Prosecutors Refuse to Drop Charges Against Texas 11-Year-Old Put in Solitary Confinement
Prosecutors Refuse to Drop Charges Against Texas 11-Year-Old Put in Solitary Confinement
A school district and local prosecutors in Texas are refusing to drop charges against an 11-year-old who was held in solitary confinement.
Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police
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Point is, it's not immoral no matter how much you cry about it now stay out of other peoples lives.
Pretty sure I can rigorously prove that you accept moral principles, empirical facts and a logical system that determines that abortion is infact immoral, you simply never bothered to analyze it.
"Now stay out of other people's lives"
Can you imagine what a horrible (dare I say immoral?) world you would have if immoral actions could not be restricted? Next time someone wrongs you remember that you are the real perpetrator for expecting them to follow your conception of morality.
Not the original poster, but I would enjoy seeing you rigorously prove that pro-choice views are incoherent. My views:
All human beings should have a right to bodily autonomy. This includes the right to deny the use of their body to anyone, even if the person who is using their body is doing so in order to survive, and even if they've previously permitted that person to use their body. If the use can be ended without killing either party, that should be preferred, but if not, then the person being used should still be able to withdraw access.
The real world is messy, obviously, so we have some ambiguity, but in general, this is the guideline.
Easy, define a form of bodily autonomy that permits forcing conscious action upon an individual (this is the basis for many laws1 ), but not prohibiting the individual from engaging in an action to override an already occurring unconscious process.
This is necessary because the former is the description of what many morally accepted laws already do, and the latter is a description of what prohibiting abortion is.
In other words this is the exact definition that we need to show is correct to justify abortion on the grounds of bodily control.
Except we can't, and it's obvious why. Saying "you must do X" is clearly stronger than saying "you cannot stop Y from continuing to happen". So we already accept a greater violation of bodily autonomy as good, and the abortion defence is actually contradictory.
We can resolve this by rejecting one of the premises. So which one do you want to reject? The one that is the basis for societal rules, or the one that allows killing humans?
As I already pointed out the bodily autonomy argument is essentially completely rejected in ethics, it's only popular because of Thompson's deeply flawed and overly simplistic paper (primarily because it already assumes that such a form of bodily autonomy already exists).
- Consider the fact that if you are in a circumstance were someone else depended on minimal effort from you for survival, saying you did not want to provide it is not a legal defence. You can't just let your child drown in a 2ft pool, and claim that your right to bodily autonomy allows you to withold conscious support. You intuitively know that it is immoral simply to withhold life-saving actions, and so does everyone else in society. The only reason why fetuses have an exception is that they don't appear human, despite satisfying all the necessary conditions. It is simply psychologically easier, much like how it's psychologically easier to kill strangers who look differently to you than your friends or relatives.
The first half of what you said is difficult to understand and I'm probably going to need you to simplify it for me.
For the last part- you don't believe that there's any moral difference between:
- One person not using their body to help another when the other is dying.
- One person not allowing another to use their body to stay alive.
?
And, follow up question - is a fertilized egg a person in this example? If not, at what point does it become one and have moral weight, in your view?
This is an incorrect phrasing of the situation. The actual question is what moral principles do we already accept? Which ones are more fundamental than others. Instead you are literally affirming the consequent by presupposing that bodily autonomy is morally relevant.(Otherwise,if that's not what you are doing,your phraseology is just bizarre)
Laws force people to use their body regardless of how they feel about it. We agree that it is moral.
Prohibiting abortion is denying the ability to perform an action. We assert that this is immoral.
However, forcing an action is stronger than denying an action. So which premise is wrong? Is it the one that leads societal rules unenforceable, or the one that makes a quarter of the population temporarily unhappy?
There is also the extrinsic teleological argument that pregnancy isn't a violation anymore than your pancreas producing insulin. A belief can be irrational if it contradicts a biological function.
"Would a fertilised egg be human"
As long as it is a separate entity that is living and functional with a probability of future conscious experience. Note, that I don't make the unique DNA distinction because that would render killing clones permissible.
Now unlike some people I don't think that all abortion is immoral, just one's where we have a reasonable expectation of future human experience so long as we do not take action to reduce this expectation. Like how rendering someone brain-dead so you can kill them is just a more elaborate active killing , something like drinking alcohol to render your fetus brain dead is also active killing.
However, forcing an action is stronger than denying an action
Why?
As long as it is a separate entity that is living and functional with a probability of future conscious experience
Do you consider a fertilized egg to have the same moral weight as a person?
Because denying an action is simply requiring that the existing circumstance continue, while forcing an action is to require that the person engage in a conscious action (to specify, it's a stronger control over someone else's body).
"Do you consider a fertilised egg to have the same moral weight as a person"
I already answered this more generally, fertilisation is not the revelant part it is that it is a distinct organism with a reasonable expectation of future conscious experience. Many fertilised eggs do meet this standard, but not all. Likewise fertilised eggs are not the only things that meet this standard. Things like pluripotent stem cells that are being created to form fetuses, also meet this standard.
(I strongly suspect that you are fishing for a specific response, which you find absurd despite ultimately accepting all the premises.)
I strongly suspect that you are fishing for a specific response, which you find absurd despite ultimately accepting all the premises.
I'm not. I thought you were pretty clear, but I wanted to check. I'm sort of exploring what you believe, rather than fishing for anything in particular.
So, in your view, if a building were burning, and inside was an artificial womb of some sort with twenty viable eggs that will eventually become people, then would there be a moral duty to save them over one five-year-old child?
presupposing that bodily autonomy is morally relevant
Do you believe that it isn't?
The "burning IVF clinic" is a poor instance of analogous reasoning. The reasons why one would save a 5-year old, are not fundamental moral principles but purely psychological. One would save friends or attractive people first as well, this does not grant them greater moral value.
Even if we don't consider it to be purely emotional preference, the "triage" rebuttal can hold as well. I.e the fact that we choose a 5-year old is that their value is more immediately apparent, even if we have no reason to believe them to be more morally valuable.
"You don't believe that it isn't"
The problem here is that if you want to show that something is true, you can't rely on premises being true that require the conclusion to be true. It just becomes a useless tautology that provided no additional information.
The reasons why one would save a 5-year old, are not fundamental moral principles but purely psychological
How do you identify when a moral rule is a fundamental principle versus a psychological preference?
...even if we have no reason to believe them [the five year old] to be more morally valuable [than the eggs].
In your view, is someone who saves twenty viable eggs over a five year old a more moral person than someone who does the reverse? (in some sort of ideal sense, regardless of whether anyone would do this or not)
The problem here is that if you want to show that something is true, you can’t rely on premises being true that require the conclusion to be true...
I don't think that I'm engaging in any circular reasoning. I'm not trying to argue that bodily autonomy is good- I'm making the base assumption that bodily autonomy is good and should be treated as a fundamental moral principle because it makes sense of a lot of moral intuitions that I have. That's not any more circular or arbitrary than any other moral principle.
EDIT: Also, I appreciate you getting back to me, and in case we don't talk again until after the holidays, Merry Christmas!