...don't believe in slavery? Don't own a slave.

Discuss.

BUT

It's not a serious argument, when people say this they don't mean "I have cut the gordian knot and found a moral justification for abortion that all sides can live with." Basically, they're saying "Fuck you, don't tell me what to do with my body."

I don't know if you're serious, but if you are then I would advise you to study harder than ever for the LSAT.

can we own slaves as long as they aren't only black slaves and we make sure we purchase them with no regards to race?

I get that, but what do people mean when they follow the abortion statement with "...don't believe in slavery? Don't own a slave."

No.

what about leasing?

it's not about me... and I am studying harder than ever for the LSAT. I'm just quoting a poster I saw once. So, how about you discuss instead of telling me to study for lsat.

There are several fallacies with the analogy, starting with the 'either-or' fallacy all the way to comparing apples and oranges.

What's the difference between leasing a slave and hiring an intern?

Several is more than two. What's the either-or problem? Isn't it more an apples to unripe apples comparison?

Oh, I didn't know that's the part of it you were hung up on. It's a reductio ad absurdum. The person's trying to show the statement "Don't believe in abortion? Don't have one" isn't an adequate defense of abortion, because if a similar line of reasoning was followed, slavery would be permissible. Since that statement is obviously not a reasonable defense of slavery, neither is it a reasonable defense of abortion. Which is correct, if an action iis truly unjust, it's not enough to just refrain from taking such an action, something should be done to prevent those actions from occuring.

Very nice! Thanks! Reductio ad absurdum. I don't think I would have figured that out just by studying harder for my lsat.

college credit?

Like almost all the issues in the abortion debate it comes down to whether the fetus is a person with rights. If it isn't than his point is worthless because slavery involves an unwilling third party.

I believe in abortion, but this is definitely a valid response to that particular sketchy reasoning. Same thing about gay marriage, actually...

Desert Fox hits the nail on he head. If a fetus is a person with rights, than j2d3's snark is completely valid. Saying that abortion is a personal choice that's no someone elses business makes no more sense under that premise than does saying that slavery is a personal choice that is not anyone else's business. Or murder for that matter: "don't like murder, don't kill people..."

Personhood seems to be directly linked to a presumption about the degree of subjectivity posessed by the entity in question which is what makes it so difficult - we are trying to gauge the degree to which an other subjectively experiences the world... a philosophically impossible task made more complicated whenever the entity in question is incapable of arguing on its own behalf.

It's not a philosophically impossible task. The classic standard is the capacity for suffering, which requires both pain receptors and a sufficiently complicated mind that one may reflect upon pain. While it's hard to determine with 100% accuracy the point at which a human develops this capacity given the current limits of medical science, at early stages of fetal development it's physiologically impossible to have it. Once we've developed a functional cognitive psychology this will get much easier to determine.

Law school --> biglaw = indentured servitude

So if I can't feel pain anymore because of neural damage I am no longer a person? Or, if I have a memory disability that prevents me from reflecting on painful experiences I am not a person? I don't like to keep using the word "person" here because what I really mean is "an entity deserving of rights." We grant certain animals rights based loosely on the pain/complexity test you describe but they are not persons (oh I know I know, dogs are people too). Still, really we grant animals certain rights based on how cute they are, which plays a major role in how well we can "personify" them.

Still, it remains *philosophy* impossible to determine whether anything outside the self has subjectivity. Even with all the knowledge about neural structures and cognitive science we can not *prove* to each other that each other's experience of the world is real and comparably subjective. You and science and everything outside myself could be figments of my imagination.... there could be nothing outside my self... this could all be a dreamlike matrix kind of simulation, and there is no proving or disproving that claim. Its the same thing as proving or disproving God. Obviously the majority must operate on the assumption that each other does have legitimate comparable subjectivity for society to function, but that's a practical not philosophical concern.

One of my slaves is pregnant. Can I force her to get an abortion?

Agreed on semantics - we're really talking about assigning rights. But to answer your question: if you are incapable of feeling pain or loss, you won't even desire rights. If you don't have the capacity to reflect upon your experiences (I should clarify; not just the painful ones), then inasmuch as personalities are built through learning and experiencing, you aren't an individual. Further, I don't think we really grant rights to animals; we assign them a certain status for aesthetic reasons, not because they are self-governing entities or (excuse the Kant here) ends in themselves, as are people.


Is it funny or horrible that I'd expect a Wahoo to ask this question?

There is clearly a point in pregnancy at which a fetus becomes self aware, and thus deserving of rights as a human. However, the point at which this occurs is not entirely clear scientifically, and what will never be answerable scientifically is the question of what degree of consciousness makes a fetus fully a "person." Further, what opponents of abortion rights fail to understand is that abortions in the third trimester, when most would agree the fetus is self aware, are almost always done out of medical necessity, not simply to end an unwanted pregnancy. Making such abortions illegal would really do very little to stop people from ending pregnancies in the third trimester simply because they don't want a baby, as this doesn't really happen, but it would make it more difficult for doctors to perform abortions when the mothers health is in serious jeopardy or the baby is likely to be severely disabled or deformed.

Yeah the question re: pregnant slaves coming from a Wahoo had me ROTFL

It's true, I might not desire rights if my personality degraded and I became like a schizophrenic or otherwise mentally debilitated person, but I would still be a person, albeit dependent on others to fight for my rights and meet my needs. I think we run on the hope that such people will one day recover, or that science will enable us to resuscitate their minds. Anyway, you don't have to desire rights to deserve them. In fact, in some states, suicide remains illegal under unwritten common law. And, I would still argue that certain animals are granted limited rights... the right not to be murdered, for instance, or not to be treated cruelly or inhumanely (funny word for it), and that this granting of rights has to do with a presumption about these animals' capacity for subjective experience of the world including experiencing emotion and memory. The more emotion and memory capacity we ascribe to certain animals, the higher their status and protection under the law.