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Terryl Givens Weighs in on Ethics of Abortion


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26 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

In the terms under discussion, bodies are resources which can be monopolized by threats or force.  Thus they may indeed be property, and hence owned.

That is because the government owns your body, in the terms under discussion.  Laws and enforcement thereof are the threats and the force by which your body is monopolized by its true owners.

No and no. Property is not the only lens through which human interactions can be interpreted. And we already know and codify, it has limits.

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14 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

It is to be noted that one need not "agree" with the schema proffered in my post.  It is not an attempt at persuasion - it is a de-rhetorized (value-neutral) description of our practices with respect to resources.

If one does not have power to do what I asked if you had power to do it is only because one is not the owner of one's body in the terms under discussion - another entity owns it.

It's not accurate and therefore cannot say much about human morality or human relationships with government.

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9 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

No and no. Property is not the only lens through which human interactions can be interpreted. And we already know and codify, it has limits.

The limits - codifications as you put it - are simply threats and force by the true owners.

8 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

It's not accurate[.]

Find a counterexample.

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As far as the schema proffered in my post providing guidance to "morality," it all depends on what rule one measures morality by.  God operates by the Golden Rule: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, for this is the law and the prophets."  To him, doing that is good; doing anything else is evil.

If one does not actively wish to be monopolized by threats and force, do not monopolize others by threats and force.

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1 hour ago, Jared Livesey said:

The limits - codifications as you put it - are simply threats and force by the true owners.

 

Says you. Again you're using your personal definition of property here.

1 hour ago, Jared Livesey said:

Find a counterexample.

Counterexample to what, explicitly?

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1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

It's not accurate and therefore cannot say much about human morality or human relationships with government.

It definitely simplifies human interaction into something abstract and unrealistic, imo.

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10 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Says you. Again you're using your personal definition of property here.

Counterexample to what, explicitly?

Find a counterexample to the schema offered in my post.  If it is inaccurate, as you say, then you know of a human interaction which cannot be encompassed by that schema; such an example would be a counterexample.

If, on the other hand, you cannot find such an interaction, then as far as you know it is completely accurate.

Edited by Jared Livesey
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1 minute ago, Jared Livesey said:

Find a counterexample to the schema offered in my post.  If it is inaccurate, as you say, then you know of a human interaction which cannot be reduced to that schema; such an example would be a counterexample.

If, on the other hand, you cannot find such an interaction, then as far as you know it is completely accurate.

If I understand your definition correctly, it is contradicted by rape...a rapist may surprise and force 'use of the body' in the moment due to the individual being surprised and unprepared.  This does not mean he owns his victim, as he may be caught and punished quite quickly and pretty completely disappear and never 'dictate' to that person again.

If you claim he only "owns" the victim's body in the moment of rape when the victim is unable to stop it due to surprise or being unprepared and as soon as the victim asserts power again, the rapist loses ownership....the concept is useless.

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3 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

Find a counterexample to the schema offered in my post.  If it is inaccurate, as you say, then you know of a human interaction which cannot be encompassed by that schema; such an example would be a counterexample.

If, on the other hand, you cannot find such an interaction, then as far as you know it is completely accurate.

Children are not the property of their mother. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Children are not the property of their mother. 

 

Yes, they are, as defined within the schema - or, if not the mother, then someone else owns them, and owns the mother, as well.  Who, for example, stops the mother from doing whatsoever she will with her child?

Edited by Jared Livesey
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2 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

Actually, it means precisely that.

Then there would be no justice in sending him to jail or protesting the rape if he was technically the owner while the rape was occurring.

You appear to be using ownership in a different way than is meant by most others.  Giving an individual a drug so one can rape them may give temporary control, but that isn't ownership.

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Just now, Calm said:

Then there would be no justice in sending him to jail or protesting the rape if he was technically the owner while the rape was occurring.

You appear to be using ownership in a different way than is meant by most others.  Giving an individual a drug so one can rape them may give temporary control, but that isn't ownership.

The operational definitions being used are in my earlier post.  You will find that most problems may be resolved by strictly determining the actual owner of the resources in question.  For example, in modern USA, the rapist and the victim are both owned by another entity.  That entity is the one issuing laws, granting rights and privileges, and enforcing them.

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A person takes a car for a test drive.  As they hit the accelerator they are in control of the car.  By your definition they own it.  But as soon as they give the keys back they are no longer the owner.  And in between, during anytime the driver could refuse to turn the keys over and be successful in not losing the temporary possession of the keys, the driver is the owner.

The fact that no one else in the world recognizes the driver as the owner and that they would therefore be chased down and keys forcefully removed in an hour or so means the possession and control of the car for that hour by the driver is not ownership.

A thief does not own what they steal.  If they did, no one has a fundamental right to assert ownership before others.  Possession alone would be ownership.  Nonsense.

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11 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

Yes, they are, as defined within the schema - or, if not the mother, then someone else owns them, and owns the mother, as well.  Who, for example, stops the mother from doing whatsoever she will with her child?

 

4 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

The operational definitions being used are in my earlier post.  You will find that most problems may be resolved by strictly determining the actual owner of the resources in question.  For example, in modern USA, the rapist and the victim are both owned by another entity.  That entity is the one issuing laws, granting rights and privileges, and enforcing them.

I don't care to explore your personal definitions further. Suffice to say that they do not represent common knowledge or the legal reality. Your schema is what one calls a non-starter, as I've already shown.

People are not property.

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6 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

For example, in modern USA, the rapist and the victim are both owned by another entity.  That entity is the one issuing laws, granting rights and privileges, and enforcing them.

Using the word "ownership" in such a way by redefining it it to the point of practical meaningless in terms of determining how a culture determines ownership is not a useful discussion imo.  You might as well define red as the "an effect of light with a wavelength between 450 and 500 nanometer" and when someone protests that is blue, say 'it is the operational definition being used in my post, so that is exactly what it is'.  And perhaps in the limits of your posts that is true. 

That doesn't prevent it from being meaningless and wrong in all other posts.

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2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Using the word "ownership" in such a way by redefining it it to the point of practical meaningless in terms of determining how a culture determines ownership is not a useful discussion imo. 

That doesn't prevent it from being meaningless and wrong in all other posts.

As I mentioned when you similarly disparaged the proffered functional definitions the first time, to each their own.  Others may find meaning in it where to you it seems as the noise of wind.

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12 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

That's not clear - where is the threat?

Where is the force?  What is the difference in your scenario between someone driving a car off the lot and a rape?  The person using the car cannot be stopped in the moment because the actual owner of the car is not prepared to do so, just as the rape happened not because of ownership, but because the actual owner was unprepared (not saying they were responsible for being unprepared, one isn't capable of being prepare for everything).

A hurricane can destroy a home.  It threatens as it approaches. This does not mean it owns it.  A person with a gun threatens to shoot into a crowd.  They all begin to run.  He then fires into the crowd and many drop dead.  He did not own the crowd when he threatened them.  He did not own the bodies when he prevented them from leaving.  He did not have a right to murder them because of ownership.  

Edited by Calm
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3 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

it seems that he isn't the owner by my definition.

The force is the car that is under his current control.  If he can drive it in ways unapproved by the car dealership and they are not able to prevent him in that moment, he is the owner by your definition.

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Quote

Also Meadowchik: She owns her body, and essentially that's all that is needed for the argument. Her body is hers[.]

 

13 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

Ah.

I was engaging you through the terms of your argument at that point, after which I did clarify that bodily autonomy laws do not work the same as property laws.

 

14 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

As you will.  

Of course.

15 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

 I don't own you.

No need to state the obvious.

10 minutes ago, Jared Livesey said:

As I mentioned when you similarly disparaged the proffered functional definitions the first time, to each their own.  Others may find meaning in it where to you it seems as the noise of wind.

I doubt that many see the concept of property as an absolute, and certainly not as a lens through which all truth is illuminated, especially when the use of it leads to absurdities.

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I doubt that many see the concept of property as an absolute, and certainly not as a lens through which all truth is illuminated, especially when the use of it leads to absurdities.

To be sure, truth is not popular.

One person's absurdity may well be another's straightfoward deduction.  It is self-contradictory to assert that property rights in bodies gets one only abortion and not also slavery, organ harvesting, prostitution, recreational drug use, tattoos, and so on.  Abortion and slavery and organ harvesting and prostitution and recreational drug use and tattoos and so on are the price of property rights in one's body - if one is consistent.

And if one sees those things as bad, all one has to do is turn others into property by coercing them into doing what they do not wish to do, or coercing them away from doing what they do wish to do.  We might call this exercise of coercive power to convert people into property "government" sometimes, but it is simply slavery under a different name.  But coercive power applied against others to to control them does not refute the fact that people are property - resources monopolized by coercive power - but merely demonstrates its truth.

The lens we are looking through is power.

And that is the real argument with respect to abortion: who has power over whom; that is, who owns whom, and what narrative best preserves the illusion that the winners in that contest are good people.  Thus generalized, both sides seem alike in principle.

 

Quote

No need to state the obvious.

What is obvious to one may well be absurd to another.

For example, to one it may be obvious that property is naught but resources monopolized by coercive power.

To another, on the other hand, it is obvious that one first claims resources as property (and there are competing theories on how, precisely, resources get converted into property, but the end result is always the same:) then one defends one's property by coercive power.

To the first, it is obvious that the second is merely reframing aggression as defense, and that property claims straightforwardly violate the Golden Rule.

And to the second, it is obvious that property and its perhaps unfortunate and necessarily attendant inequality and violence is "the only game in town" when it comes to the allocation of scarce resources, which is apparently at best a zero-sum game.  Even if property were evil, are not all guilty?  Doesn't every political ideology presuppose property, disagreeing only in what form the owner of last resort should take and why?  How could it be possible all of them are wrong?  Our entire society and all its marvellous works rest upon the foundation of property!  What else should we be doing?

Well, what did Jesus say we should be doing?

And behold, it is written:
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say unto you that ye shall not resist evil,
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat,
let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee,
and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away.

He said give it up.

Edited by Jared Livesey
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