Posted on 07/05/2004 12:58:47 AM PDT by miltonim
DYERSVILLE, Iowa — As Sen. John Kerry campaigned across Iowa yesterday with Gov. Tom Vilsack, widely reported to be on Kerry's vice-presidential short list, both men dodged repeated questions about whether their joint appearance might be a preview of the Democratic ticket.
But even as he tried to avoid making news, Kerry broke ground in an interview that ran in the Dubuque, Iowa, daily, the Telegraph Herald. A Catholic who supports abortion rights and has taken heat recently from some in the church hierarchy for his stance, Kerry told the paper: "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception.
"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."
The comments came on the final day of a three-state Midwest swing, during which Kerry has repeatedly sought to dispel stereotypes that could play negatively among voters in the Midwest.
President Bush's campaign said these instances are further evidence of what it says is Kerry's propensity for misleading flip-flops.
"John Kerry's ridiculous claim to hold conservative values and his willingness to change his beliefs to fit his audience betrays a startling lack of conviction on important issues like abortion that will make it difficult for voters to give him their trust," said Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman.
I don't understand the context of this.
The structural features (in reality) underlying axiological propositions are not determined purely by imaginative processes or private choice. Human consciousness, yes, and intuitions are always part of that reality.
I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't denying the reality of human thought. As far as "axiological propositions", if you are referring to, for example axioms of thought, I wasn't claiming they are determined by private choice. (However, valuing them is a private matter.)
My claim was a simple grammar school semantic one. To go beyond simple grammar--to consider the concept that I hold for "value"--it cannot be separated from the concept of a valuer any more than "thought" can be separated from "thinker". However, we needn't get into that, since it is encapsulated nicely in the English grammar common to us all. Me old school marm'd slap me wrist if I were to deny a predicate its required subject.
The transcendentals inhere in a wider ontological dynamic than private decisions about "values."
Maybe, but if you are going to talk about values and avoid error, then you must understand that values are possessed by valuing creatures, and as such, are subjective.
I realize that.
Who would find it such? I am merely suggesting that you have a justification for those values that you are ready to defend. I would hope that you could also present a justification that any thinking person, Catholic or not, could find persuasive. However, it is sufficient for me that people share my most basic values, even their justifications are not persuasive.
Kerry's status as an American citizen does not absolve him of this duty as a Catholic.
It would seem that if he claims to be a Catholic, then he ought to act like one.
Just as there is no thought without a thinker, no running without a runner, no liking without a liker, there is no value without a valuer. The concept of a value without a valuer doesn't make any sense. Now, it is true that false things can be valued (e.g., 2+2=5, the moon is cheese), and things which dramatically conflict with my values can be valued (e.g., murder, assault). But one cannot escape the semantic fact that valuing is what a valuer does.
I threw in the Zen joke because I thought, in terms of time, it would take too long to debate the De Veritate, The Nichomachean Ethics and The Declaration of Independence vs. Kant and subjectivism. And maybe because my brain is getting too old to remember everything clearly enough. Some things are better left to jokes and rhetoric. :)
I don't understand the context of this.
I realize that.
Let me clarify. I fully understand the referenses you are using, but I have no idea how they relate to anything I said, or to any other aspect of our discussion.
Or do you mean by "I realize that" that you intended a non sequitur? Maybe for comic relief--pretending to be fatuous?
"The flowing continuum of the life cycle, complete with tributaries."
Quite poetic.
Nice job.
OK. It's not important.
So it was humor. But I still think you miss the point. Although I'm sure the fallacy was probably recognized as far back as Aristotle, I don't think it is his ethics that describes it. It is a simple fallacy too easily allowed by too flexible a grammar. The concept of "clapping" requires two hands. The concept of "valuing" or "thinking" requires a valuer or thinker. Our grammar allows us to construct grammatically correct but nonsensical statements, such as those that describe values without a valuer.
It's just the culmination of post-modernism and the moral relativism that now passes for right and wrong. What Kerry implies is that abortion is wrong, for him - not necessarily for anybody else. This leaves room for other opinions and diversity without any of that nasty judgement stuff that the religious right is always pushing. In this way he can continue to criticize the pro-life folks and, when needs be, snear upon the pro-choice folks. He is like catsup left out too long - luke warm.
My personal opinion of what motivates liberal refusal to acknowledge the evil of abortion and to play childish games about value relativism on good vs. evil topics is that these are rooted in behavioral problems and developmental abnormalities. Most liberals have lingering adolescent adjustment problems, fixated masturbation anxiety, etc.
Again, I wasn't claiming any kind of extreme subjectivism. Your insinuation here is that because values are subjective, therefore all of reality is subjective.
A more germane joke would have been in regards to the Meditations where Descartes could prove to himself that he existed because thinking requires a thinker, but could not convince himself of a reality outside himself because he was unable to make the same inference in the other direction and realize that thinking also implies thinking about something. He failed to recognize the absurdity of "I think" in isolation. It's funny that a school-boy level grammatical error fueled the later rise in subjectivism.
I'm not sure why this is so difficult. Values and opinions are the epitome of subjective thoughts. If it is not values that are subjective, then what are? I guess I could turn your misunderstanding on its head and marvel at your insinuation that NOTHING is subjective.
I take offense at the insuation that everyone with a "fixated masturbation anxiety" is a liberal.
Besides, the only commonality among liberals is a lust for the money that others have earned.
But the debate can go on forever. It's been a while since I read Thomas Reid so my facility for posing it in Anglo-Scottish terms is a little rusty probably. Apologies if it seemed there was a misunderstanding.
The liberal obsession with genital matters is abnormal. The harsh, lashing out at imaginary authority figures seems to be rooted in some unresolved adolescent issue. Both Clinton and Kerry seem frozen in some sort of syndrome like this.
A likely guess would be that Clinton and Kerry were caught masturbating as adolescents and were spanked for it. Their rancorous enthusiasm for a culture of perversion may be a rebellious outgrowth of this. An unusual version of oppositional-defiant disorder. Their anxieties are directed at changing the entire social order in order to compensate and relieve their masturbation anxiety.
The quality is objective, but the way one feels about that quality (i.e. how one values that quality) is subjective. Two people can feel quite different about the same experienced quality.
I'm not sure a reasonable philosophical argument can even be made for denying that values are subjective. The case is almost by definition.
The error usually arises from people arguing against moral relativism. They say "Evilness is a kind of value; X is evil independent of what anyone thinks; therefore some values exist independent of what anyone thinks".
We've covered that fallacy. It is typically remedied by defining "evil" as the value of some particular valuer (e.g. a god or prophet), whose values every other valuer must share to be considered not evil. I.e., values remain subjective, as they must be, but we are given a common reference and told how we must value.
The moral relativist says "A thinks X is evil; B does not think X is evil; opinions of A and B have to be given equal merit; therefore evil for A is different but of equal merit to not evil for B".
First, as any conservative will tell you, it's hard to find a liberal who gives equal merit to conservative opinions. That is, most liberals deny their own premise (i.e. they are hypocrites). But by being hypocrites, they are at least denying the indefensible aspect of their argument.
Humans do not exist without values, the origins of which range from mundane visceral pleasure-pain responses to high level concepts. All possible values do not have equal merit, if by "merit" one means self-consistency and consistency with facts of reality. Even tolerance of differing values stems from a value for civility, not a total disinterest or acceptance of all values.
Commonality of values doesn't require a stipulated value dictator, either. Humans have a common nature and a common experience. As such, they have common values. Their nature also makes them amenable to persuasion (rational, emotive, or threating) to establish further commonality.
Situations can always be constructed where values cannot be common. One cure, two fathers with dying kids.
Evil is usually taken as a community standard--a local commonality. Dancing half nude in the woods at night might have one day gotten a young woman publically tried and legally hanged for witchcraft. Most people value themselves, their family, and their friends, and naturally consider as evil anyone who adversely affects them.
Sometimes evil is an intellectual discovery--a result of understanding complex chain of events that lead to a severe violation of values. Marx "discovered" that capitalism leads to enslavement of the proletariat, so capitalism, like bondage, is evil. Capitalists counter that abolition of private property leads to slavery of everyone but the controlling elite. The value violated is shared by both marxists and capitalists.
Then there's the human fetus. On a visceral level there is the fact that a fetus has the appearance of a tiny baby, that it makes in utero motions similar to our postpartum babes. Everything most of us value most (self, family, friends) were once fetuses. Having children is a wildly happy experience for most people, and so is the pregnancy. Biology doesn't offer a sharp division between a person we love and a fetus.
Then there are conflicting values. Without necessary valuing the fetus, some fear that abortion combined with Americans widespread values for fetuses will lead to dangerous general disrespect for human life. Some value the life of a matured person (gravid woman) over her fetus--thus comes the "life of the mother" exception. Some value saving a woman the emotional pain of bearing a child of rape--there's the "rape" exception. Some value averting the social, economic, and biological impact of an unwanted term pregnancy over the fetus. These women have abortions of convenience. Some people's value for a fetus is age-dependent--they favor early but not late abortions. Some people value more the political power that an abortion consistuency gives them over any anonymous fetus. These people are Democrats. Some people simply become euphoric from counting high abortion numbers. These people belong to NOW.
Efforts between these groups to achieve commonality typically come down to simply trying to impose their own legislation without ANY serious effort for persuasive argument ("it's right because it's fascist to enslave women" or "it's wrong because my god tells me its wrong"). Legitimate commonality (according to those of us who value civility and reason) can only be achieved with an honest debate about what it is we value in human beings, why we have those values, and understanding the facts of human nature and development.
Personally, I don't see how pregnancies can occur accidentally, so I have little sympathy for women who claim they want abortions.
Sheesh. This is long. I wouldn't read it either.
Man, tough cure.
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