Even though I consider the post a blatant attempt to curry favor with the increasingly open Republican stand of the Galt, allow me to say that a day that sees two Abu posts and a superkoranic comment is a very good day indeed. Sadly, I mean this.
This is precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that, even though we shouldn't go around being all concerned about what right-wing pundits think of the left (because they'll lie and distort no matter what we do), I do think there's a tendency on our side to believe that the more arrogant you sound, the more knowledgeable / intelligent you sound. It's what pjs said a couple of days ago: draw a line and then declare that anyone on the other side of the line from you, due to whatever conditions (often arbitrary) you set, is Unacceptable. It's essentially the same as what the religious right does with believers and unbelievers; the only difference is that this is with "smart people" and "not-smart people". I'm not saying Jesse's necessarily wrong in this case, but I think you're dead-on, Ogged: he may be empirically in the right ballpark (i.e. if most pharmacists who oppose morning-after pills do so out of ignorance), but the summary judgment of intellectual inferiority is probably going to put off a lot of people who might otherwise be convinced.
I mean, "you're exactly right, Fontana:"... jeez, wonder why I made that mistake?
I note that "Pharmacists for Life" plays the other side of that same card, if you see what I mean:
At the precise and unique moment of conception, a woman is 'pregnant' with "a new individual ". This is an accurate and informed medical description. It is the same terminology used by Prof. John Dwyer, pre-eminent Australian AIDS expert and researcher, who has described the moment that the sperm enters the ovum as the creation of a "new and unique individual". Well known medical writer, Professor Derek Llewellyn-Jones, author of Everywoman, has also written that when the male genetic material from the sperm joins with the female genetic material in the ovum, " a new individual is formed".To stop conception occurring, that is, to stop sperm and ovum joining, is contraception. Condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, vasectomy and tubal ligation are accurately described as methods of contraception. Obviously any drug or device used after conception has occurred cannot be termed a contraceptive.
The correct term to describe any interference with the pregnancy after conception has occurred is ‘abortifacient'. This is the precise biological description for any drug or device that acts to end a pregnancy once it has begun at conception.
But their insistence on the definitions of "pregnant" and "abortiofacent" has no more force than is already contained in the facts of the matter.
(Of course, we're owed a story about why fertilized-but-nonimplanted eggs aren't mourned over, etc., but, with the judicious application of doing/allowing and some fancy footwork we might be able to get over this hurdle.)
But I think we will never be able to get over the hurdle of why the same people aren't up in arms against in vitro fertilization, which as I understand it involves the non-implanation of a lot of fertilized eggs.
It's nice not to sound arrogant, but I'm not sure that good-faith arguments are totally appropriate here either. What's going on with contraception controversies, most of the time, is that a lot of people don't want women having sex in ways that they can't control.
(Like this, from 'round here--a Republican is trying to prohibit university health services from distributing emergency contraception because, he says, it promotes promiscuity. He doesn't give a fuck about fertilized eggs.)
I probably shouldn't get into this with the professors hanging around, but I thought Anscombe handled is/ought nicely with the "brute relative" stuff.
Anscombe apparently liked to eat flowers.
My comments will be so duplicative of Fontana's there's not much purpose, other than to note that if there is a single issue on which the base of the republican party (to be distinguished from its leadership, to be sure) argues in good faith, it is probably abortion.
That said, can we wrench this thread into a discussion of ises and oughts?
Polemical statement for discussion: the fact/value distinction is overrated -- if there are values, they are facts.
I thought I was trying to wrench it with six, and then w-lfs-n had to come back with his "Anscombe is a weirdo stuff." I believe the story I had heard was that she wore mens pants in an era where that was quite unacceptable. That may be apocryphal.
yeah, you were doing yeoman's work there. I am not familiar with Ancombe, so couldn't comment on point.
Eats flowers, wears men's pants, attacked harry truman. I think we've found the woman for ogged!
if there is a single issue on which the base of the republican party... argues in good faith, it is probably abortion.
I'm not sure if the base argues in good faith on contraception. Perhaps they do come right out and say that they're opposed to contraception because they're opposed to sex other than for procreation. Or perhaps they haven't thought the issue through. Or perhaps opposition to contraception is less popular among the base than the leaders. Still, I think there may be a touch of bad faith going on here.
Gillian Russell and Greg Restall have an interesting paper at the upcoming Formal Epistemology Workshop on laws of the form "You can't derive a statement of kind A from a statement of kind B." Even if values are facts (or, I'd say, things about which there are facts), it might be the case that you couldn't deduce a fact about a value from facts that weren't about values. For some value of 'about'.
I heard that too, w/d. My source for the flower thing is a professor who said that once he and she were walking somewhere for breakfast during a conference and she picked two flowers, giving one to him; later she took it back, commenting that he wasn't eating his. He also said that neither she nor her husband ever knew where there kids were.
What's this brute relative stuff?
Some people just can't get along with their sisters.
Generally, I'm sympathetic to FL's position here -- I had the same reaction to the Pandagon post. I do think, however, that within the constraints of blogging (hasty, short) "any real standard of pregnancy" can be read as "any standard of pregnancy compatible with most people's moral intuition as revealed by their lack of angst over the fact that most fertilized eggs don't implant and their lack of opposition to IVF." (As Weiner and FL noted).
Still, that just makes it defensible, not rhetorically strong, and I've been seeing the same statement in a lot of discussion of the morning-after pill. Probably should be dropped.
They're they're, I wooodn't bee to hard on you'reself.
I'm not sure if the base argues in good faith on contraception
Ok -- now I get where you're coming from!
I don't think the Republican base does argue much about contraception per se. They're mostly Protestants, after all.
Contraception features most prominently as a bugbear on the extreme right where it either seems like abortion (and that's a worry) or where is seems like a signifier of generalized sexual depravity (condoms, in our schools!). Both those concerns (abortion, general depravity) seem like sincerely held views.
I'll try to explain, but the problem is it's from a couple of essays in a collection on metaethics which I don't have in my current apartment. So any answer would be purely from memory.
Brute relative refers to facts being true relative to other background, institutional facts. She talks about deriving an "owes" from an "is" using the frame work of certain facts being brute (can't go deeper than them) in any given framework. So if a baker drops off bread at your house every day, and later that day you pay him $3.00, and this continues on and on, you derive that you owe (owe being both evaluative and factual) from certain sets of facts. She finally contends that "ought" can be handled in the same way as "owes".
I think I'm making the argument sound much weaker than it is because I haven't looked it at for a year+.
I don't think the Republican base does argue much about contraception per se. They're mostly Protestants, after all.
Well, there's that whole "Let's pass laws to protect pharmacists from having to hand out BCPs (rather than morning-after pills." There, the whole abortifacient argument is a real red-herring -- the BCP is designed to work by suppressing ovulation. The theory that there are circumstances where it might permit ovulation but have an effect suppressing implantation is, as I understand it, not well supported. So there seems to be some signficant constituency that has a problem with birth control generally.
), to be inserted between "pills." and " " ".
Weiner, re the paper cited in 11, what's the difference in this context between a set and a collection?
Re: 18, 20; I guess baa's thesis would be that those laws are being pushed by leadership and extremists more than by base. And I'm kind of inclined to agree with this (absent polling)--maybe it's kind of like Terri Schiavo, which was big among the pols and some people but which seems to have sunk among the base. I'd like to think that's true, anyway.
b-wo: I think a collection can be too big to be a set, maybe? Like, there's no set of all sets, but there can be a collection of all sets? Not positive.
Did 19 make any sense? I know I'm doing a poor job of summarizing a good article, but I thought I was able to get part of it across.
I'm not an academic philosphy type, but I though I understood what you were talking about. Couldn't tell you whether it fairly represents the article, of course.
(BTW, is there some unusually strong relationship between academic philosophy and lefty political blogging? I know a certain number of academics IRL, but I don't think I've ever met a philosophy professor or grad student. Here in the blogosphere, or whatever you call it, every other person seems to be a philosophy-type.)
We're mousy and unforthcoming in real life.