Quote Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai View Post
Doesn't this sound familiar? Oh, right it's Venat. It's Emet-Selch and the Ascians Three of course as well, but let's not do us all an intellectual disservice and count her out. I don't even honestly see why this line of inquiry is even relevant, personally. You're just proving his point by entertaining it, when you openly support someone who's ended as many lives however virtual as she has. You've openly stated if she was real you'd help her kill them all.

shrugs
Yes that does sound very close to Venats situation, that’s the whole point.

Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
I don't really see how you can hold the value in the general and not the specific. The general view is nothing but an infinite set of specific cases, but when it comes to the specific case, suddenly the imperative shifts?
No you’ve misunderstood. The general view is distinct and one can in fact further the aims of the general view by violating the individual. We do this with deer all the time, culling the population in order to protect the ability of the species in general from collapsing due to overeating. The potential for life oftentimes runs counter to the protection of individual life, which wouldn’t work if they just collapse into each other no?

Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
I recognize this may sound odd, but for what reason is the idea of the potential of life somehow more important than the actual potential of an actual life? The existence of a single life is as unique and special to the universe as the existence of life itself. Is it just a utilitarian numbers game? If so, surely the math in both cases adds up the same - There is more potential life in the universe than the potential life of the Ancients, and there is more potential life in a child than the remaining life of a mother. Does the scale, the gulf of the difference, just feel more appropriate for you to make that choice?
It is very much not a utilitarian numbers game, as shown by the very core of the thing we are arguing against. Let me once again use an example. Imagine grizzled bears are endangered and our protagonist holds that they should be protected and their species maintained. Now this selfsame person finds themself in a situation, not at all their fault, where they are about to be mauled by a grizzly. Killing the grizzly won’t permanently damn the population but it would kill that individual life. I can’t assume either that my killing will somehow lead to more life as that is outside of my control, all I can say is I’m reducing the number of lives by one. By your thinking, if the person holds that the potential for grizzly’s at all to exist is worthy of protecting, then because that is just an “infinite set of specific cases” they shouldn’t kill the grizzly and thus would die? Does that seem logical and true to you?

Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
Following this, you outline scenarios where suffering is forcibly incurred in order to bear the burden of propagating life. So yes, a person certainly doesn't need to be pro-life in order to believe that drastic action inducing suffering and burden for the purposes of protecting life - But in the same way, I fail to see how this is actually a logically or morally consistent position. You may say it's a pragmatic position in certain regards, but that doesn't make it morally sound.
It all leads back to valuing the potential for life in general to exist vs the potential for specific life to exist. In inter generational ethics there’s the concept of a threshold, a point that current generations must reach in order to be just to those not yet born. The threshold would not require banning abortions if I believe it important to maintain the potential for life, as the potential for life is needed for a basic just society, whereas forcing a pregnant parent to die for their child is very much not.

Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
Frankly, yes. Again, the general is just a set of the specific. To force someone to effectively be a human shield to allow life to continue but not do the same in the case of a birth is completely inconsistent.
You say this but haven’t justified it. Why are they the same? The examples I posted I think show a distinction between the two. How would you reconcile that if they are, as you say, the same?

Quote Originally Posted by Veloran View Post
Why should the obligation, forced, to give up one's life for another be incurred differentially? I assume that in asking the question you already have your own response for the comparison, so what do you think?
Because of the reasons for it! A person forced to die for an evil cause is an evil act is evil. A person forced to die for a defensible cause can be just and defensible. Do you think conscription by the Allies in WW2 was an evil act?