Scouserlande
12-04-2005, 17:27
Please before you read on I want you to completely dispel what you think good and bad mean, ok, and also accsept that this was written at about 1am so please forgive any gramtical/spelling errors.
This article concerns its self only with what’s justifiable and what’s not, if your looking for meta-ethics a la what’s good and bad you wont find them here.
A few weeks ago I took in a rather inspiring lecture on ethics by a man called Peter Vardy (you may know him), and well with all this ethical ho-har about whether abortion was right/wrong, seem simply to boil down to subjective, its the mothers x, its the babies x.
Well lets take all that out of the equation, when you really look at it, it all boils down to whether the 'foetus' being the correct term is a human life.
of course there are two stances.
1. is it.
2. is not its x.
Lets start logically with option 1.
Its a person.
Well what makes it a person,
Its DNA?
Doubtful a few bases here are there probably less than 10,00 changes and its a chimp or a daisy.
It looks like a person?
Well again doubtful, it looks more like a newt until about 12 weeks, and you if you had never seen a baby before, most likely would deny it was human to me, had it not been around 18-20 weeks of development.
It possesses some sort of human, meta-physical component.
Wizz bang here’s the money maker, Lets call this extra physical element the soul for now, what ever you want to believe it to be, be it artistic temperament or a actually meta-physical representation of your self, it doesn’t matter whether your a dualist (two separate components) or a monist (you do the math), or even whether its immortal or not.
The soul is some extra component that makes you human.
So therefore if this foetus has one it is therefore human no? and so killing it is killing a human and thus murder.
Still following, good.
So we have concluded that is you believe that a foetus zygote, whatever is human it must possess, this meta-physical 'soul'
But there is a point were the 'human' in this case dose not exist, it could be logical said that this point was prior to the fusing of the gametes into the zygote, because before hand it was only 'half' of this 'person'.
So when dose this soul no mattering whether it is immortal or not, become 'fused' to this 'potential person' and so make them human.
Well this is where it gets a wee bit tricky, If your a dualist (i.e soul and body separate entities), the position which most religions occupy, it is logical to assume that there is a point where there is a body without soul for however infinitesimally small you must by the nature of this theory that even both are created at the same time, they are not yet the same for a moment of time.
Now by pinning down this moment of time, we can see the point at which a bunch of cells becomes human.
still following?
Of course this 'quest' is entirely of a philosophical and theological nature as we have no device that can measure the soul.
Philosophers especially the stoics debated on end about this, but funnily enough the near eastern religions, appeared to have theologically hit the nail on the head farily early.
Up till the 19th centaury during a debate on whether hitting a woman in the stomach and causing a miscarriage was murder or not, the Catholic church who at the time was very much dualist concluded that God implanted the soul at around 40 days for men and 90 days for women, and thus any caused miscarriage from before then was not murder, as it was little more than a period. (there thought process for this eludes me of course)
From what I know of the Qu’ran I believe it makes a similar statement, on soul implantation.
So if we take the dualist route as religion appears to have done, we must conclude that before soul implantation the ’foetus’ is not human, and thus its removal and destruction Is no more murder, than a period or a discharge of seamen.(man that sentence sounds gay).
However in 1869 in a huge policy reversal our protagonist the catholic church suddenly decided that in fact it cannot be known when the soul is implanted, but merely the potentiality exist from conception, and the soul appears at a undetermined date by divine hand (as they do not believe the immaterial soul can be created from the material gametes, only god can create the immaterial.)
We must then move on to monism.
This holds it true that the person and the soul and an entity in one, a belief also started by the ancient Greeks, and recently adopted by the newer religions (i.e Protestantism)
The soul, as it is actually part of the person must therefore if it cannot be implanted be there from birth, and therefore from conception the soul is present and thus the zygote --> embryo --> foetus, are all human.
So concluding that the soul makes a person in fact human, and at some time during the pregnancy the ‘foetus’ comes to be in possession of a soul, or it already has one, and thus becomes/is human.
How can we then Justify (being the key word) removing and by proxy destroying the foetus.
The Violinist Example
Let us say one day that one day you awake to find yourself in a bed lying on your side and to your horror physical and atomically connected to another person via your back.
You quickly catch site of a doctor whom upon realising you are awake begins to apologise profusely. He explains the events that have transpired up to this point, it appears that the person you are connected to is a extremely famous and talented violinist with a rare kidney disorder, the international society of music lovers has canvassed the medical records of everyone it could possibly find, and among them all you alone has the exact blood type and other factors that are necessitated by the procedure, and so you have been kidnapped and hooked up to this violinist. The doctor again profusely apologises and explains that within 9 months your kidneys will have cured the violinist of his ailment and you can both be disconnected with no loss of life, however this will mean that for the next 9 month you will have to be constantly connected to this violinist with the obvious limitations this will bring on your life. You can see that you could disconnected yourself with little harm to your self, but this would clearly kill the violinist.
It is clear that waiting the 9 months would be the ‘nice’ or ‘good’ thing to do, but that’s not what we are here for, we are about justification. Would you be Justified in removing this uninvited violinist from your self, knowing that he will die but at the same time restoring your own welfare.
Yes, you are, its not the nice thing to do, but from an objectively moral standpoint, its justified.
I hope the anecdote needs no further explanation in its relation to abortion.
That’s option 1 brought to a satisfactory conclusion I hope.
I will post the second part of my article later assuming my collage havent banned ns again (the bastards!), if not see ya in five weeks.
This article concerns its self only with what’s justifiable and what’s not, if your looking for meta-ethics a la what’s good and bad you wont find them here.
A few weeks ago I took in a rather inspiring lecture on ethics by a man called Peter Vardy (you may know him), and well with all this ethical ho-har about whether abortion was right/wrong, seem simply to boil down to subjective, its the mothers x, its the babies x.
Well lets take all that out of the equation, when you really look at it, it all boils down to whether the 'foetus' being the correct term is a human life.
of course there are two stances.
1. is it.
2. is not its x.
Lets start logically with option 1.
Its a person.
Well what makes it a person,
Its DNA?
Doubtful a few bases here are there probably less than 10,00 changes and its a chimp or a daisy.
It looks like a person?
Well again doubtful, it looks more like a newt until about 12 weeks, and you if you had never seen a baby before, most likely would deny it was human to me, had it not been around 18-20 weeks of development.
It possesses some sort of human, meta-physical component.
Wizz bang here’s the money maker, Lets call this extra physical element the soul for now, what ever you want to believe it to be, be it artistic temperament or a actually meta-physical representation of your self, it doesn’t matter whether your a dualist (two separate components) or a monist (you do the math), or even whether its immortal or not.
The soul is some extra component that makes you human.
So therefore if this foetus has one it is therefore human no? and so killing it is killing a human and thus murder.
Still following, good.
So we have concluded that is you believe that a foetus zygote, whatever is human it must possess, this meta-physical 'soul'
But there is a point were the 'human' in this case dose not exist, it could be logical said that this point was prior to the fusing of the gametes into the zygote, because before hand it was only 'half' of this 'person'.
So when dose this soul no mattering whether it is immortal or not, become 'fused' to this 'potential person' and so make them human.
Well this is where it gets a wee bit tricky, If your a dualist (i.e soul and body separate entities), the position which most religions occupy, it is logical to assume that there is a point where there is a body without soul for however infinitesimally small you must by the nature of this theory that even both are created at the same time, they are not yet the same for a moment of time.
Now by pinning down this moment of time, we can see the point at which a bunch of cells becomes human.
still following?
Of course this 'quest' is entirely of a philosophical and theological nature as we have no device that can measure the soul.
Philosophers especially the stoics debated on end about this, but funnily enough the near eastern religions, appeared to have theologically hit the nail on the head farily early.
Up till the 19th centaury during a debate on whether hitting a woman in the stomach and causing a miscarriage was murder or not, the Catholic church who at the time was very much dualist concluded that God implanted the soul at around 40 days for men and 90 days for women, and thus any caused miscarriage from before then was not murder, as it was little more than a period. (there thought process for this eludes me of course)
From what I know of the Qu’ran I believe it makes a similar statement, on soul implantation.
So if we take the dualist route as religion appears to have done, we must conclude that before soul implantation the ’foetus’ is not human, and thus its removal and destruction Is no more murder, than a period or a discharge of seamen.(man that sentence sounds gay).
However in 1869 in a huge policy reversal our protagonist the catholic church suddenly decided that in fact it cannot be known when the soul is implanted, but merely the potentiality exist from conception, and the soul appears at a undetermined date by divine hand (as they do not believe the immaterial soul can be created from the material gametes, only god can create the immaterial.)
We must then move on to monism.
This holds it true that the person and the soul and an entity in one, a belief also started by the ancient Greeks, and recently adopted by the newer religions (i.e Protestantism)
The soul, as it is actually part of the person must therefore if it cannot be implanted be there from birth, and therefore from conception the soul is present and thus the zygote --> embryo --> foetus, are all human.
So concluding that the soul makes a person in fact human, and at some time during the pregnancy the ‘foetus’ comes to be in possession of a soul, or it already has one, and thus becomes/is human.
How can we then Justify (being the key word) removing and by proxy destroying the foetus.
The Violinist Example
Let us say one day that one day you awake to find yourself in a bed lying on your side and to your horror physical and atomically connected to another person via your back.
You quickly catch site of a doctor whom upon realising you are awake begins to apologise profusely. He explains the events that have transpired up to this point, it appears that the person you are connected to is a extremely famous and talented violinist with a rare kidney disorder, the international society of music lovers has canvassed the medical records of everyone it could possibly find, and among them all you alone has the exact blood type and other factors that are necessitated by the procedure, and so you have been kidnapped and hooked up to this violinist. The doctor again profusely apologises and explains that within 9 months your kidneys will have cured the violinist of his ailment and you can both be disconnected with no loss of life, however this will mean that for the next 9 month you will have to be constantly connected to this violinist with the obvious limitations this will bring on your life. You can see that you could disconnected yourself with little harm to your self, but this would clearly kill the violinist.
It is clear that waiting the 9 months would be the ‘nice’ or ‘good’ thing to do, but that’s not what we are here for, we are about justification. Would you be Justified in removing this uninvited violinist from your self, knowing that he will die but at the same time restoring your own welfare.
Yes, you are, its not the nice thing to do, but from an objectively moral standpoint, its justified.
I hope the anecdote needs no further explanation in its relation to abortion.
That’s option 1 brought to a satisfactory conclusion I hope.
I will post the second part of my article later assuming my collage havent banned ns again (the bastards!), if not see ya in five weeks.