Comments | jessiac: Moral Relativity/societal/abortion

jessiac

Moral Relativity/societal/abortion

Jan 06, 2004 19:59

Heya....

This is my journal. I have got into one helluva long debate over ad, so I asked the person I was debating with over to my journal.

If you want to join in the argument, feel free. But be nice. And courteous. Cos it's my journal.

Gotta go, will update/edit tomm, since mum is yelling at me to get off the comp.

Comments 64

magicalyak January 6 2004, 12:43:01 UTC

I'm the debator, feel free to add in what you would like. The topic we were getting into was a bit sticky for the abortiondebate room. We were getting into the existence of God (or I was kind of hoping we were). I am going to attempt to give a reasonable argument for his (I mean him in a gender neutral way) existence and whether its reasonable to conclude he exists or not. However, I'm going to do this later tonight or tommorrow.

jessiac January 7 2004, 10:24:03 UTC

Yeah, that's fine by me. I want to debate God, the non-existence of God, the fact that I now accept that you can't prove a negative (that doesn't mean you're right Freya!) etc.

desiccatedberry January 7 2004, 11:03:57 UTC

hahahah yes im right mwahaha... That was what i was trying to prove. The fact that no one can disprove OR prove the existance of god. And you have just admitted that. So that makes me technically right!

jessiac January 7 2004, 13:40:23 UTC

No, it means that if someone says that they believe in God and gives me a reason for this belief, I then reply by refuting their claims and rendering God obselete.

You physically cannot prove a negative, but you can disprove a positive.

But you were kind of right. There is no evidence that I could possibly find that would definitively prove true the statement 'fairies do not exist' (and I class God in the same category as fairies) but I could find evidence to support that claim. ie, it's ridiculous and humans made it up.

Thread 10

magicalyak January 7 2004, 04:57:59 UTC

I'm not going to be able to post anything until tomorrow (Thursday in the US). Sorry, but I'm swamped today. I look forward to debating this later though.

jessiac January 7 2004, 05:36:51 UTC

That's Ok, neither can I. I have atc tommorrow. But I can reply to your points over at AD here.

Jess

jessiac January 7 2004, 10:52:52 UTC

See, I don't agree with that. You are you, you're more than your brain. Isn't the rest of your body you? What about pain? You feel that everywhere (or nowhere). Your own self-awareness is not something that is material (it is therefore, immaterial or spirtual or supernatural). It could be an illusion, but that doesn't seem true.Self awareness originates in our brains. I am a brain. You are a brain. If I were to take your brain from the bag of flesh that you inhabit that keeps your brain alive and allows it to move and manipulate its surroundings, and place it in another body, you would still be you ( ... )

magicalyak January 7 2004, 11:24:02 UTC

Your brain is you. Consiousness is due to the way our brain is built, like a computer. Neurons, synspases - firing off to make thought/store memory etc. Think of your brain like a computer. I predict that we will have self aware computers in the future, for the simple fact that our brains are nothing but organic computers, and if we developed from a single cell then a self aware computer can develope from the minds of several highly intelligent cybernetics experts. Have you read 'In the minds eye'? It's really good.
Our bodies replenish their cells every 7 years. It's obvious you and I are the same persons we were 7 years ago. Why does this not change if we are our brains? Also, if we built a computer that could function every way a human could, would it be a person? I can't see how it could.

End of the tunnel stories? Oxygen deprivation to the brain does not result in permament brain death for around an hour.I might have to do some digging around for proof, but I was fairly sure there existed some cases where the brain was ( ... )

jessiac January 7 2004, 13:50:45 UTC

For the same reason why tattoes to not disappear after 7 years ( ... )

magicalyak January 8 2004, 08:06:13 UTC

What do you define as a person? If it could function in every a way human could, then yes, I would define it as a person.
A human being is a human person. A person is one that has the natural inherent capacity to perform personal acts. The unborn do not have the current capacity, but they do have the inherent capacity. Furthermore, person is defined so many different ways that we really need to ascertain its significance. Is a human being worthy of protection, or do we need some modifiers?

'Definitely' has been used far to much in the medical world. There have been cases of patients thought dead coming round in the morgue. In those cases the brain lasted a little longer. Or they hallucinated before they died - how could you tell when you saw the vision?
Can't prove negatives, can't prove they didn't. And of course, if we aren't sure as to whether something is alive, then we don't kill it. We err on the side of caution.

Babies have been born in this state. They have no brain except for the bit that controls non-voluntry ( ... )

Thread 19

magicalyak January 7 2004, 11:35:22 UTC

Ok, first shot at the God thing and the argument I'm going to use follows the creation (or existance of the universe).
First I wanted to find out your belief on this, do you believe that the universe was formed by an event or an agent?

Also a few other questions.

Do you beleive in absolute truth?

Do you deny that anything exists outside of the material world? Or, in other words, are you a naturalist. By this I mean, do you reject outright anything that can not be proven by science? Would you agree with the statement, Truth can only be arrived at through science (specifically, empirical means)? Another way of asking this, is do you reject outright that miracles could never occur?

jessiac January 7 2004, 13:43:32 UTC

Yes, I reject outright that miracles can occur.

Truth must be arrived at by empirical, scientific process.

Truth is not absolute. Truth can be manipulated to appear in several different ways. Facts are constant, but truths rely on interpretation.

magicalyak January 8 2004, 07:56:09 UTC

Yes, I reject outright that miracles can occur.
You don't think this is holding a presupposition? So no matter what ever occurred, nothing could convince you otherwise? This is very closed-minded and elitist, isn't it?

Truth must be arrived at by empirical, scientific process.
There is a big problem with this statement. It is not an empirical or scientific statement, its a philosophical one. It cannot be arrived at through any scientific or empirical means. The statement is self-contradictory.

Truth is not absolute. Truth can be manipulated to appear in several different ways. Facts are constant, but truths rely on interpretation.
Is that absolutely true?

jessiac January 8 2004, 14:44:51 UTC

If a miracle happened in front of me, and there were other credible witnesses around to asssure me that I was not hallucinating, then maybe I would believe in miracles.

Elitist supposes a group of people higher than oneself. Elitism is good - you want the most elite, good surgeons to operate on you, don't you?

Ok, facts can. Truth is a matter of interpretation.

How would I know? I am making an observation. Whether or not it is correct can be ascertained by looking at history, and drawing from it your own definitions.

Thread 21

jessiac January 8 2004, 00:27:54 UTC

Everything does. I can't satisfy myself sexually on a whim by raping someone even if I think it's right (which I don't, just want to float the disclaimer). Why not? It hurts someone else. Why is that wrong? Because we ... shouldn't hurt others. That's right, but that's moral claim.

Actually if you were strong enough you could, though there are laws to punish you if you do. Why shouldn't we hurt others (I agree with that sentiment, but some may not)? What will make this claim withstand in times of deperation? Humans create moral laws, and therfore they are infinitely fallible/changeable. (actually they aren't, there are only so many things that they could be, so it's finite)

Still, the possibility exists that you could be wrong. So could I for that matter. We can easily make mistakes by trying to figure out something that is immaterial (morals, truths) by what is material (experiments, quantifications).Of course I could be wrong. But so could you, and so could anyone who made up moral laws. That's the point. I simply look at the ( ... )

magicalyak January 20 2004, 17:28:05 UTC

Actually if you were strong enough you could, though there are laws to punish you if you do. Why shouldn't we hurt others (I agree with that sentiment, but some may not)? What will make this claim withstand in times of deperation? Humans create moral laws, and therfore they are infinitely fallible/changeable. (actually they aren't, there are only so many things that they could be, so it's finite)I think you are a believer in moral absolutes but you're just not admitting it. What I mean by this (and it is not an insult) is that you realize that one can't say there are no absolutes (for that is an absolute). It's a catch-22. I've heard quite a few people tell me that this is just rhetorics (yes, it is words, but that doesn't refute it) and I even had one guy call this an axiom and say that all philosophy is built upon it. I have yet to hear a good explanation of why a moral absolute rule cannot exist. Raping others for fun is wrong, not subjectively (like a flavor of ice cream) but objectively (like a medicine). Humans do create ( ... )

jessiac January 21 2004, 10:19:32 UTC

It has been seen to be wrong throughout the ages because it physically and mentally scars women, however in some times it was not seen as wrong ( ... )

magicalyak January 23 2004, 07:14:48 UTC

This shows me that our moral laws are as changeable as we are. At the moment I believe that to do something that hurts another person is wrong. That is because I don't like to hurt people, or to see their distress. I want to limit it. It's not because I believe that it is morally wrong.
I don't like coconut, this doesn't mean I have the right to force coconut lovers to abstain from the fruit. There is a big difference between not liking something and claiming it's a moral wrong. Hurting women isn't wrong because you don't like it, it's wrong because it violates basic tenets of morality (a woman has a right to live without unnecessary physical harm). Furthermore, just because most people like or don't like something, doesn't make it morally acceptable or unacceptable. With this reasoning, you would have to conclude abortion is immoral because before Roe v. Wade, most people felt it was wrong to have an abortion. You can't even claim a woman has a right to by pregnancy-free, since this wasn't a popular opinion at the time.

There ( ... )

Thread 7