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Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 3:25pmSanction this postReply
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Great essay!

I have to say this in jestful sincerity, but the thought had crossed my mind that liberal fascists couldn't -- without contradiction -- oppose rape (as you mentioned).

Rapists are getting something that they want from coercion. The debate about whether rape is sexual or just a crime of violence is not an effective argument-stopper here, because in the cases where it's just about violence (rather than about relieving one's sexual tensions), then one could just retort that some folks enjoy violence. In order for those who enjoy violence to be content or satisfied, there has got to be some victims.

Democratic socialism has no effective argument against that. If 51% of the people were people who enjoyed murder, then a true social democracy would have to make murder legal. The minute that a socialist says otherwise, she is appealing to objective principles (such as justice) and once objective principles get a foot in the door, then the whole argument cascades into eventual support of laissez faire. This is what Rand meant when she said she was primarily an advocate of Reason and, only via a secondary enterprise of noncontradictory integration, was she a Capitalist.

It's because logic necessarily leads to capitalism (rather than any other kind of social system) when one integrates what it means to be a human being with what it means to be in reality.

Ed


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Post 1

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 11:20amSanction this postReply
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Ed -- More precisely, "liberal fascists" would logically have to support rape if it was run as a government program to help the sexually less fortunate, while still imprisoning those entrepreneurial enough to privatize the sexual assault.

Of course, if they were capable of having this epiphany, they would quite being "liberal fascists."

Post 2

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 11:22amSanction this postReply
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If 51% of the people were people who enjoyed murder, then a true social democracy would have to make murder legal.

It's Thanksgiving, Ed. Let's not get into the abortion thing today, OK? :o)

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Post 3

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 11:40amSanction this postReply
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But I am happy to get into the right to abortion thing any time.  Until about the 23rd week of pregnancy abortion isn't homicide but the killing of a potential human being--kind of like killing caterpillars isn't butterfly killing.

Post 4

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 12:06pmSanction this postReply
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=============
... kind of like killing caterpillars isn't butterfly killing.
=============

And the reasoning extends indefinitely (once you let the idea of "potential" have any weight at all).

For instance, not only did you kill a potential butterfly, but you removed the potential "butterfly effect" of that butterfly flapping its wings and creating weather changes across the globe.

In that sense, killing a caterpillar could logically lead to someone being morally responsible for things like El Nino~.

And we will have to figure out a way to go back into time in order to understand all of the potential natural disasters that have occurred (and put people in jail for it) because someone killed a caterpillar and lowered the potential for a butterfly effect when one -- or a thousand of them, or a million of them -- was obviously needed within a weather cycle.

In order to avoid contradiction then, we would have to start tracing every potential thing back as far and as wide as we could -- in order to bring cosmic justice to the world. It's what has to happen when pitting the "potential" against the "actual."

Ed

Post 5

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 1:31pmSanction this postReply
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Who is pitting?  It's simply that if it is unjust to kill (innocent) human beings, it doesn't follow it is unjust to kill fetuses. Yes, fetuses are "human" in the way my nails are or spit is human but not in the sense that a child or an adult is human, namely, a human being, a rational (volitional) animal. This, briefly, is why abortions aren't homicide or, especially, murder.

Post 6

Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 1:46pmSanction this postReply
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Human but not a human.

That's as succinct as this thing can get, isn't it?

:-)

Ed


Post 7

Friday, November 28, 2008 - 4:34amSanction this postReply
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But I am happy to get into the right to abortion thing any time. Until about the 23rd week of pregnancy abortion isn't homicide but the killing of a potential human being--kind of like killing caterpillars isn't butterfly killing.

Tibor -- what objective criteria for differentiating between a potential human being and an actual human being are you using? At 23 weeks the fetus is still inside the womb. Why not the 22nd week? Or the 24th week? Or the 18th week? Or ...

Do you acknowledge that other, reasonable human beings might pick earlier or later dates using different objective criteria for making that differentiation? Some might use having a brain with perceptible activity as the criteria, or a working heart, or viability outside the womb, or (as is the legal definition in Hawaii) actually being outside the womb, or "it's my body and I can do as I please with it", or ...

If you acknowledge that other people have reasonable views that differ from yours, should it be settled by majority vote? What if the majority comes up with something you consider unreasonable and non-objective? If you reject the notion of majority vote rules, why do you consider yourself to hold this nearly-perfect view that should be imposed on those with a less imperfect understanding?

Post 8

Friday, November 28, 2008 - 7:21amSanction this postReply
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And a butterfly isn't a butterfly until it breaks out of the cocoon... life - of the organism, whatever species - begins at birth... the other is preparation for that life, the assembly line, so to speak, of the organism... the car is not a car until the engine cranks up and it rolls off the assembly line... the chicken is not a chicken until the egg shell is cracked from the inside and the chicken comes out...

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Post 9

Friday, November 28, 2008 - 10:46amSanction this postReply
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Since the cerebral cortex emerges by week 23 +/-, and since it is a necessary feature of an animal of rational (volitional) consciousness, there is no human being before its emergence, only a potential human being. Admittedly, the rationality at this point is a minimal capacity only but as of that point killing the fetus becomes problematic. For more, see my book The Passion for Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Post 10

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 5:04pmSanction this postReply
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Tibor -- if a child is born without a cerebral cortex, and thus lacks rational consciousness, would you classify that child as non-human, and allow anyone to kill the child without consequences?

Do any non-human species have a cerebral cortex? If so, would you classify killing members of those species as murder?

If 99% of the population disagreed with your interpretation of when human life begins, would you feel comfortable with using government force or coercion to impose your views on this overwhelming majority?

It is projected that sometime in the next 20 to 40 years AIs (computer artificial intelligences) will become as smart as humans and self-aware, and shortly after that will become immensely smarter than us. Will you consider them to be non-human because of their lack of a cerebral cortex, even if they become capable of passing a Turing test and assuming human characteristics? If one of them has your personality uploaded and can carry on an argument as well or better than you, would you consider that entity to be non-human and have no rights?
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 11/29, 5:25pm)


Post 11

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 5:15pmSanction this postReply
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Robert Malcom -- not sure if your post number 8 was being tongue in cheek or not. If I shut off my car's engine, does it cease being a car until I turn the engine back on? If the car is trucked from the factory to the dealer's lot without the engine ever being started up, would you tell a bystander that the car they are looking at isn't really a car? Why is that first turn of the ignition switch so different from subsequent ones?

If a chick inside an egg has pecked a hole through it's shell but hasn't yet got its entire body out of the shell, would you maintain it's not really alive yet? If it has mostly gotten out of the shell but a piece of the shell is clinging to its down, would you maintain that it isn't alive yet?

The fact is that life forms a continuum, and the line between human and non-human gets fuzzy at the margins, and that reasonable people versed in logic and even Objectivist thought can disagree where the fuzziness dissipates and becomes sharp and distinct.

(Fixed spelling of Malcom's name in the edit.)
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 11/30, 2:11pm)


Post 12

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 5:30pmSanction this postReply
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As far as birthing of humans is concerned, suspect the act of separation, of breathing in the air, activates a brain on hold into an active 'seeking to survive' one, instead of one which is just reactive...

as for the cars on the assembly line, that first starting of the motor completes the 'building' process and it becomes an independent vehicle [at least that was how they used to do it when building them - no idea of how is done these days]... besides, was using that as an analogy and not to be in all things considered, obviously...


[and there's only one 'l' in my last name, thanks...]
(Edited by robert malcom on 11/29, 5:31pm)


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Post 13

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 6:04pmSanction this postReply
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99% of the population disagree with me on so many fronts that the answer to that question is a no-brainer for anyone who knows me even just a bit. And, yes, if it were my offspring and had no cerebral cortex, I would not regard killing it murder.  But this is really up to those whose offspring we are talking about, not me, not you, nor any of the rest of us.  Point is letting such a being die would not be negligent homicide.

Post 14

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 6:23pmSanction this postReply
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Jim, I'll let Tibor deal with the philosophy questions you've asked, but I'll point out that "cerebral cortex" is the name of a structure - and that structure is present in fish, reptiles, birds and other mammals - but in them, it does not develop in a way that supports a rational faculty. The structure, as it exists in humans, is required to have a consciousness capable of awareness, reason and choice.

There are human fetus without a cerebral cortex - a condition called anencephaly - they don't survive.

Post 15

Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 2:08pmSanction this postReply
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If, for the sake of argument, we accept Tibor's argument that the beginnings of a cerebral cortex is the sole necessary precondition for considering something a human being with human rights, than a wide range of non-homo sapiens species must be accorded rights, as Steve points out.

If we accept Steve's refinement of Tibor's argument that a being must have not only a cerebral cortex, but also a "consciousness capable of awareness, reason and choice", then the date for which a fetus should be considered a human being would be pushed well past the 23rd week of pregnancy that Tibor advocates -- and other species, such as dolphins, elephants, and monkeys would also have to be considered human beings.

I would add a minimum criteria that something has to be biologically homo sapiens to have full rights. But, even ignoring that complication, we still have the situation where two intelligent, rational people -- Tibor and Steve -- have used rational, objective criteria to define when human life should be protected, criteria that would result in considerably different laws. It takes no great leap of logic to realize that other intelligent people who embrace Ayn Rand's general philosophy, and who use rational, objective criteria, would come up with a plethora of criteria that can be logically defended on moral or utilitarian grounds.

So, who should arbitrate this dispute, seeing as how even Objectivists can't agree on this fundamental thing, and who should arbitrate who should arbitrate?

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Post 16

Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 3:57pmSanction this postReply
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Jim,

You are quick to put words in the mouths of others. Unless I missed it, Tibor did NOT say "sole" precondition (and that makes a BIG difference). And I did NOT say rights must be accorded to creatures other than humans, I did not "refine" Tibor's argument, and I did NOT make a statement about what was required to grant rights, and I did NOT "define when human life begins."

Wow! When you get enthusiastic, you just jump right in there with arguments created out of thin air - All I said was that "cerebral cortex" is the name of a structure - I specifically declined entering any philosophical discussion.

Post 17

Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 4:11pmSanction this postReply
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Of course, as rights are such that there is no right to violate another's right, the woman in question retains her rights until the birthing, the separation into two distinct individuals...

Post 18

Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 4:19pmSanction this postReply
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Jim,

I've got to agree with Steve about your latest posts here. And that's coming from a guy who isn't unfamiliar with philosophically getting up into peoples' faces, defending ideas like they were some kind of a lifeline, or something.

Ed


Post 19

Monday, December 1, 2008 - 7:48amSanction this postReply
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Ed, Steve -- fair enough criticism. My bad. But, I think that if we were to take a poll on this site about when a fetus acquires rights as a human being, we'd have a spectrum of responses ranging from "at conception" to "at birth", and plenty of points in between.

So, this still leaves the question begging -- who should decide this life or death matter?

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