Abortion – Page 9 – Maverick Philosopher

A reader inquires:

This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first principles but it can also lead one down a rat hole.

Before we can discuss whether one ought to be consistent, we need to know which type of consistency is at issue. There are at least three types of consistency that people often confuse and that need to be kept distinct. I'll call them 'logical,' 'pragmatic,' and 'diachronic.' But it doesn't matter how we label them as long as we keep them separate.

Continue reading “Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency”

Here once again is the Potentiality Principle:

PP: All potential descriptive persons have a right to life.

From this principle one can easily mount a powerful argument against the moral acceptability of abortion. I endorse both the principle and the ensuing Potentiality Argument. Peter Lupu rejects both the principle and the argument. Now it seems to me that there are exactly three possible outcomes of our discussion. Either I convince Peter, or he convinces me, or we both come to agree that the question is rationally undecidable. I find this discussion intriguing, not merely because of the immediate subject matter, namely, abortion and the underlying metaphysics of potency and act, but also metaphilosophically: Is it possible to resolve even one well-defined question?

In this post I will try to explain why I do not accept Peter’s argument against PP.

His argument begins with the uncontroversial point that potentiality excludes actuality. Thus, if x is a potential F at time t, then x is not an actual F at t. This is a conceptual truth that merely unpacks what we mean by ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality.’ For this reason, it is immune to counterexamples. One who seeks a counterexample to it is in in a position similar to one who seeks a counterexample to ‘All bachelors are male.’

Continue reading “The Potentiality Principle Again”