William Lane Craig had a little video on abortion which I made a little "response" video to. Since I don't really know how TikTok responses work--or how to make them work best--I'm reposting here too.
@reasonablefaithorg ##Abortion ##Ethics ##BioEthics ##Philosophy ##ChristianPhilosophy ##WilliamLaneCraig ##ReasonableFaith
♬ original sound - ReasonableFaithOrg
@nathan.nobis Reply to @nathan.nobis
♬ original sound - Philosophy with Nathan Nobis
About Christopher Kaczor, I sometimes thought that he wasn't really listening to what Spencer and me were actually saying, but was instead rely on talking points or assumptions about what we would say. E.g., I think I pretty clearly make it clear that my focus is on consciousness and a brain (and nervous system) that supports consciousness, but he seemed to have "heard" me as saying either having a brain or "human-like consciousness" (meaning, something like self-consciousness); when I mentioned just basic consciousness. This type of thing happened a few times, I think, where what I said wasn't heard. I suppose that's how conversations sometimes go though: we suspect people are going to say something that they really don't say.
Kaczor has this phrase something along the lines of "every time a human being has been treated as less than equal, moral disaster has happened." I should find the exact quote, since it's often repeated, but it's worth noting that this quote, when applied to abortion, is question-begging, in that it assumes that abortion is bad (and as bad as slavery, the Holocaust, and other moral disasters), and, relatedly, assumes that (nearly all) fetuses are "human beings" and human beings in the same ways that enslaved people and Holocaust victims are human beings. So I don't know if this slogan is meant to be an argument, but it assumes a lot, and what it should not. To put it another way, this slogan would seem plausible only to people who already believe abortion is evil.
Finally, Kaczor seems to propose our having a closer relation to our bodies than at least I think is correct. E.g., I think he mentioned someone kissing him by kissing his cheek, with the suggestion that to kiss his cheek is to kiss him. But switch the example to kissing him by kissing his hand. If his hand were cut off, he would not cease to exist: he is not his hand or, if he "is" his hand, his hand is a part of him that he can lose. Suppose someone kissed his hand without his knowing it and said "I kissed you." I think he might deny it, thinking that an unperceived kiss isn't a "real" kiss: it's just a touch of the lips. (People do talk this way: "Our bodies connected, but we did not: there was no meeting of our 'souls' here, or intimacy between persons here, so to speak."). In sum, I think that people who think we are, in essence, our minds and not our bodies can explain what's going on here without suggesting that we are, in essence, any of our body parts, especially since many body parts are "used" by our minds to have sensations, perceptions, and experiences, all in our minds.
In sum, this was a good discussion. I hope listeners enjoy it.
My "public engagement" on the topic of abortion has, from the beginning, been motivated by the thought that abortion is a complex issue that philosophers actually know a lot about. So, if more people understood abortion the ways philosophers do, discussions of it might be better and we might actually make more progress on the issue, in terms of how it's generally understood and engaged.
So here is a quick discussion of some of the core issues that can serve as an introductory overview of the topic.
1. LIFE
Many people ask, "Are fetuses alive, living or life?" and are otherwise obsessed with the question, "When does life begin?"
The clear and obvious answer here though is, "Yes, fetuses are biologically alive: they possess the characteristics of living things, reviewed on page 1 of any beginning biology textbook." (How could anyone deny that?)
But is this true? All things that are biologically alive, living, or life are prima facie wrong to kill.
("Prima facie" is a useful phrase that philosophers use that basically means, "in most circumstances": it contrasts with "always," or "necessarily." It's useful because it allows us to set aside various "whatabout?" questions about extreme, very usual situations).
No, not at all. Uncontroversial counterexamples are easy to find: bacteria, mold, plants, etc. So it is not true that all things that are biologically alive, living, or life are prima facie wrong to kill. That was a core premise of the argument and it's false.
Now, maybe people mean something different when they say they are concerned about whether fetuses are "life," but this is the language they use: if they mean something more specific, they should say that: they can and should learn to better state their own views. They can and should learn more about the topic so they can better discuss it.
Note: there is another meaning of “alive, living or life.” For example, Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” By "come alive," he clearly didn't mean biologically alive: he meant something like that you have found something you are passionate about or a chosen purpose. Something like this is another meaning of "being alive" and the like.
While it's true that anything "alive" in this meaning or sense of the term is prima facie wrong to kill, fetuses are not "alive" on this meaning, despite being biologically alive.
People often ask this question, "Are fetuses human?" "Yes, they are biologically human! They aren't feline or bovine fetuses: they are biologically human." (How could anyone deny that?).
But is this true? All things that are biologically human are prima facie wrong to kill.
No. A blob of random, living human skin cells wouldn't be wrong to kill. A living human toe wouldn't be wrong to kill. So this premise, a core premise to this argument, is false: it is not true that all things that are biologically human are prima facie wrong to kill.
Now, again, maybe people mean something different when they say they are concerned about whether fetuses are "human," but this is the language they often use: if they mean something more specific, they should say that: they can and should learn to better state their own views. They can and should learn more about the topic so they can do just that.
3. A HUMAN, HUMANS, HUMAN ORGANISMS
Is each fetus a human? Are fetuses humans?
These terms sound like more than being merely biologically human: this is a step in a better direction since we know that something merely being biologically human is insufficient for it being even morally significant, much less having something like the right to life.
Perhaps what is meant then is the question: "Are fetuses biologically human organisms?" And, again, "Yes! The fetuses in question are biologically human, and they are organisms: they aren't parts of organisms: they are organisms, although dependent organisms." (How could anyone deny that?)
But is this true? All things that are biologically human organisms are prima facie wrong to kill.
Here is where things start getting abstract and challenging. This is where many people "fall off the wagon" in terms of being willing and able to productively discuss the issues.
This premise takes us to these questions:
These are abstract questions. We don't often ask these questions in "daily life," but potential answers need to be identified and reviewed if we want to think about this topic in serious, informed ways.
Many of the what are often viewed as best-developed and most plausible answers here are going to appeal to human organisms' having minds or mental lives or consciousness or awareness and feelings. This type of answer, however, isn't going to readily apply to at least beginning fetuses though, since they lack that.
Now, there are alternative views that will appeal to something potential for having a mind, or being the kind of being that is a conscious, sentient being, and these theories need to be reviewed and carefully evaluated.
So, in sum, thinking about abortion leads us to the abstract question of what makes us prima facie wrong to kill or why we are prima facie wrong to kill. Most people haven't studied the variety of answers to this question and their potential strengths and weaknesses. Most people haven't studied how you would evaluate answers to these questions or have developed trained skills at doing that. But having this understanding and these skills would help with this, and these are gained in philosophy courses.
4. HUMAN BEINGS
It's often asked, "Are fetuses human beings?" Again, it depends on what you mean by “human beings”! If "human being" means "biologically human organism" then, "yes," but, as we've seen above, there are live, relevant questions about what makes human organisms have, say, basic moral rights (to life, etc.).
I suspect though that by "human being" many people mean more than just "biologically human organism." There can be cases (say cases of brain death or permanent coma) where someone would say, "There's a biologically human organism here, but not a human being." Some people do talk that way and so I think there's another meaning of "human being," which is likely better expressed by "human person."
5. HUMAN PERSONS
It's often asked, "Are fetuses (human) persons?" Depends on what you mean by “persons”!
To answer this question though, we can ask this: "You are a person: why are you a person? What makes you a person?"
To answer this, we can think about when and why our personhood could end: death? Brain death? Permanent coma? These all involve the permanent loss of consciousness, which suggests a key aspect to being a person is being a conscious being. (A further data point is that to "personify" something is to give it a mind, with awareness, thoughts, feelings, and so on; this suggests that these are, roughly, the traits of persons).
But beginning fetuses do not have minds: they are not conscious or aware. So they would not seem to be persons, given what persons seem to be like.
6. POTENTIAL PERSONS
Are fetuses potential beings with goals, desires, dreams, etc.? Are they potential persons? Often, yes.
But is this true? If X is a potential Y, then X should be treated now like an actual Y. No.
So something being a potential person does not seem to result in it having the rights of a person or it being that we must treat it like a person.
7. THE RIGHT TO LIFE
Do fetuses have the right to life that would make killing them wrong? Two questions:
A short Youtube video on the often-heard, very simple arguments that "fetuses are alive" and "fetuses are biologically human" and so therefore abortion is usually wrong (also on TikTok):
1. People have the right to life.
2. Fetuses are potential people.
C. Therefore, fetuses have the right to life.
At least, when pro-choice people review the arguments, they include this one even though, in fact, probably few actual critics of abortion accept or offer it. Why's that? Because they usually claim that fetuses are "persons with potential," not "potential persons." So they deny premise 2.
Nonetheless, the argument gets some attention, because it's a bad argument. You can see it's a bad argument if you complete the reasoning, or state the argument in logically valid form.
So, to get from 1 and 2 to 3, you need to claim this:
3. Potential people have the rights of actual people.
The next question is: "Why think that?" After all, this general principle is false:
4. For anything X, potential X's have the rights of actual X's.
Potential presidents, doctors, lawyers, judges, spouses, parents, autonomous beings, senior citizens, and on and on don't have the rights of actual ones: these are, of course, the rights uniquely associated with being an X: not universal rights. (Note: this point is stronger when we focus on cases that involve natural or moral rights, not any legal rights anyone has by convention, especially arbitrary convention [e.g., driving age minimums are somewhat arbitrary: if it's 16, it could have been 17, or 15.5]).
So, the generalization (4) is false. That doesn't entail that 3 is false, but it does show that 3 is an instance of an at least often false pattern. We definitely should not believe the argument to be sound; to reasonably believe it's unsound, though, we'd need a great reason to think 3 is false, not just unmotivated or unjustified, and I'm not sure we have that.
So anyone advocating for (3) is at least, running against the grain, so to speak. They are saying (3) an exception to the rule against thinking that potential things have the rights of actual things. Of course, the question is, as usual, "Why think that?"
+++
A recent answer I've seen amounts to this: many rights we have "in potential," such as the right to health care or, to use a perhaps less controversial example, the right to food if we are starving to death. (That food we can see as a type of healthcare too, if we want).
Let's assume, at least for the sake of argument, that if you are starving to death, and someone has a (spare) sandwich that would literally save your life, they are morally obligated to give you that sandwich (and so save your life) because you have a right to that sandwich, given your right to available food when you are starving.
Now, here are the claims: you have that right now, even though you are not currently starving. You have that right now because you have the potential to starve: you could be a starving person and, if you were, your right to food (if there were food you could have) would obligate someone to give you that food.
So, your potential for starving is what gives you the right now to be fed if you were starving. That's the proposal.
+++
The question though is whether this proposal can support thinking that potential people have the rights of actual people. Does the reasoning behind "your potential for starving is what gives you the right now to be fed if you were starving" support thinking "something's potential for being a person gives that something the rights of persons now"?
The claim was this:
Non-starving (potentially starving) people currently have the right to be fed if they were starving, in virtue of their potential for being a starving person: if and when they are starving, they must be fed, and that's true of them now, even when they are not starving.
Can a parallel be made with fetuses? Does something like this work? Recall, of course, that we are assuming here that fetuses are potential persons:
Fetuses (as potential persons) currently have the right to life, in virtue of their potential for being persons: if and when these [fetuses] are persons, they must be treated as persons: that's true of fetuses now, even when they are potential persons.
+++
So what's going on here?
One thing is that we never explicitly asked what the right to be fed if we are eventually starving is.
A quick observation is that this is a right about how we must be treated if we change in important ways: if we reach the state where we starving, that's when someone must act. If we are not starving, nobody needs to do anything for us (at least regarding this).
The suggested parallel then is that if a fetus has the right to life in virtue of it's potential for being a person, it would have to be treated like a person when it becomes an actual person. At least, that's what's suggested by the suggestion that the right to life here is or would be analogous to the right to be fed: with the latter, nobody has to do anything for you until you are actually starving, and with the former nobody has to do anything until the fetus is an actual person. And so that doesn't seem to imply anything for when the fetus is not a person, or is just a potential person. So the suggested analogy or parallel doesn't seem to work out.
These are some quick thoughts on this matter. In short, yes, your potential for starving is partly why, if you were starving, someone would be obligated to feed you, but that doesn't seem to support thinking that if something is a potential person, it must be treated like an actual person.
This, of course, doesn't even bring in objections-to-Marquis-type concerns that a fetus cannot literally become person, since a never-minded thing can't be identical to an essentially minded thing--but that's another more complex matter.
Please let me know if I've made any mistakes and, more likely, if there are better ways to think about these issues and rights that depend on potentials versus those that don't.
Note: the above updates in red are some corrections I made in light of some comments that I think I put in the 'comments below'.
All blog posts are here!
Suppose someone was really ignorant of political and ethical debates about abortion. They know what abortion is, but just don't know anything about "the controversies" on the issue, including the names of the main "sides" of the "debate." What would such a person think of the label "pro-life"?
Let's listen in on a conversation, a little "play," with someone knowledgeable about these issues, played by "A", and this person, as "B".
Act 1:
A: What do you think of those "pro-life" people?
B: Who are they? I've never heard of them.
A: Who do they sound like?
B: Um, people who are really pro - life? Like, they are really "into" life and supportive of life? Like those radical environmentalists, who say that all living things matter, including plants and insects? I think they are even concerned with "life" more broadly, like ecosystems too?
Maybe Jains? But I'm not sure if they are concerned about plants: I do know they are concerned about animals, including bugs.
Are either of these who "pro-life" people are?
A: No, um, not at all! Guess again!
B: OK, was I too broad? I don't suppose that type of environmentalism is really all that popular anyway. So are "pro-life" people "pro" not just anything that's alive, but "pro" sentient life? Are they the animal rights people? Animal rights people are human rights people too, of course.
A: Again, no. But your strategy of narrowing things here is a good one. Keep on narrowing it.
B: Well, I actually know something about animal rights or animal welfare people, and I don't think they call themselves "pro-life."
So are "pro-life" people then just human rights advocates? Like Amnesty International?
A: Close, maybe! But not really! "Pro-life" people are people who oppose abortion! So I suppose they are kinda like human rights advocates, but they—unlike typical human rights folks, who generally don't oppose abortion—they claim that human fetuses also have human rights or that abortions are otherwise wrong, really wrong, and that abortion should be outlawed. At least that's what they say.
B: Oh, OK. But that's kinda confusing. Why don't think they just call themselves "people who oppose abortion"? Or "critics of abortion"? Or "anti-abortion"? Or "defenders of fetal life," to get the "life" back in?
A: I really don't know. But I agree that would be better since it'd be clear what their view is actually about. "Life" is so broad that it could be almost anything! Well, anything alive.
B: Right.
Act 2:
B: So, these people who oppose abortion, I have a question about them, or their views.
A. Ok.
B. So, they are opposed to abortion. That means they don't want people to have abortions. But how do they do that? Is the idea just to try to prevent abortions—like trying to stop people from having abortions—or is it to try to make it such that there is less "demand" or want or "need" for abortions in the first place to there wind up being fewer abortions? Does that make sense? I suppose they could do both too.
A: Yeah, sure. I understand what you are getting at.
I suspect that people who really oppose abortion are divided on this. Some of them are really just concerned about there being fewer or no abortions—since they typically see most abortions as involving the intentional killing of a human person, or something like that—and so their focus is on trying to stop people from having abortions.
Others though I suspect are more, I'd say, thoughtful and realistic, and so they recognize that abortions happen for reasons, and so sometimes those reasons can be addressed and so the woman or girl would decide to not have an abortion. And, of course, things could be done to reduce unwanted or unexpected pregnancies in the first place, like more readily available birth-control options, and so the issue doesn't even arise in the first place.
So it's kinda like there are, on the one hand, people who fight criminals to reduce crime, and then there are folks who are like, "Let's change things and try to address whatever is causing the crime, so there's less crime in the first place." At least about crime, both are needed, but the second group is more "big picture" in their approach to reducing crime.
B: Hmm. Is either type of abortion critic more common?
A: I'd say definitely the first kind is more common and vocal. They are the type that lead pro-choice people, and even just people who really don't have enthusiastic views on the issues, to often say things like that "so-called 'pro-life' people only care about people until they are born," that "they are just 'pro-birth' not genuinely pro-life," and the like. They think "pro-life" sounds like a lot more than just being "anti-abortion," since that really is what you'd expect from that label.
The other side—that might have a more comprehensive strategy for trying to reduce abortions and unwanted pregnancies—doesn't get much notice, as far as I can tell.
B: Why's that?
A: I don't know. Maybe they'd say it's due to some media conspiracy and so these efforts exist but aren't much reported on, but I don't know about that: if they really were proposing big-picture changes to help pregnant women, especially in systematic and profound ways, you'd think that'd get more notice. But maybe not.
Maybe they'd also say that pro-choice people just want to be willfully ignorant of all their hopes and plans to make things easier for women to be pregnant and have children. But I don't know about that either since people and organizations tend to seek "good press" and look cooperative, and this would be that.
Maybe the opposition—the other people who oppose abortion, but don't seem to have much interest in helping people in positive ways, even in ways that would reduce the number of abortions—just have more influence because they think it's just far more important to try to actively prevent real-world abortions that would happen than to help anyone out in other ways: maybe they think that getting that type of help is less important than trying to prevent abortions.
Maybe that makes sense, if you think abortion is a super horrible evil thing: maybe you'd think it's more important to try to actively prevent intentional killings than to, well, do other things that would ultimately lead to fewer intentional killings. Honestly though, that probably doesn't make sense.
I suspect though that this type of "let's help babies and pregnant women and families" and "let's reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies" doesn't fit very well with the typical "politics" of the most vocal and influential anti-abortion advocates. These people, of course, tend to claim that abortion is just horrible, but they also seem to think that universal health care would also be horrible—they tend to oppose the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare—and tend to call any government efforts to help people "welfare" and "socialism": they are suspicious of "Big Government" and advocate for so-called "personal responsibility."
But more readily available healthcare and, say, some kind of Universal Basic Income, even if just for some times' in people's lives, surely would reduce the number of abortions! Yet the states where there are these new abortion bans and attempts to restrict abortions seem to be very hostile to actually supporting people in ways that would reduce abortions. And, of course, Republicans nearly universally oppose these sorts of things.
B: So the whole "Let's help pregnant women so they don't feel like they 'need' to have abortions, and help them not get pregnant (if they don't want to be pregnant) in the first place" message doesn't really fit with their other political agenda?
A: Seems like it. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they aren't well known.
Maybe they want churches to help people in these ways, but it's not like a church can provide people with healthcare and adequate income to have a baby with, and a family: it's hard enough to get all that even with just a normal job (and there are typically pretty big out of pocket costs for having a baby too: it's not like it's just "free" if you have health insurance). And I suppose not many churches would want to get involved in distributing contraception. Maybe I'm listening in the wrong places, but at least I never hear about anti-abortion efforts like these from churches, or any people who oppose abortion.
B: That's interesting, especially since these people often claim to be religious, right? So much for the whole "love your neighbor" bit here, even if loving your neighbor would reduce the number of abortions!
A: Yeah, it's odd. The mainstream view seems to be like, "We're against killing fetuses, but we're not really in favor of helping anyone else." Kinda libertarian-ish, I guess. It is, however, not an inconsistent view, although the part about "Well, we just want to stop people from killing fetuses, yet we don't think there's an obligation for society to do things that would lessen that killing" does seem hard to understand.
B. Huh. Yeah, I agree. Whatever their views are though, "pro-life" doesn't seem to be an accurate label!
A. Agreed.
Act 3:
B: Oh, another thing that I wanted to say earlier, along the lines of the "if people were really 'pro-life' they would do this and that to try to reduce abortions" is that there are these claims that if anti-abortion people really believed what they say they do, they would be trying to prevent IVF, in vitro fertilization practices—since that results in the death of embryos—and that they'd be lobbying to try to find ways to reduce or prevent miscarriages, since those result in the death of many, many embryos and fetuses.
Now, they will often say that nothing can be done about most miscarriages, but I don't know that they really know that, and it seems like—given the huge number of deaths of embryos—they'd be campaigning for directing research towards that. I mean, if they think that embryos are "people," then all the "people" that die in miscarriages would seem to be a super-awful thing, worse than cancer and diabetes and many of the other problems society pours money into.
About IVF, I don't know why they don't try to ban that, or even vocally oppose that: it's not like they picket places that do IVF.
So it seems like if they really believe what they say they do, we'd expect them to advocate for different things than they actually do, although they might just not have thought about this, or they have some explanation why they seem to ignore it, at least for the most part.
A. Maybe you don't see much about IVF and miscarriage-prevention since that involves the death of embryos, those "life" or "lives" ending, but without killing?
B. Yeah, good point. And, again, it seems at least a bit odd to say that you are really only opposed to deaths from killing, but not all that opposed from deaths from other causes.
A. Indeed and, again, that doesn't sound so "pro-life."
B. Right.
