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In a recent episode of his new YouTube series "Philosophy Time" (video below), actor James Franco and co-host Eliot Michaelson interviewed Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth Harman on her sophisticated argument defending early-term abortions. But judging from Franco's questions and facial expressions, the actor appears to have heard more sophistry than sophistication, at one point stating her convoluted rationale in terms plain enough to show just how nonsensical it really is.
There are two different kinds of fetuses, Harman explains, ones with a future and ones without. The "moral status" of an early stage fetus, she says, depends entirely on whether it has a "future." No future, no moral status. In other words, if the fetus never grows up to feel and experience, killing it has zero moral implications.
In his coverage of Harman's "perplexing" attempt to excuse early-term abortion by cleansing it of any moral implications, The Washington Free Beacon's Andrew Kugle provided a transcript of the exchange, which I'm borrowing heavily from below. Here's Professor Harman's first stab at explaining her philosophical defense of the "liberal position about early abortion":
HARMAN: In some of my work I defend a liberal position about early abortion. I defend the view that there is nothing morally bad about early abortion. So, a lot of people think, "Well it's permissible to have an abortion, but something bad happens when the fetus dies." And I think if a fetus hasn't ever been conscious, it hasn't ever had any experiences, and we aborted it at that stage, actually nothing morally bad happens.
And this view might seem unattractive because it might seem that it dictates a cold attitude towards all early fetuses. But, what I think is actually among early fetuses there are two very different kinds of beings.
So, James, when you were an early fetus, and Eliot, when you were an early fetus, all of us I think we already did have moral status then. But we had moral status in virtue of our futures. And future of fact that we were beginning stages of persons. But some early fetuses will die in early pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage. And in my view that is a very different kind of entity. That's something that doesn't have a future as a person and it doesn't have moral status.
Michaelson, a philosophy professor himself, pushes back on the premise, asking plainly, "Why would we think that what's actually going to happen to a fetus in the future is going to make this big difference between having some moral status and not?"
Franco — whose facial expressions during Harman's explanations only get more hilarious — adds, "Can't you only judge that in hindsight?"
So Harman tries again, with even less success:
HARMAN: There is a real question of, how could we know? Well, often we do know. So often, if we know that a woman is planning to get an abortion, and we know that abortion is available to her, then we know that fetus is going to die—that it's not the kind of thing like the fetuses that became us. It's not something with moral status, in my view. Often we have reason to believe that a fetus is the beginning stage of a person. So, if we know that it's that a woman is planning to continue her pregnancy, then we good reason to that her fetus is something with moral status something with this future as a person.
At this point, Franco asks the question that highlights the indefensible nature of her premise:
FRANCO: If a woman decides to have an abortion with an early fetus, just that act or that intention negates the "moral status" of that early fetus just because if she goes out and has an abortion, it's pretty certain that it's not going to become a person?
Harman's third attempt to explain her "moral status" argument becomes even more convoluted than the first two. The major stumbling block, as her explanation highlights, is how "moral status" can be attributed or negated after the fact. Despite her best attempts to argue otherwise, she appears to just be attempting to rationalize abortion by claiming that a woman's choice to abort eliminates any moral implications:
HARMAN: Right, so it might look like on my view abortion is permissible because you had the abortion but that abortion wouldn't have been permissible if you didn't have the abortion. That's not quite the view, for I think two different reasons.
So one reason is that, um, even you have moral status — and in my view back when you were in early fetus you had moral status — but it's not that aborting you would have been wrong because if your mother had chosen to abort her pregnancy, then it wouldn't have been the case that you would have had moral status because you would have died as an early fetus, so she would have been aborting something that didn't have moral status.
So it's not — My view isn't that if you do abort, abortion is OK, but if you don't abort, abortion would have been wrong. But what it turns out is that it's a contingent matter, that you have moral status you actually have moral status but you might not have counted morally at all if you had been aborted. You would have existed, but you just would have had this really very short existence in which you wouldn't have mattered morally.
Harman goes on to underscore that abortion doesn't "take away" the moral status of the fetus, because the aborted fetus didn't have one in the first place because it didn't ever have a future, or something:
HARMAN: Another thing that you were bringing up was the idea that, in my view, in aborting we're taking away the moral status — that the fetus would have had moral status, but by aborting we take it away — and I think that's the wrong way to look at it. I think the right way to look at it is that just, given the current state of the fetus, you know it's not having any experiences. There's nothing about its current state that would make it a member of the moral community. It's derivative of its future that it gets to have moral status. So it's really the future that endows moral status on it; and if we allow it to have this future, then we're allowing it to be the kind of thing that now would have moral status. So in aborting it, I don't think you're depriving it of something that it independently has.
Got it? From the looks of it, Franco probably wasn't buying it either.
For more on Harman, here's a list of her classes and her bio, which offers some context for her moral status argument, including her study of "morally permissible moral mistakes" which are "behaviors that one should not engage in, all things considered, for moral reasons, but that are not morally wrong."
Remember a few years ago when pro golfer Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade?
Isn't it amazing that within a week the press found every woman with whom Tiger had an affair during the previous few years?
They even uncovered photos, text messages, recorded phone calls, etc.!
Furthermore, they not only knew the cause of the family fight, but they even knew it was a 9 iron from his golf bag that his wife used to break out the windows in the Escalade.
Not only that, they know which wedge!
And, each and every day, they were able to continue to provide America with updates on Tiger's sex rehab stay, his wife's divorce settlement figures, as well as the dates of tournaments in which he planned to play.
NOW,
BarackHusseinObama has been in office for over six years, yet this very samepress:
Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;
Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates, or any of his former girlfriends;
Or locate any of his college papers or grades;
Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia and a Harvard education;
Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980s;
Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism.
They just can't seem to uncover any of this!
Yet, the public still trusts that same press to give them the whole truth!
PRINCETON — Signs posted on kiosks in downtown Princeton encouraging residents to keep an eye out for NBC news chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman while she remains under an Ebola quarantine at her Princeton home disappeared overnight.
The fliers included Snyderman’s address and children’s names and were posted on community kiosks, which serve as a open forum for community announcements.
Snyderman has drawn criticism for violating a voluntary quarantine after returning from covering Ebola in Liberia. She has since apologized after the quarantine was made mandatory by the New Jersey Department of Health.
Princeton Administrator Bob Bruschi said Thursday that the town was made aware of the signs telling people to watch for Snyderman sightings, and would take no action to remove them, calling it a “a freedom of speech issue.”
When contacted on Friday, Bruschi said he was unaware they had disappeared.
Councilwoman Jo Butler said she was in town around 10 a.m. Friday at the corner of Witherspoon and Nassau streets and wanted to see the signs for herself, but realized they were gone.
Princeton resident Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC's chief medical correspondent, violated the voluntary isolation agreement she made after she was exposed to Ebola. (Courtesy of Peter Kramer | NBC)Nicole Mulvaney | Times of Trenton
“I went looking for them and didn’t see them,” Butler said. “It seems pretty hateful, and this isn’t a community that likes that sort of thing. Frankly I’m glad they’re gone.”
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN earlier this week Snyderman, 62, did not put the public in danger by breaking a voluntary isolation agreement she made after exposed to Ebola.
“If she was not sick, she was not putting others at risk,” Frieden said on CNN's “Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer." She remains symptom-free; the virus can only spread when someone exhibits symptoms.
The signs included phone numbers for Princeton's police department and the New Jersey health department, which ordered the mandatory quarantine for Snyderman and her crew last week.
Snyderman offered an apology Monday night for violating the agreement she made with the CDC, state and local officials.
"As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused," she said.
The mandatory quarantine is in effect until Oct. 22.
Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman with the NBC crew, was infected with the disease Oct. 1 and is recovering in Nebraska. He contracted Ebola when he was washing down a vehicle that had transported “bodies that perished from the disease,” Princeton Health Officer Jeffrey Grosser said Monday night.
Those exposed to the virus develop symptoms two days to three weeks after exposure, according to the CDC. It is transmitted through contact with blood and bodily fluids.
The Princeton police and health departments are handling the situation in Snyderman's neighborhood, Bruschi previously said.
"More important than the message the signs are giving is the fact that we have full cooperation and compliance with the quarantine," Bruschi said. "We have both the health department and our police department monitoring the matter and it is under control." Nicole Mulvaney may be reached at nmulvaney@njtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @NicoleMulvaney. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.
After more than 46 Haverford College students and three professors protested an invitation to Robert Birgeneau — former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley — to speak at the suburban Philadelphia school’s commencement, Birgeneau eventually bowed out.
Those opposed to Birgeneau’s presence were apparently angry over how he handled a 2011 incident at Berkeley involving the use of force by police at a student protest.
William Bowen, former president of Princeton University, reaches into his pocket to pull a commencement speech to graduates of Haverford College, Sunday, May 18, 2014. (Image source: AP/The Philadelphia Inquirer, Clem Murray)
Now enter former Princeton University President William Bowen — Birgeneau’s replacement — who stepped up to the microphone at Sunday’s ceremonies, ostensibly representing exactly what the protesters wanted.
Perhaps now they’re thinking…be careful what you wish for.
Because Bowen ripped into those who took issue with Birgeneau’s invite, calling them “immature” and “arrogant.”
“I’m disappointed that those who wanted to criticize Birgeneau’s handling of events at Berkeley, as they had every right to do, chose to send him such an intemperate list of demands,” said Bowen, noted the Philadelphia Inquirer. ”In my view, they should have encouraged him to come and engage in a serious discussion, not to come, tail between his legs, to respond to an indictment that a self-chosen jury had reached without hearing counter-arguments.”
Bowen even took to task graduating senior Michael Rushmore, one of the student leaders who took part in the protests, the Inquirer noted; Rushmore reportedly said Birgeneau’s bow-out was “a minor victory.”
“It represents nothing of the kind,” Bowen retorted during his address. “In keeping with the views of many others in higher education, I regard this outcome as a defeat, pure and simple, for Haverford — no victory for anyone who believes, as I think most of us do, in both openness to many points of view and mutual respect.”
Bowen didn’t leave Birgeneau off the hook completely, either. ”I think that Birgeneau, in turn, responded intemperately, failing to make proper allowance for the immature, and, yes, arrogant inclinations of some protestors,” Bowen added. “Aggravated as he had every right to be, I think he should be with us today.”
Princeton University freshman Tal Fortgang has kicked up a politically charged hornet’s nest by writing and publishing an essay about white male privilege in which he condemns those who have accused him of leaning on that privilege during his time at the Ivy League school.
“There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them,” Fortgang writes in the essay, “Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege,” which appeared in the university’s conservative Princeton Tory journal in April. He continues: “‘Check your privilege,’ the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year.”
The 20-year-old from New Rochelle, New York, who plans to major in history or politics and is a self-described “Scalia groupie,” adds, “I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.” The indignant missive to his “moral superiors” then launches into a proud history of his Jewish family: His grandfather fled Poland as a teen when the Nazis invaded, doing years of hard labor in Siberia before landing in America, starting a business, and meeting Fortgang’s grandmother, who survived both a death march and concentration camp in Poland before emigrating. His father, meanwhile, worked hard and made sacrifices for years so that his young son could have a chance in the world.
“That’s the problem with calling someone out for the ‘privilege’ which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are,” he writes. “Assuming they’ve benefitted from ‘power systems’ or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive.”
Fortgang’s essay is quickly turning him into a hero of the Right, with tweets of praise flowing in from a number of people, including GOP pundit Shoshana Weissmann, Commentary editor and New York Post columnist John Podhoretz and RedState.com editor Dan McLaughlin. Other self-identified conservative Twitter users have called his words “eloquent” and “bold.” The student-reportedCollege Fix, meanwhile, dubbed Fortgang’s story “powerful” in its article, “Meet the Poster Child for ‘White Privilege’ — Then Have Your Mind Blown.”
Others, though, were not as impressed. Some tweets noted that the student did not seem to understand the concept of privilege. In an opinion piece published in the Columbia Spectator, of Columbia University, students Dunni Oduyemi and Parul Guliani wrote that Fortgang’s piece inspired a “collective Eye roll.” They continue, “We decided that we had to respond to this op-ed, which completely misses the point and grossly misinterprets the meaning of privilege and the way it functions.” In addition, they note, “Recognizing the fact that white men benefit from the kinds of racist and sexist structures on which American society is built isn’t meant to diminish his accomplishments. It’s meant to remind us that white men don’t have an inherent predilection for success — the odds have just been stacked in their favor.”
Debby Irving, author of "Waking Up White," tells Yahoo Shine, "Especially in light of the news this week [regarding comments on race by Clippers owner Donald Sterling and rancher Cliven Bundy], I'm always grateful when someone explains how they understand — or in this case don't fully understand — privilege. So I'm grateful he put himself out there."
“Legal fact: In 1790, the first United States Congress determined that to be a naturalized citizen of this country you have to be white — and that was valid until 1952,” she says. “So [Fortgang] doesn’t even understand that laws allowed his family to come here and become citizens, and that the fact that they were seen as white conferred upon them an unearned advantage, by virtue of law.” And that doesn’t mean that they “didn’t work their butts off and that there weren't terrible things,” stresses Battalora, who spoke on these issues at the 15th annual White Privilege Conference in March, which founder Eddie Moore Jr. tells Yahoo Shine is "a space where we can have exactly this kind of conversation."
“The unfortunate part is that folks are trying to use these pithy statements (‘check your privilege’), but if you haven’t laid the groundwork, then it breeds this kind of anger, and the taking of things in a personal way,” Battalora notes. “It’s the wrong thing to demonize this gentleman, though. [His essay] just reveals how much work there is to be done.”
