[Jiro]

Remember that aphorisms like that don't only apply to your side.

Every time you say something like that, imagine that someone whose sense of injustice is opposite to yours is using it. Maybe they think that abortion is literal murder. Maybe it's the 1950s and they think some poor black guy has raped a white girl (because how would she ever consent?) Maybe they're a Russian living in Ukraine and they think the Ukrainian government is oppressing the Russians and the only way to stop this is by helping Russian troops take over.

I want people to say "No, I do not have to bomb that abortion clinic. No, I do not have to join that lynch mob. No, I do not have to overthrow the government." If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you haven't chosen the side of the oppressor. Rather, if you're neutral in situations of injustice, it means that you have figured out that humility can be a virtue.

[tshaddox]

> Every time you say something like that, imagine that someone whose sense of injustice is opposite to yours is using it.

This line of reasoning only makes sense if you think that moral positions have no qualities other than how strongly people hold them. If, on the other hand, you believe that two people can hold two opposing moral positions with equal strength, and one of them can be correct while the other is incorrect, this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense.

Of course, this was obviously Tutu’s position. Tutu probably didn’t think “before you go and help the mouse, realize that doing so might be just as upsetting to the elephant as your neutrality would have been to the mouse.”

[Jiro]

>This line of reasoning only makes sense if you think that moral positions have no qualities other than how strongly people hold them.

Of course there are differences in moral positions other than how strongly people hold them. But if you're going to make a rule about them, your rule can't take those differences into account, because everyone thinks their own moral position is correct.

It's like having a rule "the police may coerce confessions from suspects, but only if they're guilty". This rule is impossible in practice because every officer coercing a confession thinks the suspect is guilty.

[tshaddox]

> But if you're going to make a rule about them, your rule can't take those differences into account, because everyone thinks their own moral position is correct.

No, that’s precisely what I’m disagreeing with. The point is that it is possible to think your position is correct, and your opponent thinks their position is correct, but you are correct and they are incorrect. Why can’t a “rule” take that into account? Any notion of justice clearly has to take this into account already!

[sokoloff]

Correct according to what standard? Is abortion okay or is abortion murder? Is it one up until X weeks and the other after that?

I have my position, but I can’t find any reasonable way to conclude that it’s ironclad “correct”.

[ttfkam]

Or that is the wrong question. You have posited a false dichotomy.

Is bodily autonomy a right that extends to all people including females from about 12 to 50 years old?

Bodily autonomy is so deeply held that we cannot even harvest life-saving organs for donation from the dead if they dictate it shall not be done.

Abortion is the only exception we make as a society. We even pass laws preventing birth control from being paid for with group health insurance policies.

Anti-abortion positions have never been about fetuses; they are about limiting the rights of women.

When you restrict access to choose, you are granting greater agency to corpses than living women. Ask the right questions.

[sokoloff]

From context, I can tell we have similar views on how society should decide the question “what options should a pregnant person have?”

Even with that agreement, I don’t see how our views are rooted in some fundamental truth that precludes someone from arguing the opposing point of view (or arguing that the cutoff from one conclusion to the other is at a different number of weeks; I do not believe abortion should be generally legal at 39 weeks, nor at 38 weeks, ...)

[Jiro]

Because your rule will be implemented by people applying the rule to their own beliefs. And everyone thinks their own beliefs are correct.

[emj]

No.

Lots of people follow their conviction; travel far away to hurt others and deminish their and others humanity, that might be to help someone but in the end it's not ethical. Recently there was an discussion about the quote from Aristotle¹ that can be shorten to "virtues are actions, not words", but that leads to misinterpretations. Same with this quote from Tutu, you can not take it out of context and make it out as neutral to the ethics.

[¹] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662031

[dragonwriter]

> every officer coercing a confession thinks the suspect is guilty.

That's absolutely not true; coerced confessions absolutely are used against people known to be innocent by those coercing the confession (heck, even when the coercers are, in fact, the guilty parties.)

OTOH, it is true that the cops will always say the target is guilty, because that’s the whole point.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

>..Rather, if you're neutral in situations of injustice, it means that you have figured out that humility can be a virtue.

I'm not sure I understand how humility comes into the picture? I don't think anyone didn't join a lynch mob, yet allowed them to continue on their way to the victim and thought of themselves as humble.