tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940841.post113769353551577927..comments2024-02-02T07:41:55.155-05:00Comments on The Headpiece for the Staff of Ra: Choice and the Embodied MindMosBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14396378353702882073noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940841.post-1138160631353411242006-01-24T22:43:00.000-05:002006-01-24T22:43:00.000-05:00Reading Natalia's comment, I began to wonder about...Reading Natalia's comment, I began to wonder about how one might connect the theoretical approach I'm taking here with the more 'pragmatic' or 'socially-located' considerations she brings up, and I've talked about elsewhere (scare quotes because neither term seems entirely accurate). <BR/><BR/>One rough possibility might be to extend the line I take here: a person is not just an embodied mind, but also an en-cultured body. Just like it is illegitimate to consider her as a disembodied intellect, it is equally illegitimate to abstract her from her cultural context -- and, indeed, from the particular situation in which she stands when faced with the possibility (or not!) of making a choice.Noumenahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02442204504120141558noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940841.post-1138124252253105462006-01-24T12:37:00.000-05:002006-01-24T12:37:00.000-05:00I think one important issue to think about here is...I think one important issue to think about here is the meaning of personhood. I agree that a person is an embodied mind, and that bodily integrity is at least as worthy of respect as mental integrity. Moreover, such a respect entails carving up social space for self-determination. However, I can imagine pro-life arguments claiming that a foetus is a person and thus an embodied mind whose bodily and mental integrity ought to be respected. In order to address this issue, we need to clarify what an embodied mind is. What is a body? Is it characterized merely in terms of human life in a technical sense, or are there qualifications that need to be added to this definition? Also, what is a mind? Is it to be defined biologically, and if so, would that mean that mind=brain, or is it to be defined in a social context that requires interaction with other human beings and the world?<BR/><BR/>These are very difficult questions. It is not easy to draw the "personhood line." One might be tempted to say that personhood requires ability for self-determination, but then we would be denying personhood to infants, the handicapped,... It also seems inadequate to equate personhood with having a brain or with having a human genome (and both of these definitions would rule out abortion). Bodily considerations are also murky, for there are many individuals who have little power over their bodies but are still entitled to personhood, I'd say.<BR/><BR/>The debate over abortion has usually been tied to the personhood dilemma, and looking at the literature can be overwhelming, for there seem to be as many good arguments for the granting of personhood to unborn foetuses as there are against it. <BR/><BR/>I think that one of the biggest problems in the contemporary ethical debate surrounding abortion is that it is impossible to evaluate the ethical status of this practice without having to look at all sorts of social issues that obscure the question. Most women who find themselves in the position of considerign abortion cannot make their decision based merely on considerations about the dignity to which all embodied minds are entitled or whether their own self-determination ought morally to override that possibly attributed to the foetus. Instead, they are alienated from this critical personal dilemma by having to ask questions such as: can I deal with the social stigma of being an unmarried mother or a single parent? or, do I have the social resources to raise a child in a society that refuses to take any sort of collective responsibility for the development of its young? or, do I have to give up all my professional/educational goals because there are no social resources to aid me in the monumental task of supporting and nurturing a child? The list, of course, goes on. My point is simply that the moral debate over abortion is in my opinion mute right now. It is nearly impossible to discuss the ethical validity of the act itself in terms of individual self-determination when every social factor surrounding it impedes maximal self-determination, for a lot of times the decision to abort is itself forced on women. And I know this for a fact because I worked for some time at an abortion clinic. The issue is not just whether women should be free to have abortions, but also whether they should be free not to. With social conditions such as they are today, the decision to abort or not is seldom a real ethical dilemma in the sense that women are rarely able to own their decision as a clear moral choice steming from their ability to determine their own future freely. Rather, they often face this choice as something imposed on them by social conditions.<BR/><BR/>I wish that the social ills that often push women to have abortions figured more prominently in every discussion about abortion, for it is almost impossible to understand the ethics of abortion as an individual choice when in practice it is almost never a free choice, even when it is pursued. And the importance of maintaining the legality of abortion ought to be discussed alongside the importance of providing a better social network for women who desire to take their pregnancies to term, for only the conjunction of these two elements can provide a foundation for choice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940841.post-1137725786972337672006-01-19T21:56:00.000-05:002006-01-19T21:56:00.000-05:00Well, I wanted to write something on embodiment, a...Well, I wanted to write something on embodiment, and that Pandagon link got me thinking about 'you can always just put it up for adoption' arguments, so it was kind of a matter of getting from A to B. Not really a coincidence if you were arguing this at Pandagon, or 'nearby' in the noosphere. (How would a proper metric be constructed? Hmm ... )Noumenahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02442204504120141558noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940841.post-1137717648607373192006-01-19T19:40:00.000-05:002006-01-19T19:40:00.000-05:00Weird... I was having an argument today on an inte...Weird... I was having an argument today on an internet forum that covered some of this ground (but in far less technical terms).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02620757577974844563noreply@blogger.com