Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Pro-which-life(?) Message-ID: <3702@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Mar-84 18:00:32 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.3702 Posted: Fri Mar 30 18:00:32 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 18:00:32 EST References: <785@ihuxq.UUCP>, <3670@utzoo.UUCP>, <1293@sdccs6.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 177 Kenn, Statements like ``the fetus can't feel its own death'' require proof. Why is forced sterilisation so repugnant? I am not talking about forced PERMANENT sterilisation; I explicitly mentioned reversible ones. I should like to give people a choice. Either practice birth control (and here is an effective reversible way -- sterilisation) or be responsible for any child that you engender. Until this choice is givn to people then there will always be illegal abortions even if there is no such thing as a legal abortion. Therefore, if you really want to stop the problem of unwanted pregancies leading to the killing of what might be a human being you must have such a choice to give people. In practice, it might not even be necessary to sterilise very many people. The mere thought of this might get people to realise what a grave responsibilitly is a possible outcome of sex. Thus only those who are willing to take on this responsibility could sign the form which says ``no abortions if I am responsible for the engendering of a child''. Sterilisation would then be a wonderful choice for those who really want to avoid having a child at the present time. If it were routine surgery then people would not be so upset about it -- just as most people are not upset about circumcision or appendectomies. For those who are upset about such things there is always the form to sign. I figure that this sort of thing could be implemented much in the same way as one has draft registration. Perhaps you should have everyone sign the form and just make reversible sterilisation a heavily talked about method of birth control. If you just make ``no abortions'' part of the criminal code you will accomplish this thing, but I would rather that people actually had to go out and sign some papaer just because it will drive home the fact that this decision is one which they are commiting themselves to in writing. The reason which I do not say that life is valuable because man has chosen it so is that it makes a rational system of ethics impossible. You will be governed by your whims and I will be governed by mine and since we both chose to act on our whims there is no way in which one can say that ``I am right'' or ``you are wrong'' or vice versa. Decisions become a matter of opinion only, and not of truth. I do not think that life is valuable because I have chosen it to be -- I believe that I chose life to be valuable for me because it *is*. In the same way, I do not believe that knowledge is valaubel because I have chosen to persue knowledge, but rather that I choose to persue knowledge because it it valuable. If I chose to be ignorant then ignorance would not become a virtue by the fact that I chose it (this is the position of Sartre, by the way) but I would be making a logical error in whatever lead me to believe that ignorance is a virtue. In brief, I WOULD BE WRONG. There is no purpose to ethics if there is no question of right or wrong. The purpose of ethical theories is to provide a guideline over what actions one should do. By and large, all theories say that you should ``do good and don't do evil''. They differ over what exactly constitutes an evil. No ethcial theory can tell you what you ought to be doing at any given moment but they can tell you certainthings which you should not be doing at any moment. If one believes that killing is bad by virtue of men choosing that killing is bad then one says that tere is no objective badness in that action. thus an ethical theory is not possible. Everybody should just go on making decisions which will be good by virtue of their deciding them. On te oter hand, most people want to say that certain things are bad because the simply are, ad other things are good because they simply are. The utilitarian maxim is ``the greatest good for the greatest number''. This is the basic good of that theory. there is no question of what makes that statement true -- if you are a ulitarian you regard this as self-evident. Anyone who does not hold this view is mistaken. I, on th other hand, find that te utilitarians are mistaken.I think that it is self-evident that life is good. I think that anyone who does not agree with this is mistaken. In any ethical position you will come down to certain postulates which are accepted by the people who share that position which cannot be proven by the sytem. (This is true of all formal systems -- see Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem for why this is true). What one tries to do is to base one's rational system on what is true about reality. For example, Euclidian geometry has 5 postulates. (4 of these are shared by most non-euclidian geomentries as well). Geometric proofs work, (are real -- are isomorphic to reality) because their basic postulates are grounded in reality. Why don't 2 parellel lines intersect? because they don't! This is the way that the universe works. Change te rules and you can get elliptic and hyperbolic geometries which also work in the realities which they are isomorphic with. (spheres for elliptic geometries. I don't know what with hyperbolic geometries). If you change all the rules you will get something which does not even come close to modelling our reality and thus may be interesting but is more or less useless in the matter of day to day living. If parellel lines intersect in >2 points then the thinking one can do with these ideas is a lot of fun, but when I am building a bookcase I expect that the shelves are not going to intersect because I use good old Euclidian geometry to make them parellel. I want te same degree of consistency in my ethical theory. Therefore there will have to be certain postulates which must be consistent with reality. An ethical theory which says that killing people is great because all murdered people go to a wonderful afterlife is only good if this is a fact -- if I am merely deluded then my ethical system is out of joint with reality and thus no good. My ultimate basic postulate is that life is good. there are other postulates which are almost as basic such as ``knowledge is good'' and ``freedom is good''. But these things are good only so far as they are real. No matter how hard I might choose to make leaping out of a window and flying like Superman a good, leaping out of a window and flying like Superman will never be a good because it is not real -- I will fall like a rock. (building a flying device and using it does not count for te purpose of this example.) Thus ``is life good'' is a basic question which I think is a self evident truth. It may be that you have decided that life is not good in that it is bad or it is neutral. If you have come to the conclusion that it is bad then I have serious doubts about your ability to perceive reality, since you should at least see that life CAN be good without any assistance. If you believe that life is neutral, then what makes certain lives good? Most people who have decided that life is neutral either answer this by saying: God makes certain lives good or Human freedom of choice makes certain lives good. God I am going to leave out of the question. If God exists then I may be making a big mistake here, but Larry Bickford is already working on demonstrating to me that God exists so if I get the inkling that my current belief (God viewed as a being who actually cares about human beings and it to some degree anthropomorphic does not exist -- ) is not grounded in reality because I get evidence that God exists I will have to backtrack here and say that life might be made good because God makes certain lives good. On to freedom. Freedom is a good, I am sure. Freedom is what one uses to determine which of possible goods I will actualise. (Will i paint my new bookcase or stain it? both choices are good). I do not think that freedom s what makes other things good. Rather I do not think that the notion of goodness can exist under such a constraint. Nothing is objectively good, so therefore anything which I choose to do is a good by virtue of my choice. Thus if I choose to murder you that would be good. I think that the notion of good has been drained of all meaning under such a setup and we are left at the mercy of competing whims with no recorse to te common reality which we share (anoter basic postuate of mine -- also impossible to proove within the system, as readers of Hume will know) to resolve differences. I find this notion incorrect. Therfore I conclude that life is a good, even though it implies that abortions are bad things and I have strong personal reasons for wishing that I could find abortions morally acceptable. But I do not let my whims prevent me from sticking to that which is real as ultimately greater than my personal desires. -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura "Capitalism is a lot of fun. If you aren't having fun, then you're not doing it right." -- toad terrific