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Here is part I of an intellectual autobiography Daniel C. Dennett is writing. I find it extremely interesting, if only for the glimpse of what it was like to be a talented and dedicated student of philosophy at Harvard and then Oxford in the 1960s.

The thesis was duly typed up in triplicate and handed in (by a professional typist, back in those days before word-processing). I anxiously awaited the day when Quine and young Charles Parsons, my examiners, would let me know what they made of it. Quine showed up with maybe half a dozen single-spaced pages of comments. I knew at that moment that I was going to be a philosopher.

And, yes, the slogan is “I drink, therefore I am.”

I just received a flyer advertising Laurence Paul Hemming’s visit to USU next Wednesday, September 16th, at 4 pm. I don’t have the flyer with me just now, so perhaps Kleiner can supply the place and any other details. He is a very accomplished thinker on continental philosophy and Christianity, and gave a very impressive talk on campus last year, from what I hear. More info about him here. Definitely a talk you should attend, whatever your own beliefs.

I thought I would post a few of Thomson’s most compelling arguments from her article “A Defense of Abortion” here (we are covering this in Social Ethics) for possible discussion:

Thomson takes a moderate view on abortion, arguing that is permissible in some cases but impermissible in others.  She begins by, surprisingly, granting the pro-life view that personhood begins at conception.  Most pro-lifers think that once you grant that point, the matter is settled.  But Thomson tries to show that it is not, that the right to life just means you have the right to not be unjustly killed.

She relies heavily on analogies, and I will present two here:

Analogy 1: Imagine you are asleep, and while you are asleep you are hooked up to a famous violinist who can only be kept alive (for whatever reason) if he is hooked up to you.  Obviously you did not consent to the violinist using your body, but disconnecting yourself from him would lead to his death.  Thomson points out that, in this case, while it would be really really nice of you to remain hooked up to the violinist, no one would demand that you remain hooked up.  In other words, it would be morally permissible to disconnect yourself from him.

Thomson is banking that most of us would agree on this, and uses this example to show that abortion – even if the unborn has a right to life – would be morally permissible in cases where the person did not consent to the unborn using their body to live (say, rape).

Analogy 2:  IF it is the case that the morality of abortion hinges on whether or not the woman has consented to the unborn using her body (example 1 is supposed to show this), then what about this? – Imagine you own a home and install a top of the line alarm system to protect yourself from burglars.  No alarm system is 100%, but say yours 99.8% effective.  You dutifully arm the system every time you leave the home, lock the doors, etc.  Of course, a burglar might still enter your home.  But no one, Thomson suggests, would think that you have consented to the burglar being in your home just because you left your house unattended.  After all, what more precautions could you have reasonably taken?

What does this have to do with abortion?  Thomson argues that this analogy shows that abortion is also morally permissible in cases of failed contraception.  The pill is (or can be if taken properly) 99.8% effective.  By almost any measure that is a “reasonable precaution” and provides evidence of a refusal of consent for the “burglar” (sperm) to invade your “home” (egg).

A conversation I had with my 3 year old daughter this evening while sitting under a tree looking at acorns.

Madeline: What do you call this?

Dad: It is a seed.

Mads: I like to call it a baby tree, because it will grow up to be a big tree just like this one [gesturing to the large tree we are sitting under].

Dad: Why do you say that?

Mads: Because that is what they do.  Big trees used to be baby trees just like this seed, and then they grow up and are big. [translation: Because it is in their nature to actualize their telos]

Conclusion: my 3 year old daughter already apprehends a basic truth about her world (that entities in the world have teleological striving) that thick-headed materialists still don’t get.

Madeline 1.  Materialists 0.

By the way, Curious George even knows this – read “Curious George Plants a Seed”.  The synopsis:

Curious George watches Jumpy the squirrel bury an acorn in the yard. Upon learning that Jumpy is storing food for later, George decides to do the same. The man with the yellow hat comes home to find the kitchen empty and its contents buried in the yard! It’s time to teach George about what things grow and what don’t. George finally gets it right when he grows a beautiful sunflower from a seed.

Silly as it might sound, this story presents Aristotle’s distinction between things that have a nature (an internal principle of change) and artefacts (things that have an external principle of change) in a way that is understandable for toddlers.

Keep in mind, I’ve been a stay-at-home Dad for 4 months, so I am still transitioning from Elmolectual to intellectual.  Bear with me.