RoR: Forum

Let’s distinguish between the concepts of potentiality and capacity. A capacity may or may not be employed: a rational being does not employ their capacity while sleeping – but still retains the capacity to reason. Potentiality is a different, thought related, concept. Having an unused capacity gives one a potentiality: I’m not thinking but I can. However, even if one does not have a capacity, one can still have the potentiality: a fetus does not have the capacity to think but it has the potential to become a being with such a capacity. What a fetus does have is the capacity to grow: a capacity to develop such a thinking capacity. Notice the indirection. This is both subtle and I think, obvious.

Let’s see how you make an equivocation by missing the distinction between capacity and potentially. You equate the sleeping man with a fetus. Is a fetus a rational being that is just not using its capacity? The child argument is more complex and I won’t deal with it at this point. However, does it not have the apparatus for rational thought even if it is in the process of learning how to use that apparatus? (I admit that this question does not adequately deal with the case of children). An adult, too, may not use their rational capacity but it remains their tool of survival and they have rights because of that capacity.

You show the absurdity of a simplistic potentiality argument with regard to being potentially dead. However, notice that the dead lose a capacity – and that is what makes the difference. Let me state a viable pro-abortion position. A fetus is not “brain alive” and has no more rights that a person who is “brain dead”. A brain dead person has irreparably lost his capacity to reason. A fetus does not yet have, and if aborted, will never have a capacity to reason. Comments?

Post 1

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 7:41am

Rick Zuma correctly identifies the core of Stolyarov's argument as a crude equivocation. This equivocation shows the importance of context in logic. A sleeping man only lacks consciousness in the sense of temporarily not using it. In Rand's argument, "being of volitional consciousness" is an abbreviation for "living being that lives by means of its volitional consciousness". This is analogous to abbreviation of "living being that lives by breathing" as "breathing being", and "living being that lives by production of values needed for life" as "productive being." Just as I do not cease to be a "breathing being" if I hold my breath for a minute or two when diving, and I do not cease to be a "productive being" when I go on vacation, I also do not stop being a "being of volitional consciousness" when I sleep. Even asleep, my living remains the result of my own volitional consciousness, by means of which I obtained a bed and a house to sleep in safely etc. A fetus, on the other hand, is alive strictly as a result on the automatic functioning of some pregnant woman's body. It is only when one begins to live by means of one's own volitional consciousness that one becomes a "being of vocational consciousness" in Rand's sense.

Post 2

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 7:55am

The title to this peice is misleading, and its self-defined description as an 'objective, rational' argument against abortion is also incorrect. This is neither Obejctivism, nor rational.

The context in which the Courts look at the abortion issue is political. Whether a legislature can constitutionally pass and enforce a law against abortion, and whether a state must extend welfare benefits to include abortion. Your support of laws prohibiting abortion completely side-steps the issue of whether such legislation of personal choice is appropriate, moral or constitutional. It isn't, but that is an entire article unto itself.

More troubling than your willingness to grant government authority to legislate morality and to allow government into every nook and cranny of our lives, are the fundamental flaws in reasoning, that you present with an air of rock-solid certainty.

Here are some of the problems with your reasoning:

You write:

"I am myself an atheist, but my foremost opposition to this view stems from my recognition that a free society must possess religious freedoms and men must be free from initiation of physical force upon them by ideological groups which happen to disagree with them."

Yet, as stated above, you approve of government use of force to stem personal choice in this matter.

You write:

"However, once conception has occurred, the peculiar genome is already in place, which will result in the inevitable development of a rational creature absent intervention. Granted, the fetus does not yet possess volitional consciousness, but neither does a man who is asleep."

Your are staring directly at the answer, and are purposely looking in another direction. Volitional conciousness. Even a profoundly retarded person has volitional conciousness. A fetus does not. A dead person does not. A sleeping man does. That a genome is in place means nothing. We all leave genetic material behind whereever we go--hair, skin, even in urine and feces. A person could be cloned from these. Should I not flush? And that a fetus is a potential person means nothing. It is not until a person is a person in fact that one gains right qua man.

You write:
"The consequences of the contrary interpretation are frightening. Objectivists have long stated that children, for example, are in a stage of "apprenticeship" and are not yet fully mature in both their physical and cognitive aspects"

Your are really overreaching here, suggesting that some 'evil' abortionist is going to extend the abortion law and slaughter children? Of course, children are not yet fully mature. But they are little beings with volitional conciousness. So they are untrained in the precise and proper means of doing so. So what? Even a profoundly retarded person has that attribute, even if he is never able to focus his conciousness to the degree a normal person may.

You write:
"We have already defined what a "potential" is, and a sleeping man, a child, and a fetus are not potential human beings."

No, YOU have made this illogical equivalence. Objectivism, logic, and reality refute your conclusion, rather than support it.

Your write:
"Because I consider myself an Objectivist, I like to think of all proper actions in terms of trade, or the consensual exchange of value for value. What is parenthood, you ask? Is it a selfless sacrifice of time, money, and psychological calm to an "unintelligent growth" or an "ungrateful little ruffian"? No. It is an investment like all others. "

Well, it is nice that you like to think in terms of bargained for exchange. But, you see, you are NOT part of the bargain between a man and woman, and/or a woman and her own body. As anxious as you may be to explain how it is a moral imperative for a woman to go through with an unwanted pregnancy, that is not your, or the government's, decision to make. Anbd here's a contradiction in your argument. How can the pregnancy be a bargained for exchange between mother and fetus if you concede that the fetus does not have volitional conciousness?

Your write:
"If anything, such a mistake [UNWANTED PREGNANCY] will serve to persuade the erring party to be more prudent in its further analyses. Reality punishes the man who misuses his rational faculty, and that particular truth was embraced by Rand as a further reinforcement for man's need to discover and apply reason."

Man's poor judgment, in times past, that resulted in such a 'reality-sanction' as a broken leg, killed him before the advent of modern medicine. Pregnancies could not be prevented, as there was no effective birth control. And now, we have the means to health broken legs, apply effective contraceptives, and terminate unwanted pregnancies. It is unnecessarily harsh to impose a life-altering sanction on a person, when the same can be avoided by use of medical technology. It is anti-life to suggest that, where a means of improving man's life, or giving man more choice where none existed before, it should not be used.

Your write:
"No matter how displeased a woman may have been with her pregnancy, and no matter how rigid anti-abortion laws have been in the past, she possessed the choice not to take the matter into her own hands. The fact that she had willfully abandoned that course of action classifies her as a criminal. "

You open an entirely different can of worms here, worthy of an article unto itself. Separate from the morality issue, which, I think, I have shown you have no rational basis for (above), the proper context of the criminal issue is: whether the state ought to legislate this sort of thing to begin with. You seem to be very concerned with the non-initiation of force against your interestingly-termed "futuristically certain human beings" (which fetuses are not), but ignore the more germane initiation of force by the State against the indivdual. That is, you ignore the impostion of an immoral law that is, further, beyond a legislature's Constitutional mandate, a severe and intensely personal and invasive initiation of government force, in order to enforce a fetus' 'rights against a woman, whose rights for which you have not made a proper, logical, rational case.

Your write:
"I view abortion as a horrendous evil, a circumstantial Holocaust in many ways because it involves the murder of individuals due to characteristics beyond their control, such as age. "

Yes, and your intense horror shows in your specious reasoning. You have made an emotional decision, and now seek, through the flowery language of intellectual discourse, to justify it. But what you espouse is not rational, is not logical, and most certainly is not Objectivism. By your own terms in defining man qua man as a volitional conciousness, abortion is not murder, but you assign it that nomenclature.

You are not alone in finding abortion to be horrendous. I wish it was not part of reality. I think that no woman who ever had an abortion found it to be a rewarding or fulfilling experience; they probably, every one, wish it didn't have to happen. But, and here's the key, THEY DID decide that it had to happen. No one would argue that abortion is 'good.'

Your horror is not grounds for imposing anti-abortion laws, nor is it grounds to conclude that a woman who chooses abortion is immoral. Neither is your conclusion that since, in your estimation, abortion is immoral, the State ought to be able to outlaw it. It makes your arguments understandable, just not valid.

Post 3

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 9:20am

While I appreciate Mr. Stolyarov's willingness to deal with this issue, as the writers above state, there are serious problems with his position. I hope his arguments in favor of the Vietnam War are more coherent. Rather than repeat what others have written here, I'll offer my own evaluation of this issue, published some time ago in _Summa Philosophiae_.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/Abortion_Philosophy_Sc.html

Russ Madden

Post 4

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 9:42am

MR. ZUMA: However, does [the child] not have the apparatus for rational thought even if it is in the process of learning how to use that apparatus?

MR. STOLYAROV: Likewise, does the fetus not possess such an apparatus, defined by its already formed genome, and bound to develop into a fully functional mechanism for rational cognition ABSENT THE INTERVENTION OF ABORTION DOCTORS? The only difference here is that of development stage. The fetus is merely at an earlier developmental stage than the child, and the essential mechanisms of human consciousness are already developed within it. It is merely that the fetus is presently tabula rasa, as opposed to the child’s acquisition of a certain degree of content within his mind. Capacity already exists, in burgeoning form, as it inevitably does in futuristically certain beings. It would be immoral to grant sanction to the termination of a living being that possesses (from conception) the form by which man interacts with reality, but not the content. It is like stating that because a child has not yet been introduced to the Bill of Rights and the negative obligations he derives therefrom, that those rights do not apply to him, who yet possesses the mechanisms of rational capacity from which rights stem.

MR. atlascott: You have made an emotional decision, and now seek, through the flowery language of intellectual discourse, to justify it. But what you espouse is not rational, is not logical, and most certainly is not Objectivism.

MR. STOLYAROV: Emotions inevitably are the result of value-premises within the mind. They are, in Rand’s own words, lightning-swift integrations of the brain’s evaluations. True, it is sometimes difficult to trace the source, but here it is evident that my emotional stance concerning abortion is derived from my arguments, not the other way around. Both in the structure of the essay (as this evaluation was placed at the end) and in the logical progression of my arguments, the expression of horror was merely a means of taking my analysis to the next level. If this is indeed a refutation of the moral validity of abortion, then here is the way that one should react to the practice.

Just about the entire remainder of Mr. atlascott’s arguments hinges on the supposition (espoused so frequently by party-line leftists to the great irony that should be striking Objectivists) that an abolition of abortion is a limitation of an individual’s “choice.” But there can be no legitimate legal or moral choice to terminate the life of another who possesses (to employ Mr. Zuma’s words) a rational capacity. Every denizen of a free society must be bound by a negative obligation to impose no harm upon another rational being, especially one who cannot consent to it. This is not a legislation of morality, but rather the necessary prerequisite for every individual to possess the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Now, nothing mandates the woman to retain custody of the child upon birth, and numerous eager foster parents will be willing to adopt it. Yet while an individual (the fetus) is entered into a forced dependency upon the mother (and note that I use the word “forced,” since the fetus had no choice in the matter), it is the obligation of the mother to transition it to a state where, at least, it can survive autonomously. Then, the mother can choose whether or not to further extend this obligation into the realm of parenthood.

MR. REED: It is only when one begins to live by means of one's own volitional consciousness that one becomes a "being of vocational consciousness" in Rand's sense.

MR. STOLYAROV: Indeed? Does a child, whose life is almost in whole secured by his parents’ productive money-generating endeavors, then, not qualify to be a being of volitional consciousness, since someone else’s volitional consciousness is taking care of it (and he lives by it, in a sense)?

This is a step beyond the capacity argument (with which I generally agree; I merely think that Mr. Zuma has not properly applied it to the context of a fetus and its rights) into the realm of present actuality as the only means of attributing a condition to a human being. This is precisely the extrapolation that I was warning against in my essay.

Post 5

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 10:28am

In response to my comments, Mr. Stolyarov states that "there can be no legitimate legal or moral choice to terminate the life of another..." (i.e., abortion is immoral)... and later in the same paragraph "...This is not a legislation of morality, but rather the necessary prerequisite for every individual to possess the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness..." So in other words, he defines the issue as one of morality, and then denies that an abolition of abortion is legislation of morality. Hmmmm.

Further, he suggests that my position is one shared by, and therefore somehow ironically-allied with, "the party-line leftists." Well, my response to that is--Mr. Stolyarov puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like filthy Communists, so his argument must be wrong. See the pointlessness of such an argument? It does nothing to reveal the truth of falsity of the argument on its own merits, and so is pointless.

Finally, his response to my observation that his reaoning is incorrect, and he is probably swayed by emotion, is that, since his essay is organized with arguments and then a conclusion at the end, his emotions are a result of sound reasoning. Of course, emotions are automatized, instantaneous reactions, based on the thinking you have done, or failed to do.

I leave it to the reader to decide which applies to the article these posts are in response to.

Post 6

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 10:48am

G. Stolyarov II:
"I view abortion as a horrendous evil, a circumstantial Holocaust in many ways because it involves the murder of individuals due to characteristics beyond their control, such as age."

Please point to the individual that is being murdered. You are forced to point to the mother instead of the fetus. The fetus is not an individual. Your argument is not based on the rights of individuals at all.

Post 7

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 11:47am

Mr. atlascott seems to consider my reference to both the moral and legal facets of the abortion issue as a plea for the government to legislate morality. The fact, however, is that I never stated that such issues were congruent. I emphasized distinct legal and moral aspects, the legal aspect being the violation of individual rights, the moral aspect being the deprivation of an individual's life. It so happens that life is also an individual right and the legal and moral realms are tangent on this issue. This is not always the case (as, say, in the issues of drug consumption and pornography, which are abhorrently immoral, but which are in effect "victimless crimes" and violate no one's rights), and hence I do not content that all morality must be legislated. I am rather merely consistent with the spirit of negative obligations that is necessary for a free society.

Moreover, addressing the second paragraph of his response, a "filthy Communist's" procedure of donning trousers is not in any manner definitive of his ideology, whereas the anti-abortion stance of the leftists, and, in particular, the rhetoric of "choice" they employ to justify it, is an inextricable component of their ideology. My remark was merely that for a system resolutely opposed to the leftist mode of sacrifice to the state, the collective, Womankind, or Someone Else, it is ironic to uphold the practice of abortion, which sacrifices an innocent child to a woman's whim, which, as I have proven in my article by discussing the bilaterally beneficial nature of parenthood, can only occur for frivolous reasons. Abortion is, in fact, the surrender of an immense value, a child's life, to a non-value, a fanciful desire to escape the facts of reality, the laws of causality, and the responsibility for unprotected intercourse.

Post 8

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 12:35pm

In addition to all of the other nonsense that you posted, you added the following:

"What, you might say, should occur if the contract were undertaken without express knowledge by all parties of the consequences involved or of the benefits they should expect from it? In a similar manner, a customer may purchase an unnecessary product out of sheer unthinking whim, but that does not nullify the consensual nature of the exchange already undertaken. If anything, such a mistake will serve to persuade the erring party to be more prudent in its further analyses."

So, I am to believe that a woman who is raped is somehow responsible for the unwanted pregnancy? In your analysis of the nonconsensual agreement you failed to bring out rape. Is the victim of rape immoral because she wants to terminate a pregnancy she doesn't want which was the result of an act she didn't consent to? Perhaps, using your logic, she should have taken a different route to work, or decided not to go to a movie, or do something different so that she wouldn't find herself in a position she could have never guessed she would be in in the first place.

Post 9

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 1:54pm

A walking contradiction, clothed in Objectivist terms.

Mr. Stolyarov states that he never stated that the moral and legal facets of abortion "were congruent." 2 sentences later: "It so happens that life is also an individual right and the legal and moral realms are tangent on this issue." So, I guess, now he is essentaily saying that they are.

"...hence I do not content that all morality must be legislated"

Oh, ok. So only the stuff you really find objectionable, you would agree to grant the State power to legislate? Private decisions made by people, harming no person, are in no way in the realm of legislation necessary to keep society free and peaceable. My guess is that, after outlawing abortion, you might be able to find some victims that need some protection against the 'abhorrently immoral' crimes of drug use and pornography. (I leave aside, for the time being, my profound exception to such a blanket statement as calling pornography and drug use 'abhorretly immoral'). Later, you can move on to cursing in public, because you know, "what about the children"?

Our disagreement is fundamental and profound.

Post 10

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 2:16pm

"But there can be no legitimate legal or moral choice to terminate the life of another who possesses (to employ Mr. Zuma’s words) a rational capacity."

What about self defense?
And I thought that you wrote that fetuses do not have a rational capacity, just a rational potentiality...

Post 11

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 2:31pm

MR. REED: It is only when one begins to live by means of one's own volitional consciousness that one becomes a "being of vocational consciousness" in Rand's sense.

MR. STOLYAROV: Indeed? Does a child, whose life is almost in whole secured by his parents' productive money-generating endeavors, then, not qualify to be a being of volitional consciousness, since someone else?s volitional consciousness is taking care of it (and he lives by it, in a sense)?

Mr. Stolyarov apparently believes that trade - when I exchange my work for my salary, or when a child exchanges her joy-producing interactions with her parents for her parents' existential and emotional support - is not an exercise of volitional consciousness. The fact is that rational people create their children _for the purpose_ of trading, once they have created the child, the products of the child's volitional consciousness for the products of their own. Someone who apparently believes that trade is not a function of volitional consciousness could be many things, but most of those things cannot be objectively integrated under the concept of "Objectivist."

Post 12

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 4:16pm

MR. PRITCHETT: So, I am to believe that a woman who is raped is somehow responsible for the unwanted pregnancy? In your analysis of the nonconsensual agreement you failed to bring out rape. Is the victim of rape immoral because she wants to terminate a pregnancy she doesn't want which was the result of an act she didn't consent to? Perhaps, using your logic, she should have taken a different route to work, or decided not to go to a movie, or do something different so that she wouldn't find herself in a position she could have never guessed she would be in in the first place.

MR. STOLYAROV: One of the fundamental tenets of Objectivism in regard to initiation of retaliatory force is that it is to be initiated only against those directly responsible for it. The guilty party here is the rapist, NOT the fetus, and the law should grant its consent to terminate the rapist (as rape is a most abominable crime), yet not an innocent child, even if the latter's dependence on the mother were a direct outcome of the rape.

Let me present a parallel. Pretend that Mr. Pritchett and I are neighbors living in the same apartment building in Britain during Hitler's bombing raids in 1940. A bomb explodes upon the building so as to cause all possible exits to cave in while destroying the wall that separates us. We are, in effect, forced to share the same living space and work alongside each other in an attempt to tunnel ourselves out despite (in this scenario) a mutual dislike. Does this, then, justify one of us killing the other because of the inconvenience thereby caused, despite the fact that neither one of us had caused it, or would in not instead be justice to demand, upon reaching freedom, that the Nazi air marshal who had commanded the raid to occur be tried as a war criminal? (I know this is an immensely unlikely scenario, but so is rape, and both are possible. And the circumstances here are comparable to those of a pregnancy by rape.)

This is also a fitting response to Mr. atlascott's contention concerning self-defense. The only time abortion can in any manner be justified is if the fetus definitively (what that means I leave to medical science) threatens the life of the mother, in which case the mother's own life must take priority, as no one can expect to live by (as the fetus would be doing in that situation) sacrificing another's life for the continuation of his own existence.

MR. atlascott: Mr. Stolyarov states that he never stated that the moral and legal facets of abortion "were congruent." 2 sentences later: "It so happens that life is also an individual right and the legal and moral realms are tangent on this issue." So, I guess, now he is essentaily saying that they are.

MR. STOLYAROV: Not so. I stated that the issues were tangent, not congruent. There is a difference. Tangency is a correspondence in a given respect (in mathematics, two tangent circles, for example, share the same point), congruency is a correspondence in all respects (such as two identical circles). Life happens to be an individual right, and the purpose of the law is to secure individual rights, whereas in the moral realm of this issue, it is illegitimate to deprive an individual of life, period(except in retaliation against physical force, but that much is obvious and I should not be compelled to mention it further except where it relates to this issue). In the moral realm, life is the ultimate value, whereas legally an individual possesses the right to act to the detriment of his own life via such harmful and unhealthy practices as drug use and pornography.

Moroever, Mr. atlascott's claim that, should I succeed in illegalizing abortion, I will proceed to crusade against drugs, pornography, and swear terms is an absolute non sequitur. Unlike Mr. atlascott, I do in fact perceive a distinction between legal and moral in the realm of so-called VICTIMLESS CRIMES, and moreover, am aware of the fact that for a genuine social reformation on these issues (which I admit, I do wish to see) the force of government is not the proper means. My approach compared to compulsion is what temperance is compared to prohibition. Cultural stimuli as well as the spreading of information by private parties are more preferable where no one is endangered but the immoral individuals themselves.

MR. REED: Mr. Stolyarov apparently believes that trade - when I exchange my work for my salary, or when a child exchanges her joy-producing interactions with her parents for her parents' existential and emotional support - is not an exercise of volitional consciousness. The fact is that rational people create their children _for the purpose_ of trading, once they have created the child, the products of the child's volitional consciousness for the products of their own. Someone who apparently believes that trade is not a function of volitional consciousness could be many things, but most of those things cannot be objectively integrated under the concept of "Objectivist."

MR. STOLYAROV: Apparently, Mr. Reed has absolutely misinterpreted the message of my article. An entire section of it is devoted to the contractual value-trading nature of parenthood. Is this not why a pregnancy is undertaken in the first place by rational, deliberating individuals? Note that I say rational, deliberating individuals, for there may be those who behave in a more rash manner. I believe I already was quoted as having written the following:

"What, you might say, should occur if the contract were undertaken without express knowledge by all parties of the consequences involved or of the benefits they should expect from it? In a similar manner, a customer may purchase an unnecessary product out of sheer unthinking whim, but that does not nullify the consensual nature of the exchange already undertaken. If anything, such a mistake will serve to persuade the erring party to be more prudent in its further analyses."

Responsibility to objective consequences via reality is what is moral, not having your cake and eating it, too, as those who have unprotected intercourse and wish to terminate their pregnancies seem to desire. But this particular irrationality should also become illegal, as it violates an innocent child's right to life.

Post 13

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 6:21pm

The arguments presented in favour of abortion and against the arguments presented in the original article are compellng. The sticking point seems to be the definition of volitional conciousness, i.e. what it is and when an entity acquires it.

To help clarify my thinking would someone answer this question, does a prematurely born baby have volitional conciousness and the right to life which an as yet unborn baby at the same stage of gestation does not have?

Post 14

Friday, June 13, 2003 - 8:13pm

Mark,

Once a new human is no longer kept alive by the automatic biological functions of a pregnant woman, its survival depends on its ability to behave in ways that motivate its parents to support it, whether or not it is born prematurely. Even at what, were it not for premature birth, would have been similar stages of development, the born baby's means of living is its own consciousness; the fetus' means is the pregnant woman's body, which by right belongs to the woman and not to the fetus. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that all human behavior, including that of the prematurely born child, is the result of volitional consciousness. So yes, "a prematurely born baby does have volitional conciousness and the right to life which an as yet unborn fetus at the same stage of gestation does not have."

Post 15

Saturday, June 14, 2003 - 8:22am

On the subject of value-trading, Mr. Reed presumes that the sanction for the child's existence is that it brings joy to its parents and thereby receives material benefits as part of a value trade. In essence, this is what an ideal relationship would be. However, what if the parents do not derive joy from the child's existence (assume that the child, despite its attempts to do so, fails to please or entertain a particularly gruff pair of parents)? My remedy in this situation would be adopting out the child, but Mr. Reed, because he seems to think that "living by volitional consciousness" is the sole mark of a human being, might, by extrapolation of his argument concerning abortion, support the parents terminating the child. This is the danger, and there is no contradiction in my claim. The fact is: parents possess the obligation to either sustain a living human being directly dependent upon them or to provide an alternate means by which this being can safely escape this dependency, whether or not that child brings any joy whatsoever (despite the fact that the expectation of joy is always present in a rationally undertaken pregnancy).

The following is a link to a passage by Nathaniel Branden concerning parental obligation:
http://nathanielbranden.net/ess/que02.html

While Branden may have been pro-abortionist, this only follows from his false definition of a fetus not yet attaining humanity. If one analyzes the condition of the fetus and compares it to the condition of the child, one will observe that everything which Branden has written holds true for it as well, or is, at the least, futuristically certain (which is different from potentiality, no matter how many times the pro-abortionists here will wish to maintain a mere simplistic distiction between "potential" and "actual" without venturing into the intricacies thereof).

Post 16

Saturday, June 14, 2003 - 9:33am

Mr. Stolyarov: "I stated that the issues were tangent, not congruent. There is a difference. Tangency is a correspondence in a given respect (in mathematics, two tangent circles, for example, share the same point), congruency is a correspondence in all respects (such as two identical circles)"

Yes, but your arguments essentially equate them (grant them congruence).

A question for Mr. Stolyarov: When do the reproductive cells gain their rights as 'futuristically certain human beings?' Conception? Conception (i.e., the fertilization of egg by sperm) must be your answer, since your definition of that which must be protected is the "futuristically certain human being." So, does a mother who smokes or drinks during pregnancy commit the crime of child endangerment? Should she be sanctioned by the State? If not, why the ambiguity? I mean, we ARE talking about the paramount importance of the rights of the "futuristically certain human being." What about a woman who works too hard, to the detriment of her "futuristically certain human being" or even loses her "FCHB" because sheis working too hard? Criminal time? Should the State install sensors to monitor what pregnant woman are doing, to make sure that the rights of FCHB's are not being violated? Isn't that moral and proper, since the FCHB's have no ability to protect themselves?

Of coure, the above is sarcasm.

You view of these issues completely ignores the primacy of the individual human being. None of your arguments addresses the fundamental issue of the imposition of state force upon the mother to allow her body as a host for nine months. Your response to the rape scenario completely ignores the rape victim--you know the COMPLETELY BLAMELESS victim of rape, the individual human being, who supposedly has rights. The person whose rights have been once violated at the time of the crime. Your view is to violate her rights on an ongoing-nine month basis, through the sanction of the state, in preference to some cell cluster. Your preference of the rights of a cell cluster over a fully-developed human being is instructive of your sense of life, if it can be called that.

The foundational disagreement is: whether human beings have rights, or whether "futuristically certain human beings" have rights qua man. Your view on this issue is not based on any evidence, and is not in accord with Objectivism. You evade analysis of precisely why a human being's rights must trump a 'FCHB' (itself a misnomer). There can be no further productive discussion with you on this point, other than to point out that you are not correct, and for impressionable readers who might be mistaken, to clarify that you are not espousing Objectivism or a view consonent with Objectivism, but rather, your emotional personal view, shrouded in Objectivist terminology.

Post 17

Saturday, June 14, 2003 - 12:52pm

MR. atlascott: A question for Mr. Stolyarov: When do the reproductive cells gain their rights as 'futuristically certain human beings?' Conception? Conception (i.e., the fertilization of egg by sperm) must be your answer, since your definition of that which must be protected is the "futuristically certain human being." So, does a mother who smokes or drinks during pregnancy commit the crime of child endangerment? Should she be sanctioned by the State? If not, why the ambiguity? I mean, we ARE talking about the paramount importance of the rights of the "futuristically certain human being." What about a woman who works too hard, to the detriment of her "futuristically certain human being" or even loses her "FCHB" because she is working too hard? Criminal time? Should the State install sensors to monitor what pregnant woman are doing, to make sure that the rights of FCHB's are not being violated? Isn't that moral and proper, since the FCHB's have no ability to protect themselves?

MR. STOLYAROV: My answer here is that the mother must not be permitted to inflict upon the fetus what she would not have been permitted to inflict upon a born child, as there is no distinction between them except the time frame over which their volitional consciousness will unfold (i.e. the fetus’s futuristic certainty). A mother is permitted (although discouraged by any sane physician) to smoke, drink, and work as she pleases during the life of the child, but she cannot KILL the child. Of course, it may be proper (and should be part of the legal code) for the child to demand monetary or other forms of compensation if any actual damage was inflicted upon it during its presence in the womb.

MR. atlascott: You view of these issues completely ignores the primacy of the individual human being. None of your arguments addresses the fundamental issue of the imposition of state force upon the mother to allow her body as a host for nine months. Your response to the rape scenario completely ignores the rape victim--you know the COMPLETELY BLAMELESS victim of rape, the individual human being, who supposedly has rights. The person whose rights have been once violated at the time of the crime. Your view is to violate her rights on an ongoing-nine month basis, through the sanction of the state, in preference to some cell cluster. Your preference of the rights of a cell cluster over a fully-developed human being is instructive of your sense of life, if it can be called that.

MR. STOLYAROV: Your response to my response to the rape scenario completely ignores the fact that force can legitimately be employed only against its initiator, and the fetus had not initiated force. It had not even selected to be in the position it is in, and hence cannot be punished. The violated rights of the victim need to be addressed via the termination of the rapist, NOT the fetus.

A brief overview of this debate:

1. The issue of whether the fetus is a human being: Essentially, in slightly varied forms, abortion proponents in this discussion have stated repeatedly “potential is not actual” (as if saying it many times would render it more valid) and ignored the crucial distinction between futuristic certainty (which is closer to capacity than potentiality) and potentiality. The argument that a being of volitional consciousness is that which lives by volitional consciousness is a derivative of that crude dichotomy, and results in the permission for parents to murder a born child who does not, in their opinion, produce them sufficient joy. (If they can murder a fetus under these conditions, why not a child?) Hence, there must exist a parental obligation to keep alive any being generated by the parents’ volition until such time as that being is either adopted out or matures into self-sufficiency.

The fact that a unique genetic code has already been generated which will determine the mechanisms by which the child will function renders the fetus (from conception onward) as far more than a “cell cluster.” This argument will trump any of the absolutely groundless assertions to the contrary.

2. The issue of “keeping government out of private choice,” a standard leftist mantra, absolutely ignores the principle of non-initiation of force except in retaliation and the inalienable rights of human beings, futuristically certain or not.

See Doris Gordon’s article which addresses precisely the fallacy that “pro-choicers” commit when they say that they wish to “keep the government out of our lives.” That should answer this point, as well as the “slippery slope” non sequitur, which also neglects the distinction between victimless crimes and rights violations.

http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Choicers_Government.html

3. Repeating the phrase that my views are “not Objectivism” many times over will not answer the numerous Objectivism-grounded arguments that I had proposed and the fact that I had argued from the ultimate value of human life in ethics and individual rights in politics, whereas the abortion proponents have merely employed a spuriously misapplied potential-actual dichotomy. Let me remind Mr. atlascott and others that the ideology we are discussing is indeed Objectivism and not Fetishism, and that wishing that my ideas were not consonant with Objectivism will not make them so.

Post 18

Saturday, June 14, 2003 - 5:09pm

Mr. Stolyarov takes a long time to say very little and what he does have to say is nothing new. He asserts that life begins at conception and that an embryo is a human life. I’ve already made an inductive argument against these ideas on this forum here, which I repeat in part:

“With the abortion question, I always find it helpful to step away from rationalistic, albeit true, definitions of what life is and how rights are derived and take a look at what life really is all about.

If I take a look at my life and what characterizes it, what’s important, here are some ideas: I love, I laugh, I philosophize, I work, I play, I check out girls, I enjoy music, I apply logic, I keep fit, I have sex, I make decisions, I make mistakes, I have a massive complex range of emotions. These are just some examples of what comprises my life, some trivial, some fundamental.

Now, loosely speaking, I am a fully-grown man. Children experience some of what I’ve just listed to some degree, but an embryo certainly does not. Integrated with Ayn Rand’s definition of life – a process of self-generating, self-sustaining action - it’s very clear to me that an embryo is not a life. There’s no confusion, for me, with the idea of potential life, any more than the idea of a potential anything; a child is a potential man; a student is a potential graduate, etc. and so on. But a child is NOT a man, a student is NOT a graduate, and we don’t treat them as such.
A life is not defined merely by genetic make up, ontogeny this or phylogeny that. You need to look at the concrete, actual things that make up a human life, starting with your own, and ask; does this have anything in common with an embryo? That makes the abortion question very cut and dried for me.”

That's nothing new from me either, but what I’d like to address is the political/legal implications of Mr. Stolyarov’s ideas. He is at least consistent. He writes:

“… it is the proper function of law to prevent and penalize the initiation of physical force, and henceforth it is not compassion that we must exhibit toward these child killers but imprisonment.”

It is very clear that Mr. Stolyarov does not consider a embryo to be a partial-life, a pseudo-life or almost-a-life but a life-life, no different, in legal status, than him or me. He asserts that abortion is murder and “embryo-murderers” (and accomplices) should be subject to the full force of the law in this regard.

Imagine for a moment a world where murder laws were applied to embryos.

Oftentimes, a pregnancy is invisible, as is a subsequent abortion. How would the government prevent these abortions? Would it be compulsory to register pregnancies with the state? Would doctors be required to report pregnancies when they discover them in patients? Would pregnancy test kits only be available from a government agency? After all, the instance of a pregnancy is no longer a matter between the mother and the father. There’s a life with rights to protect!

What would occur in the instance of a miscarriage? Each one would be subject to a police investigation. Every mother’s privacy would be grossly violated by an examination for evidence of induction. What about the case of accidental miscarriage? As with any accidental death, there are questions of negligence and liability. Could mothers be prosecuted for manslaughter if they miscarry as a result of an accident that was within their control?

Not to mention the instance of rape, which Mr. atlascott has so admirably covered.

The moral is the practical and a good test of morality is to apply it in practice. We can see that Mr. Stolyarov’s ideas are at best, impossible to implement, and at worse, pave the way for gross violations of liberty, privacy, decency and confidence. And coming full circle, we can observe that the reason these violations arise is because an embryo is not a life. When investigating the death of a human life, there is evidence that they have lived: their property, a network of friends and family, photographs, memories etc. An embryo doesn’t possess these characteristics, nor does it satisfy Ayn Rand’s definition of self-generating, self-sustaining.

Mr. G.

Post 19

Saturday, June 14, 2003 - 5:13pm