Thinking and feeling aren't what define life

There should be a word for some being that can think and feel, but there is none.

Even though evidence DOES show that a fetus can think and feel...

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Gun control is giving criminals guns and taken guns away from law abiding citizens.

Well thats good because you lost and the discussion is over. Debate is like chess wolf and the central idea of your argument is like your king. In chess, when you are unable to defend your king, you lose. In a debate, when you are unable to defend the central idea of your argument, you lose. Simply stating over and over that unborns are not living human beings when there is overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary does not constitute a defense.

When you get in touch with reality and come to terms with the fact that unborns are living human beings, let me know. We can continue the debate and you can explain why it is ok to kill them.

Snide remarks don't constitute a defense either wolf. Do you know what worship is? Feel free to provide any evidence that I "worship" unborns. Again, this is an example of you not being able to defend the things you say. If you really have any interest in philosophy, you really should begin to consider the things you say and follow them to their logica ends.

There is a reason that neither you, nor lexi, nor peach, nor any other pro choicer have been able to defeat any part of my argument. I carefully consider what I am going to say and thoroughly research any claims that I make before I speak. I don't talk off the top of my head.

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"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma

Thespians tansform themselves into something less or something more or greater than what they actually are. They play to their audience and the audience inspires the transformation.

Art under the concept esthetics is a selective recreation of reality. Its purpose is to concretize an abstraction to bring an idea or emotion within the grasp of the observer.

Illusion does not constitute reality marmalade. Illusion is the basis of the pro choice argument. It isn't real. It assumes when actual fact is available. It lies, it distorts, and misrepresents. The pro choice argument is very much like theater and it isn't surprising at all that you would draw the paralell.

Once more. Can you actually change something in reality, by the application of a philosophical concept? Here, you are once again talking illusion which is not reality.

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"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma

what the hell are you saying? This mumbo jumbo help?
The Way of the Samurai: It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way (Tao).

Seriously though, why is this under the abortion section? More like metaphysics. The origin of metaphysics starts with Plato, and ends with Kant. All great philosophers after that are into way less stupid old Greek shit.

It is here because certain pro choicers wanted to get away from the superior scientific argument and believed that if they could get into the realm of philosophy, they could prove somehow that unborn human beings weren't acutally human beings. They failed as miserably here, as they did against the scientific argument.

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"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma

Oh, I'm willing to take on that challenge, thats a good one!
Lets skip past the "gay" Greek philosophers, and European philosophers in general. I like American philosophers (for obvious reasons, as I'm sure an American like yourself does too). To, say, Donald Davidson or Richard Rorty there is no such thing as an essential truth, an ultimate moral imperitive certainly does not exist in this situation. That is to say, and I think you'll be able to agree with this part, that it is within human possibilities to look at abortion from a number of different perspectives. Say, pro-life, and pro-choice, and an infinite number of variances on a theme (like people who are pro-life is some situations and pro-choice in others).
This begs, to me at least, a very crucial question, which is how, exactly, are all these humans coming up with different answers to the same question? We're all the same type of organism, surely our response should be similar? Do we not all respond to pain in the same way? Why not abortion?
I'd say, and these modern philosophers would agree, it is because of our vocabulary, because of the values we assign to words. To some people, abortions carry a moral weight, to them abortion is denoted with things like "life" and "babies". To others, abortions seem more casual, they use words like "remove" and "fetus".
Both groups uses similar tactics, they shroud themselves in other comfortable beliefs. They make reference to science, to religion, to rape. They obscure and dismantle the issues raised by their opposition.
The process is the same on every side of the issue. The reason why, and my final speculation, is simple. Its language, its an arbitrary assignment of sound to tangible and intangible subjects and objects which can be configured in an infinite number of ways to produce an infinite number of opinions and thoughts. Meaning, language, the tool we use together to define our society, the tool we use to define everything including ourselves, is not comprised of truths, of essential always true truths, just contingent words, concepts with origins, and their subsequent evolution.
Abortion is best seen as the right choice, because if you see abortion as okay, society will benefit. If you see abortion as wrong, society will continue to suffer through unwanted births. Its simply pragmatic to keep abortions legal, it isn't a moral imperative, it isn't right, nor is it wrong, its simply pragmatic, which is a far more substantive idea that morality.
Now, disprove my point. To do so, you need to prove that life is not without intrinsic meaning and that language is not the tool with which we give meaning. You have to prove that one equally arbitrary and random occurring idea can be more valid than another. You have to prove that there is something called right and wrong. Because, as these pragmatist philosophers would argue, the only "right" choice to be made is the one which serves society the best.

Interesting, and WOW!

There may be no essential truth, but there are facts. It is a fact that an unborn at any stage is a human being. It is a fact, that in this country, human beings have rights and it is a fact that a particular group of human beings is being denied their most basic human rights.

The way people view a reality, does not actually change the reality. Take any situation and ask any number of people what they saw or what they think they saw and you will get any number of variations but none of those variations can change the reality of that situation.


But we don't all think, or respond in the same way. Once again, human is they type of creature we are, not the degree to which we manifest our potential. Our responses, our analysis and reaction to any given set of circumstances will be the result of any number of variables in our individual lives up to the point in time that we respond.

In this particular debate, there are some facts that are simply undeniable. Unborns, at any stage of development are human beings. If you approach the abortion debate acknowledging the facts and frame your argument in acceptance of the facts, then you are making an honest argument and the entire character of the debate changes.

The bulk of the debate that you will find on the internet doesn't even get to the issue of whether or not killing unborn human beings is a good or bad thing. The bulk of the debate is spent cutting throught the stories that pro choicers (for the most part) tell themselves and attempt to tell others about what unborns are.

I would find it very difficult to argue abortion with one who states that they favor allowing women to kill their unborn children without legal consequence for any or no reason at all. We could have a real discussion over the constitutionality of the roe decision, or over the 14th amendment and how it demands due process for all of us, or even the legal requirement that in order to deny an individual or a group a right, law must be legislated that specifically enumerates which right is to be denied, from whom it is to be denied, and for what reason it is to be denied. But we wouldn't be dancing around playing word games involving trying to make a human being into someting other than a human being.

This goes back to reality. Unborns are what they are. We are human beings from the time we are concieved for we can be nothing else. Any set of words is fine so long as they are being used to describe what is rather than in an attempt to make something into something it isn't. If you use the word fetus to describe a particular part of a human being's life in the same manner as you would use toddler to describe a particular part of a human being's life then you are addressing reality.

If, on the other hand, you use the word fetus in an attempt to dehumanize a human being as if to be a fetus is to be something other than a human being, then you are doing the same thing a racist does when he uses words like nigger in an attempt to somehow decrease the humanity of a human being.

Hard science isn't a belief. If there were a great divide between different sides of the scientific community, then belief would be an issue as, for example, in the debate between those who view climate change as a natural phenomenon and those who beleive human beings are responsible. There is credible research aplenty to support the beliefs of those on either side of the issue. Scientists on each side are doing research, writing, and publishing every day.

With regard to whether or not unborns are living human beings, however, there is no such divide. Scientists aren't scabbling between themselves over whether or not we are human beings from the time we are concieved. Scientists deal in reality and they all agree that the offspring of two human beings is a human being at whatever stage of development it happens to be in. There is a debate over whether it is OK to kill them, or create them for the purpose of scientific experimentation but not over what they are. Evidence for this exists in the fact that there is not research coming from both sides over what they are.

(continued)

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"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma

(continuation)

Only if your aim is to avoid the reality. Among scientists, there is no attempt to sidestep reality. They all accept what is and build their arguments within the framework of what is real. Those who want to experiment on embryos accept that those embryos are human beings but they argue for the potential greater good of allowing the experimentation.

An infinite number of means to avoid the reality doesn't change the reality. An examination of the pro choice argument outside of science reveals that most of those who make the pro choice argument do indeed attempt to avoid the reality and they do this because to accept the reality would bring on some moral dilemmas within themselves that they simply don't want to face.

To admit that unborns are living human beings no matter what stage they are at would make very many pro choicers very uncomfortable in ways that they don't want to face. So they tell themselves stories and attempt to get others to join them in their stories as if getting enough people to agree will somehow change the reality which is that unborns are living human beings.

Society is an abstract concept and of course there are an infinite number of views to take with regard to society. The fact that we are human beings from the time we are concieved, however, is not an abstract concept and no amount of applied philosophy will ever change that. People who do not deal with that fact head on and structure their arguments either for or against abortion in acceptance of it are the source of most of the debate on the issue. This isn't so much a debate over whether abortion is right or wrong so much as an attempt to cut through the stories and get to the basic fact. It seems as though the pro choice argument is an elaborate dance designed to keep the dancer from ever having to look at the basic fact of their position because to do so would make keeping that position a very difficult proposition for them.

You may easily say that it isn't right or wrong so long as you can avoid acknowledgment of the fact that unborns are living human beings. So long as one can keep believing the stories, then it is easy to say that it is just pragmatism at work. To accept the fact that they are living human beings changes the issue a great deal.

If pragmatism is the ultimate, then one would serve society better if one were to support killing those whom we know beyond any doubt are a drain or a detrement to society. They are easliy idenifiable. We know who they are and we can calculate the good to society if they were eliminated. From a simply pragmatic point of view, it would be very foolish to advocate eliminating an unknown quantity that may be worthless or may be invaluable when a known bad quantity is easlily identifiable and if killing off the bad quantity is always an option, then once the unknown quantity is known, if it is found to be bad, it can be eliminated at that time.

Minds that fall into the 99th percentile are exceedingly rare. Those are the minds that can concieve of a means to make cold fusion a reality, or imagine a means to store solar energy more efficiently, or solve any number of problems that face humanity. Pragmatically speaking, any system that results in one in four minds being terminated before we know what sort of mind it is, when we know how rare the really great minds are is a system that isn't working. If pure pragmatism is the goal.

I am not sure what your point was unless you are saying that avoiding reality is ok if it makes you feel better. If you are arguing that you favor allowing women to kill their unborn children without legal consequence for any or no reason, then what can I say? We can debate the constitutionality of the proposition, but it would probably be a waste of time to debate the rightness or wrongness of it because that is largely subjective and can be argued effectively from both sides.

If, however, you are arguing that we are not living human beings from the time we are concieved and for that reason abortion is OK, then before we can actually discuss the issue, we are going to have to have a great long, and pointless argument over whether or not the offspring of two human beings can ever be something other than a human being. If you ever come to accept the reality then perhaps you can frame an argument supporting your position that killing them is ok but until we get past the story, no real discussion can take place.

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"It's not alive, It's not alive, It's not alive. Because I said it isnt', there's your proof jerk." ...lexi

"As far as your logical fallicy shit - shove it. I am a woman."...naturemomma