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Politics : The Left Wing Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: St_Bill who wrote (3992)	2/12/2001 8:52:18 PM
From: ecommerceman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6089

If this doesn't make you mad, you're not alive... salon.com

To: St_Bill who wrote (3992)	2/12/2001 8:58:21 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6089

St_Bill: I think the reason to have a philosophical view is to know how strongly you can believe what you believe. Many people seem to think they know what they know and that information can't be wrong. When you engage in philosophical debate, you quickly learn how many assumptions are included in people's arguments (including your own). Most people don't even realize they are making assumptions because they are presuming that the premise they start from is absolutely true. Usually it isn't even a single premise but a premise made of other premises and conclusions based upon certain unstated assumptions. In matters of great importance, it is easy to understand you can be (and almost certainly are) wrong about a great number of things. The more of these you have in your basic principles as assumptions, the more likely you are to be wrong in your conclusions. I've debated the existence of God and a variety of deep issues. I doubt I have changed any one's core beliefs, but if I've helped them understand that ultimately this thing they hold dear is not transferable to other logical and intelligent creatures, then I've made progress. I won't argue with someone who expresses an idea as a core belief. I might question them about their belief and tell them that I don't believe it, but I can't tell them they are wrong in their belief. I can, however, suggest that the likelihood of their belief is low or high. But my estimate itself is little more than a belief (by me that such estimates are worth anything). At most I hope that society moves in a direction governed by the Golden Rule - do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. It's hard to get into much trouble with this. Slippery issues like abortion ultimately get someone in trouble because people start identifying with something (a fetus, for instance) that they could never meet, interrogate, interact with or otherwise determine it's sentience. For me, I can state factually that the early fetus has about the same development as a flea, shrimp, mouse, rat, dog, monkey, chimp, etc at its various developmental stages and as such, probably feels pain but doesn't qualify as sentient in the way we understand it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have any feelings. I ended up becoming a vegetarian because of my philosophical principle of minimizing my impact on the world. I try to recycle, telecommute and do a variety of other things that reduce my impact on other people, the environment and my fellow creatures. I even break my regimen of vegetarianism but usually only with seafood in a social context. This isn't a dogma for me, just a first order system of operating principles. For me, a pro-Life stance is reasonable only if someone extends this to all life and all creatures. I don't even hold enough creatures near and dear to be consistent (IMO) with a pro-Life stance. There is no factual basis to make divisions between shrimp and 2 week old fetuses in any scientific way. They may have different DNA but the structures and the number and functions of the cells are almost identical.