I’ve run into far too many bloggers whose content I enjoy who then feel compelled one day to write about abortion. This inevitably pisses everyone off.
The core of the abortion debate—on both sides—is squick factor, not logic. There are compelling arguments on either side, but no one ever gives the opposition any heed. It’s ultimately about whether or not abortion makes you feel funny. My own stance, and the reasons I have for holding it, are not going to convince anyone for more than five minutes before they find a counter argument that supports their gut feeling.
Also, you’re wrong about gun control; there is mounting evidence that banning guns results in higher crime, while legalizing them causes crime to decrease. I don’t think this argument suffers the same squick factor; while many people knee-jerk to gun control because they’re afraid of firearms (and because government legislation feels like ‘doing something’, no matter how ineffective it is), I’ve successfully argued many people into changing their stance by presenting evidence.
Abortion? I don’t even trust my own rationality to be completely valid, despite holding a stance which goes against what I would like to believe. It’s a black hole of rationality fail.
The core of the abortion debate—on both sides—is squick factor, not logic.
Yet this is a good start, to observe that a final unmoving ‘nay’ emotion is the core of any morality debate. When people acknowledge that what’s ‘right’ isn’t related to a logical argument, there are two immediate consequences:
First, they realize that their morality doesn’t need to be justified by logical arguments: morality is arational. This makes morality safe from logical argument. No one can convince a person that something immoral is OK by stringing a fancy set of arguments. Moral principles don’t need to be justified (because they cannot be, it is not written on a tablet anywhere that good is good) and they don’t even need to be mutually consistent (moral principles may have evolved for specific contexts, outside those contexts or in occasional overlapping contexts they may become nonsensical).
Second, free of the fear that admitting lack of justification will open principles to attack,
they can begin to pinpoint precisely where their instrumental values end and their terminal values begin (the values with reasons and those without).
Instrumental values can be modified and updated according to evidence. For example, it seems banning guns is an instrumental value related to decreasing crime, so it is easy to change one’s position if one is shown evidence that banning guns does or does not decrease crime. The imperviousness of the pro-life stance to rational argument indicates to me that the value to protect unborn babies is much closer to a terminal value.
I suspect pro-life advocates aren’t giving their real reasons for being pro-life because the real reason doesn’t sound like a reason that could hold up as well in argument. It might be something along the lines of, ‘Babies are special. I want them to be given special status in society so that taking care of them is each individual’s and the community’s top priority.’ I think one way to test this is to ask someone that is pro-life if such a situation would be utopian. (That is, if a described situation would be perfect despite other negatives. For example, if the special status in society is what they’re seeking so they don’t mind as much if babies die due to unpreventable non-human causes.)
Note: I just gave the first example of a possible underlying moral principle that I could think of and I wouldn’t guess it’s exactly that. You would have to navigate towards the answer as people thought about what exactly makes them feel squicky. There could also be population differences. Some people may want protected status for babies, some people may want infant mortality to be minimized, etc.
Second note: Giving this putative terminal value for being pro-life has just moved me to be more pro-life. I now hypothesize that people with pro-choice positions may be more skeptical about the ability and appropriateness of using rules to enforce a social value. I find that the value I listed above gives me room to still be pro-life even though I observed upon inspection that I personally feel indifferent to the possibility of a miscarriage as long as I eventually conceive a healthy child.
I think this is a worthless debate.
I’ve run into far too many bloggers whose content I enjoy who then feel compelled one day to write about abortion. This inevitably pisses everyone off.
The core of the abortion debate—on both sides—is squick factor, not logic. There are compelling arguments on either side, but no one ever gives the opposition any heed. It’s ultimately about whether or not abortion makes you feel funny. My own stance, and the reasons I have for holding it, are not going to convince anyone for more than five minutes before they find a counter argument that supports their gut feeling.
Also, you’re wrong about gun control; there is mounting evidence that banning guns results in higher crime, while legalizing them causes crime to decrease. I don’t think this argument suffers the same squick factor; while many people knee-jerk to gun control because they’re afraid of firearms (and because government legislation feels like ‘doing something’, no matter how ineffective it is), I’ve successfully argued many people into changing their stance by presenting evidence.
Abortion? I don’t even trust my own rationality to be completely valid, despite holding a stance which goes against what I would like to believe. It’s a black hole of rationality fail.
[...]
Yet this is a good start, to observe that a final unmoving ‘nay’ emotion is the core of any morality debate. When people acknowledge that what’s ‘right’ isn’t related to a logical argument, there are two immediate consequences:
First, they realize that their morality doesn’t need to be justified by logical arguments: morality is arational. This makes morality safe from logical argument. No one can convince a person that something immoral is OK by stringing a fancy set of arguments. Moral principles don’t need to be justified (because they cannot be, it is not written on a tablet anywhere that good is good) and they don’t even need to be mutually consistent (moral principles may have evolved for specific contexts, outside those contexts or in occasional overlapping contexts they may become nonsensical).
Second, free of the fear that admitting lack of justification will open principles to attack, they can begin to pinpoint precisely where their instrumental values end and their terminal values begin (the values with reasons and those without).
Instrumental values can be modified and updated according to evidence. For example, it seems banning guns is an instrumental value related to decreasing crime, so it is easy to change one’s position if one is shown evidence that banning guns does or does not decrease crime. The imperviousness of the pro-life stance to rational argument indicates to me that the value to protect unborn babies is much closer to a terminal value.
I suspect pro-life advocates aren’t giving their real reasons for being pro-life because the real reason doesn’t sound like a reason that could hold up as well in argument. It might be something along the lines of, ‘Babies are special. I want them to be given special status in society so that taking care of them is each individual’s and the community’s top priority.’ I think one way to test this is to ask someone that is pro-life if such a situation would be utopian. (That is, if a described situation would be perfect despite other negatives. For example, if the special status in society is what they’re seeking so they don’t mind as much if babies die due to unpreventable non-human causes.)
Note: I just gave the first example of a possible underlying moral principle that I could think of and I wouldn’t guess it’s exactly that. You would have to navigate towards the answer as people thought about what exactly makes them feel squicky. There could also be population differences. Some people may want protected status for babies, some people may want infant mortality to be minimized, etc.
Second note: Giving this putative terminal value for being pro-life has just moved me to be more pro-life. I now hypothesize that people with pro-choice positions may be more skeptical about the ability and appropriateness of using rules to enforce a social value. I find that the value I listed above gives me room to still be pro-life even though I observed upon inspection that I personally feel indifferent to the possibility of a miscarriage as long as I eventually conceive a healthy child.