Essay:The Numerical Argument

"Given that roughly 40% of all pregnancies, both documented and undocumented, end in miscarriage, we may strongly and reasonably assume that roughly 40% of abortions occur in cases wherefore the fetus would die regardless (1). However, it follows that roughly 60% of abortions result in the death of children who would otherwise have been born alive. Consequently, abortion must be strictly justified in depriving such children of life (2).

1.	http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199906103402304 2.	http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/principles-medical-ethics.page”

Constaigne, I wrongly condemned you as an unreasonable revisionist until I finally discovered some of your comments—rationalwiki no longer informs me of comment updates. Nevertheless, I find your dismissal of the numerical argument unjust and unreasonable.

Your first criticism—“Consequently, abortion must be strictly justified in depriving children of life” lacks a citation.

My response—criticism valid. Emend statement to include a relevant, reputable source. Statement emended.

Your second criticism—“AHA either mentions nothing explicit pertaining to abortion.”

My response—A curious argument, given that the majority of pro-choice advocates reject the argument that, since there is no mention of abortion or family planning in the Constitution, abortion is therefore without precedent or illegal under all circumstances, in all places, and at all times, a symptom of religious absolutism in which I little share. The AHA may not explicitly state anything about abortion, but just like the Constitution, its articles are general and abstract, applying to all medical situations, not just abortion, vivisection, or heart surgery. Therefore, just as with the bill of rights, we need to extract all relevant passages to judge a particular action.

“I. A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights.”

This article directly states that we should respect human dignity in rights. Since you are a moral nihilist, however, this concept of “dignity” or “rights” can be of no meaning to you. And since all ethics, to you, is fundamentally subjective, even when we can make useful, objective, descriptive, and potentially normative statements about subjective experiences, you must not believe in rights and therefore deny they exist. If you believe in “rights” and ascribe them to certain entities, I dearly wish to know how you reconcile right attribution with moral nihilism.

“II. A physician shall uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.”

A doctor is obligated—though I wonder what “obligated” means to you if morality is non-existent or nihilistic, for which I urge you to tell me what “obligated” means, and for which I dare you to not use the word should, whether literally or semantically, beyond which I would also ask you to reconcile such a normative statement against moral nihilism, to specify precisely how such normativism does not contradict your beliefs about moral nihilism—to be truthful in all professional interactions, including those concerning abortion. Hence, a doctor must be truthful when asked whether the abortion he conducted upheld the article I, whether he obeyed the Hippocratic oath, the extent to which he so did, and if there was sufficient justification for overriding article I and other subsequent articles.

“III. A physician shall respect the law and also recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.”

Notice the use of the word “shall”. No matter how hard you try, you cannot render article III as anything other than a normative statement without fundamentally changing the meaning. “A physician shall… a physician should… a physician must… a physician is obligated to… a physician is supposed to” is radically different from “a physician DOES”. It would be unfounded assumption, or at least an assumption yet to be demonstrated, that a physician DOES indeed obey article III, assuming we drastically alter the meaning of the statement, substituting “does” for “shall”.

“IV. A physician shall respect the rights of patients, colleagues, and other health professionals, and shall safeguard patient confidences and privacy within the constraints of the law.”

Rights, again, must be meaningless to you, for they imply obligations. If someone has the right to avoid unnecessary harm, it naturally implies that you, or someone else, should not cause unnecessary harm to that individual. By moral nihilism, however, it is neither right nor wrong to cause unnecessary harm to someone else. We have no obligations, there are no rights, and no matter terrible an atrocity is committed, we can never deem it right or wrong. “V. A physician shall continue to study, apply, and advance scientific knowledge, maintain a commitment to medical education, make relevant information available to patients, colleagues, and the public, obtain consultation, and use the talents of other health professionals when indicated.”

“VI. A physician shall, in the provision of appropriate patient care, except in emergencies, be free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate, and the environment in which to provide medical care.”

“VII. A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.”

“VIII. A physician shall, while caring for a patient, regard responsibility to the patient as paramount.”

“IX. A physician shall support access to medical care for all people.”

Actually, since these are all normative ethical statements, these must all be meaningless to you, for, if moral nihilism is correct, all normative ethical statements are necessarily meaningless. Therefore, a doctor can renounce the Hippocratic Oath and every article above in his medical profession, and remain immune to moral censure, since morality DOES NOT EXIST. If a doctor decides to sew eyelids shut, break limbs, and vivisect a fully conscious human, we can’t protest that he should not sew eyelids shut, break limbs, or vivisect a fully conscious human. No matter how great the atrocity, no wrong occurred. In other words, the doctor is not morally CULPABLE for his actions, no matter how painful, cruel, and barbaric these actions. We can’t even say that he has done something wrong, because morality DOES NOT EXIST.

Let’s assume you were on the operation table, and your doctor, bound by no moral code because morality DOES NOT EXIST, decides to abandon the Hippocratic Oath and all nine articles above. He can purposely kill you, lie to you about his devious intents, violate your interests, destroy your privacy, refuse help from more qualified personnel, ignore you during personal emergency, give you shots laden with the HIV virus to better public health, assume no responsibility for your well-being, and deny proper healthcare to you and everyone else. And yet, none of this, by moral nihilism, is WRONG. There is nothing he SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do to you because… MORALITY DOES NOT EXIST. Perhaps you can argue that your surgeon has a somehow non-moral obligation to respect your biological functions, by acknowledging, for example, that your bodily processes produce waste products such as heat and feces, which can power and sustain a local greenhouse to which he will connect you—he’s struggling to find an objective, scientific reason to respect your “right” to freedom, especially when your heat and excrement could be put to better use than with you sitting behind a computer writing “morality does not exist”. But even finding this purely objective, “scientific” reason to permanently connect you to a greenhouse presupposes the existence of VALUE. You waste is VALUED because the heat you generate can sustain the plants through the winter and because your excrement can fertilize the crops. Perhaps the plants are instrumentally VALUED like yourself because these plants can feed the doctor and his friends. Regardless of whether the value of anything is instrumental or intrinsic, that it exists presupposes the existence of an ethical theory. VALUE is a meta-ethical property propagated by various ETHICAL THEORIES. Even without such ethical theories, the mere existence of VALUE, as a meta-ethical property, indicates that MORALITY DOES EXIST. If you deny the existence of morality, you must deny the existence of ANY AND ALL VALUE, for in the presence of a single value, no matter how slight, MORALITY NECESSARILY EXISTS.

I find it interesting that you probably agree with the statement “we should provide safe and legal abortion”, yet when I start making ethical claims, suddenly I must be censored, for the very fact that my claims are ETHICAL! As I have demonstrated, you cannot from a normative ethical claim, including “we should provide safe and legal abortion”, arrive at an objective, descriptive claim, without fundamentally changing the meaning of the statement itself. Next, if morality does not exist, no one or anything has any rights whatsoever, we owe each other no ethical obligations, and we can’t even protest any action, no matter how grotesque, morbid, and cruel, as “wrong”—what a meaningless word! Your surgeon can butcher you, and… he did nothing wrong because… MORALITY DOES NOT EXIST. Even if your surgeon found some purely objective, “scientific” reason to value not you, but your waste products, heat and excrement, this implies the existence of VALUE, and value is a META-ETHICAL property from which ETHICAL THEORIES derive. Even with a completely unarticulated ethical theory, the mere existence of VALUE necessarily entails that morality… EXISTS. And if morality does not exist, if values do not exist, it is a complete mystery WHY you would bother to make any arguments AT ALL. If you have no values about anything, WHY do you care? As you have noted, you value “scientific, objective truth”, and because you VALUE “scientific, objective truth”, morality not only necessarily EXISTS, but exists for YOU. MORALITY applies to you precisely because you have VALUES. But when I have values, and I try to present them fairly, only I cannot have values! You might even be surprised to learn that we share many of the SAME VALUES.

You might object that morality is still utterly subjective—did I not just write that morality applies to you because you value something, to anyone who values anything? If so, an infinitude of values exist, all ripe for the picking. What you neglect is that only a handful of all possible values are central to the human condition—life, bodily integrity, health, well-being, freedom, happiness. All our foremost ethical theories, from utilitarianism to libertarian ethics, focus precisely on these values which undeniably, inextricably, and so intimately intertwined with the human condition. Our most belabored efforts in ethical theory are to determine which value or values are most essential, and which of the ethical theories should supersede all the others. You also overlook the immense role of morality in ensuring that society functions cohesively, for without a moral code, which is NECESSARILY THE CASE IF MORALITY DOES NOT EXIST, any and all manners of atrocity may be perpetrated, without consequence, without meaning. You could be strung upside down and sawed in half, starting from your anus, through your spine, up you torso, until you die one of the most gruesome and horrific deaths imaginable, and you cannot protest your executioner without… PRESUPPOSING THE EXISTENCE OF MORALITY OR ITS ANTECEDENTS… which is impossible if… MORALITY DOES NOT EXIST. Finally, you overlook the simple yet all so meaningful fact that we can make objective claims about subjective experiences. Subjective experience, broadly defined, refers to the existence of any internal mental state, such states as of which may include representations of external data, as is our case. Neuroscience is now so advanced that know which neurons fire and the corresponding emotions they evoke. In fact, neuroscience can now describe certain mental phenomena with such precision as that, when a trained lab rat dreams, we not only know when the lab rat dreams of the maze, but what turn it is at in that maze. Brains are computers, exceedingly complex computers, but soon we will be able to predict behavior based on neuronal activity, and we have already come a long way in reading thoughts. Pain, pleasure, and memory all have a factual basis, and ethical theory goes hand in hand with the value of these phenomena in subjective experience.

You might raise a final objection—that the world SHOULD be purely objective. Not only in making this objection would you violate your own wish—and, for reasons discussed above, VALIDATE the existence of morality—but you would condemn the world to a potentially unachievable—and if achieved—damnable state. If any beings exist which value anything, including rationality, scientific inquiry, objectivity, morality would still exist, since value underlies morality and is part of it. Hence, the only way to realize a perfectly objective world is to eliminate all subjective experience, i.e. to kill all life and for all life to perish. If you are so committed to realizing this objective world, which just exists, with no one or anything to screw it up with their ungodly synapses and conceptions of morality!, you would wish all life to death. I hope you, like me, find something wrong with a completely dead world, especially one achieved for reasons of pure idealism—to return the universe to its purely objective state, devoid of all sentient life and subjective experience. It is also doubtful that we could ever achieve a perfectly objective race, for we could not render any external, internal, or dualistic model of the universe within and without of us lest we return to our subjective primitivism. But ‘tis more primitive to live as a rock. I finally note that Descartes believed animals were mere living machines, whose pain was meaningless and toward whom we had no obligation, except insofar as our personal interests are concerned. To Descartes, the screaming of a dog from being torn apart fully conscious was but stimulus-response, the expression of “mere pain”, of no difference from the sound of gears churning in a clock. Your theory that morality does not exist likewise defies our best understanding of the world, and could only be the work of a madman.--Animalian (talk) 03:01, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I wish you'd stop calling it "the numerical argument". What you're saying is "A significant amount of the aborted fetuses would've resulted in non-miscarriage births if they hadn't been aborted." The exact numbers don't matter, really. Also, I'd add that this is a very uncontroversial statement. What's more controversial is your implication that this uncontroversial factoid necessarily dictates that abortion needs to be strictly justified. Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but you won't convince a pro-choicer with this 'argument'. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 03:21, 13 February 2015 (UTC)