Metaphysics Butters No Parsnips

Interesting thread on abortion. Just a few at random.

•  In Mr. Hume’s post and the comments threads we’ve so far turned up Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin as having carried out legislative actions suggesting that, at the least, they didn’t/don’t mind abortion very much. I’d add Margaret Thatcher, who IMS voted in Parliament for the 1967 bill that liberalized British abortion law, and certainly who as Prime Minister never made any move against the newly-liberalized abortion regime. So … tell me again how
you can’t be a conservative if you’re not anti-abortion?

[I can speak to the liberalization of the abortion laws in Britain in more detail, from observation and countless conversations in that country through the pre-1967 controversy. The two driving forces were (a) class, and (b) our old pal disgust. The class angle was the one most often heard in conversation. Under the old, quite strictly anti-abortion regime (still in force in Northern Ireland last time I looked), it was perfectly easy for well-off women — not rich, just upper-lower-middle-class and above — to get a hygienic abortion in a decent clinic. Everybody knew this. Even the price was well-known: it cost £200 in 1963-4 (about three months wages for a working-class man at the time). Working-class girls, however, had to resort to “back-alley” abortions: older women of the same class wielding bicycle pumps and shirt hangers. (Frank Sinatra’s mum was in this line of business, I believe, so things were probably much the same over here, at any rate in Hoboken.) This was regarded as grossly unfair class-wise; and in post-WW2 Britain that was sufficient to get a political movement airborne. The disgust was directed at the biddies with the bicycle pumps. If people are intent on having abortions, as they obviously are, always and everywhere; and if, as is the case, it is rather easy for a doctor to write up the procedure as something else, at least for early abortions (“dilatation and curettage” was the usual formula, making it sound like a sort of gynecological house cleaning — “… and to my great surprise, there was an embryo in there!”); then at least let’s make sure the thing is done to some medical standards. Those were the talking points behind abortion law reform in Britain. British people don’t go in much for metaphysics. At least they didn’t used to, when they were a sane nation.]

•  Isn’t there any way to wean people off the silly, prissy, dishonest terminology of “pro-life” and “pro-choice”?  What’s wrong with “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion”?  That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Does anyone think the homicide rate among “anti-life” abortion liberalizers is higher than it is among “pro-lifers” (My guess would be, it’s lower.) I understand the marketing strategies here, but there is great clarification to be got from just using plain names for things.

•  The whole idea of ensoulment is a fascinating topic in cognitive psychology. Doug Hofstadter has witty things to say about it in his 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop.  The common human perception seems to be, though — contra one of the commentators here — that souls come in different sizes. Doug notes, for example, that the English word “magnanimity” and the Hindu (Sanskrit?) title “Mahatma” both mean “great-souled.” He attempts a quantification of soul-size, based on a unit called the huneker — you have to read the book to get that reference. There is a two-page discussion about the size of a mosquito’s soul, coming up at last with 10–10 hunekers, the average human soul size being of course 100 hunekers.  Says Doug:

I have never been specific about the kinds of traits a high-huneker or low-huneker soul would tend to exhibit. Indeed, any hint at such a distinction risks becoming inflammatory, because in our culture there is a dogma that states, roughly, that all human lives are worth exactly the same amount.

You thus have one of those doublethink situations that cog-sci types get excited about: on the one hand, the intuition, universal and embodied in language, that some souls are bigger than others, on the other hand, a cultural dogma that all human souls are equi-capacitous. Prof. Pinker, call your office.

•  Still on the cog-sci beat, I think the other reader is right that we have, as part of our mental equipment, a module that, for any other human being, computes a sort of “potential-for-accumulating-experience” quotient, and assigns the human being a value on that basis. This module likely only kicks in when confronted with an observable human being, though. Probably our brains just didn’t evolve to have valuation modules for embryos and fetuses, which we didn’t much encounter until recently. Following on from that, I’d guess that much of the salience of the abortion issue in modern life is driven by the good-quality medical imaging that’s become available in recent decades. I’d guess, in fact, that really good quality imaging of fetuses, if cheaply and widely available, would lead to public demands for earlier limits on legal abortion terms. The theocons can metaphysic all they want, but further policy/legal changes in this zone will likely be driven by things we can see and hear, and by the effects those things have on our emotions.  Metaphysics butters no parsnips.

•  I remember Nat Hentoff all right. He wrote the cover notes for the first British LP issue of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” Sixties survivors don’t forget stuff like that.

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23 Responses to Metaphysics Butters No Parsnips

  1. Danny says:

    “What’s wrong with “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion?”

    Standard editorial practice at The Times and most other outlets of the mainstream press is “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” – notice the subtle bias.

    Regarding ensoulment, it’s not a particularly religious concept. Just like the statement that “the whole is greater than the part,” the statement that “man is a composite of body and soul” is one which demands the assent of the intellect as soon as one understands what the terms mean. How has your reading of The Last Superstition been coming along, Derb?

  2. Danny says:

    … I suppose I should add, too, that most people nowadays do not understand what is meant by the terms man, body, and soul from the standpoint of classical realist philosophy.

  3. Tom Piatak says:

    I have no problem with “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion.” The main problem is that the people who are in fact pro-abortion don’t like admitting that, maintaining that what they really are in favor of is “choice,” not abortion. Granted, a six year old should be able to see through this sophistry, but it’s stoutly maintained nonetheless, even by organizations like Planned Parenthood that make lots of money by performing tens of thousands of abortions each year.

  4. Susan says:

    I think it’s perfectly possible to be a conservative and a)be pro-abortion, b)not care much about the issue one way or the other, c) regard it as a private matter left up to individuals the way any other decisions concerning medical treatment would be, or d)recognize that for the majority of voters it’s not a priority,and thus not a winning campaign strategy. Or some combination of the above. It appears, though, that there’s an increasingly strident group of religious conservatives who claim that you can’t be a conservative without making your first priority a commitment to end abortion. This group also states that they won’t support any candidate for office who doesn’t do so. Staying home on Election Day and sulking because the Republican/conservative candidate hasn’t promised to make ending abortion his or her first priority would seem to guarantee that only leftwingers get elected, so it seems a self-defeating strategy. Then again, I don’t think logic is their strong suit.

  5. Danny says:

    Actually, Susan, among voters who say the abortion issue is important (i.e., very likely to affect which candidate they will support), a decided majority are pro-lifers. Abortion is and will continue to be a winning position for Republicans. People did not elect Obama because of his don’t-give-an-inch position on abortion.

    Also, pro-lifers do not expect candidates to make abortion “their number one priority.” If that was so, John McCain would have lost by a much larger margin than he did, given his somewhat shaky record on the life issues. However, pro-lifers did expect (and I believe with good reason) that he would take judicial appointments seriously, and most especially Supreme Court appointments.

    Roe v Wade will continue to disrupt and distract our national politics until it is overturned. If any of you haven’t read Justice Scalia’s dissent in Planned Parenthood vs Casey, it’s an excellent read. To quote:

    “Roe’s mandate for abortion on demand destroyed the compromises of the past, rendered compromise impossible for the future, and required the entire issue to be resolved uniformly, at the national level. At the same time, Roe created a vast new class of abortion consumers and abortion proponents by eliminating the moral opprobrium that had attached to the act. (“If the Constitution guarantees abor tion, how can it be bad?”–not an accurate line of thought, but a natural one.) Many favor all of those developments, and it is not for me to say that they are wrong. But to portray Roe as the statesmanlike “settlement” of a divisive issue, a jurisprudential Peace of Westphalia that is worth preserving, is nothing less than Orwellian. Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general, and has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to this Court in particular, ever since. And by keeping us in the abortion umpiring business, it is the perpetuation of that disruption, rather than of any pax Roeana, that the Court’s new majority decrees.

  6. Susan says:

    Danny, I won’t argue with you that “among voters who say the abortion issue is important (i.e., very likely to affect which candidate they support) a decided majority are pro-lifers” because that was my point. Of course pro-lifers are going to support anti-abortion candidates. My question is, and remains, whether abolishing abortion or overturning Roe is much of a priority for voters in general. Or enough of a one to make a difference.

    While it’s true that Obama didn’t get elected because he’s pro-abortion, his don’t-give-an-inch stance on it certainly didn’t repel a majority of voters. In fact I doubt it was even a minor consideration for a lot of them. Again, that’s my point. Most people just don’t feel that strongly about it–certainly not as strongly as they feel about the economy, for example.

    As to the question of whether pro-lifers expect politicians to make ending abortion their number one priority: I never said they all did. I said that a very vocal group of them did, and do. It’s the first plank of the Constitution Party.

  7. Gotchaye says:

    I think you may be underestimating the importance of social issues generally, Susan. People care a great deal about the economy, but they’re also much less certain that they know how it ought to be fixed. There’s a reason that voters who care about the economy tend to vote for the out-of-power party in a downturn – they just feel that the people in charge screwed up and that now it’s time for someone else to have a chance. A voter may want the economy fixed more badly than she wants abortion to be illegal, but when it comes time to actually choose a candidate to vote for she has to determine how likely it is that either will achieve those goals.

    The strength of social issues in politics is that we’re all 100% sure that we’re right and we’re all absolutely confident that there’s an easy way to achieve the effects we want. I would guess that positions on social issues inform positions in economic issues, with people adopting the economic views of the party that’s in line with their positions on social issues.

    One bit of evidence for this is the surprising success that Huckabee saw in the primaries. Economically, it’s hard to say that he was a Republican, but a large number of Republicans supported him anyway. A pro-choice, pro-gay marriage Republican presidential candidate would go down in flames at every primary, I imagine, no matter how popular his other positions were. Wasn’t Romney great on the economy but bad on social issues (with respect to the party platform)? It seemed like the Republican base hated his guts.

    Perhaps it’s the case that Democrats are more likely to vote on economic issues, but even then I think that it’s for the same reasons that people vote on social issues. Very, very roughly, poor Democrats want handouts and rich Democrats feel that the state has an obligation to provide for the poor. These Democrats are really voting based on views about social justice, same as the social issues Republicans.

  8. JPL says:

    A very good movie on abortion in 1950s England is Vera Drake. It has all the elements (class, disgust) that Bradlaugh discussed.

  9. Superbia says:

    Interesting to witness thinkers slowly, issue by issue, devolving into the radicalism that characterizes them in all but name (the “Right,” in the very title of this web site). Like former conservative Andrew Sullivan and his sexual-identity hobbyhorse, you will pull on a thread that irritates you until the entire garment is unraveled. Then follows your final revelation — which will appear along the lines of “I didn’t leave the Right, the Right left me.” Up to then you will portray yourselves as an embattled minority even as you seek to redefine the very essence of conservatism from within.

    There will be plenty of complaining for you to do about this or that topical issue until your final revelation. Let’s call that “The Sullivan Moment.”

    Until then you can claim: hey, we tried reform from within, but the superstitious bigots somehow continue to outnumber us unhappy few. Now why would that be? Save yourselves the time and energy and realize that those who are actively interested in preserving the precarious “culture of life” tend to band together on one side of the political divide, and those who are indifferent or against its preservation find a comfortable home elsewhere. This site is farcical and sad.

    To avoid the sudden realization that you are fighting under the wrong standard, go back to basics like the good conservatives you once fully were, and discover that “SecularRight” is an oxymoron in a civilization built by, for, and around the human religious impulse. Maybe we are on track for some future world where the human animal has transcended its need for churches and arms and money, but conservatives qua conservatives doubt it very much — and besides, we believe such a place would likely be a horror show.

    The opinions and arrogance are not surprising. They are as old as pride. But the devolution, the slow rotting is pitiful to witness. The shock of waking up in bed next to a thoroughly transformed, former ally goes beyond pity and revulsion. Our protection against the corruption of the label “Right” is more than semantic jealousy. It is a duty to maintain its integrity — that is, if the cause for which we gather together is to mean anything.

  10. Susan says:

    Those are all excellent points, Gotchaye, and I’m not going to dispute them. I think a problem in achieving a consensus about abortion, though, is that most people–as far as I can tell–would not want to outlaw it completely, as does the Constitution Party, and this is where the problem arises. If you ask someone who’s “opposed” to abortion if there should be any cases in which it should be allowed, a lot of them will make exceptions: in cases of rape, for cases of incest, in cases where the fetus is hopelessly defective, and certainly in those cases where the mother’s life will be jeopardized by not terminating the pregnancy. Welll,the very last of those is surely easy to justify: if the mother dies, the child very often dies in utero, so what’s to be gained by preventing her from having an abortion? Nor is it hard to justify abortion in the case of a child so badly damaged that he or she probably won’t survive long after birth anyway. With rape or incest, the lines blur. After all, why kill the kid, who certainly wasn’t responsible for how he or she was conceived, for a crime committed by the inseminator? On the other hand, why make the mother suffer through a pregnancy she never wanted, and give birth to and raise a child she never wanted? Yes, yes, the child can be put up for adoption–but the mother still
    has to go through the pregnancy. And who pays for the medical expenses, by the way? If the state forces you to have a child engendered by a criminal act, shouldn’t the state pay?

    You see what I’m driving at? A lot of people who claim to be opposed to abortion are in actuality opposed to women having abortions for convenience, or as a form of birth control, though they can’t articulate that and probably don’t even completely realize it. And it would be difficult to get them to make common cause with those who think abortion should never be legal under any circumstances, and impossible to get them to make common cause with those who think that abortion should be legal under all circumstances throughout the nine months of the pregnancy.

    So who do you make the laws to suit? What group do you cater to when you’re campaigning?

  11. Fritz says:

    I advise looking at Don Marquis’s “Future Like Ours” argument against abortion. It avoids some of the religious and more obvious metaphysical difficulties.

    The BBC has a nice snapshot of the argument: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/future.shtml

  12. steveT says:

    @Superbia
    Ahh “churches and arms and money”, I have to admit that my heart beats a little faster when I think about those pillars of our civilization.

  13. sonny says:

    pro-choice does not = pro abortion

  14. Gotchaye says:

    I see what you’re saying there, Susan. I’ll agree that pro-life as defined by the hard-line pro-life groups is not politically viable (likewise for pro-choice groups). But I do think that there are natural coalitions in there – pro-life hard-liners might not like exceptions for rape and incest, but they’re going to be willing (and have been willing) to compromise on that if it gives them political power over the pro-choicers. They’ll be mad, and they’ll make themselves heard in primaries, but they won’t stay home to punish a moderately pro-life Republican in significant numbers.

    Part of it is just about branding. A fringe pro-lifer will hold his nose and vote for a candidate as long as that candidate can be described as pro-life. But he will stay home to punish a pro-choice candidate. And this is true even though both politicians may be well to the left of his own position. This is basically rehashing what you were hinting at in your first post, I guess.

    One difficulty in deciding whether an issue is important in elections is the same that we encounter with heritability. Most of the tools we have at our disposal only tell us how much of the variation in X is due to changes in Y, but this effect is itself dependent on the variation of Z. For example, if we introduced an environmental factor such as shooting everyone older than 40, we’d find that genes have almost nothing to do with how long people live. But it still seems to make sense to say that there are genes which lengthen lifespan. I guess we have to consider a bunch of counterfactuals in deciding how important things are. You may well be right, though, that, given the current range of positions on various issues, abortion isn’t a game-changer.

  15. Gotchaye says:

    I have less of a problem with ‘pro-choice’ than I do with ‘pro-life’, but neither bothers me all that much. Understood as referring to the abortion debate, both labels make perfect sense. ‘Anti-abortion’ is probably a more sensible label for the pro-life movement, but ‘pro-abortion’ isn’t very useful. Very few pro-choicers think of abortion as a good thing in itself, and relatively few think that women who do decide to bear inconvenient children are behaving wrongly. The pro-choice movement is pro-abortion in the same way that pro- free speech groups are pro-racism. I think that both labels as they are nicely communicate the motivations of the labeled groups in the context of the abortion debate. It’s just true that pro-choicers generally don’t think that the lives of fetuses have a great deal of value and it’s just true that pro-lifers generally don’t believe in as many ‘reproductive rights’.

    I’ve got a much bigger problem with the terminology that flies around with respect to gay marriage. ‘Pro-equality’ works well enough, but I’ve heard people with various positions (though tending anti-) call themselves ‘pro-marriage’, which is obviously stealing a base.

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  17. Bradlaugh says:

    Well, then:  "anti-abortion" and "anti-anti-abortion."

  18. Susan says:

    I’ve seen the locution “anti-choice,” but unfortunately I can’t recall the exact context. It sounds, though, as if it might have been used by a pro-choicer to describe someone opposed to abortion.

  19. Anon321 says:

    If the terms weren’t already so closely linked in the public’s mind to the issue of drugs, I’d suggest that pro-legalization and anti-legalization would be the most accurate. That is, I’d be perfectly happy if no one ever had an abortion again. But I don’t like the idea that it should be a crime for someone to perform or have one. Thus, I’m pro-legalization of abortion (or, perhaps, anti-illegalization?), but not in any way pro-abortion. But I tend to agree that, at this point in the debate, the labels don’t do much work.

  20. Beran says:

    I just want to add that parsnips are revolting, with or without butter.

  21. Mark says:

    I think pro-life and pro-choice are just fine, actually. Pro-lifers want the fetus’s right to life to be respected. Pro-choicers want a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a fetus to term to be respected.

    The only problem, in my opinion, is that the debate is usually couched in terms of “abortion rights” without any mention made of fetal rights. Fairness would seem to require that both sides be presented.

  22. Bad says:

    ” What’s wrong with “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion”? That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

    Pro-abortion is still dishonest: it implies that people who want abortion to be legal actually want abortions to happen, when that’s not consistently the case at all. It’s as if you said that someone was “pro-plastic surgery” or “pro-sodomy” because they didn’t want plastic surgery or sodomy to be against the law. What they are is pro- “having abortions be legal medical procedures.”

  23. vicneo says:

    re: imaging: – “I’d guess, in fact, that really good quality imaging of fetuses, if cheaply and widely available, would lead to public demands for earlier limits on legal abortion terms”

    A Radiologist friend of mine is pretty much left libral on every issue but abortion. Her sees the fetuses on the ultrasound day by day and that changes his POV. I put these former fetuses on a ventilator in a NICU and watch them go home. Ceratainly makes me much more ambivalent about abortion.

    “Pro-abortion is still dishonest: it implies that people who want abortion to be legal actually want abortions to happen, when that’s not consistently the case at all.”

    I dunno. au contraire to what I said before, OBGYN’s that I have interacted with tend to actually be PRO abortion (as in encouraging abortion among reluctant or ambivalent mothers – perhaps a refelction of docrinal purity, . I exxagerate, but the systamatic push for abortion is at times disturbingl.

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