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From: tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: \"Words mean what I pay them to mean . . .\"
Message-ID: <410@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 4-Aug-85 16:18:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-s.410
Posted: Sun Aug  4 16:18:27 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Aug-85 01:38:59 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 33

The problem with the statement 'modern biology tells us that the fetus
is not human' is that you are using your own definition of 'human'.  In
the past, there have been proposals on this net that children up to the
age of 12 are not 'human', and are thus fair game to be slaughtered!!!!
And clearly if your definition of HUMAN is HUMAN(X) = HOMO_SAPIENS(X) &
(TIME_SINCE_BIRTH(X) >= 13 years), logic will lead you to conclude that
children up to the age of 12 are not 'human'.

A fairly standard practice when one wants to oppress someone is to define
the function HUMAN(X) in such a way as to exclude everyone in the group to
be oppressed.  Thus, in the Old South, one of the terms often found in the
definition of HUMAN(X) was (not BLACK(X)).  And in Hitler's mind, one of the
terms in the definition of HUMAN(X) was (not JEW(X)).

Arguments on the definition of the function HUMAN(X) seem to occupy a large
amount of time in this newsgroup, and to a great extent these arguments can
not be decided by science since the decision to include/exclude particular
terms is philosophical in nature.  This is not to say that any definition of
HUMAN(X) is as good as any other -- I'm sure most people on the net disagree
with the examples given above -- but that it is hard to resolve differences
because ultimately there are no objective tools for doing so.

On the other hand, the function ALIVE(X) is fairly well-defined.  Rich's
assertion that ALIVE(fetus) = FALSE was thus either a lie (intentional or
not) or an attempt to introduce a second meaning for ALIVE.  If it was a
lie, it was definitely counterproductive.  But even if it was an attempt
to redefine ALIVE it was counterproductive -- do we really need the sort
of confusion surrounding the word "alive" that we have surrounding the word
"human"?  If every word used to communicate has extremely ambiguous meanings,
we will all be the worse off for it.

                                        -- Thomas Newton
                                           Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA