Here. It is based on this statement of Epicurus. The Epicurean argument was an argument against fearing death. This is the quote: “Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.
From this it is easy to derive a Epicurean defense of abortion.
1. Where the fetus is, death is not.
2. Where death is, the fetus is not.
So, why oppose abortion?
One of my office-mates was a protege of Rosenbaum. When he explicated his position, another office-mate of mine asked, "So, on your view, why shouldn't I just kill you now?" His answer was "Only if you could do it painlessly."
24 comments:
Well at least it is logically consistent to have no objection to a painless murder. Most would be opposed.
Guess she has a "get out of jail free" card now if she can prove she drugged his coffee before she bludgeoned him to death.
Why is pain bad?
Seems to be a good argument for suicide. And that alone, all by itself, proves (at least to me) that the argument is false.
From this it is easy to derive a Epicurean defense of abortion.
1. Where the fetus is, death is not.
2. Where death is, the fetus is not.
So, why oppose abortion?
One of my office-mates was a protege of Rosenbaum. When he explicated his position, another office-mate of mine asked, "So, on your view, why shouldn't I just kill you now?" His answer was "Only if you could do it painlessly."
So if you were in Victor's class and he posed this to you, how would you respond (if your grade depended on it).
Maybe one should say, that even an Epicurean would be compelled (by his own principles) to support Trump's proposal to outlaw abortions where the 'fetus' could feel pain. I await my "A".
Metacrock's blog
Atheists think it is. I've seen many a knock down drag-out fight, multiple threads, lasing for days, accomplishing nothing. I wrote that dilemma off years ago before I was an internet apologist, so long ago I don't remember when. I wrote it off because at an early date I read Boethius who, in his great work The Consolation of Philosophy (circa 524), puts to rest the issue by proving that foreknowledge is not determinism. In this essay I will demonstrate not only that this is true but the atheist error about omniscience and omnipotence contradicting [1] are actually hold overs from the pagan framework which Boethius disproved.
Joe,
I read your article and agree with most of it. I agree with your (ancient) solution to determinism and free will.
I disagree, however, with some of your historical speculation that implies early Western philosophy corrupted Christianity. I rather think later Western philosophy corrupts Christianity.
Regardless, this statement stuck out to me:
He doesn't know first hand what it's like to be human.
So I have to ask:
Do you really believe this?
The article also states "Being dead is not bad for the dead person" and that's the key here; it isn't bad for the dead person, but it doesn't imply the person who's currently alive would want to die.
Therefore, it isn't relevant to abortion as the issue is around whether the aborted human life is a person or not, and has rights or not. It doesn't add useful information to claim that death isn't a bad thing for the dead.
To be, or not to be, that is the question: To die, 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. [For] the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, somewhat abridged)
Bottom Line: The answer to this question is wholly dependent on whether you believe death to be the end of one's self, or not.
Starhopper said...
wow great stuff! someone should write a play about that.
Blogger bmiller said...
Joe,
I read your article and agree with most of it. I agree with your (ancient) solution to determinism and free will.
I disagree, however, with some of your historical speculation that implies early Western philosophy corrupted Christianity. I rather think later Western philosophy corrupts Christianity.
Regardless, this statement stuck out to me:
He doesn't know first hand what it's like to be human.
So I have to ask:
Do you really believe this?
I would not say that ancient philosophy corrupted christianity. It did change it's trajectory and made it more Greek than Jewish. this statement from my essay may beehat made you think that it doesn;t mean to tome,:
"It' an antiquated problem because it's rooted in the pre-Christian Greek understanding of God and time and the world, and it's also rooted in thinking of God as a big man in the sky rather than the transcendent and immanent ground of all being that God is."
antiquated is not corrupted.
as for the bit about God not knowing what it was like to be human: Of course he does sine he became human for time. I don't remember why i said that,i wrote this in 2011.
read iT that again it may be m dyslexia missed the typo and I meant to say he does know. I've negated things I meant to affirm at times
I am changing that to an affirmation. Thanks B.
Joe,
I am changing that to an affirmation. Thanks B.
You're welcome.
The more I read, the more I'm convinced that the problems with modern philosophy started out with William of Ockham and his theory that God's will is prior to His intellect. He thought that if intellect is prior to will that would somehow constrain God from doing things. But if God's will is prior to His intellect, we end up with the conclusion that the world we live in unintelligible, leading to all sorts of nonsense.
Christianity and Western civ
Atheists have of late been harping on the slavery in the Bile issue. I just got through dealing with the post of an unusually ignorant one who claimed that Christianity contributed nothing to the progress of Western Civilization! I can't believe people are so ignorant they are still saying tripe. This person tried to make an argument, with no backing, that the direction of social progress is away form religion!
Joe, you're just spamming at this point... why repost and link to your own 12-year old post?
And ya, it's still true that Christianity contributed nothing; many Christians did, despite Christianity.
But if God's will is prior to His intellect, we end up with the conclusion that the world we live in unintelligible, leading to all sorts of nonsense.
How do we see this play out in modernity? Glad you asked.
If God's creation, the world, is a creation of His intellect primarily we could expect to discover that the regularities we find in nature to follow logical patterns using our own intellect. We can find justification of our belief in God from our examination of nature.
On the other hand, if God's creation is primarily the creation of His will, then apparent regularities will tell us nothing at all about God. God commands each and every action in the world directly and regularity can tell us nothing about God.
But if we can know nothing of God from nature, then we can only know of God through His revelation. This was the impetus for the separation of faith and reason that in turn led to the polarization of religion and secularism played out in the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
bmiller said...
"Glad you asked."
Hum, nobody did and you quoted yourself. That's weird... did this come from somewhere else originally? Or self-promoting like Joe?
Hugo,
Get a life.
I was merely following up one post with another.
Oh the irony... lol
This was the impetus for the separation of faith and reason that in turn led to the polarization of religion and secularism played out in the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
With respect to the Reformation, certain strains of Protestantism came to the conclusion that God directly commands each and every action in the universe (Divine Command Theory) leading some to the denial of free will altogether.
With respect to the Enlightenment, the deep scepticism engendered by Ockham's proposition led to Descartes's "Cogito, ergo sum" setting philosophy on the progressively non-sensical set of "-isms" we witness today.
is Religion Dying Out?
This is an extremely important topic for anyone who takes her/his faith seriously, David Voas university of Essex argues based upon his demographic research that religion will disappear over the next 50 years. [1] This is not like the usual atheist propaganda that atheism is unceasing, for two reasons. Voas offers no data to the effect that atheism is increasing. Never the less religion is in trouble and it has to do with the rise of the nones, . The theory is called "replacement" and it means subsequent generations are not being replaced. America is now headed for the same kimndof relgioius deliewqqe see Europe and Great Beition.
LINK
Last time I raised the fair certainty that religion will cease to be a major influence on society within the spice of this century.[1] In this essay I will do two things: (1) I will discuss my own ideas about the cause of the great falling away, (2) Play the historian's "what if...?" game using the worst case scenario. By "worst case" I mean realistically worst.
I ended last time talking about how the religious right in America has poisoned the well for young minds. That only applies to America [2] and while it means that a possible revival is short circuited it still assumes a larger world wide source of apostasy so the issue moves beyond America.
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