Justifying Infanticide

[palerider]

So where is it? If a fetus felt pain, that would certainly be something I would be troubled and concerned about.

There are those who are born without the ability to feel pain and will never feel pain. Do you believe you can rightly kill them because they don't feel pain or do you believe that because they can't feel pain that somehow they are not human beings?

The problem with your attempt to redefine what is and isn't a human being is that any attempt on your part is going to exclude people that you didn't mean to exclude and any definition that excludes the very thing it is attempting to define is invalid. If you can't make your argument using actual definitions, then perhaps you should re examine your position.

 

[palerider]

Anti-abortionsits are duplicitous.

They don't care about a few cells with no brain even though he is the president.

They just pretend to be all outraged to show how pious they are.

As I have said before, they don't mind execution and war so it is impossible to take them seriously.

More logical fallacy. Tell me, have you ever made a rational argument in your entire life?

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

That's all you say.

You don't respond explaining this alleged logical fallacy.

Because there isn't one and you are a hypocrite just trying to be pious +.

Bible bashers would call you a Pharisee.

 

[palerider]

That's all you say.

You don't respond explaining this alleged logical fallacy.

Because there isn't one and you are a hypocrite just trying to be pious +.

Bible bashers would call you a Pharisee.

I have explained it but for you here:

https://www.houseofpolitics.com/forum/showpost.php?p=62222&postcount=86

I will explain it again. Your injection of Iraq, or war into the topic of abortion is a red herring. What anyone does or doesn't believe or think about war has absolutely nothing to do with the facts of abortion.

If a person went to war zones and ate dead burned bodies, that person could still argue against abortion as they are two different things.

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.

 

[Federal Farmer]

More logical fallacy. Tell me, have you ever made a rational argument in your entire life?

If he/she/it has, I've never seen it!

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

I know what a red herring is.

Despite your ramblings it is impossible to take seriously the views of those who claim to be pro-life when it comes to the foetus but so acceptant of murder when it comes to issues such as war and execution.

It is called hypocrisy and I won't define it for you. I am sure you are self aware of what it means.

 

[palerider]

I know what a red herring is.

Despite your ramblings it is impossible to take seriously the views of those who claim to be pro-life when it comes to the foetus but so acceptant of murder when it comes to issues such as war and execution.

It is called hypocrisy and I won't define it for you. I am sure you are self aware of what it means.

Hypocricy, even if you can prove it, has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion and in no way changes the facts as they apply to abortion. If you are unable to argue abortion based on the facts as they apply to the subject, then why do you even bother. It is clear that you can't defend your postion so why enter the discussion?

As far as execution goes, if you give each and every child his or her day in court, and the requisite appeals and prove beyond a reasonable doubt why they should forfiet their life, you won't hear another peep from me on the subject. War is an issue between governments and decided by governments and in no way applies to discussions of actions taken between individuals.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

So you don't mind innocent people being executed.

Pro-life?

What a joke.

You have been busted you mentalist.

Now get back on your soap box and rant about the rights of the foetus to show how pious you are.

 

[palerider]

So you don't mind innocent people being executed.

I didn't say that I don't mind, but human beings are fallable. I would like to see a higher standard of proof in capital cases.

Pro-life?

I am anti abortion on demand.

You have been busted you mentalist.

Someday, I may be busted. But it won't be the likes of you who does it. It will be someone who has researched the subject even more exaustively than me and has at their command a far greater knowledge base than I.

You bust me? You don't have a chance. You have brought a knife to an intellectual gunfight.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

You said that if a court convicted someone and then they were executed you wouldn't mind.

Would you mind being executed for a crime you didn't commit or would you object in yet another act of hypocrisy. I expect you are probably pro your own life.

And eveni if the accused is guilty I thought you were pro-life so why would you want them killed?

You are not pro life.

You are a nasty piece of work who wants to appear pious.

You are a typical christian

 

[palerider]

You said that if a court convicted someone and then they were executed you wouldn't mind.

Bring my quote foreward. I am sure that we will se that you are being dishonest.

Would you mind being executed for a crime you didn't commit or would you object in yet another act of hypocrisy. I expect you are probably pro your own life.

I wouldn't mind as much as if another individual summarily took my life without legal review and without legal consequence for any reason that they chose.

And eveni if the accused is guilty I thought you were pro-life so why would you want them killed?

Again, you don't seem to be able to comprehend the words that I am writing. I said as clearly as I could that I am anti abortion on demand. Which part of that are you having a problem understanding.

You are a nasty piece of work who wants to appear pious.

And you are a pitiful case who has yet to make a single rational argument in defense of your postion.

 

[Agnapostate]

There are those who are born without the ability to feel pain and will never feel pain. Do you believe you can rightly kill them because they don't feel pain or do you believe that because they can't feel pain that somehow they are not human beings?

The problem with your attempt to redefine what is and isn't a human being is that any attempt on your part is going to exclude people that you didn't mean to exclude and any definition that excludes the very thing it is attempting to define is invalid. If you can't make your argument using actual definitions, then perhaps you should re examine your position.

This post does nothing but illustrate your extreme inability to comprehend logical arguments. I never attempted to redefine the meaning of a "human being," as you would very well know had you read my post in its entirety.

Killing persons who possess a physiological inability to feel pain is not a morally acceptable course of action because they presumably have an interest in continuing their lives, and it is morally wrong to deny the interests of a rational moral agent.

You hold that personhood is based on membership in the human species. But I hold the converse position that species membership is an arbitrary distinction such as race or sex when it comes to the issue of equal consideration of interests. This is because nonhuman animals are self-aware and are able to suffer in the same manner that humans are.

Self-awareness has traditionally been considered an essential trait of personhood, as most firmly established by Enlightenment principles.

Western Philosophers have expounded on every dimension — from the purely analytical to the metaphysical — in discourses on personhood. Conceptually, a person is defined by the characteristics of reasoning, consciousness, and persistent personal identity. The English philosopher John Locke defined a person as "a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it" [4].

According to Boethius:

Person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights.[citation needed] John Locke emphasized the idea of a living being that is conscious of itself as persisting over time (and hence able to have conscious preferences about its own future).

In a Lockean approach, some criteria a person might be required to have in order to be a person are one or more of the following:

Consciousness,
The ability to steer one's attention and action purposively,
Self-awareness, self-bonded to objectivities (existing independently of the subject's perception of it),
Self as longitudinal thematic identity, one's biographic identity.
Neo-Kantian philosophers over the last two decades have emphasized that conscious awareness requires both:
The sensorial capacity to access an environment (and one's own body) in a way that offers the basic qualitative content for subjective experience.
The intellectual capacity to conceptually interpret sensorial content as representing some thing to oneself.
Both of these capacities are required for a subject of experience, action, thought, or self-reflection to exist, at least in the physically embodied, world-accessing manner of humans (and presumably other intelligent animals). As Kant wrote:

Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. [5].

The reason for this is that creatures or objects that lack self-awareness are incapable of suffering. Suffering, of course, leads to pain, and the avoidance of pain is a natural biological imperative. It is for this reason that we do not consider it immoral to kick a stone down the road, but consider it quite immoral to do the same thing to a puppy. The stone is not a self-aware creature that is capable of suffering and feeling pain, while the puppy is.

Thus, it is not logical to hold that the infant that is not self-aware nor has the capacity to ever become self-aware should be granted the equal consideration of interests that is granted to self-aware beings simply because the infant is a member of the human species.

 

[Bunz]

Ill chime in on a few things here. Firstly, I think there needs to be some clear definitions involved in what should be a larger socially political discussion that does nothing but go around circles in DC.

I am one who thinks it should be left up to the states. Besides that, there should be some limits on partial birth practices. But I am one who thinks that the decision concerning abortion/euthanisia is best left up to the families and health care professionals directly involved.

 

[palerider]

Killing persons who possess a physiological inability to feel pain is not a morally acceptable course of action because they presumably have an interest in continuing their lives, and it is morally wrong to deny the interests of a rational moral agent.

The fact of life itself demonstrates an interest in its continuation. If there were no interest in the continuation of life, there would be no life.

Self-awareness has traditionally been considered an essential trait of personhood, as most firmly established by Enlightenment principles.

Name a bright line moment when you believe self awareness happens and can be designated as a time, before which, no self aware human being will be arbitrarily killed by another individual without judicial review and without legal consequence.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

There are lots of grey areas that do not prevent us from talking about black and white.

When does day become night?

Are you saying there isn't any day or night because you can't say when one stops and the other starts?