Does a pregnant woman carry a human being/person or just 'life'/meat?

Abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, Just War theory and other such hot topics.

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Sculptor
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Re: gaffo

Post by Sculptor »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:58 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:28 pm Since we can't even agree ON THIS forum what rights the unborn, if any, should have, why would you stupidly think that these things are universal??
You think "universal" means "universally accepted and acclaimed"? Nope. Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes they're right. But right and wrong about facts doesn't depend on their consensus. It depends on what's true in reality.
Matters of fact only relate to qualities that are not socially or subjectively defined.
People have been telling you this for some time but you seem utterly incapable of understanding the most simple things.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: gaffo

Post by Immanuel Can »

Sculptor wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:19 pm Matters of fact only relate to qualities that are not socially or subjectively defined.
Right. Well, the ontological status of a human being is not socially defined. That's what I'm pointing out. The "social definition" idea isn't sensible. In fact, all it does is open the door to abuses. That's all it has ever done.
Skepdick
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Re: gaffo

Post by Skepdick »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:10 pm Right. Well, the ontological status of a human being is not socially defined. That's what I'm pointing out. The "social definition" idea isn't sensible. In fact, all it does is open the door to abuses. That's all it has ever done.
So you (the social animal) are going to re-define the ontological status of a human being in a language that develops and evolves via social interaction, and then you will convince society to buy into your new definition.

And that would totally free the ontological status of a human from being a social definition.

You really are delusional.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: gaffo

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:20 pm So you (the social animal) are going to re-define the ontological status of a human being
No. That's the point -- it cannot be done. A baby is what a baby is. Nobody's opinion is going to change that, whether mine, yours or a whole group's. But Sculptor thinks it will. He thinks a "person" is only as much a person as some group of people want him to be.
And that would totally free the ontological status of a human from being a social definition.
Now you've got it.

A rock is a rock, no matter what you believe it is. A tree is a tree, no matter if you think it's your mother. A dog is a dog, a cat is a cat. Poison remains poison, even if you think it's ambrosia. And a person is a person, no matter what anybody else thinks.

It may be that that Nazi German society defined Jews, Poles, gypsies and the handicapped as non-persons. But their agreement on that didn't make it true. It just made Nazis wrong. And evil.

Meanwhile, social agreement is nowhere near so unproblematic as Sculptor would like to tell himself. Few societies today are anything close to ideologically homogeneous or unanimous on questions of who counts as a person and who doesn't. So this allegedly single-minded "society," or "my society" that has a single opinion is simply a myth. No such thing exists, and social constituencies disagree.

And yet some still talk about "social definitions" of personhood, as if the idea were plausible, or even coherent?

What nonsense.
Skepdick
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Re: gaffo

Post by Skepdick »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:36 pm No. That's the point -- it cannot be done. A baby is what a baby is.
A grobmunf is what a grobmunf is also.

A vacuous, verbal foot-stomping that tells you absolutely nothing about the nature of a 'grobmunf'.

Because all human knowledge and all ontologies are socially constructed.
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:36 pm Nobody's opinion is going to change that, whether mine, yours or a whole group's.
You mis-understand the problem. It's not that social opinion is going to change what a 'grobmunf' is.

It's that nobody in your society knows what a grobmunf is until at least one person invents a meaning for that word and teaches it to the rest of you.

You are taking language for granted. Words don't invent themselves. Somebody, somewhen, somewhere contrived/used the word 'baby' for the first time.
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henry quirk
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grobmunf

Post by henry quirk »

C'mon, guy: we're not takin' talkin' about some made up bullshit, and we're not talkin' about placeholders.

We're talkin' about 'personhood': is it intrinsic or bestowed?

Is a person a person cuz his personhood is intrinsic to him (whether others acknowledge that personhood is irrelevant in context of this discussion), or is a person only a person when other folks say he is?

Start there. Leave off with all the 'socially-constructed' stuff.

You know what's bein' discussed here, so stop paradin' your fine brain around.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: gaffo

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:21 am A grobmunf is what a grobmunf is also.
No, a "grobmunf" is a nonsense word. It signifies nothing at all.
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Re: gaffo

Post by Skepdick »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:38 am
Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:21 am A grobmunf is what a grobmunf is also.
No, a "grobmunf" is a nonsense word. It signifies nothing at all.
Oh yeah? And when exactly was the nonsense word "baby" SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED to signify something?
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henry quirk
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Re: gaffo

Post by henry quirk »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:44 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:38 am
Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:21 am A grobmunf is what a grobmunf is also.
No, a "grobmunf" is a nonsense word. It signifies nothing at all.
Oh yeah? And what did the word "baby" signify before it was SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED to signify something?
doesn't matter. now, we all know what the placeholder 'baby' stands for.

c'mon, guy...
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Immanuel Can
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Re: gaffo

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:44 am Oh yeah? And when exactly was the nonsense word "baby" SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED to signify something?
"Person" was the word Sculptor chose to use. The OP uses "human being." "Baby" signifies a human in a particular stage of development. But if we had no word "baby," that would not imply we had no real "babies." All we would lack is the word so explain what was genuinely the case. So the word itself might be socially constructed, but the ontological being to which that word was socially-constructed to refer is not. The word was an attempt to grapple with the existing reality; the invention of the word did not MAKE the reality.
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Re: gaffo

Post by Skepdick »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:03 am "Baby" signifies a human in a particular stage of development. But if we had no word "baby," that would not imply we had no real "babies.
Ontologically speaking - that's exactly what it would mean.

You would have real humans. You wouldn't have real babies. And you wouldn't be able to speak about the differences between "baby" and a "full grown human"
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:03 am So the word itself might be socially constructed, but the ontological being to which that word was socially-constructed to refer is not. The word was an attempt to grapple with the existing reality; the invention of the word did not MAKE the reality.
But the word "human", "person" and "baby" all refer to the exact same real-world entity. Are you telling me you have 3 ontologies?

Is it a human, person or a baby? All three? What!
Last edited by Skepdick on Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: gaffo

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:10 am Ontologically speaking - that's exactly wha it would mean.
No, linguistically speaking, it would mean we lacked a word to explain the thing we were observing, a baby. Ontologically speaking, it would make no difference at all: it would not mean we lacked a baby.
Skepdick
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Re: gaffo

Post by Skepdick »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:11 am No, linguistically speaking, it would mean we lacked a word to explain the thing we were observing, a baby.
So you are observing neither a human nor a person?
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:11 am Ontologically speaking, it would make no difference at all: it would not mean we lacked a baby.
But it would mean you lacked a human or a person.

Unless you are claiming 3 different ontologies/realities.
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henry quirk
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"But it would mean you lacked a human or a person"

Post by henry quirk »

No, we'd just lack the placeholder(s), not the thing the placeholder signfies.
Skepdick
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Re: "But it would mean you lacked a human or a person"

Post by Skepdick »

henry quirk wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:22 am No, we'd just lack the placeholder(s), not the thing the placeholder signfies.
You have three placeholders for the same thing: baby, human, person.

Which one of those three placeholders signifies the thing?
Which one is the real placeholder for the thing??

Language is abstract. All of it.
Last edited by Skepdick on Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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