Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:32 pm
henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2019 2:57 pm
"Your argument seems to be: people don't want to die, so killing people is morally wrong."
Well, if 'morality' is subjective, has no grounding in reality, is just consensus or is just majority-determined: then 'morality' literally is what the majority sez it is, yeah? If the majority choose to respect what seems to be the natural and normal desire of individuals to 'be', then killing folks will deemed 'wrong' or 'immoral'.
If that same majority, however, chooses to disregard the individual's desire to 'be': killing folks may be viewed neutrally, or even as beneficial; might be taken as 'moral'. Not seein' how such a community can survive, but people in masses are sometimes the worst kind of jackasses.
That's how it seems to me (but, I'm a moral objectivist lookin' in from outside, so I might be wrong in how hiw I assess these things).
Why does 'subjective' mean 'having no grounding in reality'? Isn't the social reality we all subjectively experience real? What a strange idea.
Subjective morality doesn't mean majoritarianism. Again, what a strange idea. Why should it? Why should what any people think is morally good necessarily be morally good?
You claim to be a moral objectivist, which I assume means you think there are moral facts or truths, independent of opinion. Please can you produce an example and show how it describes a feature of reality correctly, independent of opinion - which is what a fact does? If you can't - and I don't believe you can - then I don't understand why you think there are moral facts.
We can think there are moral facts because, first, our moral opinions matter deeply to us; and second, our moral opinions are usually universal - not restricted to place and time - if we think slavery is wrong, then we think it always was and will be wrong.
Dear Henry/Peter,
I'm a moral objectivist (moral realist) like Henry, and I think their are some serious contradictions in Peter's points of view on the subject. I will try to explain them in what follows.
As this is a thread dealing with the morality of abortion, let me introduce my defence of moral objectivism with the following opinion...
I think that if I were to raise the topic of abortion as a talking point at any dinner party in polite society where I was a guest, it would be regarded by all present as either very bad manners or concrete evidence of arrant stupidity.(Kind of like farting loudly in church during the vicar's sermon on prudence and self-restraint, only worse) The reason is that all normal, rational, civilised adults know for a fact that abortion is morally wrong - that it is a dark, diabolical and profoundly tragic business (literally). At the same time, they know that the abortion industry in their own country, the United States, is killing hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, and not uncommonly killing them in circumstances that would set the mind of even "Jack the Ripper" recoiling in horror. Thus, abortion is not merely a dreadful fiction, it is an all too real and shameful fact, and that is why in social situations like a dinner party or which are organised with the intention of having guests to enjoy a pleasant evening, the topic is taboo.
As a matter of fact, it seems to me that unless the morality of abortion is a topic that is being discussed by philosophy professors and their students in ethics courses at college, or, is being debated by members of the clergy or students of theology, or crops up as a topic for discussion on an internet forum thread like this one, where obviously, those who participate in the dialogue are happy debate the issues, it seems to me that the entire question of abortion is conscientiously avoided by the majority of members of the general public. Even the abortion industry itself, dares not speak it own name, referring to its abortion clinics by any number emollient and benign euphemisms including : "Planned Parenthood", "Centre for Women's' Reproductive Health", "Women's Fertility Clinic" and such like. But this is just the surface layer of the kind of subterfuge and chicanery these organisations are engaged in.
To give an example of what I mean, the ironically-named "Planned Parenthood" organisation, which , if memory serves is the largest of American abortion providers was exposed recently employing extremely devious/ deceptive/misleading "accounting" tactics to disguise the actual number of abortions it performed. It had claimed that abortions accounted for only 3% of the medical procedures it carried out. They had invented a devious system whereby any and all minor interactions with staff a woman seeking an abortion had were recorded. For example: arriving at the clinic, meeting a doctor, and requesting an abortion = 1 "occasion of service"; requesting some pain-killing paracetamol tablet for a headache = 1 "occasion of service"; the actual abortion procedure itself = 1 "occasion of service"; being written a prescription to have filled upon leaving the clinic after having an abortion = 1 "occasion of service" and so on. Fortunately "Planned Parenthood", were caught by an investigative journalist engaging in this obscene skulduggery and the truth that they were too afraid/ashamed to admit, namely, the fact that performing abortions is by far the largest part of their business (that, and selling aborted babies body parts: eyes, livers, intestines, and other tissue) has been revealed.
So why did "Planned Parenthood go to such lengths to cover up the reality of what they were doing? Why did they LIE (and let's face it, that's effectively what they were doing) to the public and the regulatory authorities? I'll tell you why; it was because they- the human vermin that work in these places - all knew for a concrete, cold FACT that what they were doing was MORALLY WRONG. They knew that it was an OBJECTIVE TRUTH that killing innocent human being is a profoundly IMMORAL (WICKED) thing to do. THAT'S WHY.Take a look at your wristwatch... every 90 seconds "Planned Parenthood" kills a baby - but "Planned Parenthood" is just one of the organisations currently operating in the US abortion market - so let's cut that 90 seconds down to 60 seconds. How do you feel about that?
INTUITION and THE MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY OF ABORTION
To begin with, In an earlier post on this thread I argued that from the moment a human male sperm cell fertilises a human female ovum a unique individual living human being exists. If you wish to dispute this, then the mainstream Western scientific establishment will tell you that you are simply wrong, and a mountain of empirical evidence has been collected to prove for a objective, scientific FACT that you are wrong. You might as well argue that the Earth is flat or that the Periodic Table is a hoax. They will tell you that this entire debate is concluded, - that it ended years ago, - and if you wish to enlighten yourself on the issue you should get off your butt and start reading the relevant literature. Secondly, In that same earlier post, I argued, from an ontological perspective that from the moment of fertilisation, not only does a living member of the species
homo sapiens exist, but that this biological organism also has genuine moral status as a person. I am not going to set out the later argument again here, if you wish to read it, or read it again, you can find it on p.30 of this thread.
Killing a living, human person
in utero is called abortion. It does not matter at what stage of its development ( fertilised ovum,zygote, morula, embryo, foetus, etc) the living human person is killed
in utero, killing it - terminating its life is morally wrong. (And) If you find it difficult to understand why a fertilised egg is a living human BEING/ PERSON, then for now, let's proceed by considering the case of aborting a second trimester foetus instead. If you are willing, I would like you - when it's convenient - to concentrate on imagining that you present in an abortion clinic observing this procedure being carried out up close. It is a surgical procedure, BTW and involves the use of instruments like forceps, surgical pliers, scissors and other hardware.(And, BTW, if you think 2nd trimester abortions are rare, think again) Try to envisage everything in detail in your mind's eye: the mother the abortionist, the medical instruments, the surgical theatre and so on. The exercise should take, say, 10 minutes... (?)
OK, I'll continue now, and presume that you have completed the mental exercise above.
If, you are a normal rational/reasonable adult, then in the process of imagining the abortion procedure you would have immediately and directly know that what you were "seeing" was WRONG, and also that the fact it was wrong was the TRUTH. The way you came to know this is through intuition. The kind of intuition I am talking about is described in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as...
"Immediate, (pre-logical/rational and pre-verbal) knowledge of the truth of a proposition, where "immediate" means "not preceded by inference."
Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher and theologian (1225-1274) was also referring to the kind of intuition I am speaking about when he wrote...
[i
]"A truth can come to mind in two ways, namely, as known in itself, and as known through another. What is known in itself is like a principle, and is perceived immediately by the mind... it is a firm and easy quality of mind which sees into principles."
[/i]
Intuited knowledge is
a priori knowledge that one has prior to sense experience; it emerges from the unconscious and is pre-logical and pre-verbal. The statement abortion is (morally) wrong is an intuitional truth, it requires no defence - no justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge. The reason is that this truth is not the kind of truth that is a result of reasoning step-wise to a conclusion. It is an obvious truth that no normal, rational person would deny.
INTUITION IS THE FOUNDATION OF MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Intuition is the basis of moral knowledge because if we were unable to know some facts about morality unless we knew why we knew them - that is, if we didn't have some things in place to begin with - then we couldn't know anything at all. We couldn't even start the task of discovery. Intuition is the foundation from which we start to know everything. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
[i
]"If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved."
[/i]
Aristotle put the same insight this way...
"Some, indeed, demand to have the law proved, but this is because they lack education; for it shows lack of education not to know of what we should require proof, and of what we should not. For it is quite impossible that everything should have a proof, the process would go on to infinity, so there would be no proof."
In other words, if it's always necessary to give a justification for everything we know, then knowledge would be impossible, because we could never answer an infinite series of questions. It is clear though, that we do know some things (e.g; "Thou shalt not kill) without having to go through the regress.
The intuitional moral knowledge, "Thou Shalt not Kill" (or in the case of abortion, "Thou Shalt not Kill the Unborn") can't be "proved" because, on this level of intuition no further analysis is possible. Certain moral rules like these and ,for example, rape is (morally) wrong or cruelty is (morally) wrong, are not conclusions that we reach, they are premises that we begin with. All moral knowledge must start with foundational concepts that can only be known by intuition. These are the kind of truths that any reasonable, normal rational person understands. So when I say that abortion,- because it is murder of the innocent is morally wrong - I do not carry the burden of proof, because this is a clear-cut example of moral truth; and anyone who fails to see this is a morally handicapped human being.
Kindest Regards
Dachshund WOOF, WOOF !!