The physical state of the fetus is not in question; the ‘surprising discovery’ here would be that an abortion has some quality of badness, one which is not implied by a subjective observer’s desires or a full and complete understanding of the physical system.
I think I have two responses:
Firstly, I sometimes am convinced to change my mind on moral issues as a result of purely moral arguments. Something like moral uncertainty seems to be at play.
I think there’s some danger of equivocation with “full and complete understanding of the physical system.” Maybe if I knew the position of each atom, and had all the systems-level understanding that would imply, then there would be no moral uncertainty. But it seems possible that I could have a ‘full understanding’ in the conventional, more banal sense, and also have moral uncertainty, even if some strong version of physicalism is true.
The physical state of the fetus is not in question; the ‘surprising discovery’ here would be that an abortion has some quality of badness, one which is not implied by a subjective observer’s desires or a full and complete understanding of the physical system.
I think I have two responses:
Firstly, I sometimes am convinced to change my mind on moral issues as a result of purely moral arguments. Something like moral uncertainty seems to be at play.
I think there’s some danger of equivocation with “full and complete understanding of the physical system.” Maybe if I knew the position of each atom, and had all the systems-level understanding that would imply, then there would be no moral uncertainty. But it seems possible that I could have a ‘full understanding’ in the conventional, more banal sense, and also have moral uncertainty, even if some strong version of physicalism is true.