On abortion
I often focus less on political issues, but the problem I face when considering abortion is that of distinguishing between potential experience of sentient creatures, and actual experience. Another issue that accompanies this is, in my pseudo-utilitarian moral theory, should well being me maximized, or should suffering me minimized? Can it be both?
Pro-choicers tend to focus greatly on actual experience in their arguments and for the most part I can really sympathize with that. If a being isn’t actually able to experience anything yet, how are they being affected - that is - what suffering is being caused? While pro-lifers will often try to argue from the religious position, that doesn’t fly; you aren’t going to convince people who don’t adhere to those same beliefs and values. When they do try to make secular-based arguments they often bring up the idea that abortion is murder, but this tends to fall short just as easily because they focus on the notion that some sort of harm is being caused to the unborn child while the entire scientific community says otherwise.
So to me it’s pretty clear that pro-lifers consistently get off on the wrong foot when they try to argue for their cause. Their insistence of focusing on actual experience and the basic moral concept that suffering should be minimized tends to completely undermine the points they attempt to make. To me it seems that the only case that can ever come close to being made for an anti-abortion position is one that does not distinguish between actual and potential experience, and the maximization of well being. Really once you get others to admit that they too value the maximization of well being (which many atheistic people do), it becomes a much less difficult task to blur the line between the actual and the potential in regards to the experience of sentient beings. One thing that I see as a huge shortcoming of moral theory based on that idea, however, is that taken to its logical conclusion, it’d be immoral for humans to refrain from having as many offspring as possible, all the time.
This has been way too wordy and I really hate it when I do that. I just needed to write about something because, even though I enjoy contemplating and discussing metaphysics much more, I haven’t had the inspiration to read or write philosophy for some time. Thank you community college.