Mint Chocolate Ice Cream Reigns Supreme! & Abortion.

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Stewsburntmonkey
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Postby Stewsburntmonkey » Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:13 pm

Xocrates wrote:If this is wrong, then it's physically impossible for two persons to have divergent opinions by having only the same facts.


"Physically possible"? Is logic a physical entity now? ;)

Xocrates wrote:I admit the colour argument was not the best since you can give a quite definite definition, but many definitions are subjective and vague. Borderline cases are extremely difficult to define. We can't even agree if the fetus is part of the mother.


The question of the fetus being part of the mother or not doesn't really matter in the end. There is a reality there that can be measured just like the color example. The debate about whether it is part of the mother is really just semantic. The fetus is what it is. The real issue is how we think it should be treated. My view is based on biological dependence which is a fact (not that that makes my view right). I don't base my view on whether you consider the fetus part of the mother. I was simply using that argument to try and get you to explain your views more fully.

Xocrates wrote:If that isn't clear by now you haven't been paying attention.


Yes, if I disagree it must be because I haven't been paying attention. . . :roll:

Xocrates wrote:Hum... You're probably right. But that depends on how you define logic.


Yes, but if you use the accepted definitions of "logic" and "notation" the distinction between binary representation and decimal representation is clearly notational.

I could define "logic" to mean "pink" after all. There is a certain point at which a definition becomes simply silly. I think trying make "logic" mean "notation" is beyond that point.

Xocrates wrote:And are thus subject to human fallacy. Most definitions are not definite.


Certainly not. That doesn't really matter in the end.

Xocrates wrote:However the true flaw on your argument is that definitions affect the way we think, not what things are. Since definitions are not definite neither is the way people think.


How is that a flaw in my argument? I don't believe I've argued anything to the contrary. Language is clearly an extension of our thought process and thus the two are intimately connected. However our thoughts don't alter reality (despite what some might want to think).

Xocrates wrote:At no point I said it wasn't. I simply said that from the beginning I didn't care what it was and when I set out on that argument I wanted my side to fail, because I wasn't trying to prove abortion right or wrong. I was doing something completely different.


You don't care what my argument was? That explains a lot.

Xocrates wrote:Considering I started that point of argument, it seems to me it was you that missed the point.


It seems to me you don't even know what your argument is. You are so all over the place, it seems you've even confused yourself.

Part of your problem is that you like blaming people for misunderstanding you, but you make no effort to correct them. You go off say "that's not what I was arguing" without saying what you thought you were arguing. You keep saying you've proven something without laying out the proof. It's really a very lazy and insulting method of debate.
Last edited by Stewsburntmonkey on Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby xander » Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:34 pm

Xocrates: May I point out that, when conjoined twins are born, they are generally separated. Often, one of the twins will die. It happens. It is sad? Yes. Is it necessary? Yes. The twins are, together, a biologically independent entity. However, the individuals are not biologically independent until they are separated, as demonstrated by the fact that one or the other often dies.

By the same token, a tapeworm is not biologically independent from its host.

I do not see how SBM's argument of biological independence is inconsistent.

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Postby Xocrates » Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:36 pm

Stewsburntmonkey wrote:
Xocrates wrote:If this is wrong, then it's physically impossible for two persons to have divergent opinions by having only the same facts.


"Physically possible"? Is logic a physical entity now? ;)


A very interesting semantic point. I do note however that you failed to answer my question.


Stewsburntmonkey wrote:The question of the fetus being part of the mother or not doesn't really matter in the end. There is a reality there that can be measured just like the color example. The debate about whether it is part of the mother is really just semantic. The fetus is what it is. The real issue is how we think it should be treated. My view is based on biological dependence which is a fact (not that that makes my view right). I don't base my view on whether you consider the fetus part of the mother. I was simply using that argument to try and get you to explain your views more fully.


And as you note ahead:

Stewsburntmonkey wrote:Language is clearly an extension of our thought process and thus the two are intimately connected.


therefore the way we think is influenced by the way we define things.




Stewsburntmonkey wrote:
Xocrates wrote:If that isn't clear by now you haven't been paying attention.


Stewsburntmonkey wrote:Yes, if I disagree it must be because I haven't been paying attention. . . :roll:


Understanding has nothing to do with agreement. You could agree with me and still not understand what was being said.

Stewsburntmonkey wrote:Yes, but if you use the accepted definitions of "logic" and "notation"


And what are those?


Stewsburntmonkey wrote:
Xocrates wrote:And are thus subject to human fallacy. Most definitions are not definite.


Certainly not.


Are you agreeing or disagreeing?

Stewsburntmonkey wrote:That doesn't really matter in the end.


As noted above, the way we think is connected to the way we define things.



Stewsburntmonkey wrote:However our thought don't alter reality (despite what some might want to think).


They don't alter reality, but they alter the way we perceive t.


Stewsburntmonkey wrote:
Xocrates wrote:At no point I said it wasn't. I simply said that from the beginning I didn't care what it was and when I set out on that argument I wanted my side to fail, because I wasn't trying to prove abortion right or wrong. I was doing something completely different.


You don't care what my argument was? That explains a lot.


I didn't cared because I obviously agreed that we should not kill adults. I was extending your logic to absurd and then attempting that you built a coherent logic that explained that fetus and adults are not the same. Thus showing that extending a logical reasoning to he absurd (as you did with the holocaust argument) was not a good point of argument.



Stewsburntmonkey wrote:It seems to me you don't even what your argument is. You are so all over the place, it seems you've even confused yourself.

Part of your problem is that you like blaming people for misunderstanding you, but you make no effort to correct them. You go off say "that's not what I was arguing" without saying what you thought you were arguing. You keep saying you've proven something without laying out the proof. It's really a very lazy and insulting method of debate.


I make not effort to what? I spent post after bloody post discussing the same bloody thing in a thousand different ways and you accuse me of not trying to correct those who might have misunderstood?

I've gone back countless times and referred to past points countless times to justify that I had already discussed the point. I was even as nice as to recover one of the posts in which I stopped debating you to point out why I did it.

And most of all, you claim I don't even know what I'm saying????

That's the second time you accused me of lying. Well then, since you are not only so bloody right as you obviously can read my bloody mind you might as well continue the debate for both sides. Because independently of what you may think I'm out of here.
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Postby xander » Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:00 pm

Xocrates wrote:They don't alter reality, but they alter the way we perceive t.

You are basically arguing for the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. I would suggest that you read up on modern linguistics and psycho-linguistics a bit. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been largely discredited -- Pinker and Chompsky discuss it quite a bit in their work, and make a very good case for its invalidity.

Hrm... I've changed my mind. I am going to respond to this:
Xocrates wrote:I didn't cared because I obviously agreed that we should not kill adults. I was extending your logic to absurd and then attempting that you built a coherent logic that explained that fetus and adults are not the same. Thus showing that extending a logical reasoning to he absurd (as you did with the holocaust argument) was not a good point of argument.

Logic is the art of extending known things into the unknown in a rigorous fashion. It has limits, but is a very useful tool for that. For instance, children get taller as they age. If you were to measure a child once a week until they were 12, you would see their height going up at a fairly regular rate, with a couple of spikes here and there where they grow faster. Logically, we could extend that, and predict their height at age 16. We would probably be fairly close. However, if we tried to predict their height at the age of 40, we would be way off, because our prediction is based on an incomplete picture, and the extrapolation went to far.

In this case, I think that we can all agree that a human is different from a sperm and an ovum. However, all humans start as a sperm and an ovum. That means that there must be some transition from gametes to human. There are many places that a line could be drawn. You choose to draw that line at conception. One might, instead, define that transition as the moment the embryo implants on the wall of the uterus. Or the day the heart begins to beat. Or when the fetus first kicks. Or at birth. Or any one of many milestones from sex to birth (an possibly beyond).

In some parts of Mexico City, the people are so poor that women do not generally form a bond with their children until they are one or two years old, because the infant mortality rate is so high that most kids are not expected to make it that long. In that culture, the transition from non-human entity to human occurs much later.

So, basically, you define the beginning of "humanness" differently than SBM and myself. Ultimately, there is no way for either of us to sway the other. On the other hand, SBM has provided many logical reasons to define it as he has, and why a fetus should not be considered independent of its mother, and is not human. You have responded with emotional arguments, but nothing that is logically convincing.

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Postby Stewsburntmonkey » Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:38 pm

Xocrates wrote:I didn't cared because I obviously agreed that we should not kill adults. I was extending your logic to absurd and then attempting that you built a coherent logic that explained that fetus and adults are not the same. Thus showing that extending a logical reasoning to he absurd (as you did with the holocaust argument) was not a good point of argument.


You were never able to extend my logic to the point of absurdity though. My biological independence argument doesn't distinguish between a fetus and an adult as such. My argument is that different rules apply to biologically dependent individuals. I gave the example of conjoined twins by way of providing a less controversial example of this principle. In order to reach the absurd conclusion that we can kill conjoined twins you had to alter my argument. Conjoined twins are only dependent on each other not on society in general, just as a fetus is dependent only on the mother. Society can no more order a fetus to be killed than it can order conjoined twins be killed. My argument does not say that such things should happen. The only ones who have this right are the ones involved in the dependency. Thus a conjoined twin can be sacrificed to save his sibling and a mother can terminate the fetus she is carrying.

It should be noted that the dependency of the fetus on the mother is absolute while the conjoined twins are mutually dependent.


I employ the extension of logic argument a fair amount and think it is a powerful tool, but you have to be careful and precise with how you do it. It is very easy to extend the argument in a way which is not consistent. When this is done the extension is useless.

Xocrates wrote:Because independently of what you may think I'm out of here.


You keep saying that. . .
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Postby KingAl » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:19 am

Xocrates: Your extension of Stewsburntmonkey's logic regarding 'biological independence' is void because it does not work within the definition of biological independence that he used. In this sense, it is a straw man. This is entirely different to applying the same logic to a different situation. The 'holocaust argument' that Stews used was in contrast a logical extension of the argument you presented, though your original statement most likely did not reflect your views accurately.

Xocrates wrote:Read it the way you want:

The same logic can confer two different outcomes.

Or

You use different logical paths to attain different conclusions.

If this is wrong, then it's physically impossible for two persons to have divergent opinions by having only the same facts.


This is because there are bases of opinions which are not solely logical.


You doubtless recognise that some things are just plain facts. It is true that if we represent these facts differently, and we interpret them with our own representation, then they may appear fallacious.

For example, if I call the colour blue "budgerigar", then the statement 'the sky is budgerigar' would appear false from your '"blue"-is-blue' interpretation, but sound from my own. However, if we were to paint an accurate picture of the sky, we would both use the colour blue. Differing definitions become more complex when the idea they address is more complex, but the underlying logic can only contradict if the bases of the arguments differ. Morality provides one such potential 'shifting basis'.

Definitions do not affect the way we think, they affect the way we relate with or treat logic. They cannot change logic. An action derived from one definition, if the rest of the argument is entirely logical, should be exactly the same as an action derived using another definition.
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Postby xander » Wed Aug 08, 2007 8:25 pm

An interesting article was brought to my attention earlier today. It does a pretty good job of summing up my problems with the rape exception. Anyone who is anti-abortion, but who does support the rape exception should read it.

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Postby Ace Rimmer » Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:41 am

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Postby xander » Sat Aug 11, 2007 4:10 pm

Ace Rimmer wrote:Abortion statistics.

Would you care to comment on that, or did you just throw it out there? I don't see how it helps your argument...

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Postby Ace Rimmer » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:21 am

xander wrote:
Ace Rimmer wrote:Abortion statistics.

Would you care to comment on that, or did you just throw it out there? I don't see how it helps your argument...

xander

I wasn't trying to help my argument.

I was just 'ending' the thread (as it were) with some stats. I found that site and it's cram packed full of every stat on abortion worldwide you could ever want. I just thought the best end to the thread was some cold hard facts. No bias, no argument, nothing implied, just the facts as they are. Something to educate, that is it.

Numbers, all sorts!
Reasons why. (same as above)
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Postby Stewsburntmonkey » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:16 am

Ace Rimmer wrote:I was just 'ending' the thread (as it were) with some stats. I found that site and it's cram packed full of every stat on abortion worldwide you could ever want. I just thought the best end to the thread was some cold hard facts. No bias, no argument, nothing implied, just the facts as they are. Something to educate, that is it.


Did you even read that page? There is a clear argument and a clear bias. The last line of the article:

"This is an example of the consequences of the current extreme policy in the United States regarding abortion."

His whole point in listing those statistics was to try and argue that cases like rape, the mother's health, etc. should not be taken into account in the debate over abortion because they are rare.

This sort of misrepresentation (claiming something isn't colored by an argument when it actually is) really annoys me. It is either the result of idiocy, reckless ignorance or simple dishonesty.
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:29 am

I just looked at the numbers and the sources. I wasn't interested in any argument being made.
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Postby Stewsburntmonkey » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:41 am

Ace Rimmer wrote:I just looked at the numbers and the sources. I wasn't interested in any argument being made.


That is a horribly naive thing to do. Statistics can be as skewed as any argument. You can cite statistics to prove virtually anything. Stats are useless unless you look at the source and for possible biases.
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:44 am

Stewsburntmonkey wrote:
Ace Rimmer wrote:I just looked at the numbers and the sources. I wasn't interested in any argument being made.


That is a horribly naive thing to do. Statistics can be as skewed as any argument. You can cite statistics to prove virtually anything. Stats are useless unless you look at the source and for possible biases.

Well, if you can find a place with as much info on the numbers and reasons without any bias that you'd be satisfied with, then post it. :wink:
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Postby Stewsburntmonkey » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:01 am

Ace Rimmer wrote:Well, if you can find a place with as much info on the numbers and reasons without any bias that you'd be satisfied with, then post it. :wink:


That site really didn't have all that much information. It just had a lot of tables with the same basic information repeated several times. It is made to look like it has a lot of information, when it really has very little. Seems like just the appearance of lots of information alone is enough for a lot of people. . .

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