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The 8th Amendment Part 2 - Mod Warning in OP
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Not much being said we won't have to read, listen and look at in papers, radio and TV for the next couple of months, you can't report and get them all banned.
But its good to know,the boards.ie army of troll hunters is an all conquering army.
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Not much being said we won't have to read, listen and look at in papers, radio and TV for the next couple of months, you can't report and get them all banned.
But its good to know,the boards.ie army of troll hunters is an all conquering army.
One of the reasons I like Boards over other internet forums is because they have posting standards, regardless of the topic.
Not sure why you feel justified giving a snide comment?0 -
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bertieinexile wrote: »Because for a huge number of people out there, all those in the vast middle ground of this debate, their gut reaction on seeing ultrasounds like that and thinking about the child in the womb
Indeed, and I carefully wrote something in the post you are replying to in expectation of you bringing this up. When I wrote "I have ALL the same emotions and compulsions and biology as these people. I do not need to imagine myself in their position, I AM in their position."
Meaning I am not immune to the emotional responses one can get to images of this sort. And I am more aware of such images than most on this forum for other reasons relating to my education, training and background.
But what I also said was that despite having such emotive responses myself, I go one further and bring intellect to bear on the issue too. I can divide from emotional responses in general those that are not really warranted or are being triggered falsely and in a fashion that can mislead.
But you are right, there is little we can do about this other than inform people as best we can what is ACTUALLY going on in images like that, and try to undermine false narratives and concerns that are unwarranted. And in fact I have talked at length in some posts on this very thread about how we often work with women and miscarriages in exactly that way.... to tease out and divest them of false narratives that are causing them suffering..... and separating their concepts of babies from that of a fetus.
But we are an emotive species, and run on narrative. And therefore many people simply do not want their intuitions challenged, especially challenged well.
For example I have asked time and time again of people impressed by those little toes and fingers WHY they want to have moral and ethical concern towards that fetus. And they tell me phrases without substance. "Human Life". "Baby". "Unborn Child". Even Christopher Hitchens whom I believe to have brought his larger-than-mine-by-far intellect to bear on so many subjects, seemed to shut down his brain on the topic of abortion and espouse Anti-Choice views solely on the basis of the words "Unborn Child".
So I then ask those people if I could remove their consciousness from their brain and install it in the physical equivalent of a toaster, and they retained all their previous levels of sentience, consciousness, and capacity for happiness or suffering.... would I have to have moral and ethical concern for that toaster and it's well being. And if so why, and why would I have any ethical concern for the form left behind. The responses so far to this have been A) They run away or
They scream "irrelevant" and then run away.
And the reason is clear. Such challenges shine a light on EXACTLY what it is we value when we have moral and ethical concern. And it does so while pointing out that those things we ACTUALLY care about, rather than IMAGINE we care about..... are precisely the things the fetus in your little video there lacks. And this reality is, alas, one they are not prepared to accept.
But in deference to the single point you appear to be making here, I have said it before on this very thread I think..... I have predicted with confidence and accuracy many elections and events in the past years. I felt confident I knew which way elections were going to go and I was right every time. From Trump to Brexitt to SSM to scottish independence to what is going on in Spain and many more. I called them all. And this is the FIRST election where I find myself genuinely and completely unsure about it. I simply can not call it nor so I want to. I simply have no confidence in a result in either direction. I simply do not have that feeling I have had before of "I really feel I know where this is going".
Which is why I never engage with these posts or posters posturing their success before the fact on this thread. Some people on both sides are declaring victory already. And clearly ONE group of people is going to be left red faced, and the other completely forgetting what it is to be magnanimous and lording the victory over the former.bertieinexile wrote: »It is extrememly difficult to give a reductivist definition of the beginning of human personhood but after 35 years of trying would you agree that it's next to imposible to use that definition to snuff out the feeling someone else experiences when they see ultrasounds like the one above. Even if you wanted to.
Two things here.
The first is that no, I do not think it next to impossible to snuff out those feelings using the arguments and descriptions I use. And I know this because, as I said earlier in this very post we do EXACTLY that when counselling women who have had miscarriages. And with often very good results. We lead them to a point where they realise a lot of the source of their suffering comes from narratives that are in themselves false or unwarranted. And in this way we can mediate SOME of that suffering. You can read up on this. Simply google scholar papers on grief counselling with respect to miscarriage, and the concepts of "Loss of a baby" versus "Loss of a pregnancy". It is well documented.
The second is that thankfully for the subject of abortion we do not even NEED "a definition of the beginning of human personhood" at all. We just need firm definitions of when this has NOT occurred. Which is both more relevant AND easier to pin down as a concept. When you can show personhood has not even NEARLY begun in a fetus being terminated, then when it is going to begin becomes much less a concern.bertieinexile wrote: »I don't want to pin you down, or throw your words in your face, so feel free to modify, or backpedal, or just clear it up, but for me what's really important in that quote is "our young". At that point, maybe inadvertently, you seem to be allowing that the (my term) unborn child is one of us. We have fellow feeling. We recognise something.
No modification or back pedal required, just a clarification as I have failed to convey to you correctly what I meant when I talked about "our young". And what I meant when I wrote "We are pretty much evolved to want to protect our young.". When I clarify this you will understand why no modification or back pedal is required.
Here I was specifically referring to children actually born. We are evolved to have emotional responses to that young. We are programmed by evolution to respond to certain sights and sounds related to youth. Physical form, vulnerability, and much more. And this is a hyper sensitive programming to the point we actually respond in this way to the youth of OTHER species too. I myself am rendered silly by baby wolves and lions.
Then along comes human science and technology and allows us to look INTO The womb during development. Something evolution simply never prepped us for. And we see in such a fetus MUCH of what would trigger us in a fully developed actual baby. And our technology accentuates that effect through things like magnification. For example in your little video link there you get very little impression of the ACTUAL size of that fetus. It is TINY in reality. But watching that video one could very easily imagine a fully grown child, replete with little and fingers and toes, in ones hands.
Worse many people are prone to taking seriously or literally the artistic license of researchers into the fetus. For example we have a user about here who read a line in a study about playing music to the fetus. In an attempt to describe what the oral movements of the fetus LOOKED LIKE the researcher said it looks like "trying to speak". The emotional and unwarranted response of the boards user to this was to react to that as if the fetus actually WAS trying to speak. But most rational actors can tell the difference between "Looks like X" and "IS X". But not everyone.
So no there is no "one of us" narratives coming off what I wrote here. Sorry to disappoint Rather I am pointing out how things like medical technology are allowing triggers we normally have for "one of us" to be accessed at stages where they are not warranted, and were never really evolved into us. And I think you were on the right track with your line "Or I'm just imagining the whole thing.". I think you are.bertieinexile wrote: »I know you have rationalised your way out of this. I know your reductivist biological definition of personhood allows you to leave these important feelings aside (usually).
I would not say it allows me to leave them aside. Rather it inoculates me against false narratives taking hold in the first place that even need to be "left aside" at all. Also I think your phrasing it in that way has the effect, intentional or otherwise, of trying to straw man my position into one of bias. Like you think I am biased towards a pro-choice position and am then retrospectively "leaving anything aside" that conflicts with that.
Nothing could be further than the truth and in fact the only real bias I hold is the axiom of "Innocent until proven guilty" which I apply to concepts as well as people. In that if the termination of a fetus is to be indicted as an immoral act then it is up to those indicting it to make the case against it, not for me to somehow justify something that does not require justification at all. And if all I can do as my part of the pro-choice camp is to point out that such arguments are not forth coming then so be it. That is what I will do.
I also think rights.... and moral and ethical concern.... are in the business of mediating the actions of, and therefore the well being and freedoms of...... conscious and sentient creatures. As such it is generally TO (directly or indirectly) conscious and sentient creatures we are, and should be, affording those concerns.
The fetus at 0-16 weeks might have little toes and fingers and pull emotively at our evolutionary heart strings but when one realises this is NOT a conscious entity, it never has been one, and it is a distinct period of time away from ever being one..... one can still feel those heart strings but be inoculated against their influence. Emotion is not a bad thing, but emotion at the total expense of intellectual rigour is. Peoples moral and ethical concerns for such a fetus even in isolation is not warranted therefore..... but it is not in isolation we are considering it at all..... but in relation to the ACTUAL rights and concerns we afford to the very real and very sentient agent hosting it.0 -
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