The first principle of Stoicism is to distinguish those things which are within your power and those things which are not.

It is also relevant to distinguish things that are not within *anyone’s* power from things that are.
This is highly relevant in case of claims of “bodily autonomy.”

People mistakenly think that this right of bodily autonomy gives them moral claims against nature, i.e. having a “right” not to become pregnant.

That is comparable to a “right” not to catch a cold or not to age.
Human persons do, of course, have a wide degree of say in what happens to their bodies vis a vis WHAT OTHERS MAY RIGHTFULLY DO TO THEM.

We have no such claim against NATURAL events. This doesn’t even make sense.
A right to life just is a right not to be killed unjustly by a moral agent.

It is *not* a right not to die without consent.

You cannot invoke your right to life to prevent a bear from mauling you, nor a body of water from drowning you.
Very few people argue that “bodily autonomy” involves a right not to become pregnant, because they would look like fools trying to push a moral claim against a natural event.

But they will argue that one has no obligation to *remain* pregnant.
But this tactic, which is meant to circumvent the question of the personhood of the unborn DOES NO SUCH THING.
It will be argued that an unborn child has no right to “use” a woman’s body to preserve its life.

Let us note an unborn child is not acting here as a MORAL AGENT. It isn’t MORALLY CHOOSING to “use” the woman’s body (it isn’t assaulting her; this doesn’t make it a “parasite”).
Suppose A is the owner of a ship at sea. A goes to sleep one day and wakes to find herself and B (a 6-year-old boy) the only persons on shipboard.

Does A have a right to throw B overboard, to make B walk the plank? On the grounds “my ship, my choice”?

No.
Judith Jarvis Thompson is famous for her “violinist” analogy in A Defense of Abortion. She also makes several other fanciful analogies which are less famous—because analogies are more or less strong depending on their similitude to the situation.

She speaks of uninvited guests: Image
The idea here is to analogize “my body, my choice” to “my house, my choice.”

Now, of course, people do have a wide range of liberty to say who is or is not allowed to remain in THEIR HOUSE.

But it isn’t UNLIMITED. You can’t throw someone out of your house to certain death.
All else being equal, you have a claim right on an unwanted guest to have them LEAVE YOUR HOME.

But guest right is a real thing.

You do have obligations to PERSONS in your home. You can throw out THINGS into conditions in which they may be destroyed, but not PERSONS.
When a house is A’s house, A typically has a Claim Right on B to leave A’s house if A desires it.

But B has an Immunity Right to nullify A’s Claim Right if A is attempting to use her Claim Right in such a way as to cause B to enter a situation of (Near) Certain Death.
One does have a pretty broad right to say what goes on in one’s body, but it isn’t an unlimited right, just as a say about what goes on on one’s ship or in one’s house.

You cannot make someone “walk the plank” to (Near) Certain Death on the grounds that it is “your ship.”
(If you prefer a more sci fi version of “walking the plank,” let it be a SPACESHIP and “blowing someone out of an airlock”.)
Let it be presented this way:

A owns a spaceship and has just embarked, alone, on a 10 month journey. But she wakes up to discover a 2-year-old child in aboard her ship.

Does she have the right to blow the young child out the airlock? “My ship, my choice”?

No. That is murder.
What makes the “bodily autonomy” argument seem PLAUSIBLE is two things

(1) it really is a *broad* right, but not an *unlimited* right, and its limits are those which involve harming or killing PERSONS
(2) it subtly presupposes the non-personhood of the unborn
What needs to be CLEARLY SEEN in cases of bodily autonomy arguments is that autonomy does not justify harming or killing another PERSON.

IF AND ONLY IF an unborn child is not a person, but a mere thing, is the autonomy might nearly unlimited.
So while the argument is SUPPOSED to be “neutral” on the question of PERSONHOOD — it isn’t.

Because your autonomy rights are limited by OTHER PERSONS *much* more sharply than they are vis a vis mere things.
In ALMOST ALL cases, you have a right to throw an unwanted THING out of your house EVEN IF doing so will lead to its destruction.

There are, on the other hand, ALMOST NO cases in which you have a right to throw a PERSON out of your house into a situation of (NEAR) CERTAIN DEATH.
So it CRUCIALLY matters whether what you are attempting to “throw out of your house” (or your spaceship, or your body) is a THING or a PERSON.

So the bodily autonomy argument does not actually, as is often claimed, “get around” the personhood argument.
That is what it was intended to do, since the personhood argument seems deadlocked (and not in the way pro-abortionists like).

But it doesn’t do that.

Do not be fooled by that claim.
I’ve had my say for now, but I feel like I should add one more point, which is one I regularly make, because it is often lost in the moral confusion of this argument, namely, “a right not be remain pregnant” ≠ “a right to kill a child one is pregnant with.”
You can make a *much* stronger case that a woman has a right not to be pregnant than that she has the right to kill a child.

AS IT HAPPENS these two things are ONE AND THE SAME ACTION during much of pregnancy.
They are LOGICALLY distinct. One can imagine a future where technology is such that a woman can have an unborn child removed from her body and placed, with no danger or death to the child, in an incubator.

Would she have a right to do this?

All else being equal, it seems so.
But as things are now, we have no such technology, and as long as that remains fantasy, it will be true that “terminating an unwanted pregnancy” and “killing a child” BOTH CORRECTLY DESCRIBE THE SAME ACT.
And while one could be (is?) morally justified in “terminating a pregnancy” ON THE CONDITION THAT it is not also “killing a child”, so long as “terminating a pregnancy” and “killing a child” ARE THE SAME ACT, one is not morally justified in doing it.
And the fact that “terminating a pregnancy” is the same act as “killing a child” is NO ONE’S FAULT.

That is a fact of nature, and of the limitation of our technological power to separate two events which are logically, but not practically, distinct.
That is “terminating a pregnancy” (TP) is morally wrong so long as it is the same act as “killing a child.” KC

In any circumstance where TP ⇒ KC, TP is wrong.

The fact we can IMAGINE a circumstance where TP is not wrong is immaterial. We’re not in that circumstance.

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More from @EveKeneinan

18 May
Join me in this marvel of a paragraph:

“plausible models” + “controversy reigns” + “seems to” = IT CAN ONLY BE POINTLESS TO … ON THIS BASIS.

Yes … that’s a pretty weak basis for a “can only be pointless to.”

Also, that isn’t what “ethically fraught” means. Image
Among those who have looked into the way sexual orientations are formed, it isn’t controversial. An inclination for same sex attraction runs in families, so it is partially genetic; identical twins don’t always end up with the same ‘orientation’, so it’s partially environmental.
Being partially genetic doesn’t mean something is not a disorder, by the way. THOSE are frequently genetic too.

Hence “genetic disorder.”
Read 8 tweets
18 May
“My short answer is that, while obviously we need to acknowledge the interesting fact that throughout the ages, same-sex activity has had many different relatively local sociocultural meanings and names, it wasn’t invented in the 20th century.”

The late 19th.
The category of “homosexual” really is, I think, a contingent historical creation, and its deconstruction is welcome.

It’s a metaphysical reinterpretation of the act of sodomy. Foucault was actually half-right about this. Image
“Strictly speaking, a sexual orientation should be understood in terms of the sex(es) you would be sexually attracted to under relatively self-aware, uncoerced, uninhibited circumstances, and not necessarily who you actually are attracted to right now.” ⬇︎
Read 9 tweets
28 Apr
Another cool lesson I learned on the path of chemistry:

I was top in my class, but the award for “top in chemistry” went to this other girl because her professor was head of the department and mine was a new hire.

But I was already bailing for physics, because ⬇︎
1 I was really, really good at chemistry. Just because you are really, really good at something doesn’t mean you necessarily *like* it much and

2 I still thought *physics*, as the fundamental science, might be a path to something profound about the world. I was very, very wrong.
Pretty soon I was doing a Philosophy/Physics double major, and I was good at physics too—but I soon learned that for at least 100 years or more it had become a kind of advanced recipe following. “Quantum cookery.”
Read 6 tweets
27 Apr
I feel like this point is not well understood by many. It would probably clear up a lot of confusion about what I do with ideas.
A lot of the things I say, which sound absurd, *are*, in fact, absurd, but what I’m doing is following out the implications of what someone else has said, to see whether or not the initial assertion survives this or detonates in a BANG! of absurdity.
But most people, from my observation, feel as if they have a “right” to say things that have implications but not have the implications drawn, unless they approve of them.

Or have a right to made concrete arguments without the logical form of their argument being tested.
Read 5 tweets
27 Apr
The problem with those who naively appeal to “the obvious” is that nothing is, in itself, obvious.

What the naif takes to be obvious may, upon reflection, turn out to be true — but his defect lies not in missing the truth, but hitting only by accident.
I have always liked this saying of Master Qingyuan Xingsi.

It always puts me in mind of Socrates, who often argued the views of the common people, against the “sophisticated” sophists — in an utterly uncommon way.
It is difficult to have a discussion with the sophisticated. Their sophistication gets in the way.

But it is impossible — often — to have a discussion with the completely uneducated man. Especially when they take a perverse pride in their own lack of education.
Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
Ignorant atheists don’t get to tell me how to Christian.
You deserve to be dismissed. You bring nothing of value to the table. You could, perhaps, be a student, but you are dead-set against having your ignorance corrected, so that seems unlikely.

Yes, I do, in fact, have disdain for ignorant moral subjectivists.
You deserve disdain because you hold a stupid and evil view of the world.

And you are, presumably, teaching this evil and stupid view to your children.

I hope for your sake they don’t listen to you and actually adopt sound views of morality.
Read 4 tweets

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