saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (04/03/84)
Laura, I just cannot agree with your choice of axioms. First I do not
think that the axioms are obvious, secondly, I do not think that your
axiomatic system is complete enough to model the problem you are trying to
model, and thirdly I am not convinced that abortion is something that
can be modeled out as you are trying to do, in order to reach a conclusion.
Abortion is a very specific problem and unless you include all the elements
you are dealing with, you are not approching it, but simply a model of it.
Notably missing in your deduction system were the goodness and badness of
the following elements:
(on the pro-life side) impacts of abortion on the respect for life in
society, (on the pro-choice side) relationship between abortion and
women's place in society, the right to control our bodies, the risks
involved in all the alternatives, from death at the hands of quacks to
impacts of adoption to the health impacts of birth-control methods and
pregnancy, abortion and economics, abortion and overpopulation, etc...
I personnaly agree with your choice of "life is good" as an axiom, but
I do not agree with the implied corollary that "taking away life is bad".
I think that both of these cannot be taken as absolutes and need to be
better redefined. Missing also, but which to me seems as important is:
"suffering is bad".
I do not think that you can really defend your choice of "human life
is better than animal life or vegetable life" except by natural chauvinism
i.e the fact that you are a human. If you take a holistic view of life
(again) you might reach the conclusion that right now vegetable life seems
to be more precious than human life, simply because humnan life seems to be
endangering all kinds of life on this planet (including itself) and that one
of the things that will be needed to save human life is to emphasise vegetable
life more than we do (For every puzzled person: I am thinking of the fact
that our wildlife (and forests) which provide us with the living material we
need if we want to survive is greatly endangered by our presence)
If you look at animal species, you will see that if there is one rule they
live by, it is not "life is good", but "survival of the species is good".
This implies that what would be considered atrocities such as mass suicide
or euthanasia, are accepted facts in many animal societies because they are
for the good of the species.
I am not pointing out that "life is good" is not a good axiom, but that it
is not the obvious one to choose as a basic axioms and that other animal
societies seem to have chosen different ones which often work out better as
a whole than ours does.
Your last rule: "there is an objective reality" is something you might be
hard pressed to prove (I know axioms are not meant to be proved). Even if
it is an acceptable axiom you seem not to be using it, but rather a corollary
of it: "there is an objective good", which I think is very debatable, and as
far as I know has been debated forever without anybody ever coming to an answer.
Finally, I do not agree that the deductive system you use to model reality is
adequate. You seem to use a very binary one which leaves no room in between
black and white for shades of grey (talk about cliches). This is all very
good for logic or philosophy, but has only a very vague relationship with
reality.
I just don't think you have proven anything in your deduction exercice exept
show us that you can prove anything if you really want to and if you are
really adept at manipulating symbols. You will fool quite a few people this
way unfortunately, but hopefully most of us won't be fooled.
The unfortunate thing about the fact that logic and deduction are used as
weapons in real life is that people who do not know much about them will
tend to view them to be only what they experience them as: weapons used
against them. This will turn off quite a few people from philosophy and
mathematics because of the fact that they have been inadequatly handled.
One of the reasons the feminist movement is so much agaisnt mathematics and
logic is that as women they have experienced them as weapons that men use
against women and often are lead to believe that it is in the nature of
mathematics to be used as a weapon, so they have rejected it as another tool
of "male opression".
I find it to be really a shame because I like mathematics a lot and I which
I could share my love of mathematics with other people, but because of all
the nastiness involved in it, many people are repulsed. I am very glad that
I have a formal training in logic and mathematics because I can see through
people's abuse of these wonderful tools and I will try to point out such
abuses whenever I see them. This was one such case.
Sophie Quigley
...!{decvax,allegra}!watmath!saquigleylaura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/04/84)
First of all, I stated that I was presenting the extreme form of holism. This is because I do not know any good treatments of non-extreme form holism, or any non-extreme holists personally. However, you make it sounds that extremism is in itself bad. Then in the next article you claim that there ``is no black and white'' only greyness. This is a widespread belief, and a false one. Let us see what it entails. Before anyone can identify something as grey one must first be able to recognise white and black. In the field of moral judgements this requires being able to determine what is good and what is evil. However, once one has determined this there can be no justification for choosing the grey -- one should go for the white. Moral blackness involves pretending to oneself that one is ``merely grey'' rather than recognising that one is persuing evil to a great extent. Very few people actually think of themselves as evil. Therfore they must think of themselves as white or grey. Perhaps you mean that issues are *complicated*, not *grey*. But it is precisely when the issue is complicated that one must use one's judgement to the fullest in order to separate the black from the white. This does not imply that one must be infallible -- if a man makes an honest error he is morally ``white'', since errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality. If, however, in order to escape the responsibility of moral judgement man stuggles *not to think* and *not to know* and calls down a protective shield of moral greyness he cannot be morally reguarded as ``grey'' -- ethically he is as black as they come. Perhaps you mean that on a statistical sample you are likely to find people who are not white or black, but grey. This is likely to be a valid observation, but does nothing to mitiage the need for moral whiteness -- indeed it makes the need more pressing. Remember that morality is the area of issues open to man's choice, and therefore subject to his free will. Remembering that -- what does it mean to say that most people are grey? That they are *unable* to be white -- or that they are *unwilling*? What could it be that makes men unable to ponder complicated issues and try to determine what is ``right'' and what is \``wrong''. What malevolent force compells man to do that which he has determined is evil? This is the meaning of saying that man is *unable* to be good. Outside of those versions of Christianity which have a very active devil forcing people to be bad agaisnt their better judgement there are very few people who really admit to the existence of such an immoral force. Therefore, such a phrase must come from those who are unwilling to be morally white (if they are talking about statistical samples). This shows some sort of sense in that they are holding out a moral blank cheque on the expectation that you will give them one (or demanding one on the strength that they are willing to give you one). But who really loses here? Clearly the morally white (who have no need for the blank cheque) and those who are harmed by the evil that moral blank cheques permit. Is compromise to be the standard of value? Is one to be judged worthy by the number of values that one betrays? Moral greyness is a cop-out. It is an abdication of responsibility and a demand for blanket forgiveness so that one can go about behaving in an evil manner for whatever goals one thinks (but not too clearly) that this will further. * * * * * It is possible to construct a hierarchy in which plants are good and man is bad. To be consistent, one must then advocate the extinction of mankind as a species. To be inconsistent is to not have moral principles at all -- merely moralistic things to say when something interferes with the attainment of desires. It is possible to say that man is good and these activities of man (for instance pollution, and war) are bad. This is not the same thing. This is to say that certain men either did not take responsibility for their actions and permitted atrocities, or made mistakes in their judgements and perpetrated atrocities. This is all the more reason to be scrupulous in one's moral judgements. It is possible to construct a hierarchy in which man and plants are equally good. Then, to justify eating, killing must be a moral good (or all animals and plants are by their very nature evil, which makes plants superior, which destroys the equallity in the heirarchy). It is interesting to note that if this is the case then there is something which is preventing the plants (with the exceptions of Veus Flytraps and the like) from partaking of the good of killing. I find it unreasonable to assume that it is the free choice of the plant, so it must be part of their nature. Once one sees that one immediately has another factor in one's hierarchy -- one which naturally tends to put men at the top and rocks at the bottom, when it comes to the justification of killing. It is natural for deer to eat trees and not for the converse. In determining what should get to kill what, the nature of the organisms involved must be taken into consideration. * * * * * What you seem to want is a justification for the killing of organisms, regardless of whether or not they are human beings, for the purpose of personal convenience. This has never been morally justified. You are interested in the effects of telling a woman that after she has chosen to have sex she must not try to evade the consequences of that action when a preganancy occurs by killing what could be a human being. Have you thought of the consequences of telling people that it is good to evade teh responsibilities of one's decisions by killing those people who make your decisions inconvenient? Even lying aside the dead fetuses, how does one not conclude that it is morally right to kill mentally retarded children (they can't be intelligent enough to be human, and they are inconveninet to raise), handicapped children, autistic children... All of thse would be *more* inconvenient to raise than a perfectly healthy and not-handicapped child. Let us go a little further ... shall one be able to kill one's children at any age if it becomes inconvenient to support them? Clearly, almost nobody wants to reach this position. (Some people want to reach the position where one can execute the mentally retarded, though.) But what is to stop it from happening -- not this year, but in 10, 20, or 100? Once you entrench the principle that it is okay to kill certain human beings for reasons of convenience only you leave everybody free to determine which certain human beings are effected by this -- even if you yourself have an extremely small set of member of that certain group. If you can contemplate killing a fetus even though it is a human being for reasons of convenience, then your grandchildren may be able to comtemplate killing other human beings for reasons of convenience and call you squeamish when you find the notion repellant. All they have done is generallised another law which is being upheld as moral. * * * * I have yet to hear from any middle-ground holists a consistent ethical postion from certain moral principles. (I hear ``reductionism is bad'' and little else.) Extremist holists have given me something of a consistent ethical position, but I reject it given that it seems to entail direct, mystical revelation from God/the Source of all Being, and until I have experienced one of those I am not going to make a potentially fictitious delusion the basis of the ethical system which I use to make decisons. It may be that middle-ground holism is by nature contradictory. Therefore, middle grounds holists would either never have thought about the implications of their beliefs (asnd discovered them inconsistent and resolved the inconsistencies, even at the expense of admitting that in some way they were wronf before) or that contradicitons do not matter to middle-ground holists. Neither conclusion is appetising, because it implies that there are people out there who really sincerly are ``hell bent'' on not thinking about how they make the ethical decisions which they must make throughout life. If they do not think, they can not ever give sufficient reason to justify their decisions. Thus it will only be by chance that they arrive at correct decisions -- most likely when that which is correct also happens to agree with that which they desire. There is a great difference between reasoning and (popular day usage) rationalisation. (if you look up ``rationalisation'' in the OED you will find a very different definition -- and the defintiion of something I find very good indeed.) Reasoning is when you work from your principles towards your conclusion. Given that your process of thought is good you are obligated to stick to your conclusion even if it is distasteful. (to abandon your conclusion because it is distasteful is the essence of moral cowardice. This is not the same thing as questioning one's principles when one reaches a distasteful conclusion, since distasteful conclusions are often the first indication that one gets that one's reasoning is faultly or one's principles are inconsistent.) Rationalisation is to take a conclusion that one is enamoured of and artificially construct a plausible line of reasoning by which one could reach that conclusion from the ``bottom up'' to hide the fact that one really decided for no reason at all save that one desired this particular conclusion. I hope that the middle-ground holists are just being quiet -- and are not all rationalisers. So far I have no evidence that they are not, however. -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura "Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts! Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite of conscience is indecent" -- Nietzsche The Twilight of the Idols (maxim 10)
peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (04/05/84)
The question of balance in moral decisions is not a "lazy" way of thinking as Laura would have us believe. On the contrary, it requires one to evaluate each case carefully, judging relative merits (such as a judge does), rather than applying rules in a mechanical matter. Though I am no jurist, it seems that such is the difference between merely following the letter of the law and striving for genuine justice. Yes, we *start* with written laws, but they are only a starting point in a process of balancing considerations (and a costly and anything-but-lazy process at that). As for greyness, past articles have clearly shown the multi-dimensional, conflicting-good situation. The one-dimensionality suggested by a white-grey-black spectrum is misleading and I think it has misled Laura. p. rowley, U. Toronto
slag@charm.UUCP (Peter Rosenthal) (04/10/84)
YANBO To assume that any question has only absolutely right and wrong answers is a mistake. Every act a person takes engenders an uncountable number of consequences. Some of these consequences are good for some people but bad for others. Some are good for most people. Some stink for most people. To say that "abortion is wrong" is to ignore the circumstance of each separate situation in favor of the all encompassing generalization. I find this dangerous. It makes much more sense to me to look at serious problems with an open mind. To use the contexts of previous experiences and future possibilities not as dogmas but as guidelines. I don't believe that we will ever know what is absolutely right or wrong. The best we can do is continually reevaluate our understanding in terms of our circumstance. That is why things aren't black or white. I think its a cop out to ignore the many sides of a question by forcing a pure evil versus pure good answer out of it.