Hi MP, Arlo,
[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".
Steve:
I was being polemical in my MOQ analysis. I agree that it is not as
simple as all that. But I do think that the question about the morality
of destroying a zygote lies in its potential for humanity rather than
it actually being a human person which it obviously is not. As long as
one person claims that a human person is created at the moment of
conception, there isn't much to talk about. It just a matter of two
people not accepting one another's definitions. No MOQ analysis can
proceed if you believe that a soul is bestowed on a zygote at
conception.
I still hold that a zygote is a biological pattern in the MOQ. There
are also social patterns involved in considering the abortion issue.
Opposition to abortion is an example of society trying to control
biological patterns. A society needs to instill a value for human life
(there are other less defensible social aspects such as male control
over female reproduction). But there is also the individual freedom of
the woman to consider. To instill a value for human life, does a
society need to go so far as to call a single cell a human life? Or is
there some reasonable compromise to made here? Does society's need to
instill value for human life trump a woman's right to her own body? The
MOQ does have value in breaking this issue down so we can see what
levels are in conflict, but the MOQ never has easy answers unless the
levels in question are as separate as a germ and a doctor's patient.
The moral conflict is complicated here. It is biological (zygote)
versus social (value for human life), social versus intellectual
(woman's individual rights), and static versus dynamic (the potential
for human life).
Remember Pirsig in his intro to LC:
"...I've concluded that the biggest improvement I could make in the
Metaphysics of Quality would be to block the notion that the
Metaphysics of Quality claims to be a quick fix for every moral problem
in the universe. I have never seen it that way. The image in my mind as
I wrote it was of a large football field that gave meaning to the game
by telling you who was on the 20-yard line but did not decide which
team would win. That was the point of the two opposing arguments over
the death penalty described in LILA.That was the point of the
equilibrium between static and Dynamic Quality. Both are moral
arguments. Both can claim the Metaphysics of Quality for support. Just
as two sides can go before the U.S. Supreme Court and both claim
constitutionality, so two sides can use the Metaphysics of Quality, but
that does not mean that either the Constitution or the Metaphysics of
Quality is a meaningless set of ideas. Our whole judicial system rests
on the presumption that more than one set of conclusions about
individual cases can be drawn within a given set of moral rules. The
Metaphysics of Quality makes the same presumption."
We don't have clear answers handed to us by the MOQ. We just have a
better way of understanding the factors that must be weighed.
Personally, I think our society is better off preferring the woman's
right to choose and can instill a value for human life without having
to go to such extremes as calling a zygote a person.
Best,
Steve
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