A Catholic like myself would probably be more than happy to bite the bullet on this one and just agree that contraception just is wrong, at this point do we just Moorean shift?
What's wrong with saying that we (and the two headed aliens) are numerically identical with our brains, which are numerically identical with the brains of the fetuses we were? That would seem to deal with the contraception objection, and given that there is an immature brain present from very early in pregnancy, it would suggest that most abortions after perhaps 5 weeks or so might be wrong (which would be most abortions that actually take place).
I think the identity objection is pretty weak—even if we aren’t animalists. If animalism were false and some other physicalist theory of personal identity were true (such as constitutionalism, brainism, four-dimensionalism etc.), at most that’d get the proponent of Marquis’s argument to the conclusion that most abortions are only half as bad as murder (which seems more like a feature rather than a bug, if you ask any intellectually serious pro-lifer). But the argument itself would still work.
Why do say that? Because even if persons aren’t identical to their adult bodies, and thus weren’t fetuses, it remains true that the adult human animals we’re all associated with were indeed fetuses. Since human animals share our central nervous systems—and indeed our brains—down to the atoms that constitute them, they must be having all of our experiences as well. Indeed for any reason R you might give for a person’s ability to think and have experiences, R would equally entail that human animals can think and have experiences as well.
In fact, this point is so uncontroversial that even the leading defenders of non-animalist theories, like Jeff McMahan, Lynne Rudder Baker and Hud Hudson grant it. McMahan goes as far as to state that he finds the idea that animals can’t think (probably referring to Shoemaker, if memory serves me right), despite having a neural machinery sufficient for thinking, borderline “nonsensical”.
(There’s a reason why the problem of “too many thinkers” remains serious and intractable till date!)
So, human animals also have a future like ours that they would be deprived of if they are aborted as fetuses—and thar is so even if *WE aren’t human animals or bodies* and *WE haven’t been early fetuses*. Therefore, the identity objection fails completely.
My biggest concern has long been that arguments against the anti-abortion camp imply that logic is the only useful way to determine permissibility. The problem with this approach is twofold: it plays into the hand of anti-abortion by inappropriately detaching ideas about the thing with the contexts that may demand it. Secondly, it fails to address the ways in which sometimes people are pro-abortion bc they cannot support the life of a baby. And sometimes people are anti-abortion bc they want to guarantee paternal lineage / ensure procreation in male-choice driven circumstances
How do you take these motivations for being pro-life or pro-choice to be relevant to the permissibility of abortion and abortion restrictions themselves? Or do you not take them to be?
I think that you are either not using the word "logic" in the way that I would use it or you're getting confused. "Using logic", in the sense that I mean, just means giving arguments. An argument is just a series of statements in which some of the statements give you reason to believe one of the other statements (the conclusion).
You say that the approach of using logic (giving arguments, or reasons for what you believe) ignores the fact that sometimes people get abortions because they cannot support the baby. I assume you think this is a good reason to get an abortion. But if you think this is a good reason to get an abortion, then you are just "using logic" in the way that I've defined it. You're giving a reason for why it's okay to get an abortion!
Now, if using logic just means actually giving an argument (giving reasons) for your view, then what other "useful way" to determine permissibility is there? If you're not giving reasons for your view, what are you doing? You can try to emotionally persuade people, I suppose, but that's not a project I'm interested in. I want to know the reasons for and against the pro-choice view. Anything is else is not really an inquiry into whether it's true that abortion is morally okay.
Lastly, in this writing I am responding to an argument for the pro-life view. When confronted with an argument against your view, you should consider whether the argument works and give objections. I'm curious, if giving reasons why this argument doesn't work is not what we should be doing, then what do you think we should do? Ignore the argument? Attempt to emotionally persuade people (this is just another way to avoid the argument, really)?
The way I understood Ashley's special use of the term "logic" was as defined by the boundaries given by her: "detach[ed] ideas about the thing [from] the contexts that may demand it" which is a fair boundary to proceed with her criticism, as it could for example describe the logic of a Metaphysics, the way it divides things from their history, connection to other things, and concrete existences, and in so doing divides our ideas of things from the material reality of things. An example that satisfies her condition would be including the—necessarily attached—pregnant person in the propositions of abortion, as well as the political environment, technology to achieve the abortions, class strata in affordability of abortive healthcare, and so on.
In fact, the historically inherited traditions of philosophy have always been divided between class interests, not the intellectually pure pursuit of conclusions to propositions. And they have always used logic that suited their own claims to rulership. One such example is actually given by Ashley: "guarantee paternal lineage / ensure procreation in male-choice driven circumstances". This highlights the political and sex hierarchy interests men have over women, which is long established in anthropological records (see Lerner, Gerda "The Creation of Patriarchy"). These closed systems of logic dependent on material interests are ideologies. And a male-over-female dominance ideology is the patriarchal ideology, of which one position is anti-abortion. Ideologies are very often internally consistent, as they are not open systems subject to scientific scrutiny.
While you may not personally feel comfortable attempting to accurately guess at your opponent's political purpose in their argument (their argument AS a teleological product for a political power), or political relevance to the argument, don't mistake that special aversion for rigor in the general sense of real world propositions. A rigorous analysis of any proposition must consider the history, connection with others, and as it satisfies concrete experiences of history (not only abstractions like Pinocchio or robots). At least if we want a rigorous analysis that can be put toward the human endeavor of science, not merely furthering practiceless philosophcal rigor. If a logic doesn't depend on scientific practice, it's a pure abstraction (like Math) whether internally consistent or not. By responding directly from and in the same apparently politically detached framework as the arguments presented by your opponent, and not how the propositions in it are connected to real things, you will find yourself in the realm of only the abstract, making arguments about pregnancy without for instance ever once mentioning the practical role of the pregnant person herself.
If I can call this kind of argumentation, by Ashley's specified boundary, a "dry" logic, then I can say it's fair play for Ashley to demand a "wet" logic, which is dependent on the unique property of teleology in human activity.
Avoiding the teleological is not necessary when analyzing social propositions. Precisely the opposite. Access to safe and affordable abortions is a uniquely social question in the first place. After all, Society is an ontologically different kind of being from inorganic or organic nature, distinguished by its dependence on human activity. That is, an activity that has teleology as its distinctive property. The consequence of this is that the characteristic of social being comes from the specific determination of the material reproduction of the human species that constitutes society. The mode of that production changes throughout history and thus determines new characteristics of social being in every era. Social being stands on natural being and organic existence yet we do not find any necessary connection between the material reproduction of the being and teleology until society, by the very fact that we don't find intentional activity (relative to humans) in nature.
Therefore you are ALWAYS making a statement of teleology, even implicitly, even by absence, when making a statement about distinctly human activity. This includes your opponent, even as he is writing his argument. You may want to take it and engage with the argument as if it were written purely as a puzzle solving activity that takes scientific facts and follows mathematical rules to reach a conclusion, and that this particular puzzle was chosen at random or whatever was ready to hand. You may suspect his political motives but, unable to prove them, choose to engage as if it were such a pure puzzle endeavor. Yet nevertheless, his argument's framework and conclusions can be plucked by class actors in society (same as yours and mine) and given final purpose through political tools in service to class interests. The production of arguments is always already a production of ammunition in class war and is therefore not able to be undertaken as a valueless enterprise by anyone, no matter how much they might wish or imagine it so. The ammunition may be weak or strong, actually used or unused, but that doesn't make it any less so.
What separates a wet (social) logic of human activity from a dry one is that the logician treats the universe their arguments live in as the real one, with all its messy human political powers, not one where only purely natural and unconscious physical laws are the only rules. Even the argument itself was produced in a definite society, in a definite human era, and is subjected to definite class interests, it is not something holy and set apart from the society it was created in. As such, I take Ashley's criticism to the meat of your logic on the abortion question to be that it has unduly prejudiced natural activity, not provided really human activity, owing to the lack of identifying any doctrine of design that very real classes have for banning abortion. By accepting the opponent's (purposeful) framing of abortion as a moral question about murder contingent on scientific facts about purely natural activities, we ignore the framing of the very human activity of social classes in shaping and maintaining the laws of reproduction of society in ways that suit their class interests, by the subjugation of women's bodies to the body of violence-enforced Law. This entirely skips the question of the pregnant person's relation to a doctrine of design in their own pregnancy. Avoiding this in the last analysis only suits the interests of those who have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and power to coerce pregnancy. Reductionism in any understanding of social being—of human activity, to a purely natural process always does this.
Use of wet logic for abortion must account for the many connections of the proposition with political power, class oppression, sexual hierarchy, and gender rules (just to name a few), and how each of those fluctuate throughout history. And that there is a historically consistent removal of consideration of the practice of the pregnant person out of the propositions of abortion, even though abortion cannot exist without a pregnant person! And I preemptively caution, it's not a fair play to take a priori that the historically male-dominated field of philosophy, and all its logic produced thereby, has somehow exhaustively covered all the arguments about pregnant bodies when the men in question, who cannot become pregnant, do not have a direct, visceral, existential, or power interest in the question. It's not that they couldn't, it's that we should not silently assume people considered things outside of and against their own material interests, their own designs, for an entire field of study, which has historically answered to ruling class designs (see: Plato's "Republic"; a ruling class ideology given as philosophy, which was definitively partisan).
I mean to describe a fixation with logic in a pure sense, which is how I took the original authors post i.e. defeating an argument by pointing out contradictory / self-defeating premises.
I am trying to say that arguments against abortion may be more effective without plain reference to some predetermined logical structure. Like it’s a real question: who is the author convincing of his pro-abortion refutation on zygotes? And why are we trying to modus ponens real life practical human concerns like abortion?
People make reasonable decisions based on a whole host of warranted assumptions that (rightly) cannot be captured by “if this then that” logic. What’s more, we’re in a moment where women are DYING from having been denied much needed abortive care. So frankly, on the topic of abortion, the author’s route in addressing the debate itself strikes me - in this moment - as more than just droll & trite; it strikes as irresponsible. That’s my claim
This article isn't really about the political, legal, or popular debate concerning abortion. It's just about one academic article arguing that abortion is wrong. It's not "irresponsible" to not cover every aspect of the abortion debate in one article on Substack that won't even reach a popular audience to begin with.
As for who I'm convincing, I'm looking to convince people who accept the future like ours argument that it does not work. The audience is not your typical pro-lifer or pro-choices because almost nobody outside of academic philosophy knows about this argument.
I'm a bit puzzled about the modus ponens comment. Do you think that logic can't be used when thinking about real life concerns? There is nothing wrong with using logic to make sure our judgments concerning a real life issue are consistent, and that our arguments concerning that issue are actually valid. Frankly, both sides in this debate need to do that more often because the majority of arguments given for and against abortion at the popular level are blatantly question-begging.
As for the claim that people's "warranted assumptions" about abortion cannot be captured by logic: I don't see how this could be?? If the assumption they're making supports abortion, you should be able to capture that in the form of an argument. If it doesn't support abortion then... so what? Either the assumption they're making entails something about the morality of abortion, in which case it can be captured in the form of an argument, or the assumption does not entail something about abortion, and then who cares. People can make whatever assumptions they want about moral matters, but we have to actually check and make sure those assumptions can be turned into an argument.
A Catholic like myself would probably be more than happy to bite the bullet on this one and just agree that contraception just is wrong, at this point do we just Moorean shift?
What's wrong with saying that we (and the two headed aliens) are numerically identical with our brains, which are numerically identical with the brains of the fetuses we were? That would seem to deal with the contraception objection, and given that there is an immature brain present from very early in pregnancy, it would suggest that most abortions after perhaps 5 weeks or so might be wrong (which would be most abortions that actually take place).
I think the identity objection is pretty weak—even if we aren’t animalists. If animalism were false and some other physicalist theory of personal identity were true (such as constitutionalism, brainism, four-dimensionalism etc.), at most that’d get the proponent of Marquis’s argument to the conclusion that most abortions are only half as bad as murder (which seems more like a feature rather than a bug, if you ask any intellectually serious pro-lifer). But the argument itself would still work.
Why do say that? Because even if persons aren’t identical to their adult bodies, and thus weren’t fetuses, it remains true that the adult human animals we’re all associated with were indeed fetuses. Since human animals share our central nervous systems—and indeed our brains—down to the atoms that constitute them, they must be having all of our experiences as well. Indeed for any reason R you might give for a person’s ability to think and have experiences, R would equally entail that human animals can think and have experiences as well.
In fact, this point is so uncontroversial that even the leading defenders of non-animalist theories, like Jeff McMahan, Lynne Rudder Baker and Hud Hudson grant it. McMahan goes as far as to state that he finds the idea that animals can’t think (probably referring to Shoemaker, if memory serves me right), despite having a neural machinery sufficient for thinking, borderline “nonsensical”.
(There’s a reason why the problem of “too many thinkers” remains serious and intractable till date!)
So, human animals also have a future like ours that they would be deprived of if they are aborted as fetuses—and thar is so even if *WE aren’t human animals or bodies* and *WE haven’t been early fetuses*. Therefore, the identity objection fails completely.
Well, “offensive to common sense” were McMahan’s exact words...
My biggest concern has long been that arguments against the anti-abortion camp imply that logic is the only useful way to determine permissibility. The problem with this approach is twofold: it plays into the hand of anti-abortion by inappropriately detaching ideas about the thing with the contexts that may demand it. Secondly, it fails to address the ways in which sometimes people are pro-abortion bc they cannot support the life of a baby. And sometimes people are anti-abortion bc they want to guarantee paternal lineage / ensure procreation in male-choice driven circumstances
How do you take these motivations for being pro-life or pro-choice to be relevant to the permissibility of abortion and abortion restrictions themselves? Or do you not take them to be?
I think that you are either not using the word "logic" in the way that I would use it or you're getting confused. "Using logic", in the sense that I mean, just means giving arguments. An argument is just a series of statements in which some of the statements give you reason to believe one of the other statements (the conclusion).
You say that the approach of using logic (giving arguments, or reasons for what you believe) ignores the fact that sometimes people get abortions because they cannot support the baby. I assume you think this is a good reason to get an abortion. But if you think this is a good reason to get an abortion, then you are just "using logic" in the way that I've defined it. You're giving a reason for why it's okay to get an abortion!
Now, if using logic just means actually giving an argument (giving reasons) for your view, then what other "useful way" to determine permissibility is there? If you're not giving reasons for your view, what are you doing? You can try to emotionally persuade people, I suppose, but that's not a project I'm interested in. I want to know the reasons for and against the pro-choice view. Anything is else is not really an inquiry into whether it's true that abortion is morally okay.
Lastly, in this writing I am responding to an argument for the pro-life view. When confronted with an argument against your view, you should consider whether the argument works and give objections. I'm curious, if giving reasons why this argument doesn't work is not what we should be doing, then what do you think we should do? Ignore the argument? Attempt to emotionally persuade people (this is just another way to avoid the argument, really)?
The way I understood Ashley's special use of the term "logic" was as defined by the boundaries given by her: "detach[ed] ideas about the thing [from] the contexts that may demand it" which is a fair boundary to proceed with her criticism, as it could for example describe the logic of a Metaphysics, the way it divides things from their history, connection to other things, and concrete existences, and in so doing divides our ideas of things from the material reality of things. An example that satisfies her condition would be including the—necessarily attached—pregnant person in the propositions of abortion, as well as the political environment, technology to achieve the abortions, class strata in affordability of abortive healthcare, and so on.
In fact, the historically inherited traditions of philosophy have always been divided between class interests, not the intellectually pure pursuit of conclusions to propositions. And they have always used logic that suited their own claims to rulership. One such example is actually given by Ashley: "guarantee paternal lineage / ensure procreation in male-choice driven circumstances". This highlights the political and sex hierarchy interests men have over women, which is long established in anthropological records (see Lerner, Gerda "The Creation of Patriarchy"). These closed systems of logic dependent on material interests are ideologies. And a male-over-female dominance ideology is the patriarchal ideology, of which one position is anti-abortion. Ideologies are very often internally consistent, as they are not open systems subject to scientific scrutiny.
While you may not personally feel comfortable attempting to accurately guess at your opponent's political purpose in their argument (their argument AS a teleological product for a political power), or political relevance to the argument, don't mistake that special aversion for rigor in the general sense of real world propositions. A rigorous analysis of any proposition must consider the history, connection with others, and as it satisfies concrete experiences of history (not only abstractions like Pinocchio or robots). At least if we want a rigorous analysis that can be put toward the human endeavor of science, not merely furthering practiceless philosophcal rigor. If a logic doesn't depend on scientific practice, it's a pure abstraction (like Math) whether internally consistent or not. By responding directly from and in the same apparently politically detached framework as the arguments presented by your opponent, and not how the propositions in it are connected to real things, you will find yourself in the realm of only the abstract, making arguments about pregnancy without for instance ever once mentioning the practical role of the pregnant person herself.
If I can call this kind of argumentation, by Ashley's specified boundary, a "dry" logic, then I can say it's fair play for Ashley to demand a "wet" logic, which is dependent on the unique property of teleology in human activity.
Avoiding the teleological is not necessary when analyzing social propositions. Precisely the opposite. Access to safe and affordable abortions is a uniquely social question in the first place. After all, Society is an ontologically different kind of being from inorganic or organic nature, distinguished by its dependence on human activity. That is, an activity that has teleology as its distinctive property. The consequence of this is that the characteristic of social being comes from the specific determination of the material reproduction of the human species that constitutes society. The mode of that production changes throughout history and thus determines new characteristics of social being in every era. Social being stands on natural being and organic existence yet we do not find any necessary connection between the material reproduction of the being and teleology until society, by the very fact that we don't find intentional activity (relative to humans) in nature.
Therefore you are ALWAYS making a statement of teleology, even implicitly, even by absence, when making a statement about distinctly human activity. This includes your opponent, even as he is writing his argument. You may want to take it and engage with the argument as if it were written purely as a puzzle solving activity that takes scientific facts and follows mathematical rules to reach a conclusion, and that this particular puzzle was chosen at random or whatever was ready to hand. You may suspect his political motives but, unable to prove them, choose to engage as if it were such a pure puzzle endeavor. Yet nevertheless, his argument's framework and conclusions can be plucked by class actors in society (same as yours and mine) and given final purpose through political tools in service to class interests. The production of arguments is always already a production of ammunition in class war and is therefore not able to be undertaken as a valueless enterprise by anyone, no matter how much they might wish or imagine it so. The ammunition may be weak or strong, actually used or unused, but that doesn't make it any less so.
What separates a wet (social) logic of human activity from a dry one is that the logician treats the universe their arguments live in as the real one, with all its messy human political powers, not one where only purely natural and unconscious physical laws are the only rules. Even the argument itself was produced in a definite society, in a definite human era, and is subjected to definite class interests, it is not something holy and set apart from the society it was created in. As such, I take Ashley's criticism to the meat of your logic on the abortion question to be that it has unduly prejudiced natural activity, not provided really human activity, owing to the lack of identifying any doctrine of design that very real classes have for banning abortion. By accepting the opponent's (purposeful) framing of abortion as a moral question about murder contingent on scientific facts about purely natural activities, we ignore the framing of the very human activity of social classes in shaping and maintaining the laws of reproduction of society in ways that suit their class interests, by the subjugation of women's bodies to the body of violence-enforced Law. This entirely skips the question of the pregnant person's relation to a doctrine of design in their own pregnancy. Avoiding this in the last analysis only suits the interests of those who have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and power to coerce pregnancy. Reductionism in any understanding of social being—of human activity, to a purely natural process always does this.
Use of wet logic for abortion must account for the many connections of the proposition with political power, class oppression, sexual hierarchy, and gender rules (just to name a few), and how each of those fluctuate throughout history. And that there is a historically consistent removal of consideration of the practice of the pregnant person out of the propositions of abortion, even though abortion cannot exist without a pregnant person! And I preemptively caution, it's not a fair play to take a priori that the historically male-dominated field of philosophy, and all its logic produced thereby, has somehow exhaustively covered all the arguments about pregnant bodies when the men in question, who cannot become pregnant, do not have a direct, visceral, existential, or power interest in the question. It's not that they couldn't, it's that we should not silently assume people considered things outside of and against their own material interests, their own designs, for an entire field of study, which has historically answered to ruling class designs (see: Plato's "Republic"; a ruling class ideology given as philosophy, which was definitively partisan).
I mean to describe a fixation with logic in a pure sense, which is how I took the original authors post i.e. defeating an argument by pointing out contradictory / self-defeating premises.
I am trying to say that arguments against abortion may be more effective without plain reference to some predetermined logical structure. Like it’s a real question: who is the author convincing of his pro-abortion refutation on zygotes? And why are we trying to modus ponens real life practical human concerns like abortion?
People make reasonable decisions based on a whole host of warranted assumptions that (rightly) cannot be captured by “if this then that” logic. What’s more, we’re in a moment where women are DYING from having been denied much needed abortive care. So frankly, on the topic of abortion, the author’s route in addressing the debate itself strikes me - in this moment - as more than just droll & trite; it strikes as irresponsible. That’s my claim
This article isn't really about the political, legal, or popular debate concerning abortion. It's just about one academic article arguing that abortion is wrong. It's not "irresponsible" to not cover every aspect of the abortion debate in one article on Substack that won't even reach a popular audience to begin with.
As for who I'm convincing, I'm looking to convince people who accept the future like ours argument that it does not work. The audience is not your typical pro-lifer or pro-choices because almost nobody outside of academic philosophy knows about this argument.
I'm a bit puzzled about the modus ponens comment. Do you think that logic can't be used when thinking about real life concerns? There is nothing wrong with using logic to make sure our judgments concerning a real life issue are consistent, and that our arguments concerning that issue are actually valid. Frankly, both sides in this debate need to do that more often because the majority of arguments given for and against abortion at the popular level are blatantly question-begging.
As for the claim that people's "warranted assumptions" about abortion cannot be captured by logic: I don't see how this could be?? If the assumption they're making supports abortion, you should be able to capture that in the form of an argument. If it doesn't support abortion then... so what? Either the assumption they're making entails something about the morality of abortion, in which case it can be captured in the form of an argument, or the assumption does not entail something about abortion, and then who cares. People can make whatever assumptions they want about moral matters, but we have to actually check and make sure those assumptions can be turned into an argument.
And oh! You are the author. Do accept my non-apology for the honest thoughts