Society/Culture The Abortion Thread

[ShanDog]

IMO up to a certain point you are not taking a life but a potential life as an

A human is always potential life is it not?

 

[BruceFromBalnarring]

My man to the rescue:



Life IS suffering. What do you do about it? Try to reduce it.

I heart Jordan Peterson. Especially "that" interview and how he kept his cool.

 

[Ok Boomer]

Bringing an unwanted and unloved child into the world is a bigger crime than supposedly "murdering" it, via abortion.

 

[owen87]

Bringing an unwanted and unloved child into the world is a bigger crime than supposedly "murdering" it, via abortion.

Fortunately all those newly wedded gay couples can adopt those unwanted children and provide them the (sweet sweet gay) love they need.

 

[Run n Spread]

A human is always potential life is it not?

Nope. By that logic we should all be out on the town creating potential life then posting on this board shouldn't we?

That's the point. When is it life, when is it a hypothetical?

 

[Run n Spread]

An unwanted pregnancy simply gets transferred to the chamber, everyone wins.

The woman doesn't have to carry the child, the father can keep the child if he chooses, the child gets to live, maybe the government end up with a generation of tank babies born without any of the issues that can be caused by poor diet, drug use including alcohol. Save money on developmental issues caused by poor mothering and raise all babies in the tanks.

It would put incontinence pads out of business though.

And if no one wants to keep it???????????

Back to square one. Hence my initial point. Better off developing better contraception.

 

[Run n Spread]

Incidentally did anyone watch/read the transcript of Insight last night? Or read any blogs in the Lifestyle sections of numerous publications.

Seems to me a hell of a lot of pregnancies are occurring to spite women being "on the pill"

which to me reads:

a) They are lying and trapping men etc etc

b) They subconsciously are missing a few through carelessness or unconscious habit

c) We have been sold a pup. And it outright doesn't work as effectively as claimed.

What everyone think?

 

[owen87]

Incidentally did anyone watch/read the transcript of Insight last night? Or read any blogs in the Lifestyle sections of numerous publications.

Seems to me a hell of a lot of pregnancies are occurring to spite women being "on the pill"

which to me reads:

a) They are lying and trapping men etc etc

b) They subconsciously are missing a few through carelessness or unconscious habit

c) We have been sold a pup. And it outright doesn't work as effectively as claimed.

What everyone think?

d) All of the above.

 

[ShanDog]

Nope. By that logic we should all be out on the town creating potential life then posting on this board shouldn't we?

That's the point. When is it life, when is it a hypothetical?

I don't follow your logic there, but agree regarding the last part of the post.

 

[Procrastinator35]

A human is always potential life is it not?

 

[ShanDog]

Yep. Therefore at every point in the life of a human being until they draw their last breath, their humanity remains full of potential. This is what I was getting at.

 

[Procrastinator35]

Yep. Therefore at every point in the life of a human being until they draw their last breath, their humanity remains full of potential. This is what I was getting at.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/

Chapter 12.

12. Actuality and Potentiality
In Metaphysics Ζ, Aristotle introduces the distinction between matter and form synchronically, applying it to an individual substance at a particular time. The matter of a substance is the stuff it is composed of; the form is the way that stuff is put together so that the whole it constitutes can perform its characteristic functions. But soon he begins to apply the distinction diachronically, across time. This connects the matter/form distinction to another key Aristotelian distinction, that between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (entelecheia or energeia). This distinction is the main topic of Book Θ.

Aristotle distinguishes between two different senses of the term dunamis. In the strictest sense, a dunamis is the power that a thing has to produce a change. A thing has a dunamis in this sense when it has within it a “source of change in something else (or in itself qua other)” (Θ.1, 1046a12; cf. Δ.12). The exercise of such a power is a kinêsis—a movement or process. So, for example, the housebuilder’s craft is a power whose exercise is the process of housebuilding. But there is a second sense of dunamis—and it is the one in which Aristotle is mainly interested—that might be better translated as ‘potentiality’. For, as Aristotle tells us, in this sense dunamis is related not to movement (kinêsis) but to actuality (energeia)(Θ.6, 1048a25). A dunamis in this sense is not a thing’s power to produce a change but rather its capacity to be in a different and more completed state. Aristotle thinks that potentiality so understood is indefinable (1048a37), claiming that the general idea can be grasped from a consideration of cases. Actuality is to potentiality, Aristotle tells us, as “someone waking is to someone sleeping, as someone seeing is to a sighted person with his eyes closed, as that which has been shaped out of some matter is to the matter from which it has been shaped” (1048b1–3).

This last illustration is particularly illuminating. Consider, for example, a piece of wood, which can be carved or shaped into a table or into a bowl. In Aristotle’s terminology, the wood has (at least) two different potentialities, since it is potentially a table and also potentially a bowl. The matter (in this case, wood) is linked with potentialty; the substance (in this case, the table or the bowl) is linked with actuality. The as yet uncarved wood is only potentially a table, and so it might seem that once it is carved the wood is actually a table. Perhaps this is what Aristotle means, but it is possible that he does not wish to consider the wood to be a table. His idea might be that not only can a piece of raw wood in the carpenter’s workshop be considered a potential table (since it can be transformed into one), but the wood composing the completed table is also, in a sense, a potential table. The idea here is that it is not the wood qua wood that is actually a table, but the wood qua table. Considered as matter, it remains only potentially the thing that it is the matter of. (A contemporary philosopher might make this point by refusing to identify the wood with the table, saying instead that the wood only constitutes the table and is not identical to the table it constitutes.)

Since Aristotle gives form priority over matter, we would expect him similarly to give actuality priority over potentiality. And that is exactly what we find (Θ.8, 1049b4–5). Aristotle distinguishes between priority in logos (account or definition), in time, and in substance. (1) Actuality is prior in logos since we must cite the actuality when we give an account of its corresponding potentiality. Thus, ‘visible’ means ‘capable of being seen’; ‘buildable’ means ‘capable of being built’(1049b14–16). (2) As regards temporal priority, by contrast, potentiality may well seem to be prior to actuality, since the wood precedes the table that is built from it, and the acorn precedes the oak that it grows into. Nevertheless, Aristotle finds that even temporally there is a sense in which actuality is prior to potentiality: “the actual which is identical in species though not in number with a potentially existing thing is prior to it” (1049b18–19). A particular acorn is, of course, temporally prior to the particular oak tree that it grows into, but it is preceded in time by the actual oak tree that produced it, with which it is identical in species. The seed (potential substance) must have been preceded by an adult (actual substance). So in this sense actuality is prior even in time.

(3) Aristotle argues for the priority in substance of actuality over potentiality in two ways. (a) The first argument makes use of his notion of final causality. Things that come to be move toward an end (telos)—the boy becomes a man, the acorn becomes an oak—and “the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired ... animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see ... matter exists in a potential state, just because it may come to its form; and when it exists actually, then it is in its form” (1050a9–17). Form or actuality is the end toward which natural processes are directed. Actuality is therefore a cause in more than one sense of a thing’s realizing its potential. As we noted in Section 11, one and the same thing may be the final, formal, and efficient cause of another. Suppose an acorn realizes its potential to become an oak tree. The efficient cause here is the actual oak tree that produced the acorn; the formal cause is the logos defining that actuality; the final cause is the telos toward which the acorn develops—an actual (mature) oak tree.

(b) Aristotle also offers (1050b6–1051a2) an “even stricter” argument for his claim that actuality is prior in substance to potentiality. A potentiality is for either of a pair of opposites; so anything that is capable of being is also capable of not being. What is capable of not being might possibly not be, and what might possibly not be is perishable. Hence anything with the mere potentiality to be is perishable. What is eternal is imperishable, and so nothing that is eternal can exist only potentially—what is eternal must be fully actual. But the eternal is prior in substance to the perishable. For the eternal can exist without the perishable, but not conversely, and that is what priority in substance amounts to (cf. Δ.11, 1019a2). So what is actual is prior in substance to what is potential.

 

[ShanDog]

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/

Chapter 12.

12. Actuality and Potentiality
In Metaphysics Ζ, Aristotle introduces the distinction between matter and form synchronically, applying it to an individual substance at a particular time. The matter of a substance is the stuff it is composed of; the form is the way that stuff is put together so that the whole it constitutes can perform its characteristic functions. But soon he begins to apply the distinction diachronically, across time. This connects the matter/form distinction to another key Aristotelian distinction, that between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (entelecheia or energeia). This distinction is the main topic of Book Θ.

Aristotle distinguishes between two different senses of the term dunamis. In the strictest sense, a dunamis is the power that a thing has to produce a change. A thing has a dunamis in this sense when it has within it a “source of change in something else (or in itself qua other)” (Θ.1, 1046a12; cf. Δ.12). The exercise of such a power is a kinêsis—a movement or process. So, for example, the housebuilder’s craft is a power whose exercise is the process of housebuilding. But there is a second sense of dunamis—and it is the one in which Aristotle is mainly interested—that might be better translated as ‘potentiality’. For, as Aristotle tells us, in this sense dunamis is related not to movement (kinêsis) but to actuality (energeia)(Θ.6, 1048a25). A dunamis in this sense is not a thing’s power to produce a change but rather its capacity to be in a different and more completed state. Aristotle thinks that potentiality so understood is indefinable (1048a37), claiming that the general idea can be grasped from a consideration of cases. Actuality is to potentiality, Aristotle tells us, as “someone waking is to someone sleeping, as someone seeing is to a sighted person with his eyes closed, as that which has been shaped out of some matter is to the matter from which it has been shaped” (1048b1–3).

This last illustration is particularly illuminating. Consider, for example, a piece of wood, which can be carved or shaped into a table or into a bowl. In Aristotle’s terminology, the wood has (at least) two different potentialities, since it is potentially a table and also potentially a bowl. The matter (in this case, wood) is linked with potentialty; the substance (in this case, the table or the bowl) is linked with actuality. The as yet uncarved wood is only potentially a table, and so it might seem that once it is carved the wood is actually a table. Perhaps this is what Aristotle means, but it is possible that he does not wish to consider the wood to be a table. His idea might be that not only can a piece of raw wood in the carpenter’s workshop be considered a potential table (since it can be transformed into one), but the wood composing the completed table is also, in a sense, a potential table. The idea here is that it is not the wood qua wood that is actually a table, but the wood qua table. Considered as matter, it remains only potentially the thing that it is the matter of. (A contemporary philosopher might make this point by refusing to identify the wood with the table, saying instead that the wood only constitutes the table and is not identical to the table it constitutes.)

Since Aristotle gives form priority over matter, we would expect him similarly to give actuality priority over potentiality. And that is exactly what we find (Θ.8, 1049b4–5). Aristotle distinguishes between priority in logos (account or definition), in time, and in substance. (1) Actuality is prior in logos since we must cite the actuality when we give an account of its corresponding potentiality. Thus, ‘visible’ means ‘capable of being seen’; ‘buildable’ means ‘capable of being built’(1049b14–16). (2) As regards temporal priority, by contrast, potentiality may well seem to be prior to actuality, since the wood precedes the table that is built from it, and the acorn precedes the oak that it grows into. Nevertheless, Aristotle finds that even temporally there is a sense in which actuality is prior to potentiality: “the actual which is identical in species though not in number with a potentially existing thing is prior to it” (1049b18–19). A particular acorn is, of course, temporally prior to the particular oak tree that it grows into, but it is preceded in time by the actual oak tree that produced it, with which it is identical in species. The seed (potential substance) must have been preceded by an adult (actual substance). So in this sense actuality is prior even in time.

(3) Aristotle argues for the priority in substance of actuality over potentiality in two ways. (a) The first argument makes use of his notion of final causality. Things that come to be move toward an end (telos)—the boy becomes a man, the acorn becomes an oak—and “the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired ... animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see ... matter exists in a potential state, just because it may come to its form; and when it exists actually, then it is in its form” (1050a9–17). Form or actuality is the end toward which natural processes are directed. Actuality is therefore a cause in more than one sense of a thing’s realizing its potential. As we noted in Section 11, one and the same thing may be the final, formal, and efficient cause of another. Suppose an acorn realizes its potential to become an oak tree. The efficient cause here is the actual oak tree that produced the acorn; the formal cause is the logos defining that actuality; the final cause is the telos toward which the acorn develops—an actual (mature) oak tree.

(b) Aristotle also offers (1050b6–1051a2) an “even stricter” argument for his claim that actuality is prior in substance to potentiality. A potentiality is for either of a pair of opposites; so anything that is capable of being is also capable of not being. What is capable of not being might possibly not be, and what might possibly not be is perishable. Hence anything with the mere potentiality to be is perishable. What is eternal is imperishable, and so nothing that is eternal can exist only potentially—what is eternal must be fully actual. But the eternal is prior in substance to the perishable. For the eternal can exist without the perishable, but not conversely, and that is what priority in substance amounts to (cf. Δ.11, 1019a2). So what is actual is prior in substance to what is potential.

And what was in actuality a human become substantially grass food. Where does it start and end?

 

[Procrastinator35]

And what was in actuality a human become substantially grass food. Where does it start and end?

Ah Yes, the old Chicken & the Egg conundrum.....That old chestnut....Believe it or not, Aristotle has an answer for that too.

The chicken always comes first as actuality always proceeds potentiality.

https://janetthomas.wordpress.com/2...the-egg-or-the-proof-of-the-existence-of-god/

Why the chicken came before the egg or the proof of the existence of God
December 28, 2011 //
1


In his study on metaphysics Aristotle introduces a distinction between matter and form[1]. This distinction is enacted in the definition of matter as potentiality or dunamis and form as actuality or energaia[2]. Aristotle states that actuality is to potentiality as ‘someone awake is to someone asleep’ or as ‘that which has been shaped out of some matter to the matter from which it is shaped’[3]. Something is always potentially the thing that comes after it. However, ‘if there is a first thing which is no longer called after something else, and said to be of it, this is prime matter’[4]. For Aristotle, actuality is really real and potentiality is only half real[5]. Aristotle also stated that actuality has a priority over potentiality because it is capable of being[6]. His argument for this priority has two subarguments. First, is that logically the actual is not defined by the potential but the potential by the actual[7]. For example, ‘visible’ means capable of being seen[8]. His second temporal reason is that only an actual substance can actually physically produce something[9]. The potential does not have the power to produce anything[10]. For example the seed, or potential substance, must have been preceded by an adult or actual substance[11]. For Aristotle, the potential is created by the actual therefore actuality precedes potentiality[12].

 

[ShanDog]

Ah Yes, the old Chicken & the Egg conundrum.....That old chestnut....Believe it or not, Aristotle has an answer for that too.

The chicken always comes first as actuality always proceeds potentiality.

https://janetthomas.wordpress.com/2...the-egg-or-the-proof-of-the-existence-of-god/

Why the chicken came before the egg or the proof of the existence of God
December 28, 2011 //
1


In his study on metaphysics Aristotle introduces a distinction between matter and form[1]. This distinction is enacted in the definition of matter as potentiality or dunamis and form as actuality or energaia[2]. Aristotle states that actuality is to potentiality as ‘someone awake is to someone asleep’ or as ‘that which has been shaped out of some matter to the matter from which it is shaped’[3]. Something is always potentially the thing that comes after it. However, ‘if there is a first thing which is no longer called after something else, and said to be of it, this is prime matter’[4]. For Aristotle, actuality is really real and potentiality is only half real[5]. Aristotle also stated that actuality has a priority over potentiality because it is capable of being[6]. His argument for this priority has two subarguments. First, is that logically the actual is not defined by the potential but the potential by the actual[7]. For example, ‘visible’ means capable of being seen[8]. His second temporal reason is that only an actual substance can actually physically produce something[9]. The potential does not have the power to produce anything[10]. For example the seed, or potential substance, must have been preceded by an adult or actual substance[11]. For Aristotle, the potential is created by the actual therefore actuality precedes potentiality[12].

I like the thinking; however, it is framed within an understanding of matter that precedes science by a good thousand years. We can take those same descriptions of matter and form and apply that framework on the macro or micro level of biology and physics. As I have said, the key issue in abortion is determining at what point do we consider a human life to have started, and how does that relate to our moral imperative to preserve human life? Is it when a fetus is self-sustaining? When a baby enters the world? When the mother or external intervention is no longer required to sustain that life? Again, where does it stop and end? I don't think citing Aristotle answers any of that.

 

[Procrastinator35]

I like the thinking; however, it is framed within an understanding of matter that precedes science by a good thousand years. We can take those same descriptions of matter and form and apply that framework on the macro or micro level of biology and physics. As I have said, the key issue in abortion is determining at what point do we consider a human life to have started, and how does that relate to our moral imperative to preserve human life? Is it when a fetus is self-sustaining? When a baby enters the world? When the mother or external intervention is no longer required to sustain that life? Again, where does it stop and end? I don't think citing Aristotle answers any of that.

I couldn't disagree more strongly....As a mother herself represents actual being, & an embryo is still only potential being....It is always the actual being itself which dictates the course of events so far as the potential being of the unborn baby goes & is decided upon.

Whether we like it or not, or agree with it or not....This is actually always the case in nature....That actual being dictates the reality for potential being coming to be or not.

You should never ever underestimate the universal application of the Aristotelian/Platonic corpuses to our present day reality.

No other philosopher has, as yet, been able to supersede any part of Aristoles' thoughts on being qua being itself....Of the metaphysical underpinnings & presuppositions upon which all scientific knowledge is based & founded upon.

 

[ShanDog]

I couldn't disagree more strongly....As a mother herself represents actual being, & an embryo is still only potential being....It is always the actual being itself which dictates the course of events so far as the potential being of the unborn baby goes & is decided upon.

Whether we like it or not, or agree with it or not....This is actually always the case in nature....That actual being dictates the reality for potential being coming to be or not.

You should never ever underestimate the universal application of the Aristotelian/Platonic corpuses to our present day reality.

No other philosopher has, as yet, been able to supersede any part of Aristoles' thoughts on being qua being itself....Of the metaphysical underpinnings & presuppositions upon which all scientific knowledge is based & founded upon.

Does the priority of actuality over potentiality come with it ipso facto power? The sort that decides whether said potentiality can become actuality? Where it that addressed in Aristotle's philosophies?

 

[Procrastinator35]

Does the priority of actuality over potentiality come with it ipso facto power? The sort that decides whether said potentiality can become actuality? Where it that addressed in Aristotle's philosophies?

Just that one is always prior to the other in the causal chain of being, incorporating both change & motion.....I think it's logical to assume that Aristotle would have adopted a pro-choice stance prefaced upon his metaphysics & his Nichomachean Ethics of a 'Golden mean'; Whereby certain situations would warrant it as the best option/scenario, with all things being considered.....As far as incorporating a moral dimension to the process?....Alls I can do is point you to some relevant articles & applications.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/670804

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthPats.htm

"This shows that the embryo possesses only the nutritive soul, that is, soul of a minimum capacity and development that lacks the characteristics of a fuller existence. Perhaps, it is not by chance that Aristotle allows abortion to take place before the fortieth day of gestation and this should definitely relate to his theory about the development of an

(an animate organism). It could be said that his moral approach to abortion relates to the so called moderate view in modern applied ethics, according to which the reason for abortion and the stage of fetal development are relevant factors in assessing the moral acceptability of abortion." (6)

 

[Brick Loosener]

Aborted children raise themselves.

 

[Lethality]

Bringing an unwanted and unloved child into the world is a bigger crime than supposedly "murdering" it, via abortion.

A child can become wanted and loved even if it is not wanted and loved upon exiting the birth canal.

 

[Brick Loosener]

Bringing an unwanted and unloved child into the world is a bigger crime than supposedly "murdering" it, via abortion.

 

[ShanDog]

A child can become wanted and loved even if it is not wanted and loved upon exiting the birth canal.

A big issue with making abortion illegal is the lack of an ''out" for the mother if she doesn't want the child. A baby brought up unloved and neglected is a disgusting thing. I don't know what the numbers are in Australia but I'd imagine we don't have parity of numbers with abortion and couples wanting to adopt or foster.

 

[Ok Boomer]

A child can become wanted and loved even if it is not wanted and loved upon exiting the birth canal.

That is far from a certainty though.

 

[ShanDog]

That is far from a certainty though.

Being aborted still doesn't cut it as a better outcome than being unloved IMO though. If you see an unborn, developing fetus as a life that is.

 

[Run n Spread]

I don't follow your logic there, but agree regarding the last part of the post.

My point was I don't understand the you can't abort because you deny potential life. If it is only potential life (IMO it is to a point) so what if it is aborted.
By the above logic I shouldn't be posting here but out trying to screw any women I can find lest I deny a "potential life"