Aella is probably referring to stuff like this;
The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories
lesswrong.com/posts/aMHq4mA2
and the Noncentral Fallacy
lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8
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Conversation
Fish and humans are real categories though. There are important things that distinguish whales from fish. What distinguishes babies from humans? I think any argument used to justify abortion could also be used to justify other kinds of homicide, because babies are humans.
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There's a lot of concepts that I perceive as mixed together in this your tweet. If you *assume* babies are humans in the way that we ascribe moral personhood to humans, then I agree that argument could be used to justify homicide. But the debate here *is the assumption itself*.
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There is no debate about whether or not personhood should be ascribed to adults (thankfully). What makes babies any different?
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We're using the word 'babies,' which evokes to mind something I'm not talking about, to be clear. In the interest of conceptual clarity I'd rather use words that evoke to mind exactly what it is I'm talking about. We can make up a fully neutral word for this if you like.
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The lack of clairty comes from something like, if I go around saying 'I think we should kill babies,' people will grab their 3-month old in fear, even if I don't think we should kill their 3-month old. I'd like to use a word that is not incongruous with my intent.
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Okay, we can call them subjects of abortion. At first I wanted to say victims of abortion, but that’s not very neutral. Can you explain how to justify killing a subject of abortion in a way that wouldn’t justify any other kind of homicide that we agree is unjustifiable?
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This is a big fractal rabbithole of stuff like morality and rights, which I'm saying to acknowledge that I'm doing some 'smoothing over the edges' of things that have a lot more depth nuance to them. That being said,
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"why is it different from other homicide" feels like the same question as "why is removing cysts different from homicide" or "why is poisoning invasive rats different from homicide" - the answer being these things don't strike at our vague shitty concept of 'personhood'
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In a world where subjects of abortion (SOA?) are in fact, actually, objectively equivalent to a cyst or a rat, then your question sort of... falls flat, or become strange to ask about *that* and not all the other kinds of minor life-extinguishing that we do.
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This is why it feels to me that the important question here is not "how is this different from homicide", but rather "are we in a world where SOAs should tickle our intuitions around personhood/humanness, or are we in a world where they shouldn't?"
WITOPs certainly do tickle our intuition about what personhood is and a lot more than tickle. That’s why up until recently even the most ardent abortion advocates said that abortion should be rare.
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To be clear, my question is are we in a world where they *should* or *shouldn't* tickle, not whether they *do*; in the latter I would point to most of recorded human history, where it seems that it did *not* tickle most people's intuitions, that this would be a recent thing
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I think the idea of personhood is not vague at all and is actually quite simple. It always has been and science has confirmed our long-held suspicions about when life begins. The only reason to call any of it into question and make it vague is to justify the expedient option.
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I get a little...sad/frustrated? when ppl assume motivated failing as an explanation for why people disagree with them. It makes me feel like you're not really curious for why I believe what I believe, cause you "already know" it's just to justify an expedient option.
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