laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (07/31/84)
This is a reply to a 284 line article from Scott Anderson, which was a reply to an article that I posted in response to Brian Peterson. Last time I replied in net.abortion I sent them out in short, 80 line articles. Sometimes it took many articles to reply. I got lots of hate mail. I seems that lots of people would prefer it if I only posted one huge article. So today I am going to plese them and make those of you who hate 900 line articles angry. Could you go argue with each other? I don't care either way, myself. Secondly, there are almost no quotes in this article. This is mostly rebuttal (ie this is new stuff from me). In case you don't know what to expect -- This is an argument against abortion on the grounds that it may be unconstitutional. This is also an argument against Utilitarianism. This is an argument against ``subjective morality'' and ``the definition game''. This is an arguement against the notion that all desires are equally moral. It is an argument against majority rule, and doing what is expedient. It comes down rather hard on governments and the vote. oh -- ps -- I expect to get about 30 mail messages from people accusing me of Christianity and that all of this is just a scam to force my religious beliefs down their throat. To set the record straight: I am not a Christian. Now I can toss any message that accuses me of it on the grounds that the author of that message never bothered to read mine -- so I am certainly not going to bother reading his. ---------------------------------------------------->>>>>>>>>> This is a reply to Scott Anderson. Scott makes some pretty sweeping generalisations, tries to twist my argument into one with which he is more familiar, and promotes utilitarianism as the way in which one makes decisions. (he calls utilitarianism ``situational ethics''). I am going to take another crack at the whole argument and see if I cannot do a better job. However, Scott, there are new rules here. You have got to *read the whole article* and not assume that you know where it is going to lead. In particular, the argument which I am presenting is not ``abortions are bad because they can be used to make legitimate a method whereby you can eliminate any segment of the population claiming to be doing the will of the majority'' (though they *are* and this is a good argument). I have a much more general argument which goes: ``if fetuses are persons (something which we don't know yet) then it is unconstitutional to kill them''. Remember Brian Peterson's original article? He said that he was going to ask ``why?'' for as long as he could, much like any small child you are likely to meet. So the next question is: ``Why is it bad to do something unconstitutional?''. Back to my last article. In it I claimed that in setting up a society you can either use terrorism or freedom. William the Conqueror showed up in Hastings in 1066, beat the Saxons, and took over as dictator. Scott has a good definition of terrorism and society: "Terrorism" is not a "clear-cut and well-documented way" to set up a society. It is "the use of violence to achieve an end" [The American Heritage Dictionary]. The basis of a society is an authority which regulates 1) the actions of members of the society, 2) the interactions of members among themselves, and 3) the interactions of members with the society as a whole. And what is the basis of this authority? The weapons that the ones in authority will use to assert their wills through violence and fear of violence? Or the understanding that the authority has been granted to those in authority by the individuals who are members of society and who can take away this authority? Does whoever have the guns rule, or does whoever has the guns find that the society has already taken steps to discourage and/or prevent rule by violence? By this definition, then, terrorism is an extremely well documented way to set up a society. It is precisely how William the Conqueror did it. However, societies change. England today is not the absolute dictatorship it was under William the Conqueror. The Athenian democracy, which once boasted that its citizens were ``the freest in all the world'' became a tightly totalitarian oligarchy under the rule of generals. The Roman Republic became the Roman dictatorship. I have made no claim that societies must live up to the philosophies under which they were founded. This is why one must watch one's society because if the principles under which it were founded were good then it behooves one to see that they are not forsaken over time. Now, Thomas Jefferson, and the other people who were involved in the founding of the United States were no fools. They were able to look at governments throughout history, and decide which they thought were best and which they wanted to avoid. You notice that they set up a Republic, and not a Constitutional Monarchy, or a pure Democracy, for Instance. In one sense of the word ``arbitrary'' you are correct in saying that the decision was arbitrary: in that it was a clear and well-defined choice which could not be confused with any other. However, this is not the sense of arbitrary that I think that you mean. It does not follow that a dictatorship is every bit as good as a free society, and by arbitrarily choosing these things which are necessary and proper to a free society you will *get* a free society which you affirm is a good thing. On the other hand, by arbitrarily chosing things which damage free society you are either demonstrating that you do not value a free society (and are actively working to have it replaced with something else) or that you do not understand the workings of a free soceity well enough to recognise when they are endangered. The American (and, to a lesser extent the Canadian) founding fathers had done their reading and knew how democracies had fallen in the past. A few facts are known about democracies. First of all, you should have a constitution. You don't *have* to have one, but if you do not have one you are entirely dependent upon the decisions of the courts to always be consistent with the initial vision of democracy. Over generations this is bound to fail. Second of all, you must give people certain rights. Every person must be guaranteed the right to life, and to liberty, and to own property. There are a whole host of other rights, but most of them could be sub-grouped under ``property ownership'' and ``liberty''. Freedom of speech, and Freedom of Assembly, for instance, are worth mentioning in case somebody in the future gets the idea that they are not important, but with a proper understanding of ``liberty'' one would never consider taking away these rights. The final thing to do is to consider how it is that free scoeities have failed historically and to try to keep the same thing from happening. Historically, democracies have evolved into tightly controlled totalitarian governments. Ironically, what brings about this collapse is an excess of democracy, which causes chaos and leads to tolitarian rule. When a democracy degenerates into a free-for-all where citizens vie for both favours and for increasing infringements on the rights of fellow citizens, collapse is just around the corner. This is because of the major weakness of democracy. A democratic government can become a vehicle whereby each citizen, dominated by thoughts of expedient solutions to his own problems, hopes to live at the expense of his neighbour. This is both destructive and irrational, since it does not take the long term consequences into consideration. It is this problem which is referred to as the ``tyranny of the majority''. Majority rule implies that it is proper to violate the rights of the minority as long as the majority consents to this. A Republic is supposed to suffer from this problem less than a Whether the US *has* a Republic these days is another good question.) In particular, as long as any action which violates the rights of so much as one man is considered immoral (and illegal) no matter what the benefits of that action may be the worst of these excesses can be avoided. Finally, a government should set up some method of resolving disputes. Given that human beings are fallible, it could be that there are some fatal botches in the Constitution (or other primary documents) which will need ammending. Declaring Blacks to be human beings (over the protests of a majority in certain areas which denied that they were human beings) is an obvious example. This does not mean that ammending the Constitution is a good thing. IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT. However, if it is broken then it quite clearly needs fixing. Also, there will be need for ways in which individuals can receive arbitration over differences of opinion on matters of law. Okay? Now, you have got to have these mechanisms if you want to preserve freedom. If you are not interested in preserving freedom then it does not matter what you do. If you do not want to preserve freedom, however, you can make asinine statements like ``but the Soviet Union has a society'' because for you it does not matter whether a society is free or good, merely that it works. Now, the best tactics to use when trying to eat away at freedom is to encourage people to look for short term expedient solutions to problems (which is easy because most people fall into this trap all the time and everybody falls into this trap some times). You can do this by saying that ``everybody must compromise'' (tacit assumption -- the fact of compromising is a virtue) and by saying that ``all rights are arbitrary'' (tacit assumption -- therefore it doesn't really matter whether we have any particular one or not) and by saying that ``you must look at a cost and benefit analysis of every situation'' (tacit assumption -- that which certain people <who?> decide is best for certain people <also who?> should be enforced on all people because it has been deemed to benefit some or all of them) (tacit assumption 2 -- there are no decision makers who are men of principle) (tacit assumption 3 -- anybody who makes decisions due to matters of principle rather than matters of expedient is a nut.) You make this bold statement: Many things in life are a compromise. America was designed and founded on compromise--balance of power--between the various branches of government and such. These compromises have nothing to do with moral or ethical compromises. You can not compromise on moral issues. You cannot lie ``just a little'' and maintain your integrity. You cannot be ``just a little'' pregant. Simply because some things exist on a continuum does not mean that all things do, and it is irrational to try to fake a continuum where none exists. Moreover, the balance of power was not seen as a compromise in the sense that most people mean compromise. The Founding Fathers did not sit down with this abstract notion (the execcutive) and another abstract notion (the legislature) and attempt to make peace between them by conceding powers from one and the other. Instead, the powers were fairly clearely laid out and the legislature and the executive were designed in such a way as to agree with them, because it was clearly thought that this division of power was not ``good because it was a compromise'' but simply good. It strives for rule of the majority without tyranny of the majority. (Criminal) law is the struggle for a reasonable compromise between the rights of individuals and the rights of the society. It is NOT the struggle between right and wrong. That, we leave to individuals, and to God. No. ``We hold these truths to be self evident'' is a pretty good way of saying ``these things are right''. Ah, by the way, one of the ways that the United States was going to avoid the ``tyranny of the majority'' was called the Electoral college. Have you noticed how that has changed? Have you seen what series of compromises culminated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913? These too can be called ``compromises'', and they are a series of compromises whereby that which was better was changed towards that which is more expedient. Criminal Law starts with certain things defined as ``offenses''. IE they are wrong. What definition of ``right'' and ``wrong'' are you using? If I take a stick to you then that is considered a ``wrong''. The criminal courts don't tell you whether you are going to hell for doing wrong, but they will tell you that you are going to jail because you are guilty of an offense (ie because you did something that is wrong). Most crimes are not ``crimes against the state'', but rather ``crimes against some individual''. There are a good number of people who maintain that *all* crimes should be of this sort (which is what getting rid of ``victimless crimes'' is all about). You cannot leave all matters of right and wrong up to the individual. No matter how much I want to kill you it would still be wrong. This does not imply that the government should make most of my decisions for me. Most of my decisions involve making choices where what I do can never be considered wrong (as in morally wrong) though I might regret them and call them wrong (as in not the optimal choice at that time.) Please distinguish between these two wrongs. Free governments are not out there trying to keep me from making mistakes (being wrong) but from being immoral/unethical (being wrong), unless it can be demonstrated that my mistake was of the sort that I am obligated not to make and to test for. (As in when I am negligent and design a car which, purely by mistake, blows up.) It is not difficult to see where the confusion between these two meanings of ``wrong'' has come in. Governments often confuse the two. However, when these confusions occur it is almost never the case that a pre-defined immoral act is considered a mistake. Instead what happens is that some agency decides that certain mistakes (as in non-optimal decisions) should be considered morally wrong. The government, through more and more regulations, is even more heavily into ``playing God'' all the time. What else do you say? These "rights" are just arbitration of desires. For instance, the "right" to free speech is a decision in favor of my desire to speak my mind over your desire not to have to deal with my speaking my mind. More unstated assumptions. (All desires are equal. There is no difference between the desire of a murderer to kill you and your desire not to be killed, or between the desire of a man to have money by robbing you or to have money by working hard and earning it.) (Somebody else's freedom is an infringement upon my own freedom). (All decisions are made with what one desires (as opposed to what one thinks is correct or right) in mind.) Strange as this may sound, this is the ``original sin'' argument in secular terms. All men are greedy, viscious, evil little sinners at the mercy of their base desires and all claims to virtue are based on false pride. However, it is fairly easy to refute this argument. All you have to do is meet one virtuous man who is not at the mercy of any base desires, and who defends principles, not because it is expedient for him to do so (though it may *be* expedient for him to do so) but because he believes that the principles are important. Who says free speech is a "right?" Not the Soviet Union, yet they have a society. But not a free one. <who said that free speech was a right...> (I think ... or was it Jefferson?) Was he (dare I say the word?) right? Ah, but by definition, "rights" are arbitrary, so they cannot be judged right or wrong. The "right" to free speech is simply a rule that the US happens to still find workable, though sometimes with difficulty. Remember the initial premise of my article? You quoted it. We want to avoid having a society that is held togehter by the violence of the people who rule. A VVT society, not a terrorist society. ``Workable'' just isn't good enough -- we want a society that is free. Are you arguing that a VVT society is not to be preferred over a terrorist one and that one is not ``right'' and the other ``wrong''? If so, I suggest that you go move to a terrorist society. There are a lot of them to choose from and there aren't that many societies which even pay lip service to VVT societies and since it doesn't matter to you, we who are trying to get closer to VVT would appreciate it if you renounced your citizenship and went to live in one of those other ``equally right'' places. What? you don't want to do that? Could it be that you see something right about VVT soceities? Then pay attention. You must have freedom of speech to have a VVT society. The right to free speech is not an arbitrary whim, it is a necessary prerequisite for this sort of society. Sometimes the desire not to deal with your free speech can be very powerful (e.g. pornography, libel, slander, bigotry, obscenity ....). Another misconception about free speech. Freedom of speech does not imply freedom from the consequences of one's actions. Nobody can claim ``but I have the right to free speech therefore I can slander with impunity''. Slander is a form of fraud. You pass an untruth off as the truth. You can slander me, yes, but I can go right back and sue you for it. You are responsible for your actions. Bigotry is not going to go away by refusing to allow bigots to speak. Indeed, it is preferable to allow them to speak so that you can refute their arguments. What is terrible is to use the excuse of ``bigotry'' to prevent people from rasing their objections to something, which may not be bigotted at all. Pornography is an huge issue. We had better argue it somewhere else. It is another case where the `tyrrany of the majority'' muscles in and equates ``right'' with ``whatever is expedient right now''. Having decided that the right to life is arbitrary, you then proceed to state that you do not have it. Besides showing an ignorace of history, this also shows an ignoranace of what constitutes freedom. What good is having the right to free speech if the government or my neighbnour can end my very life? You have the right to life. Guaranteed. Go look it up. While you are at it you might find a few more rights that you have which you haven't recognised. The argument that ``there would be no capital punishment if all men had the right to life'' is specious. The argument over capital punishment is not over whether men have the right to life (in both of our countries this is still guaranteed) but whether one can, by one's own actions, FORFEIT that right to life. It is already known that you can forfeit your right to liberty (we lock criminals up), but there is heavy arguing over whether you can lose this fundamental right. Some people, however, use the platform of capital punishment to argue a different case. They argue that ``The State gives you the right to life and the State can take it away from you''. This is not a constitutional argument, since it is only in terrorist countries where the State owns you to such an extent that it grants you your rights. In freedom societies it has always been understood that one is BORN with these rights, which either come from God or from your status as a human being. No State can give you inalienable rights (which is why they are called inalienable rights) they are yours by right of birth. This is precisely where the abortion debate comes in -- birth happens to be a convenient place to use as a mark post. But your inaleinable rights do not arrive at birth because the state gave them to you. Remember that they are inalienable. So it may be that they arrive at some time before birth. * * * * Here is a classic argument of confusion. First you make your case. Where there is a right, there must be a responsibility. If the Constitution grants some people the right to vote, then a responsibility is laid upon the polls to give those people a fair chance, and to count their votes. If the Constitution grants women the right to equal pay, then the responsibility is laid upon employers to pay the correct wage should they hire a woman. So far, so good. The responsibility is a cost to those it is laid upon (who are members of society, with rights and all that), while the benefit accrues to those that gain the right. This is the rotten conclusion. This assumes that freedom is freedom *from* responsibilities, not freedom to be responsible. It assumes that it is a terrible and to-be-avoided thing to ever have a responsibility. It assumes that all men want to be cruel and averous monsters who can trample over others for whatever irrational reasons cruel and averaous monsters want to do such things and that a right is a slap and a punishment for such monsters, either for being so evil, or, because some other monster or group of monsters got to do the trampling first. But if you are talking about rights, then this is precisely what it isn't. Not if it is a ``real'' right, that is. The arguments in favour of rights are that they are good things which all moral and free societies demand as a matter of course. The benefit is supposed to be for all. (There are some things which have been called rights which do not fit this criteria. I would claim that they are not rights at all.) Otherwise, any definitions of rights are for political expediency only, (If I give the Blacks the vote they will vote for me.) or for a thinly valied attempted at patronising. (``I'll help those Blacks in a great humanitarian gesture do what they could never have done for themselves.'') Both of these reasons have nothing to do with a desire to give Blacks a right because in a free society Black should have this right. Before the passing of any law, the costs and benefits are (hopefully) weighed and if the benefits prevail, then it is passed. Remember, "rights" are simply one way to arbitrate conflicting desires. Ah, but I have dealt with that before... There are other problems. You cannot adequately measure the benefits or costs of any law. Too many unexpected things happen. Not enough is known about the effects of great events in the past to figure out what the exact effect of any given law is going to be. However, if it conflicts with a basic right then you have clear evidence that it is going to do harm, and at that point it is time to not go ahead with the law. What most people mean when they say ``analyse the costs and benefits of the law'' is to say ``if I think that I would like it I will make a big noise about how much it is going to benefit everybody''. This is why there is a whole lot of opposition to new laws -- as soon as some people get wind of it they decide that they do not want it at all. This often has the politicians frantically backpeddling in an attempt to say ``oh, I really didn't mean it'' because it is so unpopular. Since these things are often so badly predicted, it has now become fashionable to excuise this behaviour on the part of politicians by saying that ``oh well, it is only a matter of conflicting desires, and there is no right or truth to the matter''. What this is in effect saying is that the government, by virtue of the fact that it has the force to make a law, should make any law that it wants to. This is back to the rule of the club again -- who ever has the biggest stick gets to do whatver the hell he wants and the rest get to do whatever the hell he wants as well. Scott has tried to use both arguments here. They are both false, but they are also mutually exclusive. You are going to have to pick one or the other. Either: rights and laws are simply a matter of conflicting desires, and there is no ``good'' or ``right'', or: there is a good (whatever has the greatest benefit with the least cost) and that laws and rights should reflect this. You cannot have it both ways. If all desires are equal then the desire to do that which has the greatest benefit with the least cost is equal to any other desire (such as to become an absolute dictator) and if a man desires to become Absolute Dictator then if he had the where-with-all to do this it would be moral. If all desires are not equal, and there is something ``good'' about being a utilitarian then rights are not simply a matter of conflicting desires, but indeed there are some good things which laws ideally *do* reflect and in practice at least *try* to reflect. If you insist on complete amorality of laws then you define ``the good'' and ``the legal'' to be the whims of the people who are in power. Since they can and do use violence and fear of violence to keep people in line and themselves in power, we are back to terrorism again. If you insist on utilitarianism, you have the problem of actually measuring the costs and benefits (nobody has ever been able to do this) and having established a reign of moral cannibalism, where one faction (claiming to represent the majority who will benefit a lot) uses this benefit to justify submitting other people to their will. Some people are quite frank about this. They advocate the nationalisation of industries so that the few people who own the industries today can be sacrificed for the sake of the many who would get a substantial cash infusion over the natiaonalisation (or worse, for the sake of a few government officials who would get an even more substantial cash infusion.) This leads right back to terrorism again, when ``the spokesmen for the many'' have to deal with an increasiong number of ``few'' who do not recognise the benefits of such a glorious system and want to change it. However, terrorism here is very easy to institute. After justifying the confiscation of private property for ``the good of the many'', one can go right ahead and claim that the individual is likewise the property of ``all'' or ``the state'' and that he should be forced to work for the benefit of all mankind, despite what happens when he simply does not want to. At this point the desire of the ``few'' is given no credence and the desire of the ``many'' (by this time a rather small oligarchy of people) is given absolute credence. There is no ``concern for what is best for most people'', merely lip-service to that old ideal and real concern that the desires of the oligarchs perevail. Government by terrorism again, given that the state controls the guns. But here is more of ``responsibilities are bad'' nonsense. Consider the furor over women's retirement annuities. If they have a right to an equal payout, even though it will be unfair to men, If it is unfair then they do not have a right. If it is a right then it would not be unfair. then it is the responsibility of the men to accept (and pay) that unfair burden. Should we pass this law or not? Hmmmm. If it is unfair, no. Assuming that it is fair (something which I do not think is the case, but never mind) then the opinions of certain men that it is unfair are not significant in deciding whether it is moral to pass the law (passing it would be moral) but are significant in deciding whether or not one would bother to. One is not obligated to do all things which are moral (an impossibility) merely obligated to not do that which is immoral. If there is a right to life, and that life will necessarily be very dependent and burdensome, then someone must bear that responsibility. This is a cost; the life may be a benefit. These judgments could be averaged over all cases (since they will vary), and if it turns out that in the average case the benefits prevail, then a law COULD (not "should," only "could") be passed which demanded that all cases be treated as if they were the average case, knowing that the net result would be a gain for society. Here I disagree. A life is not good in that it benefits society. A life may or may not benefit society, but, except for suicides, it is true that people find their life good for themselves. My life is not a tool to be measured in terms of how good I might be for society; my life is my own to live as I see fit (with the obvious assertion that if I want to live as a terrorist I have to do it outside of the confines of this society) and a good in and of itself which is MINE. On the other hand, a different law could be passed, one in which the people involved in the case may weigh the costs and benefits of that particular case and may make their own decision. But people cannot weigh the costs, or the benefits. You can go and talk about statistical abstractions, but just try to measure the value of the life of a fellow man whom you have just met, let alone predict the ``future value'' of that life. You simply cannot do that. Not to mention the difficulties one has in asking a fetus whether it wants to live, which one would have to do if it is a ``person''. Again we are up against a moral right or wrong. Painting my bathroom an icky colour is not a moral wrong, but killing another person is. This is why one has a right to life -- I may judge that the cost of killing you may be very beneficial, but I am prohibited from doing so. This is the basic concept of freedom by means of rights -- everybody has the right to do what he likes with his own life as long as it does not forcibly interfere with the rights of another man. The question is, should a fetus have such rights? Animals do not have such rights, though they too are given certain rights by this society. If the fetus has the inalienable right to life then your right to do what you like with your own life does not also include the right to forcibly end his life. There is no question of choice over moral issues. One can choose to commit or not commit a moral or immoral action, but one cannot make an action moral through your choice of it (<-- this is the philosophy that Jean Paul Sartre puts forward in his version on Existentialism). The latter (That, folks, was my cursory argument in favor of choice.) is sometimes called situational ethics--something that Laura is allergic to, I know. Regardless of what kind of law is enacted, if any, you (Laura) should realize that laws are based on a cost/benefit analysis, not on abstract notions of right and wrong. Well, you may be correct here. The notion of ``right'' and ``wrong'' is not really all that abstract. However, it is precisely the notions of right and wrong that are used to justify laws, even immoral laws. ``It is right to not give the Blacks the vote because they don't know how to vote intelligently'' was the claim. Now, you and I may argue that the claim is an untruth (see? you can't escape questions of truth) but you cannot argue that the ostensible reason for such a law is that it is correct/morally right. So I distinguish them and then I separate them and then I kill them. < that it is possible to distinguish between the elderly and fetuses> How is the fact that I can distinguish a little old lady from a fetus or a cockroach, for that matter, going to keep me from killing her? This is what the anti-discrimination acts are all about. (It is a different question as to whether thy have gone too far, or whether they should have been phrased in the manner that they were.) If you are a member of a visible minority, you are VISIBLE. This is (from the point of veiw of discrimination) a liability. Because I can distinguish between a Jew and a non-Jew I can practice anti-Semitism -- which is one reason why some Jews go to great effort not to appear ``Jewish''. With sufficinet effort, they can make themselves indistinguishable. Other groups, of course, do not have this option. Our legal system is based on the drawing of lines. I can think of at least five different categories of death (1st murder, 2nd murder, manslaughter, contributory negligence, malpractice ....) and I'm not even a lawyer. These are distinguished, on a case-by-case basis (surely you would not argue that this is another example of that foul "situational ethics" and that we really ought to have one uniform punishment for all who directly or indirectly cause death?), and APPROPRIATE but DIFFERENT punishments meted out. Different, yes. Whether or not they are appropriate is another and very different question. Also, there is a lot of uniformity. Judges in Albany cannot sentence people to death for manslaughter while judges in New York City fine you $100. This is what an objective justice system is all about. If we actually went purely by a case by case basis then every judge would be free to sentence any person according to his own personal views of justice, which could be very prejudiced. In some countries this is precisely the case, and the king had better be in a good mood when you are judged by him. People sometimes become enraged when a DWI manslaughterer gets a light sentence, but no one suggests that a light sentence will lead to more murders, because of the "incredibly dangerous precedent" that was set. Oh yes they do. I signed petition saying exactly that a few days ago. (I don't think the word used was ``murder'' -- it was ``death''.) There were over 1,000 signatures on that list. There are a lot of people saying precisely this. However, your example is not parellel to mine. It is not the case that ``stiff sentencing of DWI offenders'' is a basic right which is being taken away from a certain segment of the population for the first time in legal history. There is a line between manslaughter and murder. I believe we can also draw a line between fetuses and old cripples, should that be judged desirable. That is my point. SHOULD IT BE JUDGED DESIRABLE. WHO JUDGES? The other serious problem is deciding *by public opinion* whether a fetus is a human being or not. This is sheer idiocy. You do not decide a matter of fact by public opinion. Whether or not a fetus is human is not a matter of fact. It is a matter of definition. You could as well ask a philologist as an anthropologist. "Lucy" (the old bones they found in Olduvai) is generally agreed to be a hominid, but there is disagreement about whether or not she is human. Was Lucy a human being or wasn't she? We shall probably never know. However, there is no way in that having a public vote on the matter will determine whether or not she was human. You do not get to use words like humpty dumpty. Otherwuise I will just go about and say that ``the word human being has no relation to objective reality, and merely means what society has chosen it to mean. We do not choose it to mean X''. For many pro-abortionists, this argument sounds lovely when you replace X with ``a fetus''. It goes down very badly, however, when you replace it with ``a Jew''. There is a confusion of arguments here. The first argument in favour of abortion is: the fetus isn't a human being and therefore can be aborted without violating human rights. This argument is unsound, because people do not know what a ``human being'' is well enough to know whether a fetus is one or not. There are a lot of people who have the opinion that a fetus is not a human being, but they have not proven this conclusively. the second argument is: a human being is whatever we choose it to mean and so we can just chose it to not mean fetus (by the will of the majority or the right to choice) and then aborting it will not violate human rights. This is the morally contemptible one. The first argument may be the product of ignoracne, but the second attempt is a definte attempt to play the definition game whereby one group of people get to call another group of (people? still unknown) not-people so that they can commit acts of violence upon them. There is a tremendous difference. Being able to distinguish between a fetus and an old lady is only a virtue if you already know that a fetus is not human and an old lady is. (After all, being able to distinguish between an old lady and a steer is useful for this very reason.) Being able to distinguish between a fetus and an old lady is very dangerous, however, if this is just a first step in the definition game. Her actual characteristics (size of teeth, shape of bones, etc.) are matters of fact, but what collection of characteristics is "human" is a matter of definition. Wrong-o. She is human. SHe may be human because she has these characteristics, or she may be human because of some other property which is independent of some of these characteristics, but whatever it is, it is not the case that she is human because you have decided to define her as so. If there was no word human, then she would still be human -- even if we could not express the concept. If you go about redefining the word human to suit your tastes, then you will create a great deal of confusion among people who had been accustomed to use the word, but you will never be able to take the humanity away from a human being, though you redefine it to mean something that no longer includes them. Blacks did not spring into being human beings once they were recognised as such by the authorities of the time. Rather, it is understood, that Blacks always were human beings and that for a long time the word ``human being'' had had its meaning restricted in an immoral fashion by not including Blacks. In the same way, if a fetus is a human being, then today's fetuses are human beings. They will not become human beings once a law is passed declaring them to be huamn beings (or persons) and they will not cease to be human beings if a law is passed which declares them not to be human beings. Now, what would be ideal, is for fetuses to be legal persons if they are real human beings, and for them not to be legal persons if they are not. In short, we need to know the truth about whether fetuses are human beings or not. But we want our laws to reflect the truth, rather than to assume that the truth will reflect our laws, or worse, be defined by our laws. Public opinion has yet to change the speed of light, or the law of gravity. You cannot legislate the truth into existence. I'm surprised you didn't also mention the Indiana state legislature vs. PI. Yes, public opinion has little effect on these things. But, it has had a good deal of effect on, say, considering blacks and women to be first class citizens, complete with all rights and responsibilities. The Indiana State Legislature question is a lot of fun. However, it is also misunderstood. (For those of you that missed it -- they did not simply declare PI to be a set value; instead they declared a particularily complicated (and erroneous) proof to be valid. A side effect of this proof was to set the value of PI to be either 3 or 5 <I have the paper here somewhere>.) Public opinion may have to change before Blacks and women are treated as first class citizens, but are you saying that the Blacks and women should only be treated as first class citizens because this is the way that public opinion now says that they should be treated? And that they should be treated as something less than first class citizens if public opinion changes? Or is the fact that Blacks and women *are* first class citizens a matter of Truth which cannot change according to public opinion? Public opinion is dangerous. 3 million people who are wrong are still wrong. Yes, but who will tell us what is right? There is no conductor who imposes harmony upon the orchestra of the human race, making music where once there was only cacophony. (We could elect one; but, gosh, that would mean majority rule! What we need is TRUTH! Am I being sarcastic enough? :-) No. Sigh. I thought that you had finally got it. There are some things which are easy to demonstrate are true. There are even more things which it is easy to demonstrate are false. And there are some things which we do not know whether are true or not. In addition there are a lot of things which can never be decided. There is no moral question about what colour I paint my bathroom, for instance. Right. You get the government out of the non-moral questions. Government regulations on the colour of bathrooms do nobody any good but those who make and enforce the regulations. You do not make legislations which relies on something which is known to be false. MOstly, of course, you do not conduct the human race or care about how much harmony is being produced. All you go about doing is to protect human rights. This would lead to a highly reduced government (LOUD CHEER) which could spend most of its time trying to determine whether or not a given action violates human rights, and not doing it if it doesn't. Of course there would be some sticky situations. There will be times when new knowledge will cause you to discover that what you thought was true was not, and so you will have to change the laws. (Blacks are human beings, not animals? Ooops. We have to change a few laws here...). There will be no guarantee that you are always correct. (Minimum wage laws promote unemployment? Ooops, we have to change a few laws here..) However, there will be the guarantee that what the law makers are doing is trying to be *correct*, not trying to be *expedient* or *trying to get elected by promising as many untruths to as many people as they can get to believe them*. You would end up with a set of laws that come closer and closer to reflecting precisely what is true. In the cases where one does not have the evidence one may have to make a provisional law -- provisional in the sense that it will get reevaluated when new evidence comes along. In the world I live in, absolute truth is not a knowable thing, except for things that don't matter (2 + 3, definitely, positively, equals 5. THAT! my friends, is ABSOLUTE TRUTH! Unless, of course, we're talking mod 4, in which case it's 1, or mod 5, in which case it's 0, or .... I give up.) In the world I live in, we muddle through the best we can. We try to do the things we think are "right," and avoid the things we think are "wrong." But for all I know, God is rabidly anti-death, and I will go to hell for eating McDonald's hamburgers, thereby encouraging the slaughter of innocent cows. Oh well. I tried. the purpose of governments is not to see that you go to heaven. If there is a heaven then it would be nice if you go there, but that is the business of churches, not governments. That you are trying is not a bad thing. It does not imply that the pursuit of knowledge is a hopeless one. We may not know whether it is a moral thing to eat cows, but we have figured out that it is an immoral thing to drag off your neighbours and eat them. Do not disparage what we already know is moral because we are not onmiscient. Interestingly enough, if enough politicians paid close enough attention to ``2 + 3 = 5'' then we could make great headway in combatting inflation. Currently it goes ``2 + 3 = 7'', because, of course, I have already decided that I need to spend 7 billion dollars in these programs and I can't not spend it even though I don't have the money so I will go down to the mint and print some more. This is inflation; this is what devaluates currency; and it is entirely caused by politicians (in the case where only the government can print money) who spend more money then they have to spend. II. Laura argues that society avoids terrorism by making up "rights." I agree that rights are made up. Nope. I do not say that rights are made up. Rights are recognised, coedified, and protected. But they are no more made up than the number ``4'' is made up -- one could use another symbol, for sure, but the ``fourness'' is a property that is recognised, not created. If you want to avoid terrorism you treasure those known things which will prevent you from slipping into terrorism. You do not create them, however. You may recognise ones which were not well understood in the past, but you do not call them into being. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura