RE: Abortion: 10 years as an atheist and I still don't get it
April 16, 2019 at 7:52 am
(This post was last modified: April 16, 2019 at 8:31 am by The Grand Nudger.)
As commented on before, you don't know what the term "appeal to consequences" means.
If abortion can be morally justified by a variety of means, yes..that is very much relevant to whether or not abortion can always be morally justified, which isn't the question you asked, but is a question I answered regardless. If you have a problem with any of those many ways to justify an abortion that doesn't reduce to some misconception you have about a logical fallacy, cool, let's hear it.
Your reasons for being an absolutist aren't relevant to whether or not abortion can be morally justified. It's your a priori belief, which isn't actually a reason, either, but hey... how many terms can we misunderstand while we throw a fit about abortion, right?
Someone concerned with overpopulation can very easily explain to you why abortion is -always- a moral good, a moral imperative. They may take a softer stance, describing abortion as a final moral good, and so a strongly incentivized moral elective. They can always remind you that any stigma, legal or moral, to the contrary is a moral bad to be avoided.
You can, ofc, disagree with their justification, but that doesn't mean it isn't valid, or that the justification doesn't exist. You can also agree with their justification and decide to have the child anyway. None of the many possible avenues of justification are likely to end with you running out, convinced, to have an abortion. Absolutism, however, doesn't afford the level of granularity required to make rational and informed decisions about real world situations with moral content. It's used as a deontological teaching aide for small children who, we presume, lack the developed agency required to make cogent decisions of their own.
We say things like "Billy, stealing is bad, it's always bad, no matter what" - not because this is true, but because it's best for children (and to an extent adults as well) to act as though it is. The same is true of killing. Is killing or stealing always bad? In a word..no. The heuristic is levied because we posit that at least some killing or stealing is bad, perhaps even most killing or stealing, and if we did all act as though all killing and stealing were bad there would be fewer instances of killing or stealing that satisfy the moral content that absolutist deontology seeks to exclude through conformity or compliance. This is a position commonly referred to as pseudo-realism, though psuedo realists are usually much more careful than to fall into the trap of an infantile absolutist deontology.
If abortion can be morally justified by a variety of means, yes..that is very much relevant to whether or not abortion can always be morally justified, which isn't the question you asked, but is a question I answered regardless. If you have a problem with any of those many ways to justify an abortion that doesn't reduce to some misconception you have about a logical fallacy, cool, let's hear it.
Your reasons for being an absolutist aren't relevant to whether or not abortion can be morally justified. It's your a priori belief, which isn't actually a reason, either, but hey... how many terms can we misunderstand while we throw a fit about abortion, right?
Someone concerned with overpopulation can very easily explain to you why abortion is -always- a moral good, a moral imperative. They may take a softer stance, describing abortion as a final moral good, and so a strongly incentivized moral elective. They can always remind you that any stigma, legal or moral, to the contrary is a moral bad to be avoided.
You can, ofc, disagree with their justification, but that doesn't mean it isn't valid, or that the justification doesn't exist. You can also agree with their justification and decide to have the child anyway. None of the many possible avenues of justification are likely to end with you running out, convinced, to have an abortion. Absolutism, however, doesn't afford the level of granularity required to make rational and informed decisions about real world situations with moral content. It's used as a deontological teaching aide for small children who, we presume, lack the developed agency required to make cogent decisions of their own.
We say things like "Billy, stealing is bad, it's always bad, no matter what" - not because this is true, but because it's best for children (and to an extent adults as well) to act as though it is. The same is true of killing. Is killing or stealing always bad? In a word..no. The heuristic is levied because we posit that at least some killing or stealing is bad, perhaps even most killing or stealing, and if we did all act as though all killing and stealing were bad there would be fewer instances of killing or stealing that satisfy the moral content that absolutist deontology seeks to exclude through conformity or compliance. This is a position commonly referred to as pseudo-realism, though psuedo realists are usually much more careful than to fall into the trap of an infantile absolutist deontology.
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