Thank you for posting this. I’ve desperately been looking for a way to put what’s happening to us women into perspective for my boyfriend. We both don’t like or want ANY abortions to happen. We both agree the mother’s life MUST come first because logically, if there’s no mother then there’s no baby. However, because of his hardcore Christian beliefs, he cannot bring himself to oppose the current laws stripping me of my right to choose. He says he trusts ME personally, but clearly he can’t bring himself to trust all women. And he believes the lives of fetuses/unborn babies are MORE important than ANY suffering the mother could ensure aside from something that threatens her life or in the case of R@pe and Inc3st. What I’m trying to show him is that since I, as the woman/mother, am the ONLY being with a physical connection to the fetus, that I am the ONLY person who could decide if this was going to be detrimental to my mental, emotional, and physical health. Like he would hands down believe a doctor but not the human who feels the baby and the effects of the baby inside her. When my mom was having her strokes, I BEGGED the doctors to believe us and they ignored me. Just because nothing showed up on the CT, they doubled down on treating my mom like she was some senile foreigner (opposed to treating her like then intelligent medical professional she was). My mom was a Pediatric Oncology RN for 40 years and when she suddenly lost her ability to SEE and STAND, she told me, “take me to the hospital-I am having a stroke!” For over 36 hours they ignored my pleas for an MRI. The whole time she’s vomiting stomach bile every hour and cannot even sit up straight without falling to her left side. They were preparing to discharge her with the diagnosis of a MIGRAINE. Finally, after getting the head of the hospital involved, they FINALLY did the MRI I’d been screaming about. Sure enough, she falls unconscious whilst getting the scan and the MRI shows she’s having a MASSIVE Right Cerebellar Stroke. ANY DOCTOR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN TO DO THE MRI. But because I was being so vocal and because my mom was just some old immigrant with a heavy accent, they treated us like we were crazy and didn’t know what we were talking about. My mom went from a mountain climbing, jewelry making, child whispering, life saving HERO blackbelt… to a brain damaged triplegic. Both of our lives ended that day because now I alone take care of her. She cannot speak, stand, go to the potty (diapers), brush her own teeth… NOTHING…. ALL BECAUSE NO ONE BELIEVED WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO HER WAS LIFE THREATENING. Doctors can only go so far, then comes autonomy and self awareness. So even though my boyfriend assures me that he would believe ME no matter what, come what may… he STILL cannot bring himself to oppose the laws of FORCE against us women right now. My best guess is because he’s an intelligent, Christian, straight, white male whose NEVER been subjected to adversity due to how he was born (gender, race, etc.). And since we pretty much agree on when it’s necessary to have an abortion, I just need to show him why it’s SO WRONG to force a woman to do ANYTHING with her body that she doesn’t want to do. Like you said in your video, a person’s right to life shouldn’t impose on another person’s body. So after hearing the Violinist argument, I got an idea. I first tried to explain it to him as if he got a girl pregnant, he would have to tie his penis in a knot for 9 months. He called my example hyperbole because as a white male, he cannot even FATHOM such an atrocity forced against him. But like the hotel waiver idea, what if men signed a contract before every single time they penetrated a woman’s vagina, that there’d be a chance he could end up stuck together with the women by their privates? Have you ever seen dogs mate? Sometimes, the male’s penis gets so swollen in the process that he literally gets stuck inside her. They end up walking butt to butt (usually the boy walking backwards cuz the girl dog is so fed up with his shit at this point LOL). So what if, in the case of pregnancy, men were forced to stay attached to the woman for 9 months until the baby was ready to come out UNLESS they had an abortion? I am SO SICK of men having the right to decide what happens to our bodies when they’d NEVER be subjected to anything of the sort nor will they EVER know what it’s like to bear children. When I tried to explain it with tying his penis in a knot for 9 months (at first I went ahead and chopped the whole thing off LOL), my idea was to show just how detrimental a pregnancy can be to a woman’s body and mind. Like tying your penis in a knot for 9 months, a pregnancy can cause irreversible damage to a woman’s brain and body, it can devalue a woman’s sexuality and attractiveness to her partner(s), and it can 100% KILL YOU! That’s why I went with chopping it off at first because I was thinking along the lines of blood loss. Because even with the knot example, the only threat to the man’s life would be by his own hand (which is 100% possible for the woman as well). But after seeing this video, I feel using the example of having to remain attached to the woman for 9 months will do a better job at putting it into perspective for him. At least I freaking hope so. I just need him to understand WHY it’s so horrible to force that upon a woman. He doesn’t admit it, but he HAS TO believe women have abortions Willy Nilly if he doesn’t trust the very beings that are physically connected to the baby. I even asked him, “do you think GOD made the wrong choice?? Should it be YOU bearing children??” *sigh* it’s SO frustrating. I don’t need him to agree with me, I just need him to understand what this law of force does to us women. How it is NEVER right to force ANYONE to do ANYTHING they don’t want to do with their bodies. So, fingers crossed! THANK YOU for posting this!!!
In the case of abortion, you have two moral imperatives in direct conflict: the right to life (the zygote/foetus/embryo/baby, delete for preference - "the child") vs the right to bodily autonomy (the mother). In fact, the latter right also applies to "the child". When two moral imperatives clash, you have to sort them into a hierarchy - you have to prioritise them. The right to life supersedes the right to bodily autonomy. You cannot have bodily autonomy if you are dead. You may not secure your bodily autonomy at the cost of another's life (? - see below). This is why the "violinist argument" is a failure as a "pro-choice" argument. How I came to be hooked-up to the violinist such that they would die if I unhooked myself is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether or not it was voluntary or involuntary. What matters is that I *am* hooked-up to them and if I unhook myself, they will die. That would be murder. In the case of pregnancy and in the hypothetical of the "violinist argument", bodily autonomy is only being infringed to the extent of temporary inconvenience and manageable health risk. Neither of these downsides weigh heavily enough on the scales to justify murder. In the case of Fritzl's cellar, bodily autonomy is being infringed to the extent of s**ual assault, imprisonment and slavery. Would murder be justified? Each of us must wrestle with our conscience, and the religious among us must also look to their faith, to answer that question. No such agonising is required in the case of abortion. Of course, the foregoing assumes that it is taken for granted that "the child" - at whatever stage of development - is both human and alive. Whether or not one shares that assumption is a different and earlier stage in the debate. This is another failure of the "violinist argument". The violinist is the analogous counterpart of "the child", yet the "violinist argument" implicitly accepts without debate that the violinist is both human and alive. A key pro-choice argument has been omitted from the analogy, i.e. that "the child" is neither human nor alive - depending on their stage of development (which varies depending on the pro-choice advocate). By choosing to formulate a thought-experiment in which the proxy for "the child" is both human and alive by even the most rigorous pro-choice standards, a point is being conceded to the pro-life position. It is also interesting that the proxy for "the child" is not just "the man on the Clapham omnibus" but is instead a highly esteemed musical virtuoso, an individual acclaimed and valued by society. This is either a subconscious admission that all of the pre-born are morally valuable, or a (hopefully) accidental assertion by implication of logic that only those who are considered valuable by society are worthy of life; specifically in the case of "the child", their moral value is entirely dependent on the subjective determination of the mother, essentially on the shifting basis of her mood. Only if she considers "the child" morally valuable does it attain that status. Given that the ineptly formulated thought-experiment has already conceded by analogy that "the child" is both human and alive, the subsequent moral contingency and relativism applied to the value of human life is, at the societal level, fascistic.
My argument is you shouldn't be allowed to kill the violinist either because it would violate our sense of justice. If say the Society of music lovers hooked you up to the violinist whom had no intention of being hooked up to you and they left without ever being caught it would appear that to kill the violinist you'd honestly have to punish him for a crime he had nothing to do with.
Interesting -- when presenting the Violinist case, Thomson takes for granted the claim that her reader will think it's outrageous that you be forced to remain attached. So this -- and other responses I've seen -- does go some distance in challenging Thomson's assumption (about the reader's response). Does the fact that they are already attached make a difference? For example, suppose the victim awoke moments before being hooked up. Would it be permissible to resist the process at that point (i.e., prior to being attached)? (If so, then this may suggest a moral distinction between withholding life-saving care and withdrawing life-saving care.)
@@bioethicsondemand6258 Not really because if the Society Of Music Lovers as they would be doing used force on both parties and forced them into that situation they clearly are the coercive party and wither both woman and violinist woke up a minute before the situation happened they'd still be innocent
@@bioethicsondemand6258, first I want to thank you for your videos. This is really very accessible and informative introductory material - as far as I can tell ;-) That said, I also think you shouldn't be allowed to kill the violinist either. And yes, I think this is because of the fact that you are already connected (but it is permissible to resist the process before you are connected because the violinist has no positive right to use your kidneys) and so the principle of double effect comes into play. For a thorough defense of this position I recommend David S. Oderberg, „Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist approach“ (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), p. 22ff and for a critique of the Thomson Argument from a Pro-Choice perspective Kate Greasley, „Arguments about Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law“, Oxford University Press 2017, p. 36ff
@@jogo5660 Thank you! I tend to agree about the violinist: At the very least it seems as though you'd be permitted to resist the process in cases where you haven't been attached to the violinist yet. Regarding Double Effect, at some point, I am planning to do a short (5 min) video on that to supplement my discussion of Pruss's essay. As it turned out, I mentioned in that video that Pruss thinks self-defense may not apply as a justification for abortion (even where a mother's life is put at risk by continued pregnancy). But I received a lot of questions on that point, many of which may be addressed by Double Effect (e.g., *abortion* is not permitted in those cases, but a surgery to save the mother's life may be permitted even in cases where fetal death is a foreseeable, but unintended consequence of that surgery). And excellent suggestions -- I've heard many great things about Kate Greasley's book (it's actually sitting at the top of my "to read" list for summer). Thanks again!
@@bioethicsondemand6258, thank you for your reply! I think Alex Pruss is right (I do not know him in person but I had an email discussion with him a few years ago where I defended the Classical Natural Law approach on sexual ethics against some criticisms he leveled against it in his book "One Body". This was very illuminating. I think Alex is one of the brightest minds I know of and I am very grateful that he took the time to have this discussion). I think Greasley successfully shows that abortion (the intentional and direct killing of the unborn) is not even permitted when the life of the mother is at stake (on the presumption that a fetus is a person). I think she also successfully shows that Finnis, who argues on the basis of PDE that it is permissible to unplug the violinist but not to have an abortion, is mistaken. In my opinion She really does an excellent job in analyzing the Violinist from a perspective of law but her philosophical views concerning personhood do not stand scrutiny and it seems she misunderstands the Pro-Life conception of personhood, too (I have not yet completed reading her book but this was apparent to me from her dialog with Christopher Kaczor). Here are two statements from her book which I would never have expected from a woman who defends abortion: "If the lives are pitted against each other, why should the third party not choose life of the fetus [over the mother] and act instead of its behalf. Brute hiring power cannot be the tiebreak. Moreover if there is nothing to choose between them at all, and if, all other things considered equal, it is better to allow death than to kill, surely the practitioner should sooner allow the woman to die, thus saving the fetus (where that is possible), than kill the fetus to save the woman." "All in all this brings us to the inescapable conclusion that, on the presumption that a fetus is a person and that abortion is killing, a simple therapeutic abortion to save the life of the pregnant woman fails to meet the conditions for the defense, let alone abortion for any less urgent reason, such as temporary physical discomfort, derailment of life plans, or emotional turmoil." I also recommend "The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect" by Philippa Foot. She argues that there is only one exception of PDE and in this one case she thinks abortion is permissible. She thinks when the fetus dies no matter what (and you know this for certain) and the woman could be saved by directly killing the fetus this is permissible. Although I think she is mistaken to accept the underlying principle even if one accepts Foot´s exception there is only one case where abortion seems to be permissible. EDIT: It seems I did not remember this point correctly. If I understand her correctly she thinks it is also permissible to "choose" a victim if otherwise both people die. Personally I think on the basis of PDE only a surgery which does not directly attack the fetus to save the mother's life may be permitted where fetal death is a foreseeable, but unintended consequence of that surgery. I am looking forward to your video on this discussion! Keep up the good work :-) PS: Sorry for my English. I am from Germany and not a native speaker (and not even a philosopher ;-) )
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you. Great instructor.
Thank you for posting this. I’ve desperately been looking for a way to put what’s happening to us women into perspective for my boyfriend. We both don’t like or want ANY abortions to happen. We both agree the mother’s life MUST come first because logically, if there’s no mother then there’s no baby. However, because of his hardcore Christian beliefs, he cannot bring himself to oppose the current laws stripping me of my right to choose. He says he trusts ME personally, but clearly he can’t bring himself to trust all women. And he believes the lives of fetuses/unborn babies are MORE important than ANY suffering the mother could ensure aside from something that threatens her life or in the case of R@pe and Inc3st. What I’m trying to show him is that since I, as the woman/mother, am the ONLY being with a physical connection to the fetus, that I am the ONLY person who could decide if this was going to be detrimental to my mental, emotional, and physical health. Like he would hands down believe a doctor but not the human who feels the baby and the effects of the baby inside her. When my mom was having her strokes, I BEGGED the doctors to believe us and they ignored me. Just because nothing showed up on the CT, they doubled down on treating my mom like she was some senile foreigner (opposed to treating her like then intelligent medical professional she was). My mom was a Pediatric Oncology RN for 40 years and when she suddenly lost her ability to SEE and STAND, she told me, “take me to the hospital-I am having a stroke!” For over 36 hours they ignored my pleas for an MRI. The whole time she’s vomiting stomach bile every hour and cannot even sit up straight without falling to her left side. They were preparing to discharge her with the diagnosis of a MIGRAINE. Finally, after getting the head of the hospital involved, they FINALLY did the MRI I’d been screaming about. Sure enough, she falls unconscious whilst getting the scan and the MRI shows she’s having a MASSIVE Right Cerebellar Stroke. ANY DOCTOR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN TO DO THE MRI. But because I was being so vocal and because my mom was just some old immigrant with a heavy accent, they treated us like we were crazy and didn’t know what we were talking about. My mom went from a mountain climbing, jewelry making, child whispering, life saving HERO blackbelt… to a brain damaged triplegic. Both of our lives ended that day because now I alone take care of her. She cannot speak, stand, go to the potty (diapers), brush her own teeth… NOTHING…. ALL BECAUSE NO ONE BELIEVED WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO HER WAS LIFE THREATENING. Doctors can only go so far, then comes autonomy and self awareness.
So even though my boyfriend assures me that he would believe ME no matter what, come what may… he STILL cannot bring himself to oppose the laws of FORCE against us women right now. My best guess is because he’s an intelligent, Christian, straight, white male whose NEVER been subjected to adversity due to how he was born (gender, race, etc.). And since we pretty much agree on when it’s necessary to have an abortion, I just need to show him why it’s SO WRONG to force a woman to do ANYTHING with her body that she doesn’t want to do. Like you said in your video, a person’s right to life shouldn’t impose on another person’s body. So after hearing the Violinist argument, I got an idea. I first tried to explain it to him as if he got a girl pregnant, he would have to tie his penis in a knot for 9 months. He called my example hyperbole because as a white male, he cannot even FATHOM such an atrocity forced against him. But like the hotel waiver idea, what if men signed a contract before every single time they penetrated a woman’s vagina, that there’d be a chance he could end up stuck together with the women by their privates? Have you ever seen dogs mate? Sometimes, the male’s penis gets so swollen in the process that he literally gets stuck inside her. They end up walking butt to butt (usually the boy walking backwards cuz the girl dog is so fed up with his shit at this point LOL). So what if, in the case of pregnancy, men were forced to stay attached to the woman for 9 months until the baby was ready to come out UNLESS they had an abortion? I am SO SICK of men having the right to decide what happens to our bodies when they’d NEVER be subjected to anything of the sort nor will they EVER know what it’s like to bear children. When I tried to explain it with tying his penis in a knot for 9 months (at first I went ahead and chopped the whole thing off LOL), my idea was to show just how detrimental a pregnancy can be to a woman’s body and mind. Like tying your penis in a knot for 9 months, a pregnancy can cause irreversible damage to a woman’s brain and body, it can devalue a woman’s sexuality and attractiveness to her partner(s), and it can 100% KILL YOU! That’s why I went with chopping it off at first because I was thinking along the lines of blood loss. Because even with the knot example, the only threat to the man’s life would be by his own hand (which is 100% possible for the woman as well). But after seeing this video, I feel using the example of having to remain attached to the woman for 9 months will do a better job at putting it into perspective for him. At least I freaking hope so. I just need him to understand WHY it’s so horrible to force that upon a woman. He doesn’t admit it, but he HAS TO believe women have abortions Willy Nilly if he doesn’t trust the very beings that are physically connected to the baby. I even asked him, “do you think GOD made the wrong choice?? Should it be YOU bearing children??” *sigh* it’s SO frustrating. I don’t need him to agree with me, I just need him to understand what this law of force does to us women. How it is NEVER right to force ANYONE to do ANYTHING they don’t want to do with their bodies. So, fingers crossed! THANK YOU for posting this!!!
What is “person” shorthand for? Developmental level I suppose.
nice videos where do you teach?
In the case of abortion, you have two moral imperatives in direct conflict: the right to life (the zygote/foetus/embryo/baby, delete for preference - "the child") vs the right to bodily autonomy (the mother). In fact, the latter right also applies to "the child".
When two moral imperatives clash, you have to sort them into a hierarchy - you have to prioritise them. The right to life supersedes the right to bodily autonomy. You cannot have bodily autonomy if you are dead. You may not secure your bodily autonomy at the cost of another's life (? - see below).
This is why the "violinist argument" is a failure as a "pro-choice" argument. How I came to be hooked-up to the violinist such that they would die if I unhooked myself is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether or not it was voluntary or involuntary. What matters is that I *am* hooked-up to them and if I unhook myself, they will die. That would be murder.
In the case of pregnancy and in the hypothetical of the "violinist argument", bodily autonomy is only being infringed to the extent of temporary inconvenience and manageable health risk. Neither of these downsides weigh heavily enough on the scales to justify murder.
In the case of Fritzl's cellar, bodily autonomy is being infringed to the extent of s**ual assault, imprisonment and slavery. Would murder be justified? Each of us must wrestle with our conscience, and the religious among us must also look to their faith, to answer that question.
No such agonising is required in the case of abortion.
Of course, the foregoing assumes that it is taken for granted that "the child" - at whatever stage of development - is both human and alive. Whether or not one shares that assumption is a different and earlier stage in the debate.
This is another failure of the "violinist argument". The violinist is the analogous counterpart of "the child", yet the "violinist argument" implicitly accepts without debate that the violinist is both human and alive. A key pro-choice argument has been omitted from the analogy, i.e. that "the child" is neither human nor alive - depending on their stage of development (which varies depending on the pro-choice advocate). By choosing to formulate a thought-experiment in which the proxy for "the child" is both human and alive by even the most rigorous pro-choice standards, a point is being conceded to the pro-life position.
It is also interesting that the proxy for "the child" is not just "the man on the Clapham omnibus" but is instead a highly esteemed musical virtuoso, an individual acclaimed and valued by society. This is either a subconscious admission that all of the pre-born are morally valuable, or a (hopefully) accidental assertion by implication of logic that only those who are considered valuable by society are worthy of life; specifically in the case of "the child", their moral value is entirely dependent on the subjective determination of the mother, essentially on the shifting basis of her mood. Only if she considers "the child" morally valuable does it attain that status.
Given that the ineptly formulated thought-experiment has already conceded by analogy that "the child" is both human and alive, the subsequent moral contingency and relativism applied to the value of human life is, at the societal level, fascistic.
My argument is you shouldn't be allowed to kill the violinist either because it would violate our sense of justice. If say the Society of music lovers hooked you up to the violinist whom had no intention of being hooked up to you and they left without ever being caught it would appear that to kill the violinist you'd honestly have to punish him for a crime he had nothing to do with.
Interesting -- when presenting the Violinist case, Thomson takes for granted the claim that her reader will think it's outrageous that you be forced to remain attached. So this -- and other responses I've seen -- does go some distance in challenging Thomson's assumption (about the reader's response).
Does the fact that they are already attached make a difference? For example, suppose the victim awoke moments before being hooked up. Would it be permissible to resist the process at that point (i.e., prior to being attached)?
(If so, then this may suggest a moral distinction between withholding life-saving care and withdrawing life-saving care.)
@@bioethicsondemand6258 Not really because if the Society Of Music Lovers as they would be doing used force on both parties and forced them into that situation they clearly are the coercive party and wither both woman and violinist woke up a minute before the situation happened they'd still be innocent
@@bioethicsondemand6258, first I want to thank you for your videos. This is really very accessible and informative introductory material - as far as I can tell ;-) That said, I also think you shouldn't be allowed to kill the violinist either. And yes, I think this is because of the fact that you are already connected (but it is permissible to resist the process before you are connected because the violinist has no positive right to use your kidneys) and so the principle of double effect comes into play. For a thorough defense of this position I recommend David S. Oderberg, „Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist approach“ (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), p. 22ff and for a critique of the Thomson Argument from a Pro-Choice perspective Kate Greasley, „Arguments about Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law“, Oxford University Press 2017, p. 36ff
@@jogo5660 Thank you!
I tend to agree about the violinist: At the very least it seems as though you'd be permitted to resist the process in cases where you haven't been attached to the violinist yet. Regarding Double Effect, at some point, I am planning to do a short (5 min) video on that to supplement my discussion of Pruss's essay. As it turned out, I mentioned in that video that Pruss thinks self-defense may not apply as a justification for abortion (even where a mother's life is put at risk by continued pregnancy). But I received a lot of questions on that point, many of which may be addressed by Double Effect (e.g., *abortion* is not permitted in those cases, but a surgery to save the mother's life may be permitted even in cases where fetal death is a foreseeable, but unintended consequence of that surgery).
And excellent suggestions -- I've heard many great things about Kate Greasley's book (it's actually sitting at the top of my "to read" list for summer). Thanks again!
@@bioethicsondemand6258, thank you for your reply! I think Alex Pruss is right (I do not know him in person but I had an email discussion with him a few years ago where I defended the Classical Natural Law approach on sexual ethics against some criticisms he leveled against it in his book "One Body". This was very illuminating. I think Alex is one of the brightest minds I know of and I am very grateful that he took the time to have this discussion).
I think Greasley successfully shows that abortion (the intentional and direct killing of the unborn) is not even permitted when the life of the mother is at stake (on the presumption that a fetus is a person). I think she also successfully shows that Finnis, who argues on the basis of PDE that it is permissible to unplug the violinist but not to have an abortion, is mistaken. In my opinion She really does an excellent job in analyzing the Violinist from a perspective of law but her philosophical views concerning personhood do not stand scrutiny and it seems she misunderstands the Pro-Life conception of personhood, too (I have not yet completed reading her book but this was apparent to me from her dialog with Christopher Kaczor).
Here are two statements from her book which I would never have expected from a woman who defends abortion:
"If the lives are pitted against each other, why should the third party not choose life of the fetus [over the mother] and act instead of its behalf. Brute hiring power cannot be the tiebreak. Moreover if there is nothing to choose between them at all, and if, all other things considered equal, it is better to allow death than to kill, surely the practitioner should sooner allow the woman to die, thus saving the fetus (where that is possible), than kill the fetus to save the woman."
"All in all this brings us to the inescapable conclusion that, on the presumption that a fetus is a person and that abortion is killing, a simple therapeutic abortion to save the life of the pregnant woman fails to meet the conditions for the defense, let alone abortion for any less urgent reason, such as temporary physical discomfort, derailment of life plans, or emotional turmoil."
I also recommend "The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect" by Philippa Foot. She argues that there is only one exception of PDE and in this one case she thinks abortion is permissible. She thinks when the fetus dies no matter what (and you know this for certain) and the woman could be saved by directly killing the fetus this is permissible. Although I think she is mistaken to accept the underlying principle even if one accepts Foot´s exception there is only one case where abortion seems to be permissible. EDIT: It seems I did not remember this point correctly. If I understand her correctly she thinks it is also permissible to "choose" a victim if otherwise both people die.
Personally I think on the basis of PDE only a surgery which does not directly attack the fetus to save the mother's life may be permitted where fetal death is a foreseeable, but unintended consequence of that surgery.
I am looking forward to your video on this discussion! Keep up the good work :-)
PS: Sorry for my English. I am from Germany and not a native speaker (and not even a philosopher ;-) )