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From: marty1@houem.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: What makes XXXX so Valuable?
Message-ID: <614@houem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Sep-86 18:38:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: houem.614
Posted: Wed Sep 10 18:38:41 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Sep-86 07:10:48 EDT
References: <963@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 37

In <963@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, rat@tybalt.caltech.edu.Caltech.Edu (Ray
Trent) says:

> In article <608@houem.UUCP> marty1@houem.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes:
> >[...]That's the remarkable thing
> >about natural selection.  It doesn't select features that are "Right,"
> >just features that perpetuate themselves. [...]
> 
> Exactly -- so, why bother talking about it (here, in this newsgroup,
> rather than net.origins)?

Because given a choice between a policy that's "Right" in some abstract
sense, and a policy that's likely to perpetuate the species or the
society, the individual, or some combination of the two, I tend toward
the pragmatic choice.

Being abstractly "Right" may be irrelevant because my own view, that
survival of the group is a primary "good," may itself be a result of
natural selection.  Subspecies or cultures in which people have that
belief are more likely to survive than those in which the survival of
the individual is the primary "good."  I am probably the product of
such a culture.

I guess I wandered somewhat far afield by indulging in iconoclasm.  My
main point has to do with making choices based on tangible value.  I
speculated that much of our ethics today evolved by means of that
criterion.

Specifically, I suggest that a society that holds human life "sacred"
survives because it thus establishes "not killing" as a policy, and
this leads to success because the people we don't kill are useful to
us.  But a fetus is not useful, and sacrificing tangible values to
preserve a fetus is not conducive to success.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	ihnp4!houem!marty1