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MountainDewJunkie
United States10340 Posts
It's like a loaded question: "Do you support killing innocent babies?" instead of asking if someone is pro-choice. The vagueness of terms should certainly monitored and moderated in some cases. Especially when their primary use is to appeal to your emotions rather than your intellect. Even if the argument itself is based on morality or something else subjective, it should not validate the use logical fallacies and dishonest language. | ||
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dAPhREAk
Nauru12397 Posts
On November 15 2012 11:17 MountainDewJunkie wrote: Calling a fetus a baby is just a way to paint abortions as morally wrong because no one wants to kill babies (right?), because even if a baby is technically a fetus, the use of the word baby is just to arouse feelings of the "common" definition of baby, namely, a living, cute, innocent gift from above. It's like a loaded question: "Do you support killing innocent babies?" instead of asking if someone is pro-choice. The vagueness of terms should certainly monitored and moderated in some cases. Especially when their primary use is to appeal to your emotions rather than your intellect. Even if the argument itself is based on morality or something else subjective, it should not validate the use logical fallacies and dishonest language. a fetus is a baby (its not technical, its the definition of baby)....saying a fetus isnt a baby is silly. and saying people dont call fetuses a baby is silly: nobody refers to fetuses as fetuses, they call them babies.... | ||
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jdseemoreglass
United States3773 Posts
On November 15 2012 11:17 MountainDewJunkie wrote: Calling a fetus a baby is just a way to paint abortions as morally wrong because no one wants to kill babies (right?), because even if a baby is technically a fetus, the use of the word baby is just to arouse feelings of the "common" definition of baby, namely, a living, cute, innocent gift from above. It's like a loaded question: "Do you support killing innocent babies?" instead of asking if someone is pro-choice. The vagueness of terms should certainly monitored and moderated in some cases. Especially when their primary use is to appeal to your emotions rather than your intellect. Even if the argument itself is based on morality or something else subjective, it should not validate the use logical fallacies and dishonest language. Moral issues are completely about emotion, not about "intellect." Values are based upon value, which is a subjective emotional assessment by definition. It makes no sense to even talk about eliminating emotional arguments with respect to a moral debate. Empathy is the foundation for all morality. In either case, you may disagree personally with the use of a term or specific argument, but that doesn't mean the site should restrict it as a matter of protocol, which is the whole point here. Just look at the terms themselves... Pro-choice is meant to imply the other side is anti-choice. Pro-life is meant to imply the other side is anti-life. Debate is all about words and how you use them, and restricting the words that can be used is to restrict the arguments that can be made, and is therefore stifling opinions. | ||
KwarK
United States42270 Posts
On November 15 2012 12:12 jdseemoreglass wrote: Moral issues are completely about emotion, not about "intellect." Values are based upon value, which is a subjective emotional assessment by definition. It makes no sense to even talk about eliminating emotional arguments with respect to a moral debate. Empathy is the foundation for all morality. In either case, you may disagree personally with the use of a term or specific argument, but that doesn't mean the site should restrict it as a matter of protocol, which is the whole point here. Just look at the terms themselves... Pro-choice is meant to imply the other side is anti-choice. Pro-life is meant to imply the other side is anti-life. Debate is all about words and how you use them, and restricting the words that can be used is to restrict the arguments that can be made, and is therefore stifling opinions. Restricting the argument that abortion means aborting babies in general as opposed to just pre-birth babies is a good thing and if you feel stifled by it then you're just mad you can't use absurd and illogical statements to appeal to emotion. | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
If you say that you find it abhorrent to terminate a baby in the prenatal stage, you're no longer being unspecific, which is good debate. Frankly, the extreme polarization in most issues like this prevents any rational discourse, though. When everyone wants an all or nothing approach, you're doomed. | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
Coming to some sort of understanding that would allow constructive dialogue to take place between the pro-life, pro-choice camps could be useful. Insisting that the other side use your terminology and then calling them ridiculous, unintelligent, and lazy when they balk at your demands isn't all that useful. | ||
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micronesia
United States24633 Posts
On November 15 2012 12:56 HULKAMANIA wrote: Once again, there's nothing absurd or illogical about referring to unborn children as babies, whether you append some qualifier or not. It's an acceptable use, preserved in idioms and ratified by lexicographers for a great number of native English speakers. Calling unborn children babies is no more or less rhetorical sleight of hand than calling them fetuses. Coming to some sort of understanding that would allow constructive dialogue to take place between the pro-life, pro-choice camps could be useful. Insisting that the other side use your terminology and then calling them ridiculous, unintelligent, and lazy when they balk at your demands isn't all that useful. I often see pictures of cute babies (say, 1-4 months) on bumper stickers that say things like "abortion kills babies." While there may be a linguistic justification for using the word baby to refer to an unborn child, such ambiguity in what 'baby' means is taken advantage of by people with agendas all the time. Why does it make sense to put a 3 month old baby on an abortion bumper sticker? Why not put a 30 year old crack head who is dying from leukemia? They each have the same amount of a relationship with abortion (barring infanticide/murder). Yes, obviously they don't put a picture of a miscarried fetus because well, that's gross. This doesn't change my point though. There is a reason why people have trouble discussing the pros/cons of abortion with people who intentionally refer to unborn children as babies. | ||
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KwarK
United States42270 Posts
Fortunately I see two solutions to this. Solution A, autoclose any discussion of topics such as abortion. Solution B, trust you guys to attempt a reasonable debate but impose my rules upon it. If you dislike the rules then you can choose to either pretend solution A has been used and not post in it or follow them anyway and just accept that you don't get to imply they kill cute little toddlers while you call pro-choice advocates murderers. I'm going to go with B but if you object to the rules then, as always, website feedback is your friend. | ||
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dAPhREAk
Nauru12397 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:16 micronesia wrote: I often see pictures of cute babies (say, 1-4 months) on bumper stickers that say things like "abortion kills babies." While there may be a linguistic justification for using the word baby to refer to an unborn child, such ambiguity in what 'baby' means is taken advantage of by people with agendas all the time. Why does it make sense to put a 3 month old baby on an abortion bumper sticker? Why not put a 30 year old crack head who is dying from leukemia? They each have the same amount of a relationship with abortion (barring infanticide/murder). Yes, obviously they don't put a picture of a miscarried fetus because well, that's gross. This doesn't change my point though. There is a reason why people have trouble discussing the pros/cons of abortion with people who intentionally refer to unborn children as babies. do you honestly think that the conversation will go any better if they refer to it as "fetus killing" rather than "baby killing?" | ||
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micronesia
United States24633 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:20 dAPhREAk wrote: do you honestly think that the conversation will go any better if they refer to it as "fetus killing" rather than "baby killing?" I'm not sure how to respond to such a crazy loaded question lol Can you just stick to the spirit of what I'm going for? | ||
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KwarK
United States42270 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:20 dAPhREAk wrote: do you honestly think that the conversation will go any better if they refer to it as "fetus killing" rather than "baby killing?" Yes. Example below. Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies" Pro choice: "..... you're fucking retarded" Example #2 Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing foetus" Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)" Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a foetus because...." Pro choice: "well I disagree because...." | ||
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Cyrc
Canada28 Posts
On November 15 2012 12:56 HULKAMANIA wrote: Once again, there's nothing absurd or illogical about referring to unborn children as babies, whether you append some qualifier or not. It's an acceptable use, preserved in idioms and ratified by lexicographers for a great number of native English speakers. Calling unborn children babies is no more or less rhetorical sleight of hand than calling them fetuses. Coming to some sort of understanding that would allow constructive dialogue to take place between the pro-life, pro-choice camps could be useful. Insisting that the other side use your terminology and then calling them ridiculous, unintelligent, and lazy when they balk at your demands isn't all that useful. There is, in fact, something illogical in referring to unborn children as babies, in this case. One of the cooperative principles proposed by Grice in semantics is the maxim of Manner, which says, among other things, to avoid ambiguity. In this case, it'd be to specify that it's an unborn children, otherwise it may cause confusion. Also, basing your argument of descriptive English (such as dictionaries) is a really, really bad idea. It's not because a meaning has been attested by lexicographers that it has any weight; if you looked into the kind of work lexicographers do you'd see that much of what they do has to with archaic meanings or words. As an example, if you used lexicographers' work, you could argue that -dom (such as kingdom, sheepdom, dogdom) is a common affix, just because it was in the 18th century. Not to mention that dictionaries are years, if not decades behind actual word use, and that they cling to old meanings and forms way longer than actual people do. If you haven't realized by now, pointing at a dictionary will not help you get your point across. You just have to accept that and choose another way of saying "unborn baby" that isn't just "baby", otherwise you guys won't get a decent discussion going. | ||
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dAPhREAk
Nauru12397 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:22 micronesia wrote: I'm not sure how to respond to such a crazy loaded question lol Can you just stick to the spirit of what I'm going for? well, the idea is that if you change the words they can use then you can somehow lessen the emotions involved in the discussion with the idea that it makes the discussion better. i believe that is unrealistic. if people think that abortion is murder then allowing and disallowing words is not going to make the conversation any less heated, its just going to piss off the people who are being censored. the mod note dooms the discussion, it doesnt make the discussion better. i dont know. if you feel you need to censor people's word use then you should just go with banning the discussion altogether. especially where you are only censoring one side of the discussion. | ||
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dAPhREAk
Nauru12397 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:26 KwarK wrote: Yes. Example below. Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies" Pro choice: "..... you're fucking retarded" Example #2 Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing foetus" Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)" Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a foetus because...." Pro choice: "well I disagree because...." example #3 Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies" Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)" Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a baby because...." why dont you just ban the people who call the pro-lifers retards? | ||
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micronesia
United States24633 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:30 dAPhREAk wrote: well, the idea is that if you change the words they can use then you can somehow lessen the emotions involved in the discussion with the idea that it makes the discussion better. This isn't my idea. I only shared one specific thing in this thread. | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:16 micronesia wrote: I often see pictures of cute babies (say, 1-4 months) on bumper stickers that say things like "abortion kills babies." While there may be a linguistic justification for using the word baby to refer to an unborn child, such ambiguity in what 'baby' means is taken advantage of by people with agendas all the time. Why does it make sense to put a 3 month old baby on an abortion bumper sticker? Why not put a 30 year old crack head who is dying from leukemia? They each have the same amount of a relationship with abortion (barring infanticide/murder). Yes, obviously they don't put a picture of a miscarried fetus because well, that's gross. This doesn't change my point though. There is a reason why people have trouble discussing the pros/cons of abortion with people who intentionally refer to unborn children as babies. People have trouble discussing the pros/cons of abortion with people who intentionally refer to unborn children as fetuses as well. People have trouble discussing abortion. Period. I don't know that there's a more vexed issue in our shared public lives today. In one sense, a one-to-four month baby is much more comparable to an unborn child than a 30 year old crackhead who is dying from leukemia, and the human life ended by abortion is much more similar to that of a newborn than that of an adult. But I guess that's neither here nor there. I mean you might think that pro-life people are guilty of emotional manipulation by talking about "babies" in the context of abortion. That's fine. I happen to think that pro-choice people are guilty of emotional manipulation by using vocabulary like "fetus" to distance themselves from the act of abortion. I also think they're frequently guilty of emotional manipulation when they frame the issue as a necessary component of women's liberation, as something only opposed by misogynists and fanatics. One approach to this impasse is to do our best to respect one another's worldviews and the values and the emotions that each one of those worldviews includes. This would include, I think, allowing people to express themselves in the terms they find most fitting to the debate and/or to collaborate on more neutral lexical ground. Another approach would be to continue to insist that the other side adopt our language and the worldview that such language inheres. I don't think that approach goes much of anywhere, personally. | ||
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KwarK
United States42270 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:32 dAPhREAk wrote: example #3 Pro lifer: "you're okay with killing babies" Pro choice: "yes, as long as it's before it can exist independently outside of the womb (or whatever other rules that pro-choicer puts on it)" Pro lifer: "oh.... well, I think you shouldn't kill a baby because...." why dont you just ban the people who call the pro-lifers retards? Because making the argument that a pro choice advocate is in favour of infanticide is such a stupid thing to say that calling them a retard is an act of charity. Someone stupid enough to actually say that may have gotten to that point in their life without noticing that they're a complete moron because they're simply too stupid to understand it, flat out telling them is a kindness. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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micronesia
United States24633 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:37 HULKAMANIA wrote: People have trouble discussing the pros/cons of abortion with people who intentionally refer to unborn children as fetuses as well. People have trouble discussing abortion. Period. I don't know that there's a more vexed issue in our shared public lives today. In one sense, a one-to-four month baby is much more comparable to an unborn child than a 30 year old crackhead who is dying from leukemia, and the human life ended by abortion is much more similar to that of a newborn than that of an adult. But I guess that's neither here nor there. I mean you might think that pro-life people are guilty of emotional manipulation by talking about "babies" in the context of abortion. That's fine. I happen to think that pro-choice people are guilty of emotional manipulation by using vocabulary like "fetus" to distance themselves from the act of abortion. I also think they're frequently guilty of emotional manipulation when they frame the issue as a necessary component of women's liberation, as something only opposed by misogynists and fanatics. One approach to this impasse is to do our best to respect one another's worldviews and the values and the emotions that each one of those worldviews includes. This would include, I think, allowing people to express themselves in the terms they find most fitting to the debate and/or to collaborate on more neutral lexical ground. Another approach would be to continue to insist that the other side adopt our language and the worldview that such language inheres. I don't think that approach goes much of anywhere, personally. I'm not sure why there is such a negative connotation attributed to the word fetus, but technically it isn't even the right word to refer to an unborn human child, so I'd personally be fine with not using it either. I still feel people who want to be taken seriously by obvious pro-choice debaters should avoid using the word baby in exchange for the pro-choicers not incorrectly using medical terms in an effort to dehumanize the discussion. | ||
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dAPhREAk
Nauru12397 Posts
On November 15 2012 13:39 KwarK wrote: Because making the argument that a pro choice advocate is in favour of infanticide is such a stupid thing to say that calling them a retard is an act of charity. Someone stupid enough to actually say that may have gotten to that point in their life without noticing that they're a complete moron because they're simply too stupid to understand it, flat out telling them is a kindness. lol. i am sure that pro choice advocates will react well if you say that they are in favor of feoticide (had to look that one up). the point about retards was that in both your examples the issue was how the pro-choicer reacted, not the question (albeit ambiguous) itself. | ||
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