Grames
-
Posts
4514 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
155
Posts posted by Grames
-
-
On 7/13/2022 at 6:52 PM, Easy Truth said:
Ultimately it is still based on emotion or the feelings it evokes "when it is recognized as a baby".
I disagree here, this is a conceptual identification. Any emotions follow after the identification is made.
-
On 7/10/2022 at 8:27 PM, tadmjones said:
What do you take as the ‘moment of birth’? A full term vaginal delivery ?
Birth can be a long drawn out affair but compared to the months preceding it is short. Please pardon the imprecision. To stop lawyers from claiming that birth hasn't happened so long as a toe remains inside it should to be counted from the first emergence of any body part.
-
On 7/7/2022 at 7:13 PM, Easy Truth said:
Me too, but I can only find an emotional response on my part. I can't back it up with a principle. It makes me cringe to see a baby looking thing pulled out like that. Nevertheless, I can't simply propose or support laws based on how it feels to me and that is my quandary. ...
On 7/7/2022 at 7:21 PM, tadmjones said:Why is the earlier the better ? ...
Given Rand's theory of concepts and Peikoff's speculation that induction is concept-formation in action then an explanation is available. The gradual growth and maturation of a single fertilized ovum to a born infant that is recognizably human with arms and legs, fingers and toes, a face and blood, breath and brain is similar to the "problem of the beard" that I described earlier this thread, or a version of the "ship of Theseus". At a certain point some internal epistemological threshold is crossed and a moment of recognition or induction occurs and the identification is made "that's a person". I don't think this under one's voluntary control. (Gathering evidence is under one's control but not the threshold of enough evidence.)
Earlier abortions are better because the less recognizably human the fetus is then the less likely it would be automatically identified as a person by the woman involved, or the father or the care providers.
Then there is the issue of differing levels of knowledge and context. There is the naïve or layperson perspective and then there is the scientifically and philosophically informed perspective. The layperson will typically have an unidentified premise of an ontological substance theory, that whatever makes up a person an infant has it and so must the fetus 5 minutes or 5 weeks before birth. A more informed perspective that has identified human consciousness as man's distinctive attribute and further that consciousness is a relation not an intrinsic attribute will understand the full significance of the moment of birth, that human consciousness only begins at the moment of emergence into the world. To the naïve perspective the informed perspective can seem just a cold-blooded and hard-hearted rationalization using those tricksy words. The bad news is that everyone has a subconscious mind that makes naïve automatized emotional associations, it is the default understanding of the world (hence "naïve").
So which perspective should write the law governing abortions? Should the mass of laypersons be ruled over by a law they do not understand and so cannot value? Should the mass of laypersons be sent to abortion re-education camps so they can learn to think correctly? Should we fight a war over abortion rights for the sake of uniformity in the name of the universality of rights or let people sort themselves out state by state?
The only way forward is education, a task which never can end as every new infant is born ignorant of everything.
-
1 hour ago, Eiuol said:
If you are not antiabortion, then what is your point?
Don't have sex with strangers. Link sex and romance by reserving sex for romantically significant others. Use contraception with planning and conscientiousness. Don't rely on abortion as contraception. These points are what pass for common sense among normal people.
- Jon Letendre and tadmjones
-
2
-
19 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
...
If the argument is that the parents were sluts, and therefore they should be forced to protect the child's birth, it should be spelled out as such so that it can be discussed. But is that the gist of the argument? Or is it that the parents should be punished for what they have done?
Let us say, it was a slut that made a mistake. Something they regret. What is the principle mandating the birth of the child?
There is no such principle, I am not myself anti-abortion. Ridicule of sluts is the only measure I advocate against self-righteous sluts. I also have no heartache over seeing states block elective abortions in the last trimester. The earlier the abortion, the better. "Safe , legal and rare" was a good catchphrase for abortion policy goals back in the Clinton years.
-
On 7/2/2022 at 10:27 PM, Eiuol said:
More like that they have a thing against sex for pleasure, so the only truly proper way to have sex is with procreation in mind. That way, if you need an abortion, that's your fault for having sex out of wedlock.
Even between sexual partners in a committed relationship most sex does not result in pregnancy, so this is not plausible. However a good heuristic for whether or not one should have sex with someone is if a pregnancy would be completely unacceptable then don't have the sex.
On 7/2/2022 at 10:27 PM, Eiuol said:It's sentences like these that make it hard to take your position seriously in this thread. As in, it sounds like sarcasm and you think it's hilarious
I confess, I think sluts are hilarious. Sluts and drunks (similar mentality) ought to be ridiculed at every opportunity. Not just because ridicule can be entertaining but it can be persuasive to get people to change their behavior.
-
On 7/2/2022 at 8:16 PM, Boydstun said:
May you remain alone and without family! you with the insolence upstream to pontificate that we gay people should not be allowed adoption of children.
That was not what I said, merely that it would be reasonable and understandable if a state were to bar gay adoption for the protection of children. I have since gained some finer grained knowledge of possibly the real problem: children with genetically unrelated male stepparents in the household have a many times greater risk of being abused or killed (not just the murdered but also those getting into danger due to less parental attention). The phenomenon has been named the "Cinderella effect".
People have sex for all kinds of reasons, including poor reasons. It is simply not the case that sex is always indicative of someone pursuing pleasure and love.
On 7/2/2022 at 8:16 PM, Boydstun said:"The Pill; the IUD; the condom—conspicuously absent from Mr. Grames' list of preventatives."
Did I make a list of preventatives? No, and why should I when the topic is abortion and contraception had already failed or was absent? Contraception is used by people of both sexes with some sense of responsibility and an extended time horizon in their thoughts, not the kind of anti-conceptual and range-of-the-moment mentality I was criticizing.
Perhaps you simply are not aware of potential scale of the problem. Most abortions are due to this mentality in action.
Abortion would be a less controversial issue if few cared about it. If only the 7.7% abortions with valid reasons took place there would a lot less people paying attention to the issue.
Of further interest on this sidebar is Gay Parenting: Promise and Pitfalls | Dave Rubin & Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
-
6 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
But isn't avoiding the consequence, having an abortion? Wouldn't that be the honest way to deal with it when a mistake has been made? (Not even taking the cases where it has been forced on the mother as in rape etc.)
"Avoiding the consequence" here is actually the mental evasion before the sex happened. A series of range-of-the-moment reactions is no way to go through life.
-
18 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Human brain is for improving nature,....
I am glad I was able to provide you the opportunity to repeat a favorite sermon but it isn't responsive to the point I made. Some, not all, but some of the energy on the pro-abortion side comes from women who really shouldn't be getting pregnant in the first place. I used the term slut-shaming and the responses come back about wives and fiancés. One night stands and casual friends-with-benefits sex are the acts that identify a slut. Those are not acts compatible with self-esteem or pride. Am I wrong?
-
7 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Have you been so fortunate as to have had a wife? Does she know you wrote that?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A man not getting enough sleep last night and dozing off at the wheel while driving home today AND NEGLECTING TO FASTEN HIS SEAT BELT OR HAVE A FUNCTIONING AIR BAG, fails to avoid the consequence of going through the windshield.
A woman voluntarily having penis-in-vagina sex . . . desiring to have that particular manner of sexual activity, AND NEGLECTING TO TAKE THE PILL; INSTALL IUD; DEMAND HER PARTNER PUT A RUBBER ON HIS WILLY, AND IF THAT RENDERS HIM WITHOUT AN ERECTION, GET A NEW PARTNER; OR WAIT UNTIL AFTER MENOPAUSE, thereby avoiding pregnancy, "is dishonest. Pregnancy is so easily avoided . . . " BEING BORN MALE OR BECOME ELDERLY.
The reason automobiles exist and the reason to get one is for transport, not killing the driver. The reason the reproductive faculties exist is reproduction and it is not a malfunction when reproductive activity results in reproduction. Taking a breath of clear air results in respiration. Eating good food results in digestion. Exactly where is the controversy?
To follow on with more biological examples, taking a breath of foul air does not result in respiration but a coughing fit and an urgent need to move toward good air. Eating rotten or poisoned food (even if it tasted good) does not result in digestion but regurgitation, sickness or even death. So then if sex, even good sex, results in an unwanted pregnancy then the maybe the sex wasn't such a good idea after all regardless of how it felt at the time. That is my modest proposal submitted for the consideration of all and sundry.
-
4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
The grounds for the judgments are relevant. Aren't a lot of anti-abortion people really anti-sex?
They are really against sexual promiscuity, not sex itself. That is like the difference between being in favor of selfishness in ethics versus being in favor of acting like Genghis Khan or a later Ottoman Empire Sultan.
-
On 6/29/2022 at 4:18 PM, Boydstun said:
When I talk of impressment for services, it means forced labor, which is slavery—like in military conscription, but for another sort of endeavor.
But a woman voluntarily had penis-in-vagina sex which is the only way to get pregnant. There is more than a little whining about the metaphysical facts of biology going on here (as opposed to man-made facts which are legitimately open to dispute). The combination of desiring to have that particular manner of sexual activity while also avoiding the potential consequence is dishonest. Pregnancy is so easily avoided (trivially so, just don't do that one thing) that I suspect that it isn't really the underlying issue that is powering all the melodrama from the pro-abortion side. (There is also melodrama from the anti-abortion total ban side of the issue which is also childish but not my focus here.)
The idea or principle that one should not necessarily indulge every appetite or impulse as it strikes is apparently very threatening to some people at a psychological or sense-of-life level. That self-control is possible and virtuous is a very anti-egalitarian idea in a very egalitarian age. For some women the idea that somewhere someone does not approve of their life choices, that they are judged, is intolerable. To put the idea most succinctly, it's the slut shaming aspect of the issue that makes it so spicy.
-
On 6/24/2022 at 3:36 PM, Easy Truth said:
To distill it to the act of creating forced labor,
I never understood this "forced labor" angle.
-
12 hours ago, whYNOT said:
"That dangling is incredibly dangerous, and it's possible that it just caused Ukraine to experience the worst of all worlds: not receiving NATO protection while also enduring one of the most aggressive forms of Russian domination possible".
The msnbc story is cast as the U.S. mistreating Ukraine. Which is true but not equivalent to mistreating Russia. The story claims it was bad diplomacy to know Putin had decided to launch the invasion and do nothing. True enough. The story here is U.S. arrogance and incompetence in Ukraine not mistreatment of Russia.
-
50 minutes ago, whYNOT said:
and that a continuous conflict was being waged by Kyiv in part of the country which could be an eventual threat to Russia,
Russia mounted military exercises on the border of Ukraine every year since 2014. But this year something was different. A large portion of the Ukrainian army was already positioned facing the Donetsk and Luhansk, but not to defend Kiev. Putin claimed Ukraine was going to launch a military operation to pacify those areas. This is plausible. It seems that war was inevitable but Putin gained an advantage by attacking first. If Ukraine did its part to provoke this war then Ukraine does not have a moral high ground.
But don't blame NATO, or other countries for joining NATO.
-
16 minutes ago, whYNOT said:
But dropping a big context: Communism was renounced and denounced by the RF.
That policy had moral merit, then, but without ~an ideology~ Russia was not the great danger anymore.
Ah, good point to raise because this then gets back to the impact of geography upon politics (geopolitics). From the monarchy of Catherine the Great through the communist era to today under Putin there is an underlying logic to Russia's foreign policy. They have all been more similar than different judging by tracking where the armies march despite the much larger difference between monarchism and communism. Monarchism and communism are still both statism and collectivist in principle by an Objectivist critique.
Russia would have to change more radically than what Putin has brought to enable Russia to reach different conclusions of how Russian geography should effect its policies.
-
6 hours ago, whYNOT said:
I did not see invasions and occupation or few incursions by Moscow into ex-USSR states,
If you only start counting after the USSR collapsed that is cherry picking. The basis for the the anti-Russia attitudes goes back further than that. For Russia the period after the collapse of the USSR was one of extraordinary weakness. Russia did not take any actions against ex-USSR states because it could not. That was the time to invade Russia if anyone cared to, but no one did.
-
9 hours ago, whYNOT said:
Was Nato in fact ~goading~ some strong response from Moscow (a reaction that would retroactively "prove them correct")? - or - were they taking in further members, innocently unaware of Putin's 'encirclement paranoia'?
This latter is an impossibility unless the Nato people were unconscious.
America, France and Britain are not vulnerable to an equivalent paranoia, but Germany, Poland and Romania and the small countries are equally paranoid about Russian encroachment as Russia is about encirclement. Is one paranoia more important than the other? Not in some impartial god's view sense, and NATO is not in the business of being impartial.
I think western intelligence agencies and the U.S. State Dept. should have let Putin have the Ukraine and not contested it for the last decade. He's going to get it anyway because he is willing to fight for it and the west is not.
-
10 hours ago, whYNOT said:
His gambit could be two-pronged. If they actually had let in Russia (unlikely) one would think Putin would willingly accept and that would be a gain for the RF; If they didn't, his bluff would reveal that NATO was not as guileless and benevolent re: the RF as it wished to appear.
There is no need for the NATO charter to call out Russia specifically as an eternal enemy, that would just get in the way of peaceful coexistence. A decision not to engage in persistent taunting is not guile. A defensive alliance is not a benevolent organization, that was never a pretense. It is true that Russian expansionism was an ongoing threat against which NATO could act as an insurance policy, that is hardly a secret that Putin needed to confirm or reveal.
And even so the other justifications for NATO remain, the suppression of militarism and the encouragement of European political integration.
Russian expansionism was not a threat to the original NATO members, but it was a threat to the new members who were closer to Russia. It was rational and proper for those countries to decide to join NATO. It was rational and proper for the existing NATO members to allow them entry. Events have only proved them correct.
8 hours ago, whYNOT said:It is not "principled" to have wished for, continuously armed and boosted Victory for Ukraine. (Never a realistic outcome).
That support, predictably had and has only protracted and intensified the war, and raised far larger risks and worsened suffering for all involved and wider for the world.
I agree with you here. Russia appears willing to pay the price of victory, the western powers are unwilling to commit more than espionage, propaganda and inadequate amounts of military equipment. I don't think the western powers should commit more and never should have meddled in Ukraine in the first place. This entire affair is just getting people killed in Ukraine and the larger economic effects will put millions at risk of starvation in other parts of the world.
Poland and Romania are already in NATO. If Putin's special military operation succeeds beyond his stated goals and gains all of Ukraine as a Russian Federation member there is no realistic path beyond the Ukraine for any further military operations. NATO does not need Ukraine to be secure. Russia didn't need Ukraine to be secure either, but don't see things that way.
NATO does not need Finland (and Sweden) either, but since they have asked and are under a realistic threat then for the sake of peace Finland should be admitted to NATO or given unilateral security guarantees to discourage a Russian operation there.
-
4 hours ago, whYNOT said:
[From The Guardian]:
"Ex-Nato head says Putin wanted to join alliance early on in his rule".
"George Robertson recalls Russian president did not want to wait in line with ‘countries that don’t matter’
...
"Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join Nato but did not want his country to have to go through the usual application process and stand in line “with a lot of countries that don’t matter”, according to a former secretary general of the transatlantic alliance.
...
The account chimes with what Putin told the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out joining Nato “if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.
The idea of Russia joining NATO is either remarkably naïve or a gambit offered with an ulterior motive. That Putin of all people could be naïve is not plausible.
The larger an alliance is the more unwieldy it becomes. Too great of a diversity of interests causes the organization to only be able to respond to peripheral issues unimportant to all of them. Russia in NATO would diplomatically neutralize that alliance in cases where Russia itself were to cause controversy, much as both Turkey and Greece being in NATO removes NATO from Greek-Turkish disputes.
Russia having been admitted to NATO ahead of all those unimportant little countries would mean Russia could veto their admission. Russia could then act against them at its leisure and diplomatically prevent NATO from doing anything about it.
Russia could never be an equal partner in NATO without America accepting its demotion from de facto leader of the alliance. America would gain nothing from accepting such a displacement but would risk the loss of the long peace in Europe.
It was alarmingly insightful and bold of Putin to understand all this twenty years ago and attempt to achieve by diplomacy the neutralization of NATO even when Russia was at its weakest economically and militarily.
The economic integration of Russia with Europe has had some success. But the Euro community is feeling rather betrayed right now and Russia's gas lines supplying Europe are being used as leverage against sanctions.
Its been a pleasure working through these thoughts even if you remain unconvinced.
-
-
3 hours ago, whYNOT said:
...
Maybe, there were and are dyed-in-the-wool Russophobes in NATO who still smarted from the Cold War, looking for payback?
There are dyed-in-the-wool Russophobes in Poland and Romania who still remember Soviet domination, that is for sure. Also, while being on the lookout for western anti-Russian bigots lets not overlook the fact that Putin was the last KGB agent to leave and close the Berlin KGB station. I have largely the same convictions I had in my late twenties, how much has Putin changed?
Other reasons to keep NATO around:
- its continued existence prevents an EU army from manifesting
- it increases mutual diplomacy among all the members, even ones not sharing a border
- standardized military equipment costs less, standardized ammo benefits even more
- military incidents and accidents between forces are reduced due to common operating procedures
- if there were no NATO and no EU army a web of interlocking defense treaties would crop up, the treaty situation of Europe prior to World War I. That would be bad because then any small incident potentially becomes a World War.
Going to www.nato.int gets this quote:
In fact, the Alliance's creation was part of a broader effort to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration.
So even with the extinction of Soviet expansionism the other two purposes still apply. Russian expansionism is a lot less scary than Soviet expansionism I admit, but if you are Finland you still have a lot to think about.
-
3 hours ago, whYNOT said:
...
Comes to a point, Putin must explode.
And now - NATO can innocently justify how essential their existence was all along. "We told you Russia would still pose a threat!" (In effect).
Obversely, it seems to me the original causality might have eventuated from NATO.
I don't think so Tony, because this has been a very long game and reifies NATO into an entity with its own diplomatic strategy carried over 2 generations now. NATO has a rotating staff of people in the pay and uniforms of member countries, so those member countries are where to look for overarching strategies. Poland and Romania just don't want what Russia wants, and joining NATO means they won't have to accept what Russia wants. Poland and Romania, and the smaller countries, are players with their own interests and diplomatic strategies and are not merely territory captured by NATO. The expansion of NATO seems legitimate to me.
Ukraine with its divided population and the political espionage operations fomented by both sides is not a country with clear loyalty to east or west. Putin claims it is not a country at all.
-
19 hours ago, whYNOT said:
... if Putin advanced into the EU...
There is only one way Russia could be conflict with the EU and not also NATO.
Finland and Sweden are in the EU but not NATO. Turkey is vetoing Finland and Sweden entry into NATO. EU doesn't have an army. If Russia leans on or invades Finland and Sweden that would suffice for rationale to create an EU army and keep the U.S. vs Russia direct confrontation from happening. I would consider that a second worst case scenario, just behind a U.S. or NATO vs. Russia nuclear war.
When Russia was without Crimea and Black Sea ports perhaps Turkey could be evicted from NATO as more trouble than they are worth, but now that Russia has the Black Sea again Turkey is necessary again.
What Has the 'Pro-Life' Movement Won?
in Law
Posted
The value judgement here is that human life and human rights are good and valuable and should be nurtured and enabled to flourish. The value judgement applies immediately after the identification has been made that a human life is involved. Making the identification depends upon the definition of the concept. Having a clear definition of the concept using other concepts (genus, differentia, essential attribute) versus using an informal ostensive definition of what it means to be an actual living human is the difference between the Objectivist position and other positions.