Abortion is always Morally Permissible

Rules Con makes numerous attacks on egoism last round, despite me never having using it as a rebuttal to Con’s arguments. As such Con’s attacks on egoism last round are clear violations of format (he was only supposed to defend his own case). Con’s Case All three of Con’s arguments stand and fall based on whether or not realism & existentialism is correct. So if we can reject either of these we can reject all of Con’s arguments, regardless of how well constructed they are. Knock out the foundations of a skyscraper, the entire building, no matter how sophisticated will certainly collapse. Con’s case is literally that simple, since he presupposes these in every single aspect of his argumentation. Moral Realism So, we can reject realism outright since Con has given absolutely no reason whatsoever to: a. ) Accept Moral’s indeed ‘exist’ b. ) To prefer their use even assuming they did Con has attempted to affirm what is moral from utilitarianism, Kantian, altruism and even egoism. However all of these philosophies are mutually incompatible, and hence fail. Also, assuming realism is true, why on earth should we expect moral systems such as utilitarianism to give us any idea what is moral> There simply isn’t a causal link between the two other than squabbling over the label of ‘moral’, and at the very least Con has not demonstrated one. Most seriously, are Con’s continued attempts to make subject-independent moral statements which end up as imperative statements (“X is wrong! ”). The use of subject-dependant statements is trivially logically coherent (such as I have in egoism), however the use of subject-independent statements is on dubious grounds at best, which I have positively argued is in fact positively incoherent. Note that I have not defended an axiomatic version of moral egoism (Con is breaking the rules attacking my case in R4, but I will defend anyway), I have only presented it as a definition of ‘moral’, and argued why we should prefer its use over any other. Objective facts of morality =/= realism, these facts stem from a subjective use of a definition of ‘moral’. Subjectively, one can use utilitarianism, or egoism etc. as a definition. But we are now talking about different concepts. The same cannot be said of Con in this debate. I have addressed the the “Why” portion of “Why we should act moral” in egoism, but Con has not done the same for his case. Having lots of definitions of ‘what’ is moral doesn’t get to ‘why’, or ‘why care’ (thus, ‘ought’), which is the ultimate arbiter of which system we should prefer. The statement “we should act moral because it’s good” is a circular statement, since ‘moral’ is defined by what is ‘good’. I will summarise both positions below: Realism: Attempts to describe what IS moral (as an independent entity or ‘shared object of enquiry’) Anti-Realism: Defines ‘moral’ and attempts to demonstrate why a definition is preferable Clearly, my arguments for moral egoism do not argue for the former, as it doesn’t presume there is already a way things “ought” to be out there. Con’s arguments however, do. Incoherence P2. If justified in moral terms, then the moral term begs the question The point here is that moral terms in themselves are devoid of any content until expressed in non-moral terms. We cannot make arguments about ‘what’ is moral until we do this, and Con has conceded as much when he attempts to defend util etc. since these attempts posit morality in non-moral terms (well-being, pain, etc). Ergo, Con implicitly drops this premise. It isn’t just a case of playing a “why” game. The “why” game ends once you reach the definition of a word. To ask why a “chair” is something with “four legs, a back and seating for one person” is nonsense since we have now reached the definition. This is not possible with moral statements in moral realism, since it’s moral statements cannot be defined. Con can only escape this by positively identifying *what* is the nature of moral in realism, but he has failed to do so, he has only asserted it. Pro literally conceded this last round “While we may have trouble identifying what the basic truth of morality is, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. ” First, it’s an argument ad ignorantum! I still await for reason to believe its existence. Second, Con hasn’t even proposed a method by which we could hope to ‘identify’ this truth. P3. If justified in non-moral terms, then the statements are no longer “oughts” Con drops this premise as he fails to address the central argument that “subject-independent ought statements” are logically incomplete. Con asserts it’s possible but makes no attempt to demonstrate its possibility. Demonstrating something is logically incomplete/incoherent indeed “proves the negative”. Advantages of Realism None of these matters if Con cannot affirm moral realism in the first place. Also Con has not argued that moral disagreements are necessarily a problem in anti-realist systems. Given that any “ought” is predicated on subjective values, and that these values are trivially determined, then an ideal way forward is rather easy to envisage. Existentialism Con asserts that humans are of equal worth (1 for 1), however he: 1. Doesn’t define what a “Human” is 2. Fails to justify why this is the case IF Con defines a human as a “person”, then this becomes question begging since he has defined a person as “an agent or thing that has inherent moral worth”, it also doesn’t show all persons are of *equal* inherent moral worth, even assuming itis a coherent concept. IF Con defines “Human” as just the biological entity, then Con has a hard time demonstrating “all humans have moral worth”. The most important question is not *what* humans are valued, but *how* they are valued. It’s incoherent to assert the former without knowing the latter. “Inherent moral worth” necessarily divorces itself from the “how” (including theistic systems), it literally just states it ipsie dixit. Relativism Con performs a massive strawman of my position. I am not arguing for moral relativism! Relativism =/= anti-realism! That’s a massive error, it only demonstrates that Con massively misunderstands my position, as I have explicitly rejected the notion of truth in imperative statements such as: “X is wrong” Are fundamentally incomplete and “not even false”. Similarly, judgements (relative or objective) suffer the same problem: “X is good” It’s logically incomplete. MY position is to make such statements subject-dependant, hence: “X is wrong for me” “X is good for me” “I should do X if I value X” And that is exactly how I am applying my arguments to the resolution, since I applied 3 key contexts. 1. The mother’s 2. The foetus’ 3. Societies’ Which yield statements such as “Morally permissible for the mother/society/the foetus”. This is a perfectly reasonable way to affirm the resolution (hence not a kritik). Ergo, it’s not a case that Bsh1 and I would disagree on what ‘IS’ moral, since that presupposes realism. It would be a case that I would just state Bsh1’s statements are meaningless/incoherent. We could have two independent “Good for me” statements, but they do not address the same concept, hence there is no contradiction (since ‘me’ is different in each case). “He argues that egoism is a moral axiom (objective)” This is false. I have only advanced it as a preferable definition. Personhood Con drops his “argument from intuition”, which is literally his only positive argument for moral worth here and my argument from a priori mental semantics. Con argues entirely from ‘potential ability to make moral decisions’, but implicitly concedes my point! A foetuscannot make moral decisions. We don’t define things by what they ‘could be’, we define things according to what they are, at this moment in time. Thus this point is a massive red herring since he needs to argue what a foetusis, not what a foetus could be (to fulfil the definition). By how we define a foetus and a goldfish, they are of equal moral worth assuming existentialism. FLO Con reformulated argument is now logically invalid (conclusion no longer follows from the premises). P1 becomes even more debatable since it assumes all FLO’s are equal (which is just false, since everybody has a different future), and now includes mother’s future, which will become seriously compromised being forced to continue the pregnancy against her will. Moreover, Con invalidly supports P1 by asserting murder is wrong (bare assertion), but that does not demonstrate that murder is wrong *because* it denies a FLO (assuming Con’s moral ontology). Indeed there a plethora of realism ontologies which do not care about FLO in determining murder is wrong, hence P1 is necessarily incomplete/ignores the big picture. It is also an incoherent moral imperative statement. Social I have already implicitly addressed these two arguments in my own arguments (would still be in the mother’s self-interest since she is choosing to go forward with the abortion despite the potential harms). And adoptions are made with zero evidence justification. Conclusion & VotingI have provided a complete ground-up case for why we should regard abortion as morally permissible. I have established: 1. Moral egoism judgements are tautologically relevant to our best interests 2. Moral egoism is a complete and coherent moral philosophy 3. According to egoism, abortion is at worst morally neutral in the three most important contexts. The mother, society and foetus. Hence, morally permissible. Furthermore, one should vote against Con because: 1. His entire case is based on dubious assumptions of a. Inherent moral worth b. Moral realism 2. I have demonstrated such assumptions are not only unfounded, but also logically incoherent 3. Con has not even attempted to provide a complete case for *what* is moral, and is largely from emotion/intuition 4. Con’s case lacks logical rigor, and relies on faulty presuppositions and equivocations I really thank Bsh1 for this debate.