[MD] Morality, Abortion and the MoQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Michael]
Arlo, if we can continue on this line and tone, I would very much 
appreciate it and am willing and eager to drop cold all the rest of 
the opinionated back and forth with you or anyone else to do so.Yours 
is exactly my reaction to Steve's statement as well. It sure is 
problematic.But I don't see the MoQ thinking that justifies your/my POV.

[Arlo]
Well, I think the key is that nothing exists in isolation. No 
"pattern" exists in a decontextualized world. While it may be true in 
the MOQ that a pre-social organism is "just" a biological pattern, 
the fetus and the consideration of abortion exist within a large 
interwoven web of patterns; including a host of social and 
intellectual ones. This is why I would find it horribly problematic 
to base abortion law on the pre-social/post-social definition of "human-ness".

[Michael]
What is it (is there something?) about a fetus that makes it more 
than simply a biological pattern in the MoQ?

[Arlo]
Technically, it's not. The "more" is the additive social and 
intellectual considerations surrounding notions of family, 
bloodlines, social cohesion, potentiality, love, pre-birth bonding, 
etc, as well as the "negatives" such as infanticide, incest, rape, 
violence, etc. (As I wrote this list I do recall reading once that 
"pre-birth bonding" was a biological pattern based on certain 
chemical released in the woman's body who's purpose served to ensure 
that the mother would not abandon the helpless infant, so I'm not 
entirely sure everyone would agree that that is exclusively a 
"social" consideraton... and I now reread your post to see that you 
mention this as being instinctive. You may be right.).

In other words, in an empty universe a baby laying alone on a beach 
somewhere would be "simply a biological pattern" (okay, its a 
hypothetical, how a baby would come to be laying on a beach in an 
empty universe is absurd, I know that). But it is not an empty 
universe, that "biological pattern" is woven into a web of activity 
that includes other "biological patterns", and a boatload of social 
and intellectual patterns.

In other words, dissecting the world in "patterns" may be helpful to 
inform our intellectual processes, but it creates an illusion of 
apartness, it misses the landscape to call a tree a tree. (For what 
its worth, I also do not consider "deer" to be "simply biological 
patterns". I consider them part of the interwoven tapestry (sorry for 
all the tailoring metaphors) of the cosmos, and so "hunting" for me 
(which I support) is not justifiable on "its just a biological 
pattern" alone. If we are going to shoot a deer, or kill any animal, 
it must be based on stronger reasoning that "its just a biological 
pattern". Being so does not mean that indiscriminate killing of those 
patterns is moral (or amoral). See what I'm saying?)

[Michael]
A father animal will kill another that he perceives to be a threat to 
his pregnant mate. That's killing a higher evolved pattern to protect 
a lower evolved one. And its done like jumping off a hot stove; you 
do it before you think about it. That's a reaction to Quality, but it 
is in direct conflict to what Steve has laid out.

[Arlo]
Well, an animal doesn't possess the capacity to determine a moral 
hierarchy in this sense, that's an intellectualization that we as 
humans make. To that father animal, the preservation of his cub takes 
moral precedence over another non-family rival. This is, perhaps, 
based in the instinctual need to pass on one's genes. He (the father 
animal) is responding to DQ biologically. He lacks the social and 
intellectual analogues that may mediate his behavior. Consider "sex", 
humans experience the biological compulsion to have sex and yet often 
choose not to because they consider social and intellectual 
consequences (I think that analogy was used in LILA).

Its a reaction to Quality, but it wholly within a biological 
contingency of acting. And keep in mind that these animals will often 
kill rival animals over food when its scarce, and sometimes not even 
only when its scarce. But yes, I think there are biological patterns 
for self-preservation and lineage-preservation, that have evolved in 
many species (including our own).

[Michael]
My children as infants were NOT just a biological pattern.

[Arlo]
No, they were not. Well, again, technically in some isolated realm 
they were, but as active parts of a social and intellectual activity 
field they cannot (and should not) be decontextualized in "mere 
biological patterns".

[Michael]
And if MoQ tells me I was deluded, she was less valuable than my old cat..

[Arlo]
My mother has had cats for years, always around five (today the 
number has dwindled to two). These cats are not "simply biological 
patterns" to her, they are companions, and they are highly valuable 
to her. I say this not to equate human life with feline life in any 
absolute comparison, but that no biological pattern exists as value 
ONLY as a biological pattern, ask that happy talk-radio guy Mark 
Levin, who wrote a moving tribute to his deceased dog called 
"Rescuing Sprite".

Again I think the danger in getting so caught up labeling things as 
this-pattern or that-pattern is to lose sight of the landscape where 
all these "patterns" co-exist.

[Michael]
Yes, exactly. We need to define that line in an MoQ moral 
framework to be able to apply it to a greater discussion of abortion. 
This is what I've been saying from the outset.

[Arlo]
Well, unfortunately my point was that no such line can be found. When 
we isolate a fracture point (pre-social/post-social), we have a line 
that in abstraction may make a valid intellectual point, but in 
practice does not (can not) take into consideration the many, many, 
complex, interweaving values, patterns, considerations etc.