By the way, what is the reasoning for placing high moral value on "rational will."

Because I must, in order to be a morally good agent, respect a thing relative to its nature; and in order to respect a fellow will, like mine, I must treat them as an end in themselves and never a mere means.

Moral theories are not analyzed based off of moral intuitions: — Bob Ross

Why not? Moore, at least, says that they are. And saying that they are not is presenting a particualr moral theory. Argue your case!

Moral theories are evaluated based off of how well they evaluate what is actually good qua (right and wrong) behavior. — Bob Ross

I quite agree! And pro-life views evaluate the behaviour around abortion in an appallingly bad way! They claim that a cyst has more worth than Mrs Smith!

Thanks for making my case!

Suppose you believed in moral theory X. Moral theory X entails that, in a trolley car situation, one must never sacrifice an ant (or any insect) to save any people. If a bug is on the tracks, you ought not pull the switch and save the five persons. Would that consequence of moral theory X- that bugs cannot be sacrificed to save people- be devastating to moral theory X?

And pro-life views evaluate the behaviour around abortion in an appallingly bad way! They claim that a cyst has more worth than Mrs Smith!

Thanks for making my case! — Banno

I hate the term pro-life. Using it leads everyone to imprecision about everything. Just like “pro-choice.”

I’m “anti-private-right-to-abortion-without-exception.” Makes a great T-shirt.

There is no pro life position that a cyst is worth MORE than Mrs. Smith (even if what you mean by cyst is an ectopic pregnancy).

I hate the term pro-life. — Fire Ologist

So do I. That's one of the reasons I use it. It's mere propaganda, and should leave folk feeling cold.

Because I must, in order to be a morally good agent, respect a thing relative to its nature; and in order to respect a fellow will, like mine, I must treat them as an end in themselves and never a mere means. — Bob Ross

I don’t know what you mean by a means to an end. Does anyone deliberately get pregnant and have an abortion as a means to some end?

Anyway, sure, we value what is like ourselves. That makes sense.

Making abortion illegal dramatically infringes on the will of mother and others involved. Wouldn’t a good moral agent respect the will of a pregnant woman?

It is not the case that we all agree on what the word "human being" means and just disagree on whether or not zygotes satisfy the required criteria. Rather, we each use the word "human being" in different ways (albeit with a strong family resemblance), and for some of us the term also designates zygotes and for some of us it doesn't.

This is why most of the arguments made here are non sequiturs. Whether or not it is wrong to kill a zygote does not depend on how we use the word "human being". Either way, a woman's bodily autonomy has precedence over a zygote's life. Whether you call it a human or not, a zygote is still just a single-celled organism, and single-celled organisms regardless of their genetic composition are morally irrelevant.

Why not? Moore, at least, says that they are. And saying that they are not is presenting a particualr moral theory. Argue your case!

It is a metaethical claim; and, I would like to point out, you still have not presented a normative ethical account of your position.

Metaethically, I think Moore is a load of nonsense; and perhaps that’s the root of our disagreement. You cannot base your normative ethical theory on moral intuition; because intuition is unreliable: you must also have reasonable evidence to back it up. The whole point of normative ethics is to decipher what is actually wrong and right behavior to then correct or validate moral intuitions that we have; what you are doing is backwards.

I quite agree! And pro-life views evaluate the behaviour around abortion in an appallingly bad way! They claim that a cyst has more worth than Mrs Smith!

Why? Back this up. You never back anything you say up, and so, unfortunately, there is nothing for me to rejoin.

Suppose you believed in moral theory X. Moral theory X entails that, in a trolley car situation, one must never sacrifice an ant (or any insect) to save any people. If a bug is on the tracks, you ought not pull the switch and save the five persons. Would that consequence of moral theory X- that bugs cannot be sacrificed to save people- be devastating to moral theory X?

The intuition that I have that it is wrong to never sacrifice an ant to save a person is insufficient to disprove the theory—that’s what you are missing here. Rather, my understanding of what is actually good and bad, and how to best codify it into moral principles and what not, is sufficient to demonstrate that this theory fails.

You have not provided why it would be, e.g., wrong to never sacrifice an ant to save a person other than an intuition you have; which is not sufficient to disprove it. I want to know, and have been asking @Banno countlessly, why, under your theory, it is wrong to never sacrifice a zygote, in a manner where it is a means towards the end, to save a person (in the modern sense of ‘person’)? I still hear crickets.

You whole post here has no argument in it.
You just make statements.

I thought we were talking about abortion and why someone would be “pro-life”.

You mentioned “the word” human being. In the context of abortion, that’s a newborn baby. Every government and regulation says so.

So your philosophical mind isn’t the least bit curious about when a human being actually starts being a human being.

Either way, a woman's bodily autonomy has precedence over a zygote's life. — Michael

Let’s grant this point you made with no argument at all. Grant it. I’ll even grant that the woman has precedence over a toddler and she can throw them into the ocean to drown. Is a zygote a human being, like a newborn baby is?

Develop into human beings. Interesting that you now phrase it that way. — Michael

I don’t care about flies and am at constant war with them. It’s wrong to kill a human being when he doesn’t deserve it. Flies deserve it in virtue of their very nature. — NOS4A2

I understand the position. A human-in-utero is morally insignificant. I just don’t understand how one can reach that conclusion. I suppose his worth might increase and decreases with his cell count, or, he is morally worthless until he is in my phone book, but who knows?

But weighing the moral worth of human beings in various stages of their development so as to decide who are morally permissible to kill is a disgusting business. We’ve left ethics entirely and have approached an exercise in excuse-making and dehumanization, in my opinion. — NOS4A2

It's no less disgusting business than weighing the moral worth of non-human organisms. Is it wrong to kill plants? Flies? Cows? Dogs? E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? — Michael

Embryology shows that the zygote does not develop directly into a human being. The embryo undergoes many changes that reflect the organisms' evolutionary history. The human embryo initially resembles a fish embryo (It even has gills.), then an amphibian, a reptile and eventually a mammal. So while the embryo has the potential to become a human being, in this current state it isn't.

And to say that an embryo/zygote has the potential to develop into a human being, miscarriages shows that isn't necessarily the case. This is why I don't like bringing up terms like "potential" and "possibility" as if these things exist outside our minds. They don't in a deterministic universe. "Potentials" and "possibilities" are simply ideas that stem from our own ignorance of the deterministic path some process will take.

And then there are some extreme environmentalists who think we should be saving the flies in the Amazon rainforest, yet are fine with terminating the life of a zygote, embryo or fetus. In the grand-scheme of things humans are not more valuable, or special, than flies or cockroaches. To humans, yes, humans are special, but that is a subjective projection.

Some might argue that humans are destroying the planet, and that adding more humans to a planet with limited resources is immoral for those already alive, or that bringing an unwanted child, or a child with severe mental or physical handicaps, into the world is immoral.

Morality is subjective. It is up to each of us to do what is right for ourselves and to pick our battles carefully with others that are doing something different that either has an effect on how others live and the choices they can make or it doesn't.

This is why I get peeved when people on the right argue that the issue should have been taken out of the federal government's hands and place it with the states. The federal government never had it in their hands. Instead, Roe v. Wade implied that the decision was with the individual. In giving it to the states we now take it out of the hands of the individual and place it among a group - the people that live in a certain state to decide for the individual.

As a Libertarian, I believe in the right to life and the right to choose. Abortion is one of those issues that is difficult for a Libertarian to navigate. But as a deterministic moral relativist, I can only make decisions for myself, and what is best for myself, not for others that may be in entirely different circumstances.

This is why most of the arguments made here are non sequiturs. Whether or not it is wrong to kill a zygote does not depend on how we use the word "human being". — Michael

Ok I found the closest thing to an argument in your post. But that’s dumb. If a zygote IS NOT a human being, it is certainly not wrong to kill it and the debate is over. No one cares about killing a skin cell or a cyst or a lung.

What is a new human being, is one of two essential questions at the heart of the discussion. Otherwise, the state would have little interest in a zygote, like they have little interest in a cyst, and there would be no need for the various governments to make laws regulating women’s pregnancies telling them when they can and can’t kill the fetuses.

Using the word “non sequitor” is a tactic without argumentation.

Moral theories have to handle real world situations, like Trolley Car. If a moral theory says we should not sacrifice bugs or zygotes to save people, it's a failed moral theory. I don't know why you have trouble seeing that.

Glad to hear your opinion and interested to read your perspective.

If it isn’t an individual human, what is it? The distinct genetic material is there and we know that every human being went through this stage of development. Here is a biologically continuous process and entity that has begun here and ends only at death. So what other kind of entity could it be? Where in time and space does the human being pop into existence?

To answer that question, we would have to define what it means to be a human being. Care to take a run at it?

I’ve tried “a member of the species Homo sapiens” or “a biologically distinct human organism”.

You have not provided why it would be, e.g., wrong to never sacrifice an ant to save a person other than an intuition you have; which is not sufficient to disprove it. — Bob Ross

If I understand your position at all, basically because a person has a “rational will” and an ant does not.

If abortion contravenes the telos of a zygote, making abortion illegal also contravenes the telos, rational will, or flourishing of the mother and others involved.

What is a new human being, is one of two essential questions at the heart of the discussion. — Fire Ologist

Some people might use the word "human" to mean any living organism with genetics like you and me, and so include zygotes. Some people might use the word "human" to mean any living organism with genetics like you and me and which are multi-cellular, and so exclude zygotes but include embryos. Some people might use the word "human" to mean any living organism with genetics like you and me and which are multi-cellular and which have grown a sufficiently developed body, and so exclude zygotes and embryos and early stage foetuses but include late stage foetuses.

The idea that one of these groups is correct in using the word "human" to mean what they mean and that the rest are incorrect is mistaken. You need to abandon this essentialist view of the world and language.

It is problematic because it is circular logic: you are saying that moral judgment X is wrong because moral judgment X seems wrong to you. This kind of thinking, lands you in wishy-washy territory where you can justify anything to yourself so long as you have a strong intuition about it. It's nonsense.

EDIT:

That's like me saying it is morally permissible to enslave people because it seems morally permissible, to me (or perhaps to many people), to enslave people. It has been the case where the common intuition was that enslaving people is not per se wrong, and your argument so far would then entail that they were right; because we can evaluate moral theories based off of strong intuitions we have in examples. It is nonsense.

Where in time and space does the human being pop into existence? — NOS4A2

You might as well ask when an embryo pops into existence. It doesn't. There's a single-celled organism which we label "zygote" that gradually develops into a simple multi-cellular organism which we label "embryo" that gradually develops into a more complex multi-cellular organism which we label "foetus" that gradually develops into an even more complex multi-cellular organism which we label "human" or "person".

Some might use the label "human" earlier in the development cycle than others, but that's a personal linguistic convention with no philosophical or moral relevance.

It is problematic because it is circular logic: you are saying that moral judgment X is wrong because moral judgment X seems wrong to you. This kind of thinking, lands you in wishy-washy territory where you can justify anything to yourself so long as you have a strong intuition about it. It's nonsense. — Bob Ross

That is a fundamental problem with all moral claims.

I say that it is right to kill annoying children and you say that it is wrong to kill annoying children. Where do we go from there?

Is "it is right/wrong to kill annoying children" something that can be empirically verified or falsified? Is it something that can be deduced from necessarily true axioms?

I don’t know what you mean by a means to an end.

A means is anything which, at least in part, facilitates the end; and the end is the intended reason for committing the act.

E.g., killing someone to harvest their organs to save five sick patients is an example of killing someone as a means; whereas killing someone by pulling the lever to divert the train to save five people is an example of killing as a bad side effect.

Does anyone deliberately get pregnant and have an abortion as a means to some end?

Every action has at least one end; because an action is a volition of will. The end may be as simple as “I don’t want to be pregnant”.

Anyway, sure, we value what is like ourselves. That makes sense.

That’s not at all what I am arguing. Any person (in the pre-modern sense) has a right to life; and this can include, in principle other species or potentially AIs.

Wouldn’t a good moral agent respect the will of a pregnant woman?

Respecting the will of a pregnant woman is per se good; but it cannot be done with a bad means. Ends do not justify means!

All moral theories fundamentally begin with "what is actually good?" and then derive principle therefrom. There's nothing intuitional about it (at least not in the Moorean sense).

You can't derive a proposition from a question.

You might as well ask when an embryo pops into existence. It doesn't.

Exactly right. So what should we call this shape-shifting being?

If I understand your position at all, basically because a person has a “rational will” and an ant does not.

Correct; and I would say, to keep things less confusing, they are a person because their nature marks them out as one (even if they never fully realize their Telos—such as in a cognitively disabled person).

If abortion contravenes the telos of a zygote, making abortion illegal also contravenes the telos, rational will, or flourishing of the mother and others involved.

If I am understanding this part correctly, then yes prima facie. The right to life of the zygote is in direct conflict with the right to bodily autonomy of the mother; and my point is that the ends do not justify the means, so the mother cannot abort the child as a means towards the good end of upholding their bodily autonomy.

What?

You need to abandon this essentialist view of the world and language. — Michael

Not if you are a lawmaker making policy on when a woman can and cannot decide what to do with her own pregnancy.

Ridiculous argument.

According to you, there could never be a controversy surrounding any abortion. It’s just word games and platonic form manipulation easily avoided by playing other word games.

But there is a controversy if you haven’t noticed. It’s about the essence of a physical object that is either aborted or carried to term at which point it is recognized in all governments as a human being. And it’s about the balancing of the rights between a pregnant human mother and a pre-born human being. If it’s not a pre-born human being, there is no controversy (or the controversy would be resolved), and if you establish or stipulate that it is a human being, then you get into the balancing act.

You are basically avoiding the whole discussion.

Exactly right. So what should we call this shape-shifting being? — NOS4A2

When it's a zygote call it a zygote. When it's an embryo call it an embryo. When it's a foetus call it a foetus. When it's a baby call it a baby.

The idea that there must be some label that names/describes it from the moment of conception to the moment of death, and that the existence of this label entails moral facts about, is mistaken.

When it's a foetus call it a foetus. When it's a baby call it a baby. — Michael

When it’s born, the government calls it a human being. Are they right about that?