect yourself. It would mean we only help those who aren't helpless.
Objectivity is helpful for me. I value life, not personhood. I think of I argue that life is disposable but personhood is not, then I (out anyone else) get to arbitrarily pick the criteria on who lives and dies. Any subjective standard seems problematic to me.
Medically necessary isn't a thing, I think. The consideration would be health of the mother (subjective and problematic) or life of the mother VS life of the child. In that case, by what I'm positing, there's a question to answer about whether you preserve the life half lived who can defend itself or the life with a whole life ahead that can't. But these incredibly rare situations don't have a clear answer, I think.
@SecondJon
I agree on the point that ones ability to survive on their own is not a good argument
What are the justifications in aborting someone at all then?
@MOTT If the fetus doesnt even have a brain yet you dont need to justify it. If it does then im not sure you can justify it unless your life is at risk
@freemo So a brain makes someone human or not? Should we change abortion laws to ensure that? Or do they work the way they are?
@MOTT @freemo @SecondJon @AtlasFreeman I can certainly understand the statement about not surviving on one's own.
I meant more that at that point of development, the fetus is more a part of the mother's body than it's own actual individual. It's just a bundle of cells, and thus, has no rights and is certainly not far along enough to be considered a person by any measure of the word.
The concept of what, exactly, makes someone human- that personhood- is a big philosophical thing.
In Judaism, for instance, a fetus isn't really a person until after it is born. The act of being born is what makes you a human being, religiously speaking as far as I'm aware.
That being said, most religious Jews are largely anti-abortion, except where the Mother's life is at risk. The life already existing, in that case, takes precedence. In a situation where you could only save the Mother or the Baby, you're supposed to save the mother.
Then again, you're also dealing with a group of people who don't even name a baby until about a week after birth. It's a cultural thing, that.
Moving back to the philosophical aspect of it, there are a great number of ideas and concepts at play there.
What are the rights of the mother vs the rights of the fetus, for instance? Who's rights are more important?
Where do we define personhood? Is it from the potentiality of a unicelluar zygote, or does it come later?
There are a lot of aspects to the abortion discussion that need to be understood before one could make a truly ethical, moral, and logically sound decision.
@Surasanji @MOTT @freemo @AtlasFreeman I think you and I are just larger bundles of cells, I don't think that is a particularly useful phrase. We are bundles of cells that if left to normal circumstances will continue to grow and learn and develop. That's true of all human life at any stage.
What makes us humans isn't arbitrary or philosophical, but scientific. Humans have human DNA. Different humans have different human DNA.
It seems very straightforward to me as this level. A unique human life is fairly easily defined by science.
Deciding that killing humans is okay or not is not a scientific argument, because science doesn't teach morality. But I think the definitive of human life is pretty easily settled.
It's true that we can come up with interesting hypotheticals, like whose life and rights are more important, baby or mother, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, black or white. I tend to want to see this objectively and they're all objectively human, so I think we would be better off not trying to decide who is not human than whom, which human life is worth preserving, and instead value human life, and also life in general.
@MOTT A brain determines if you can kill it or not. What makes someone human is just some made up shit we came up with.
@freemo @MOTT @Surasanji @AtlasFreeman
I'd like to understand your take on this. Though I don't agree, I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but to understand. I don't think human is just something we made up. Cockroaches have brains, but we only can them not humans because of something we made up? No, it's because of more than that. Like science. DNA is different between humans and other creatures. So being human is objective and scientific and not really (any longer?) philosophical from what I can tell.
We've moved from will to live and lack of suffering to having a brain - or is it both...like...
If( havenobrain || (wantodie && wontsuffer))
{itsOkayToKillYou}?
From what we know at this point, the human brain is under development from the 3rd gestational week throughout one's life. Intense development until about 3 years after birth, prefrontal cortex developing until around 30, and with what we've learned about brain plasticity, continues through one's life. At what stage of brain development do you no longer get to stop a human life? If one's brain isn't functioning correctly, is that a factor?
I do appreciate that this brain - presence approach is creative and a shot at objectivity. So many take what ends to being a very subjective approach. This is that it's not life itself that's valuable, only brains, puts abortion as ok for only the first few weeks of pregnancy (as I understand it) steering clear if the magical birth canal argument that new York seems to now be relying on.
@freemo @AtlasFreeman gotcha. I think the parallel is that they're both definitively, scientifically, unique human lives.
I think humans are more than brains, so I've never thought about being able to take a life of a person who may not have a brain. But babies do have brains before birth, they don't pick them up in the birth canql on the way to be born....or all C Section kids would be in real trouble.
But the brain isn't fully developed. That's true. But it's not fully developed for decades.
The first 3 years of human life are huge in brain development, so your argument that the state of one's physical brain determines one's moral worth and whether killing that human is wrong would apply to small children as well.
Of course the prefrontal cortex isn't fully there until late 20s for females or about 30 for men, so it may apply to many more.
I suppose that seeing human life as valuable is very different than feeling that one gets to pick who lives and dies based on physical factors.
I've discussed a lot of people's ideas on what they'd pick as those factors, and they've always seemed logically and morally problematic. And primarily an attempt to get some argument behind their already existing opinions.
Others in the past have decided that human life wasn't worth preserving based on other physical or genetic factors, like being black, being Jewish, having downs, being female. Arguments that say "all human life is worth protecting except for this dehumanized category even if they've done nothing wrong" seem to strike me a certain unpleasant way.