And you guys thought *I* was nuts.

[tomclarke]

Overview of historic UK and European murder rates with links to sources.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... icide.html

It is not going to be easy. What we need is gun ownership in UK. Or more specifically perhaps handgun ownership in UK since rifles which are used for shooting are not commonly carried around in the rest of daily life.

[tomclarke]

http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm

get the correlation?

[CKay]

I bet you could stop a lot of crime if you suppressed freedom of religion

hmm... no.

[Diogenes]

Then I guess you miss the point of the discussion. When creating a law, you have to make a decision. You don't have the luxury of saying "I haven't made up my mind yet."

True, but you DEFINATELY have the option of saying, "We will draw the line at the beginning of sapience which we take to be "here" because of XYZ but this is subject to change as better understanding of sapience becomes available. The law would be "sapience". The line position would change as supported scientifically.

This sounds suspiciously like the doctrine of slavery. "We will assume that Members of the Negroid race ought to have the legal status of Slaves because we do not recognize their characteristics of understanding to be the equivalent of our own." "We will draw the line "here" because of XYZ, but this is subject to change as better understanding of Sapience becomes available."


As a quote on MSimon's blog relates:



Roe v. Wade is cut from the same cloth as Dred Scott v. Sanford: Certain classes of people are property.



And what of the victims after it is determined you drew the line too late?

No erring on the side of caution for some. I personally don't see any evidence that a child is more sapient after three months than before.

By what scientific method would you decide a particular point in time over any other particular point in time so as to have a proper basis for a law?

I suspect I would conduct hearings / colloquia / symposia, whatever, among scientists in the various related fields (NOT including surgery) and ask for their best consensus on the conservative (earliest) side.

That is how they figured out slavery too. By the consensus of "experts."

IBID.

Au contraire, mon frère! I have shown the only clear dividing point in the continuum that is human life.

Actually, you haven't. Death is another. Might just as well allow abortion until death.

That would at least be philosophically consistent. It would be an acknowledgement that the same rules apply regardless of the degree of gestation.

But it is human SAPIENCE that counts for unique "human" rights. So such "dividing points" are immaterial for the "right or wrong" of it.

And brain dead retarded kids fall into your classification of "sapience" but unborn children prior to three months gestation do not? You are only fooling yourself if you think this is an objective method of defining when it's okay to kill.

And oh by the way, is that first point fertilization?

Yes. After that, any mother will do, or even an artificial one as djolds1 suggested. You are familiar with chickens and eggs, right? At what point is a chick within an egg entitled to life?

Implantation? First cell division? First organ differentiation? Is it ok to prevent fertiliazation? Is the woman guilty of murder if a fertilized egg fails to implant? Can she adjust her body chemistry to PREVENT implantation? Is she guilty of murder if fertilization occurs in vitro and at the second cell divide the doctor splits the mass into two identical twins and uses one to study the other's potential for genetic problems? How about if problems are found and she decides NOT to implant the remaining mass? Is that murder?
Just how intrusive are you proposing to be?

Your side is the the one digging around in a woman's womb, and you are calling my side "intrusive" ?

Now that's what I call Chutzpah.

How about we don't be invasive at all, and let nature sort it out? Hmmmm????

If no one tampers, we won't have to worry where the threshold or responsibility lies, or who should be held accountable for anything.

[Diogenes]

BTW - most violent criminal behaviour is impulsive. One of the strongest personality correlates with criminality is exactly impulsiveness. Pretty obvious really, it is not long term a good life being a criminal.
e.g.
James, M. & Seager, J. A. (2006). Impulsivity and schemas for a hostile world:
Postdictors of violent behaviour. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 50, 47-56.

It is "impulsive" because the belief is that they can get away with it. Again, no one is "impulsive" in attacking a grizzly bear.

Take the case of a man whose wife and children have been attacked and killed by said bear, and who confronts it impulsively in his rage?

I agfree it is not typical. It is pretty difficult to have an escalating argument with a grizzly...

Some atoms spontaneously decay. Most do not. I would suggest we should base our decisions on the higher probability. Heaven only knows what kinds of difficulty we would have building things if we had to worry about common materials initiating a chain reaction upon reaching a certain mass.

[Diogenes]

"What they are and what they can be".

Before somone leaps onto the inconsistency, killing babies or children is the greatest crime. But logically, you would think that killing fully developed adults is a greater crime.

Otherwise, if you include potential, then how can killing a zygote be different from killing an adult?

I think my morality includes not just rational calculation of this but the way we all feel. We feel that young innocent children must be protected above all else. Perhaps, evolutionarily, because otherwise killing helpless offspring would be just too easy. And it would not be good for our species, because pregnancy is so costly. (Compare with rabbits, where fathers will sometimes kill young, but young are very cheap).

So when a child is born would be my starting point for murder. Before that point there is a balance of rights between mother and foetus that changes with the development of the foetus. In evolutionary terms the value would relate to the cost of the pregnancy so far. That is not so far away from the way many people feel.

Best wishes, Tom

So apply this to chicken eggs. Is it only "murder" after the chick breaks out of the shell?





So philosophically, the boundary of the law should be the thickness of an egg? Sorry, I fail to see a great deal of distinction between the one condition and the other.

The equivalence would be for murder defined after the hen has laid the egg - and it is therefore an independent living organism.

So if humans laid eggs, you would regard the killing of a human egg as murder?

But because we no longer lay eggs, and now carry our young inside, it is not?

What changed?

[williatw]

http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm

get the correlation?

Didn't know the "correlation" was so much in doubt as the cause and effect. Why don't you post a link showing how much gun control laws themselves have lowered violent crime? That is a before a gun control law or laws were passed snapshot and then afterward showing how much it improved things?

[williatw]

Overview of historic UK and European murder rates with links to sources.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... icide.html

It is not going to be easy. What we need is gun ownership in UK. Or more specifically perhaps handgun ownership in UK since rifles which are used for shooting are not commonly carried around in the rest of daily life.

From your own link: For England, the risk of homicide falls from 1.7 (in the 1840s) to 0.7 (mid-20th Century) and back up again as we approach the present day. The Scottish data is even more pronounced - falling from 2.9 down to 0.7 and then rising to a level equivalent to the mid-19th Century.So little sign the gun control measures passed by your country had much or any effect on homicide. My guess is this..where there are few guns around like Britian(even before you banned them)because people just aren't much interested in owning guns, yes homicides tend to be low. Punitive laws(gun control) designed to get a country to that have little effect, and may actually make things worse. They tend to selectively disarm those least disposed to use guns to do bad things(the law abiding) and selectively not disarm those most disposed to use guns to do bad things(criminals). Sure you could easily correlate per capita alcohol consumption with alcoholism rates very easily. The more folks drink the more alcoholics, doesn't mean out lawing booze works, and may very easily make things worse.

[Teahive]

Another aspect of this of which I have just now considered is the possibility of taking aborted tissue and growing a new child from it. If it is okay with the law to kill it, why should it be objectionable to the law to grow it a new body?

How is it different from growing a new child from any dead (or live, for that matter) body's tissue?

As I have mentioned, Egg laying certainly clarifies the distinction between one creature and another.

It creates a distinction, but that distinction does not by itself create a moral obligation of the mother (or any other creature) to care for the egg. That's a separate issue.

Where is the hard moral dividing line?

Mens rea.

So you are saying that there is in fact no hard dividing line?

In fact the distinction between artificial and natural causation is another dubious topic - since humans are themselves part of the universe.

The argument that we are all part of the Universe, and that anything we do is therefore "natural" is a justification for Stalin, Hitler and Mao. There is a bigger picture, and every piece fits into it. The actual positions of those defending the practice are not based on any real concern for accuracy or scientific method, they are simply rationalizations of self-indulgent behavior. I will argue that evolution will decide the abortion question and I have little doubt as to how it is going to eventually come out.

Natural (as opposed to artificial) does not mean justified, so where does a justification come from?
I also have little doubt as to the outcome - tampering will prevail as it outpaces natural evolution.

[tomclarke]

In fact the distinction between artificial and natural causation is another dubious topic - since humans are themselves part of the universe.

The argument that we are all part of the Universe, and that anything we do is therefore "natural" is a justification for Stalin, Hitler and Mao. There is a bigger picture, and every piece fits into it. The actual positions of those defending the practice are not based on any real concern for accuracy or scientific method, they are simply rationalizations of self-indulgent behavior. I will argue that evolution will decide the abortion question and I have little doubt as to how it is going to eventually come out.

This not only breaks web discussion protocol (don't invoke Hitler etc to prove some other point) it is very loose argument. in fact it is a classic logic error.

You are claiming artificial versus natural is a tenable distinction on which we can rest moral judgements.

I say it is not, since humans themselves are natural, and also developments in biology are blurring the distinction anyway.

You claim above that my argument says I never make distinctions between different natural entities, and therefore could not morally distinguish between good and bad people.

But that is an incorrect implication. I am not saying you can't make moral distinctions betwen different natural entities, that would be stupid, just that it is not consistent to make such a moral distinction on the basis of artificial/natural.

You may have some other moral reason, more sustainable, for thinking that killing zygotic cells is equivalent to murder. (At least I think that is your position). But invoking "natural is good, artificial bad" is inconsistent for the above reasons.

I think your categorisation of people with pro-choice views as morally self-indulgent is unfortunate, it is a strong judgement and yet you provide no justification. As I have shown above your moral argument in the post is itself lax. I would not go so far as to call this laxness self-indulgence, and am sure you will correct it.

[CKay]

Even if we accept the natural/artificial false dichotomy, Diogenes' argument is an example of Hume's is-ought problem.

First we are told the 'is', how things are: in this case, the natural state of affairs. Then, without any explanation or justification, the 'is' becomes 'ought': the natural state of affairs is how things ought to be.

But, without an intermediate step, this is a non-sequitur.

Of course, one might claim "the natural state of affairs is how things ought to be" as a priori knowledge, or choose to take it as a maxim, but then we're back to Tom's observation that everything is natural.

[tomclarke]

Even if we accept the natural/artificial false dichotomy, Diogenes' argument is an example of Hume's is/ought problem.

First we are told the 'is', how things are - in this case the 'natural' state of affairs. Then, without any explanation or justification, the 'is' becomes 'ought'. The natural state of affairs is how things ought to be - that which is natural is good.

But without an intermediate step this is a non-sequitur.

Of course, one might claim "the natural state of affairs is good" as a priori knowledge or choose to take it as a maxim, but then we're back to Tom's observation that everything is natural.

In fact the natural good/artificial bad argument gets introduced in an attempt to sort out inconsistencies in the "killing zygotic cells is murder" argument.

For diogenes, the fertilisation of an ova by a sperm (naturally) marks the start of a new life, any interference with this, or denial of the blastocyst the correct environment to thrive, counts as murder.

It is not entirely clear whether he accords artificially fertilised ovas with the rights: but if not, logically, he would reckon anyone born of IVF to be killable without moral qualms. So I guess IVF is OK. But then it becomes unclear exactly how much "artificial" intervention is required before it is no longer a natural process and interference with it becomes murder.

That is the problem - as we get better at molecular genetics we can in principle make artificial life, the results (and the DNA) of which will be indistinguishable from natural humans. How do we treat these people? Like IVF children (ie the same as everyone else)?

I think the whole natural/artificial thing is a red herring. Diogenes perhaps wants to say that formation of a zygote capable of growing into a human, however it is done, marks the start of priviliged life. Zygotes and blastocysts have human rights. Pre-zygotic cells do not, and so interfering with anything before a zygote is formed is Ok, and also it does not matter how a zygote is formed. But once you have a working zygote it counts as human.

Thinking in this way, God arranges for 25% of humans to die naturally within a few weeks of conception. Coil contraception is murder. Tying off fallopian tubes means likely mass murder. the 1 day after pill is murder. Removing the ovaries however is never murder, and there is no restriction on experimentation with eggs as long as they are not fertilised.

Fertilising eggs is not itself bad, but the resulting human must be treated properly. Possibly fertilising eggs in the knowledge that the result cannot properly be treated is murder. In that case a women who cannot not conceive due to a genetic problem with the implantation process is potentially committing manslaughter whenever she has unprotected sex. If she persists in unprotected sex however she is comitting murder.

What about a woman told that she can conceive, but that implnatation fails 80% of the time so it will be difficult. Is she morally entitled to try for children? For every living birth there will be 5 blastocyst murders.

Many people unknowingly committed fratricide in the womb because shortly after one blastocyst implants it stops others from doing so (like coil contraception). Since even unimplanted zygotes are human, and multiple eggs can be fertlised, this is fratricide. (Actually I don't know if this is true - but it could well be!).

Morally I find all this difficult, but then since I don't accord blastocysts with human rights I don't have this problem.

[tomclarke]

Diogenese wants moral choices to be simple. Murder of humans / not murder.

My point, made rather elaborately above, is that we never have this simplicity. You cannot make these binary distinctions without ending up with ludicrous results one way or another.

[CKay]

You cannot make these binary distinctions without ending up with ludicrous results one way or another.

Oh, I quite agree - not that such a reasoned argument is likely to persuade Diogenes.

But then his hyperbolic, logically fallacious, scatter-gun arguments aren't likely to change minds either (as if that's ever been his motivation here).

[KitemanSA]

The point is that the steps taken by your government in the 20th century i.e. the gradual systematic banning of firearms and practically speaking self defense have not helped the British people in fact they have made things worse. All you are saying is well your homicide rate is still much lower than the US so there. They were lower before your gov did anything, the point is that the things they have tried has only made things worse for you not better.

I never like proof by asertion. Do you have evidence to back up this idea? Like historic homicide rates in UK? Noting also problems caused by lack of reporting a long time ago?

Did I mention that the homicide rate is four times higher in the US than here in the UK?

Last time I read up on this (~20 years ago), the murder in the UK was reported to be 1/10th that in the US. However, that held true across ALL murder methods, poison, knives, hands and feet, etc. Which, if you tried to use the data to prove that there were many fewer murders per capita because there were many fewer guns per capita, it would also necessitate that the UK was a land of quadra-plegics (many fewer hands and feet per capita).

Oh, by the way, CKay's quote shouldn't be used as eveidence that the murder rate in the UK has gone up since it is well known that the rate in the US has gone way down. (Two factors mainly; loosening of gun restrictions and aging of the population.)