Ryan, I’d be happy to respond to your points.
This should be fun. First of all, you can call me Ash.
Prove a fetus has rights: A fetus is a human being. A Human being has rights. Therefore a fetus has rights.
There is the proof. Now if you want to argue that a fetus is not in fact a human being then it’s up to you to provide the proof, or change your definition of a human being. The fetus is part of a human’s normal development. The only thing which separates them is a span of time.
You’re ignoring here what it is about human beings that gives rise to the concept of “rights”: their capacity for reason. Now, by your own previous admission, a fetus has only the potential for reason. This means, as I stated before (and which point you have still not really answered), that they do not yet actually have that capacity–and therefore do not yet actually have rights. If it is the capacity for reason which gives people rights, then on what grounds to you claim they have rights absent that capacity? You may call this question “disingenuous” if you like, but it is a serious (and I think fairly straightforward) objection which you must answer.
In short, your “proof” is lacking a few critical steps, and your conclusion is therefore a non sequitur.
Unlikely we will ever know when consciousness begins: You are right. I should ahve said. There is no way to know if a being is conscious. Logic dictates that is up to the person attempting to prove the positive who need sot supply the arguement. This is a central tenent also of Objectivism. See Peikoff’s lecture on aynrand.org to hear it in his words.
What the hell is this Wittgensteinian nonsense? First of all, we certainly can know that a being is conscious. It is an inductive generalization that begins with our own direct, introspective awareness of our own consciousness, and subsumes other, similar creatures (such as other human beings). If you think that we have no way to know that a being is conscious, then on what basis do you say that any other people are rational, and therefore that they have rights? You have undercut your whole anti-abortion argument, because based on this reasoning, you could presumably reach the conclusion that murder is not wrong at all, not only as applied to fetuses, but to anyone.
Also, it’s just funny that you are invoking the burden of proof principle, seeing as how you ignore it in your anti-abortion argument. You claim a positive–that a fetus is a human being with rights–and then tell us that we have to _dis_prove it. You are a bloody hypocrite.
killing babies: Is is not the main issue, but it is relevant. If there where an objective measure for consciousness, and such a measure told us that babies are not conscious until some time after they are born, would you then be unopposed to infanticide? If not, you are not being intellectually honest, right?
If we knew that infants were not conscious until sometime after birth, I would have no problem with infanticide. How’s that for intellectually honest?
However, as indicated above, there is plenty of objective evidence that they are in fact conscious. (Whether that consciousness is yet conceptual or not and whether or not that makes a difference is another question, but one that I suppose does not need to be addressed here, since it is apparently not within your range.)
Anyway, this question still isn’t relevant.
Potential for Reason: There is no contradiction here. One can as ‘potential for a quality’ as being the disinguishing caracteristic for a certain property as the actual posesion of that quality without breakign any logical rules. If i may amke an annology: ‘The rookie’s potential for being a great player was what gave him the right to be on the football team’ Surely you would argue there is nothing intrinsicly illogical about that situation would you?
Oh, please. You have a seriously deficient understanding of the relationship of the potential and the actual. Your analogy is, well, disanalogous. Here’s a more appropriate analogy, see if you still think it logically follows: “The fetus’s potential for being a great player was what gave it the ‘right’ to be, as a fetus, on the football team.”
Don’t be absurd.
Additionally, potential for a quality is argueably even more important than a smaller measure of the quantity ‘right now.’ For instance, as mentioned earlier, certain chimps and other primates posess a level of reasoning, and have been able to solve all sorts of problems. At times they can even demontrate a greater reasoning ability than a small child. However, this does not put the chimp on the same level as the child. The child posses the potential for a much greater sort of reaosn than the chimp could ever achieve, and this is what sets them apart. I would be surprised if you didn’t agree with me on this point.
And a crow has the ability to count to three–but in a non-conceptual way, of course. I’m not so sure that a chimp’s ability to solve simple problems means that it in fact has the capacity for reason, in the full conceptual sense of the term. I think that the difference between chimp and man (as between crow and man) may still be qualitative, not just quantitative.
But this is again beside the point.
Disagreeing with the creator: I phrased this section’s name in that way intentionally, the irony should be apparent.
Oh yes, how ironic. Aren’t you clever.
No, even if you agree with one of the central tenets–such as the virtue of independence, and the fact that one must think for oneself–if you disagree with other parts of the philosophy then it is intellectually dishonest to label yourself as an adherent of that philosophy. It is an express contradiction (and therefore, another violation of that philosophy): I am an Objectivist (i.e., one who agrees with the philosophy of Objectivism), and I disagree with (some parts of) Objectivism. To call ideas that Ayn Rand disagreed with, such as your “pro-life” stance, Objectivist, is to misrepresent Ayn Rand’s ideas.
If you want to truly think for yourself and be intellectually independent, then simply do not call yourself what you are not. Give credit to the parts of the philosophy with which you agree, and then be honest and say that you do not fully agree with it. Not just that you disagree with Ayn Rand, but that you are in disagreement with the philosophy. Since you don’t agree with it, why are you so desperate to label your ideas as Objectivist? That’s intellectual parasitism, not independence.
I ask two things of your next reply. Please refrain from the disingenuous questions, it only detracts from the quality of the debate. Secondly, I’ve yet to hear anybody elses’ views on this issue yet. Perhaps Ryan, sharing with me your stance on this issue and how you arrived at it would be the best way of convincing me that you are correct.
I ask two things of your next reply. Please refrain from mislabeling my arguments (unless you’d like to point out exactly which of my questions were “disingenuous”, and why), it’s an ad hominem fallacy and detracts from the quality of the debate. Secondly, give my objections the respect of an honest answer, rather than simply repeating what you’ve already said (e.g., your “proof” that a fetus has rights contained nothing new and was simply a repetition of the fallacious logical chain to which I was objecting in the first place).
Tangentially, how I arrived at my stance on the issue is completely irrelevant, and could only serve the purpose of providing you with material for psychologizing and more ad hominem attacks. Try addressing my actual arguments.
