Quote: Originally posted by Fantasea
My concern is not with the abstract. My concern is with the actual; the living, developing human child, peacefully growing in the womb of its mother, yet at risk of a violent death because abortion advocates seek to mask the truth with denials, falsehoods, euphemisms, and arguments designed to appeal solely to the emotion.
I will sum up my analysis in one sentence, and then explain.
1. If you are saying you are not concerned with the abstracts, merely the scientific factual, then you ought have no qualms about abortion, murder, rape, incest, or any other concept you dislike, because any and all discussions of wrong, right, good, and bad involve oughts, and oughts are normative, and normatives are abstracts.
A normative equates to a standard which applies to any definite rule, principle, or measure established by authority such as standards of behavior. The authority is mortal and the standards established are, therefore, man-made and are arrived at on the basis of consensus or fiat. In the context of the abortion question, over a period of thirty-two years, the established political standards have swung one hundred eighty degrees, from absolute prohibition to absolute absence of restriction. Who knows, with the changes occurring on the Supreme Court, they may swing back. The point is, there is no constancy, no permanence in norms.
On the other hand, the biological fact involved is constant, is permanent, is not subject to change.
However, as I wrote above, “…abortion advocates seek to mask the truth with denials, falsehoods, euphemisms, and arguments designed to appeal solely to the emotion”, in an effort to alter the perception of the biological process that takes place in the womb.
Explication:
Since all normatives are and are based on abstract conceptions, and you don't care about them, as you have dircectly stated above, you have no businesses telling me that abortion is wrong. You say you are going for "facts" and "biology," not abstracts--this is all fine and dandy, but it's morally irrelevant. You cannot go from a fact to a normative conclusion. Every normative conclusion must be backed up with at least 1 or 2 normative premises. You cannot go from the Scientific and Factual to the Ethical. To do so is a logical fallacy. I am not making this up, it's not an abortionist argument, it's not anything but pure, unadulturated logic.
With respect to logic, one may reason, one may rationalize, one may arrive at conclusions on the basis of analytical thought. This is the abstract. One may not treat facts in the same manner because they are not abstract. Facts are actual.
Quote: Originally posted by Fantasea
Are you able to cite a competent scientific, medical, obstetric, or genetic authority who is able to factually justify the nearly fifty million abortions which have occurred in the US since Roe v. Wade?
If you are, display it for all to see. If you are not, then enjoy your wallow in your empty, abstract, conceptual bliss.
Naturalistic Fallacy = Is/Ought Fallacy. Regardless of how many scientific studies you come up with, they can never justify anything on ethical grounds. You can USE science for the facts that you plug into ethical arguments, but they cannot replace ethical theory, principles, or doctrine. I don't have to cite any scientific, medial, or genetic authority who can justify abortion, because justification ethically is not a matter of fact. As I mentioned above, but I know you won't comprehend, it is a logically fallacy to move from the fact to the normative.
I may be mistaken, but what I understand you to be saying is along the lines of, “Facts be damned. Just decide on the desired course of action and declare that the facts support it.”
If you want to talk ethics, talk ethics. If you want to talk fact, talk fact. You cannot talk fact and mean ethics. If you don't comprehend that, there's no helping you.
With respect, you have not swayed me. There are facts, which are actual, and there are norms, which are abstract.
I repeat:
“My concern is not with the abstract. My concern is with the actual; the living, developing human child, peacefully growing in the womb of its mother, yet at risk of a violent death because abortion advocates seek to mask the truth with denials, falsehoods, euphemisms, and arguments designed to appeal solely to the emotion.”
