‘Where negative rights are “negative” in the sense that they claim for each individual a zone of non-interference from others, positive rights are “positive” in the sense that they claim for each individual the positive assistance of others in fulfilling basic constituents of well-being like health.’
‘Negative rights are considered more essential than positive ones in protecting an individual’s autonomy.’
So when one individual’s positive right to do something is at odds with another’s negative right to protect them from something, as much as it would be ideal for both parties to have exactly what they want without harming or inconveniencing/upsetting the other, since that’s often not possible, the negative right to ‘protect’ an individual from something seems to trump the positive right for an individual to ‘do’ something in hierarchy of moral importance and most ethicists seem to agree.
For example, I think people’s ‘positive right’ to choose animal-based product or service options when there are equally suitable plant-based options that achieve all the same purposes, isn’t as important as sentient animals’ negative right to not be unnecessarily exploited and killed, and to be protected from those undesirable experiences, states or conditions. Hence the position of veganism is very clear and obvious for me, and resolves an “easy” ethical issue with a clear solution (essential negative (protective) right prevails over others’ ultimately unnecessary positive (“doing”) right).
When it comes to abortion however, I do believe that it’s a tricky situation ethically. I’m pro-choice, but I say that with difficulty, because considering both sides it’s not an easy position and I see it as much more ethically complex than the issue of unnecessary animal exploitation. That’s because I think you can make the argument that either forcing a person to undergo pregnancy, or terminating the life of an (admittedly unconscious, undeveloped) fetus, are in both cases breaching a sentient (or would-be sentient) individual’s negative (protective) right. It would seem to be a clear ethical dilemma, where neither outcome is desirable, in almost comparably important ways. However, ultimately I had to decide that protecting a woman/person from an enforced pregnancy (and the physical and life-changing, even life destroying (or killing) effects, results and experiences that can have), a person being a fully formed, conscious and sentient individual, is more tangibly important than protecting an undeveloped, unconscious “mass of cells” from being prevented from developing into a human being.
My thoughts on the matter aside… It seems like in one way the right to abortion is a positive right by claiming assistance from others to “do” something being terminate a pregnancy, while in another way it’s a negative right by “protecting” the person via preventing undesirable states and experiences that would be imposed on them by others ‘interfering’ and forcing them to undergo pregnancy, by denying them an abortion.
I’m honestly just wondering what kind right this would be considered. Positive right or negative right? Or both? Thanks :)
For me it’s a basic question of who gets to make your medical decisions, you, or someone else.
It isn’t a person yet it’s not a baby and it is “human” only by DNA. At that point it is indistinguishable from an embryo of a dolphin or other mammal. It can’t even think yet, but for some reason people think of is special enough to be worth denying you your body autonomy.
“At that point it’s indistinguishable from an embryo of a dolphin”
So we don’t know if embryos in humans are actually human?
The argument you are actually making is that it is visually indistinguishable from other embryos .
But this is meaningless, visual inspection is not the only allowed method for determining categorization. One wouldn’t look at a human in a realistic bear costume, and a bear and declare that they are the same thing. Or a stick-bug and a stick.
“It can’t even think yet”
There are numerous intervals of time were you don’t think, are you not worthy of protection? Can you be killed so long as neural synapses are severed faster than axons can fire? (Highly intense radiation can do this). Keep in mind that your argument completely falls apart once you consider that consciousness is a pattern of activity not a definite property.
That’s a great point, we we should probably stop killing all thinking beings immediately and become vegetarian then.
Or maybe protected status is based on species membership, and not level of thought.
Keep in mind that infants have a lower level of thought than pigs. If it is permissible to kill and eat pigs based on their low capacity for thought, then it surely applies to infant humans as well? After all anything otherwise is “specieism” which is totally the same as racism Singer argues. (Referring to Peter Singer who makes the same dipshit argument albeit more effectively than you).
My weak arguments aren’t meant to convince you, they are meant to lead you along a train of thought. Here’s the last piece…
Just because cancer cells are human doesn’t mean they get species protection, that would be stupid.
Once we have acknowledged that our protective feelings for the bundle of cells that can’t even think yet are species based, that we routinely kill creatures with brains more well developed than a newborn, and that we do routinely kill clumps of human tissue that put the host at risk, it’s clear that the mother’s well being should always take precedence over the well being of the fetus.
Weak arguments aren’t going to be effective in leading to any train of thought. They are going to be immediately refuted.
Your arguments are popular and extremely stupid. This is because the vast majority of people spend little time on ethics, ontology, and formal reasoning. This is like producing a theory of QM, when you flunked Calculus. Anyone can do it, everyone makes the same serious mistakes, and I have to hear the same arguments every single time.
“Once we acknowledge”…
How do we acknowledge something that isn’t clearly true? (i.e not a tautology) First we must prove it to be true, then we can draw conclusions from it. As I already pointed out trying to prove that “human tissue only has value if it is thinking” fails because it’s actually false.
Here’s a formalisation of your reasoning.
Problem is first premise is false and we can see that by determining what “thinking” is. Thinking or consciousness is a categorisation of intermittent and emergent behaviour. No human continously thinks, and even if they did it would not make sense to be able to classify them as thinking at any specific point of time. Individual firing of neurons is not thought, it is required for thought but it is not consciousness itself. It requires a system of neurons engaging in electrochemical action that meets some definition of thought (the exact definition doesn’t matter, what matters is that it is emergent not instantaneous).
Your assertion leads to the claim that human moral value must collapse when they are in a non-thinking state. But as already shown every human regularly satisfies this condition, so it must therefore be permissible to kill them. In other words if abortion is permissible by your criteria, so is killing the mother.
Of course we can avoid this clearly immoral conclusion by changing the criteria by which we value humans to “members of a rational class”. (Cancer cells clearly aren’t this). This completely avoids the problems of killing people arbitrarily, killing people who don’t solve a puzzle as fast as a rat, eating babies because we eat pork, all of which are logical conclusions of systems that only value thinking. (If you think this is motivated reasoning, simply research how moral systems are constructed and analytic descriptivism. You also used analytic descriptivism, you just horribly botched it by assuming that unproven premises were true).
Of course the only problem with this new system is that it doesn’t permit killing fetuses (except to save another human life), which you really, really want.
“Just because cancer cells…”
I can’t believe people delude themselves into thinking that this is a strong argument (again a very trite and silly argument). I fervently believe that we need government-mandated academic philosophers screaming into people’s ears every time they say stupid shit like this. Or maybe get shocked by their keyboard.
Wow, I’m not reading all that
This attitude is why you’re still a moron.
When you encounter a lengthy description of why something is true or false, your response is “OMG so many words!”
Guess what buddy? Life isn’t about punchy one-liners and vapid analysis.
… he said, patting himself on the back.