to be or not to be? the problem of abortion part 1

One can learn an enormous amount about oneself through the issue of abortion.  If one happens to be an American, through the issue of abortion one can theoretically identify one’s moral, political, and jurisprudential leanings.  Perhaps that’s why I find the issue so fascinating.  But it can also be frustrating.

Why frustrating?  Because I’m rarely exposed to someone who seems to grasp exactly what is at stake in the debate.  For example, some believe that abortion is about “choice” versus “life.”  What do these alternatives mean?  Absolute choice, like an hour before a woman’s due date just because she’s changed her mind about the whole affair?  Absolute life, like forbidding a woman the “morning after pill” the morning after she is the victim of rape?  Both views seem to me to be patently unreasonable.  But some people hold them.

Although I do not believe either extreme is reasonable, I’m only going to dismiss outright those who hold the latter view (the “life absolutists” who claim that abortion ought never be permissible) because I don’t take that view seriously, and anybody that does is invited to dismiss this piece immediately anyway.  Nothing I will have to say here will alter such a person’s view, for that person has reached his or her view by mere conviction alone – not any form of reason.  As one my philosophical heroes has put it: “In philosophy, as in any other purely theoretical discipline, it is better to be wrong as the result of inquiry and argument than be right as the result of mere conviction.”  Panayot Butchvarov, The Concept of Knowledge at 5 (Northwestern 1970).  Such folks disagree, which they are of course at liberty to do.  But I am equally at liberty to dismiss such people as hopeless knaves.

Remarkably, the former view actually has a rather hearty band of adherents who believe that nothing of moral significance or relevance occurs between the freely chosen decision to have sexual intercourse and childbirth.  (If you think I just erected a straw-man here, explain why.)  Who are these adherents, and what could they possibly add to the debate surrounding the morality of abortion?

The answer to the first question is “radical feminists.”  And I use the qualifier “radical” to distinguish these feminists from those who believe, quite rightly, that women should be considered as legal equals to men.  Those I simply call “feminists” proper, to which I consider myself an ardent subscriber.  The answer to the second question is, in my view, little or nothing of any degree of intelligibility.  And I’m not just being facetious here.  I literally mean that radical feminists, in the exact same sense as our hopeless knaves above, have little or nothing to add to the debate surrounding the morality of abortion.  My reasoning for my view follows.  But first a bit of background.

During the winter of 2007/08 I spent a great deal of time procrastinating when I should have been studying for the Iowa Bar Exam.  One of the things I did to procrastinate was surf the internet.  And, in looking for a law school classmate friend of mine who described herself as a radical feminist, I wound up viewing a website known as www.feministing.com (your guess is as good as mine where the idea for the name of the site comes from).  To put it as politely albeit as accurately as I possibly can, I was instantly fascinated by how militant and belligerent the contributors to this site are.  I grew so fascinated that I actually attempted to engage some of them in conversation and argument.  Ultimately, my attempts failed, although I was successful in interacting civilly with them.  But it was plain as day that they didn’t want someone like me around, despite their claim to wish to engage people on the merits of their views.  Simply put, I “didn’t get it” because I “don’t have a uterus.”  (I’ve never understood this sentiment.  Since when has one’s genitalia fixed one’s ability to reason?  One would think that feminists, of all people, would reject that one’s genitalia determines one’s ability to reason.)

Disappointed with the contributors’ unwillingness to engage in any serious discussion of their views, I purchased and read the executive editor’s, that is Jessica Valenti, book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Seal 2007).  Fascinated by Valenti’s mindset does not even begin to describe my astonishment as I worked through this strange book, which is specifically styled to “educate” younger women (the back cover of which speaks to all young women: “YOU’RE A FEMINIST.  I SWEAR.”).

No less so was I fascinated by Valenti’s instruction to young women about the issue of abortion.  Valenti writes: “[W]omen’s reproductive rights are under attack… [R]epro[duction] rights are about more than abortion and birth control.  They’re about being able to have sex when we want to.”  (81)

In other words, abortion is not only about contraception, abortion is contraception.  And both are subsumed under the name “reproductive rights,” as if anyone objects to the notion that a woman has the right to choose when she wishes to reproduce.  (Have you ever heard anyone advance the argument that the state should deprive a woman of when she must reproduce?  How would the state decide to force a woman to reproduce?  I don’t even know where to begin with this.)  The second strange feature of Valenti’s opening remarks about abortion is her use of the term “contraception.”  To me, that term denotes a concept that embodies preventing conception – that seems to be the point of the “contra” in “contraception.”  But Valenti’s use of the term includes “aborting that which is already conceived” in her definition.  To me, this is a wholesale mangling of basic language.

In any event, Valenti continues: “At the heart of it all, it’s truly about hating sex, or at least hating that women have sex.  There’s a lot of talk about life and morals, but it’s nonsense.  To the people who want to limit your choices, it’s about slut-punishing.”  I find these claims baffling.

For example, I happen to believe that preserving a life form – any life form, including weeds and spiders – is, at least prima facie, is better than extinguishing it.  And I say prima faciebecause this rule is obviously not absolute, for there are plenty of living things that it is good and proper to extinguish (e.g., cancer).  All things being equal, on my view, one ought not terminate another life form for no good reason, or arbitrarily, if you will.  Call it whatever you wish, but be it a blade of grass, or even a spider (I really don’t like spiders), one ought not destroy it unless one has a reason for doing so, for letting it live is morally better than not.  See, e.g., Panayot Butchvarov, Skepticism in Ethics 88 (Indiana 1989) (“The intrinsic goodness of existence as such is evident in the attractiveness of the claims of certain conservationist and environmentalist movements, as long as we understand their goal of the preservation of the environment, including other species of life, as motivated by the belief that this is an intrinsic good, rather than something [merely] conducive to human interests.”).  It is therefore no surprise that I consider myself a conservationist, an environmentalist, and why I don’t hunt animals anymore (and feel guilty about not being a vegetarian).

As a result, let’s get clear about the following proposal.  I believe the general moral proposition “One ought to do what one can to preserve life where one reasonably can in the circumstances” is prima facie true.  And the reason I believe this to be a prima facie true general moral proposition is because I take it for granted that, all things being equal, in any given universe, preserving any given being’s existence is in some sense “better than” or “superior to” extinguishing it – unless there is a good reason for doing so (which is why we say the proposition is merely prima facie true, not absolutely true).

I take this proposal as the fundamental starting place when examining the problem of abortion.  I also take this proposal as the fundamental basis of the conservationist and environmentalist movements, as Butchvarov notes above, to which – like “feminism” – I consider myself an ardent subscriber.

Do you agree with my proposal as the place to start?  Why or why not?

what is a fact?

During the course of a discussion on the nature of reason, which led to a discussion about the a priori and the a posteriori and whether that was a genuine distinction or not, Kevin Currie and I eventually found ourselves at a crossroads about the nature of “facts.”  What is a fact?

Following the early Wittgenstein, I have tended to use the term “fact” as something capable of thought, and therefore capable of representation in speech, that describes an actualstate of affairs or state of reality.  For example, if I were to say “I am typing on my laptop right now,” this utterance would be “factual” because I am typing on my laptop right now, while the uttereance “I am skydiving right now” would not be factual because I am not skydiving right now.  In this sense, then, a “fact” would be that which is or can be represented by a proposition that actually matches reality (or an actual state of affairs).  (See also Richard A. Fumerton, Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception 8 (1985) (“As I use the use the expression, a fact is a nonlinguistic complex that makes a true sentence or proposition true.  By referring to an entity as nonlinguistic, I mean that the existence of language is no a logically necessary condition for [the fact's] existence.  [Thus, "t]he fact that snow is white” refers to a complex [feature of the world] that makes it true that snow is white.  “The fact that snow is black” does not refer [to any feature of the world].  If a given sentence or proposition is not true, then there is no fact that corresponds to it, there is nothing in the world that makes it true (since it is false).)

Ponder this notion for a moment and one will realize that the fact that “snow is white” is something other than the proposition.  In other words, the proposition “I am typing on my laptop right now” is not itself a fact, but that aspect of reality to which the proposition corresponds.  The proposition makes a claim about the world, and then one must examine the world to verify whether the proposition is – or is not – a fact.  Where the proposition corresponds, we say the proposition refers to a fact, and therefore that the proposition is true.  Where the proposition fails to correspond, we say that the proposition does not refer to a fact, and therefore that the proposition is false.  And hence we seem to rely on some notion ofevidence in the world when we go looking for what justifies or warrants our statements of fact.

This all seems fairly straightforward.  But this conception of a fact appears to run into problems when we begin referring to “facts” on a more general level.  For example, does the proposition “All Iowans are Americans” refer to to a feature of the world?  If it does, then it is clear that it refers in a different way than “I am typing on my laptop right now” refers.  Here, it seems, that one who understands what the concepts “Iowan” and “American” need not look anywhere to understand that the proposition “All Iowans are Americans” is true.  But, under our working definition, we need not appeal to any evidence outside the proposition itself to verify the truth of the proposition.  Does it follow from this line of reasoning that “All Iowans are Americans” is not a fact?  Or, perhaps, does it follow that some facts are simply self-evident, that is, facts come in different types or varieties?

I am somewhat jaded in thinking about these questions for three reasons.  One reason is that I’ve been heavily influenced by my teachers at the University of Iowa, most notably among them, Butchvarov and Fumerton.  (Although I’m still trying to understand the nature and degree of the influence!)  The other is that I am a lawyer, and have a fairly rigid concept of what is a “fact” within that context.  For example, when lawyers squabble over whether “the traffic light at time t was red,” we do what we can to marshal evidence before a fact-finder (judge or jury) in an effort to convince the fact-finder what account actually matched reality at time t.  Third, I take the accuracy of the correspondence theory of truth for granted.

I am inclined to restrict “facts” to only those particular features of reality that “make true” our propositions (representations) of them in speech or thought, that is, the “truthmakers” of propositions or thoughts, or the that to which true propostions or thoughts refer.  Thus, my inclination is to come up with some term or description for general true statements that appear to be self-evident, such as “All men or mortal.”  Perhaps “maxim” fits the bill?

What do you think?

is the concept of state neutrality on “the good life” self-contradictory?

This is a question to which I have devoted a rather significant amount of thought over the years, mainly due to my reading (and rereading) my friend and former teacher’spaper,“Towards a Reclamation of Substantive Liberalism.” In the paper, John Rudisill adopts the following two (paraphrased) definitions of equality offered by Ronald Dworkin in his A Matter of Principle:

(D1) The just state must treat all individuals within its domain with equal concern and respect, from which it follows that the just state must remain neutral regarding issues that touch upon what does or does not constitute “the good life.”

(D2) The just state must treat all individuals within its domain with equal concern and respect, but it does not follow from this that the state must remain neutral regarding issues that touch upon what does or does not constitute “the good life” because being treated with equal concern and respect means to treat individuals the way the good or wise person would want to be treated.

Rudisill suggests that the best way to understand Dworkin’s two conceptions of equality is to attribute to the former its embrace of the notion that the good life is the unqualifiedly “freely chosen life,” while the latter rejects the notion on the ground that it a freely chosen life as an absolute is overbroad; that is, the latter takes it for granted that, in some instances, it is necessary for the just state to take a stand (i.e., not remain neutral) in some matters of what does or does not constitute “the good life.”  (Rudsill then continues in his paper to defend (D1).)

(D1) (and its conception of equality) is labeled by Dworkin as a fundamental commitment of (modern) Liberalism, and (D2) (and its conception of equality) is a commitment of Conservatism.  (My use of the qualifier “(modern)” arises out of the fact that (D1) is not, in my view, what Classical Liberalism held, mainly due to the fact that it was either universally held, or nearly universally held, by our “Founding Fathers” that the state would most certainly not remain unqualifiedly neutral on matters concerning what is and is not “the good life.”  I take this assumption as beyond genuine dispute, so let’s not quibble with this assumption here – if one therefore wishes to lodge an objection against the assumption, do so and I’ll supply my “proof” for it in a subsequent post.)

The question I have for discussion is this: Is (D1), with its commitment to the unqualifiedly “freely chosen life” a self-contradictory notion?  Why or why not?

It seems to me that libertarians would have plenty to say on this subject, given the extremely high value we place on freedom.