Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion

tstorm823

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Objectively, that actually is what it is. Counterintuitive is not the same thing as absurd. Assigning significance to certain features is a choice. Basically all common sense distinctions are like this. Chairs, tables, walls, doors, roofs, radios, clocks, lions, tigers, and bears... all of these are categories we can use to make sense of the world. They can have objective criteria. But chairs never existed before someone decided they wanted a concept for a thing to sit on-- or maybe benches or stools came before chairs, who knows? In any case, at that moment even some things that were not chairs before became chairs. The picking out of the features of a chair was basically arbitrary; based on nothing more than the relevance of sitting to our shared experience.
Congratulations, you have remembered chairs as an example of telos from some rudimentary philosophy class, but have forgotten where to actually apply that argument. A chair may be a chair by it's purpose to be sat on, but I wish you great luck trying to define a bear by the same logic.
 

Seanchaidh

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Congratulations, you have remembered chairs as an example of telos from some rudimentary philosophy class, but have forgotten where to actually apply that argument. A chair may be a chair by it's purpose to be sat on, but I wish you great luck trying to define a bear by the same logic.
Teleology is quite irrelevant to the point. Assigning significance to certain features remains a choice. Basically all common sense distinctions are like this. Bears, for example, are a set of categories we have used to make sense of the world. They have objective criteria. But the varieties of bears never existed before someone decided they wanted a concept to describe particular kinds of terrifying masses of fur, muscle, claws and fat that can sometimes be found hanging out near rivers catching salmon. The picking out of the features of bears began before modern science, but has since been refined by a desire to fit them into an evolutionary tree-- with quite some success, of course. That systematic approach to taxonomy? Also a choice. As is the idea that there should be such a thing as a taxonomy. But an individual bear is only a bear because at some point people decided that "a bear" is a certain kind of thing. That helped them make sense of the world. And maybe avoid being eaten by a bear.
 

tstorm823

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Teleology is quite irrelevant to the point. Assigning significance to certain features remains a choice. Basically all common sense distinctions are like this. Bears, for example, are a set of categories we have used to make sense of the world. They have objective criteria. But the varieties of bears never existed before someone decided they wanted a concept to describe particular kinds of terrifying masses of fur, muscle, claws and fat that can sometimes be found hanging out near rivers catching salmon. The picking out of the features of bears began before modern science, but has since been refined by a desire to fit them into an evolutionary tree-- with quite some success, of course. That systematic approach to taxonomy? Also a choice. As is the idea that there should be such a thing as a taxonomy. But an individual bear is only a bear because at some point people decided that "a bear" is a certain kind of thing. That helped them make sense of the world. And maybe avoid being eaten by a bear.
None of this has any relevance to your finger example. You're just filibustering.
 

Kwak

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Life is meaningless. No amount of fairy tales and imagination will change that.

I mean this very literally. Life does not actually exist in any objective sense. It is a concept humans came up with to describe a category of things that possess similar qualities. Scientifically, life is what we call it when matter begins to behave in ways we consider indicative of life. That definition is, of course, circular, but that's okay. It's just a heuristic tool for making sense of a complex universe. But do not mistake that artificial simplicity for reality. That universe is utterly indifferent to the concept of life.

What is not meaningless, what can still give value to life, is the act of living it.
Jesus, this needs to be made into a meme. Format of inspirational poster.
 

Trunkage

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Why is that a problem, and how does that apply to my argument against someone who says that life itself is meaningless?
Your statement is that all human have intrinsic value. You pretend that leads to a pro-life position. It doesn't.

The pro-choice camp are pro-choice specifically because they think humans have intrinsic value

You and them just ONLY value one life over another, 'turning the other meaningless'
 

tstorm823

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"Organism" is a made up distinction.
Terminal actually believes that. When speaking of what a bear is, you already said it's got objective characteristics. You would do the same thing when defining an organism. You're just lying for expediency.
Is a sperm?
No.
You pretend that leads to a pro-life position.
No I didn't.
The pro-choice camp are pro-choice specifically because they think humans have intrinsic value
That may be true for some, but unless you're just skipping over posts here, there's at least one example of that being decidedly not the case.
A fetus? At the start? Absolutely no
Why?
 

Elijin

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I accept the premise that one day in a far flung future, technological options may make abortions seem barbaric.

But we don't live in that far off future with those options. We live now, and we do our best to create informed options for a complicated situation. Right now, pregnancy IS a significant trial and people are entitled to reasonable measures to prevent and/or correct it, should the need or choice arise.
 

Seanchaidh

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When speaking of what a bear is, you already said it's got objective characteristics.
This does not mean what you think it means. I can make up any distinction and give it objective characteristics. For example, an 'organism' must have a mass between 1 and 10 kilograms. This is an objective characteristic. I also made it the fuck up.
 

Casual Shinji

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I accept the premise that one day in a far flung future, technological options may make abortions seem barbaric.

But we don't live in that far off future with those options. We live now, and we do our best to create informed options for a complicated situation. Right now, pregnancy IS a significant trial and people are entitled to reasonable measures to prevent and/or correct it, should the need or choice arise.
In a sense we already do, what with birth control. Which isn't 100% fool proof, but are measures that don't involve surgery. And wouldn't you know it, conservatives don't like that neither and are busy trying to ban that too.

Conservatives/republicans/christian evangelicals don't care about how "barbaric" abortions are or their claim that fetusses are actually individual human beings, they just want women to be forced into their place as babymakers. If within the next 10 years we'd get some kind of invention or method that would allow women to decide whether they want to get pregnant or not, like actual control over their own fertility, conservatives wouldn't give a shit how non-barbaric it would be, they'd still try to ban it. It's never been about the act of the abortion it's about women being free to not have children. That's what they hate.
 

Thaluikhain

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In a sense we already do, what with birth control. Which isn't 100% fool proof, but are measures that don't involve surgery. And wouldn't you know it, conservatives don't like that neither and are busy trying to ban that too.

Conservatives/republicans/christian evangelicals don't care about how "barbaric" abortions are or their claim that fetusses are actually individual human beings, they just want women to be forced into their place as babymakers. If within the next 10 years we'd get some kind of invention or method that would allow women to decide whether they want to get pregnant or not, like actual control over their own fertility, conservatives wouldn't give a shit how non-barbaric it would be, they'd still try to ban it. It's never been about the act of the abortion it's about women being free to not have children. That's what they hate.
Eh, I bet a bit of it is tribalism. If Trump were to say that abortions should be easily accessible, a bunch of his supporters would immediately do a 180 and claim to always have been at war with anti-choicers.
 

Casual Shinji

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Eh, I bet a bit of it is tribalism. If Trump were to say that abortions should be easily accessible, a bunch of his supporters would immediately do a 180 and claim to always have been at war with anti-choicers.
Doubtful. As much of a stranglehold Trump has on republcans even he got booed when he said the vaccine was great and how he took it. And either way, Trump would never say that because he knows that playing to his base means keeping the christian evangelicals happy. It's not as simple as 'Trump says, right-wingers do'.