That’s precisely my point of course. A particular abortion can either be demonstrated to have in fact occured or it cannot. Things get tricky here only when we factor in the possibility of a reality embedded in a Sim world or in some demonic cartesen dream. Or in solipsism of some sort.
Still, even the fact of an abortion may not be demonstrable. Jane may have become pregnant, told no one and induced the abortion herself. Thus even regarding the either/or world, a God must be invented. Only He is omniscient. Nothing escapes him. But then here we stumble into the conundrum that revolves around squaring an omniscient God with human autonomy.
As for ‘the rightness or the wrongness of any particular abortion’ this is a subjective matter since it is a matter of individual[s] beliefs as such we cannot impose any objective absolute ruling on whether abortion is absolutely right or wrong. Even if laws that abortion is illegal is imposed, such laws cannot prevent abortion from happening ‘underground’.
This is why I am suggesting we philosophize on the issue to find solutions that will prevent unwanted pregnancies from arising at source. Why are you against this?
Yes, if, “in the future” we come up with a way to eliminate all unwanted pregnancies, there would be no conflicting goods.
That still leaves your philosophical constructs “here and now” able to demonstrate how we might possibly get to there from here. In other words, aside from it all being crystal clear “in your head”.
But let me get this straight…
Are you arguing that with regard to the conflicting goods embedded in such things as gun control, the role of government, animal rights, sport hunting, conscription, human sexuality, just war etc., philosophers are not able to derive “absolute objective” moral “rulings”? That they are only able to construct arguments that make the conflicting goods themselves here go away?
Can you cite just one example of how this might actually be accomplished “in reality”?
Your problem as I had stated is your knowledge base is too narrow and shallow and that include knowledge of your own self. If you don’t improve on this, the credibility of your views will be very low and unfortunate for that you will suffer mentally for it.
And your problem [from my frame of mind] is that only when others come to embrace your own “knowledge base” will they be able to construct a sense of certainty about these things.
It’s a problem, from my point of view, because that is basically what all of the other objectivists assure us in turn. We suffer because we don’t think like they do. And they don’t suffer because, well, how they think is in sync with the most comforting, consoling manner in which one can think about a world bursting at the seams with the grim, grueling consequences of conflicting goods.
If they suffer at all it is because they just can’t seem to convince all of the other objectivists [let alone folks like me] to jettison their own transcending font [God, ideology, deontology etc,] and embrace the One True Path. In your case, “the progressive Middle-Way”.
Sorry, given that you make almost no attempt to really address the points I raise here…
Joan had an abortion.
And this is true despite any particular “biases caused by feelings, ideas, opinions, etc., of sentient subjects”. There are no “one of us” folks who merely believe that she had an abortion, and “one of them” folks who merely believe that she had not. Instead, it is able to be demonstrated that in fact she had an abortion.
If it is a fact she has an abortion, what is the issue then? Shun, punish or kill her??
As I had stated this is a spilt milk scenario so why cry over spilt milk.
If this is a case, then this is no more an abortion problem, but a spilt milk problem.
Those who want to cry over spilt milk should be advised to see a psychologist to deal with particular problem and not the problem of abortion.
Again, one can only imagine you standing before a woman who has been shunned or punished and explaining the import of “spilt milk” here. Or her family if she had been put to death.
Her problem of course is in being foolish enough not to have been born “in the future” where unwanted pregnancies simply won’t exist.
The reality is, at present there are the pro-life and the pro-choice groups and each is dogmatically [psychologically] stuck with their beliefs. As with Heidegger, these respective groups are thrown into and emerged out of their own and collective history. To change them for the better one will have to deconstruct their history and reconstruct their psyche so they can act effectively.
Well, another possible reality is that you are just as dogmatically insistent that how you view all of this is the optimal or the only rational manner in which it can be viewed. That, for psychological comfort and consolation, it is important to you to believe that you have pinned this all down “epistemologically”. And that these intellectual assumptions of yours are now totally in sync with that which you construe to be “effective”.
And only when I [and others] are willing to “shift” into a higher gear [yours] is there any hope that we might become effective too.
Unless of course you’re wrong.
From my perspective re what you have posted the difference between you a[nd] me is your views are based on a database that is too shallow and narrow.
It may be possible what I posted is related to psychological comfort and consolation but what I have posted, it is evident my views are based on much wider and deeper database than yours.
Exactly! And that is precisely what all of the folks who have constructed didactic intellectual contraptions like yours insist. Only they will insist it of you too. Yes, you’re on the right track that a deeper and wider database does in fact exist. You just haven’t figured yet that it is theirs not yours.
It is this psychological component that, above all else, they avoid confronting. I suspect that subconsciously they don’t even care if their own narrative is the right one. What is of far greater importance is that the right one does in fact exist.
Otherwise, my own dilemma beckons. And there is not much objectivists won’t do to avoid that. And I know this in having once been one of them myself.