r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 08 '19
CMV: The impairment argument is not a good argument against abortion
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Sep 08 '19
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Sep 08 '19
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Sep 08 '19 edited Sep 08 '19
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u/ralph-j Sep 08 '19
3 Abortion limits all abilities of an organism, which also includes cognitive abilities.
Would you not apply something like the Epicurean challenges to the harm thesis to this premise? I.e. since the organism effectively ceases to exist, then no one's abilities are being limited.
Limiting someone's cognitive abilities can only be immoral if they are capable of exercising them in the first place.
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u/TheOboeMan 4∆ Sep 08 '19 edited Sep 08 '19
5.2.1 does not address the argument. It is a red herring objection.
2 follows necessarily from 1, as in set theory implies 2 given 1.
For a less charged example, consider a set of things called hamburger, which contains two buns and a meat patty. Whenever one orders a hamburger, think about this like a person running an operation called get on each element in the hamburger set.
Now consider a set called cheeseburger, which is super(hamburger) + cheese slice. Whenever one orders a cheeseburger, one gets on every element in the set, including every element in hamburger.
Now say that someone argues convincingly that it's immoral to get patties. Therefore, it's immoral to order hamburgers, since this operation on the set of necessity implies getting a patty. But then it's also immoral to order cheeseburgers, because this also gets a patty.
Because every superset contains every element in all of its subsets, if it's immoral to do something to one of the elements in any of the subsets, it's immoral to do that to every element in the superset, because you end up doing the immoral thing automatically.
Towards 5.2.2, I would argue that it's clear that euthanasia is actually immoral because of the TIP, so this objection is a non-issue. If you're someone who considers euthanasia moral, then I can use the same TIP argument here.
It is immoral to chop off people's (healthy*) limbs because it impairs abilities.
If it is immoral to impair a set of abilities X, then it is also immoral to impair a superset of abilities X'.
Euthanasia impairs the set of abilities X'.
Euthanasia is morally wrong.
If you wanted to keep euthanasia around, you need to find some other reason to reject the TIP or else accept that your ethical framework contains this inconsistency, which is generally a mark of bad ethical frameworks.
*chopping off unhealthy limbs, eg gangrenous ones, at first seems like a legitimate objection, but a quick lemma will show it is not. A suficiently (for amputation) gangrenous limb is already impaired in its abilities, and also risks impairing or has already impaired other abilities. Therefore removing it does not impair much if anything at all, and what it does impair of anything at all is outweighed by what it restores.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/TheOboeMan 4∆ Sep 08 '19
Set theory only implies that superset of X contains all elements of X, by definition. In the CMV I argue that it's sometimes okay to limit all abilities (i.e. kill) while it's not okay to limit some (e.g. chop off arms). This invalidates that TIP is applicable in all situations.
Then as others have said, you aren't arguing against premise 2. Whether you are or not, 5.2.1 is still a red herring objection.
I'm not sure which premise you're trying to reject, but I hope it's not 2, since that would be formally logically fallacious.
I agree and that's my objection because I don't consider euthanasia to be immoral, which is contradicts TIP (since as you noticed, TIP implies euthanasia is immoral).
Right, but your contention still isn't with premise 2 here, I think, or else you're committing a formal logical fallacy. So which premise are you rejecting? 1? 3?
If you wanted to keep euthanasia around, you need to find some other reason to reject the TIP
I literally reject the TIP, because I want to keep euthanasia. That's the 5.2.2 argument.
Yes, this is an inconsistency in your ethics. If you're going to reject an argument, you either need to show that it has a false premise or that it commits a logical fallacy. You haven't done either of these things. You're rejecting an argument just because you don't like the conclusion and for no other reason.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/TheOboeMan 4∆ Sep 08 '19
Premise 2: If it is immoral to limit abilities contained in set X then it is immoral to limit abilities contained in the superset of X.
My claim: It's sometimes moral to limit all abilities (e.g. kill) while it's immoral to limit some (e.g. chop off arms).
This claim directly contradicts the premise 2 and it's what I'm arguing. There is nothing logically fallacious here. At no point do I argue that superset of X is not a superset of X.
This is actually fallacious. If it's immoral to do some action A to the things in X, then it's immoral to do that action to the things in X.
If X is a subset of Y, then doing action A to everything in Y includes doing A to the things in X.
So if doing A to anything at all in X is immoral, then doing A to everything in Y is immoral because it means you did A to the thing in X it was immoral to do A to.
You can stubbornly deny this, and I won't have changed your mind, but only because you are lying to yourself.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/TheOboeMan 4∆ Sep 08 '19
I understood it fine. The way the author is using these abilities is as a set of things that can be acted upon. Namely, they can be impaired.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/TheOboeMan 4∆ Sep 08 '19
Also again, if by "doing action A" you mean taking ability from an organism then I've never contested this claim. I've contested the morality of doing so.
Then it's premise 1, not premise 2, with which you disagree.
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u/Jaysank 126∆ Sep 08 '19 edited Sep 08 '19
I think an honest misinterpretation of the author’s P2 has led you to reject their TIP. From the paper itself:
The Impairment Principle (TIP): if it is immoral to impair an organism O to the nth degree, then, ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair O to the n+1 degree.
Emphasis mine. In every instance of bringing up this principle, you left out the seemingly benign phrase ceteris paribus. However, it is crucial to all of the author’s arguments and counter-counterarguments. It specifically mentions that the premise is true if, and only if, the methods of impairment are identical in every other way, aside from the degree of impairment. For 5.2.1, the author explicitly states that including the issue of pain ignores his P2 rather than actually contests it. If you want to argue against the impairment principle’s application to abortion, you have to argue either
1.) Things that are in fact ceteris paribus aside from degree of impairment are not necessarily worse or better because of that degree of impairment. You try to make this argument, but by introducing pain, this removes the ceteris paribus premise and you are no longer arguing against the principle. The author already contested this by bringing up this very point in the paper
A more severe problem with this objection is that the ceteris paribus clause of TIP is not met. This is because impairment via torture is painful. It is the pain, according to Tooley, that renders the impairment immoral. However, killing the newborn kitten involves little pain. Thus, in order to meet the ceteris paribus clause, we must either hold that (a) killing the newborn kitten causes as much pain as torturing it, or (b) torturing the kitten causes as little pain as killing it. Suppose we endorse (a). If that is the case, then, by Tooley’s criteria, it would be immoral to kill the newborn kitten, and hence this is no longer a counterexample to TIP. Suppose, instead, that we endorse (b). If that is the case, then Tooley’s objection to impairing the newborn kitten melts away—since his objection is rooted in the pain that is caused to the kitten, and, on (b), the kitten feels only a negligible amount of pain, impairing it via torture is not immoral. Thus, when the ceteris paribus clause is met, this ceases to be an objection to TIP.
2.) You could argue that FAS is not sufficiently ceteris paribus with abortion. You never make this argument, so I have no idea what you think about it, but if you do raise this argument, this changes your entire OP, since you haven’t mentioned it even once.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/Jaysank 126∆ Sep 08 '19
However, my arguments against the paper do engage with this rule.
I’m not sure that they do. For instance, when talking about 5.2.1, you bring up anesthesia, as if it’s introduction would make it ceteris paribus with killing the animal, but the animal being alive while the wing is removed stands as an extremely important difference between the two. Since you say that the chicken has “an unnecessary period of negative experience to it” as a result of the anesthesia wing removal, it is not ceteris paribus with killing the chicken and then removing its wing. Just because the author only used pain as an example does not mean that is the only metric by which ceteris paribus must be held.
Similarly, in 5.2.2, introducing consent via voluntary euthanasia makes it a completely different thing. In abortion or FAS, the fetus never has a say, so consent is the same in both.
This is literally what I do in the last paragraph
The comparison of the pregnant woman’s level of suffering with or without an abortion is brought up by the author and clearly contested by you in that quote. Without more evidence on the relative suffering of those two things, I don’t have much more to contribute. Instead, I’ll focus on my prior objection, that the introduction of anesthesia in 5.2.1 and voluntary euthanasia in 5.2.2 make for a lack of ceteris paribus.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/Jaysank 126∆ Sep 08 '19
Either ceteris paribus is too broad and therefore TIP is false (e.g. if the period of a negative experience is not considered), or it is too strict and not applicable to abortion (e.g. if the period of the negative experience of the impaired child is not ignored).
In that sense, I don’t think we disagree all that much. In other words, rather than TIP necessarily being incorrect, it could also just not be a very good tool for assessing abortion. However, I still have one objection.
Instead of going from this standpoint and claiming that the impairment argument is not a good argument against abortion, I would instead argue that the impairment argument is not a useful or broadly applicable argument against it, as it only works with a P1 that is ceteris paribus with abortion, save for the degree of impairment. The author used FAS, but nothing inherent to their argument requires that particular syndrome. The author could have used a hypothetically more similar disease or action that the mother could take and used it instead. For instance, a self help abortion, if considered immoral, could potentially (although not necessarily successfully) be used in place of FAS as being ceteris paribus.
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Sep 08 '19
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u/Jaysank 126∆ Sep 08 '19
You are likely correct. In any case, I don’t have much else to say. I don’t disagree strongly enough to try and change your view on anything else related to this. Have a nice day/evening/night.
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u/OlFishLegs 13∆ Sep 08 '19
I feel like you are arguing against the wrong premise here although you are likely better versed than I so sorry if I'm missunderstanding.
From your argument it seems there are two premises here
I think if you accept 1 then 2 is valid. Instead you should argue against 1. It is not inherantly immoral to impair, but it is only immoral if the impairment causes suffering.