A Very Long Analysis of the Arguments Related to the Abortion Debate

[QuickSilver]

@Max_S

I don’t see the relevence of argument a) because I think most pro-life positions would prefer to save the mother if given an immediate choice between the baby and the mother (unless the mother in her right mind asked to save the baby instead). The rationale behind this is rather straightforward. Society has invested at least eleven years into the mother; society has invested at most ten months in the baby; the mother can often make more babies; the mother is more useful to society now while the baby will need time and resources before it can give back to society.

Tired of operating on the extremes. Extremes are a tiny percentage of abortion cases. A crass statement was made about the human body being a “meat sack”, i.e. a vessel for the production of another “meat sack”. This renders the woman’s body to little more than cattle. I object to this like of reason. A woman must have autonomy and the right to choose whether she wishes to be a mother and when. Pro-life positions are wrong.

@Max_S

Even Catholics have let up on saying the babies go to limbo, so long as the mother intended on baptizing them.

Do every person who lost a child and believed they were sent for eternity to limbo a huge favor and don’t let’s pretend that the church did this finally out of some sense of benevolence and empathy for the grieving parent(s).

@Max_S

Argument b) is countered if one assigns culpability for pregnancy during sex, which is the traditional view. Adapted to your examples, if you push the girl in the lake, you have a duty to pull her out; if you stab her in the kidneys, you are on the hook for the hospital bill and can serve time for manslaughter if she dies. The idea is that by having sex, you created an innocent person who needs your body to survive. Therefore your body is forfeit, to the extent necessary to sustain the baby.

~Max

Consensual sex is not a crime and you do not forfeit control of your body because you choose to have consensual sex. The others circumstances you described are considered crimes. We deal with different things in different ways. Conflating them does not improve your argument in any way that I recognize.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Max_S

Your “level three intrusion” does not account for the fact that pregnancy is a consequence of having sex. Maybe you did account for this in saying the fetus was unwanted. But in that case, would it still be a “level three intrusion” if the fetus was conceived during consensual, unprotected sex?

~Max

I don’t care. Even an invited guest becomes a trespasser when the host wants the guest gone.

[Scylla]

@QuickSilver

Tired of operating on the extremes. Extremes are a tiny percentage of abortion cases. A crass statement was made about the human body being a “meat sack”, i.e. a vessel for the production of another “meat sack”.

That is a misrepresentation of my position. My body is a meat sack, too and it can’t produce another meat sack. “Meat sack” is actually a rather generous term, when you consider this mildly pressurized bag of fluid, bile, excrement and meat with it’s ridiculous internal supports that leave all the dangling soft parts flapping around.

There are few things that I am absolutely sure of. One of those is a terrible dark secret, that can only be learned at the cost of almost inconceivable pain, but that thing is that you are not your body. You are something else. There is no mysticism in that statement, no positing of a soul, but that. Is. A. Fact.

Your body works very hard to convince you that you are it, so that you will serve it. It has very powerful and persuasive tools to convince you. If by discipline or by accident you come to circumstances where you cannot or will not heed it’s most strident attempts to coerce you, than you will realize you are not your body. Afterwards you can make it do anything you want.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that most people never learn this.

So yeah, it’s a “meat sack.”

This renders the woman’s body to little more than cattle. I object to this like of reason. A woman must have autonomy and the right to choose whether she wishes to be a mother and when.

It’s still cattle, but it is her cow.

Pro-life positions are wrong.

That’s my current thinking, too but not for anything you said in this post. I think all our talk about the sanctity and value of human life is shown to be a sham consistently by our actions, we let people die or be killed needlessly for all kinds of stupid reasons, pay nothing but lip service to our stated values. If we treat lives that are wanted and loved and nurtured and productive so callously, how can insist someone make sacrifices against their will to bring forth a life nobody wants?

That’s why I am pro choice.

[Scylla]

@Bryan_Ekers

I don’t care. Even an invited guest becomes a trespasser when the host wants the guest gone.

I’m told it still frowned upon to cut your guest up into little pieces if they don’t get hint.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Scylla

There are few things that I am absolutely sure of. One of those is a terrible dark secret, that can only be learned at the cost of almost inconceivable pain, but that thing is that you are not your body. You are something else. There is no mysticism in that statement, no positing of a soul, but that. Is. A. Fact.

What are you, then, if not your body? Because mysticism is fine and all, but your denial that your claim is mysticism, and your emphasized statement that it’s a fact, seems pretty dubious to me.

[Scylla]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

What are you, then, if not your body? Because mysticism is fine and all, but your denial that your claim is mysticism, and your emphasized statement that it’s a fact, seems pretty dubious to me.

That I don’t know. I suspect you are something like an executive program in the software that runs your brain, and produces consciousness and your sense of self. I suspect it evolved because imagination and predictive cognition requires models that need to be distinguished from reality, as well as empathy for other entities in order to predict their behavior. Those functions necessitate knowledge of self. This knowledge of self needs to sit in the executive function and have broad power in order to make use of its predictive and empathic capacity. In order to rein in this power and coerce it to serve the body’s ends the body produces pain, lust, hunger, thirst, etc.

Most people learn early on to accept and follow these signals, and don’t distinguish them from their true self. They don’t care, don’t bother, don’t know, and their will their self does nothing more than serve their body.

[GIGObuster]

@Scylla

I’m told it still frowned upon to cut your guest up into little pieces if they don’t get hint.

That “guest” is not the same at all to an actual guest that already is a member of the society. A guest is “a person who is invited to visit the home of or take part in a function organized by another”.

[Scylla]

@GIGObuster

That “guest” is not the same at all to an actual guest that already is a member of the society. A guest is “a person who is invited to visit the home of or take part in a function organized by another”.

Ekers said “guest.”

[GIGObuster]

@Scylla

Ekers said “guest.”

And you replied with a followup that made no sense.

[SamuelA]

@Scylla

What information? How much? What kind?

You don’t understand the model.

I am saying there is a difference between 2 example patients.

Patient A is a human fetus, 8 weeks old. It is currently alive in it’s mother. It’s never manipulated it’s environment and observed the results, and thus the amount it can realistically have learned is little to nothing. It also is incapable of exhibiting any complex behavior and never has.

Patient B is a coma patient, 20 years old. This person was an average high school and average high school student up until a severe auto accident. MRIs reveal that patient B’s brain is damaged but most of it is still there. In addition, the damage is to one side, and the brainstem, spine, and cranial nerves are mostly intact. There is a 5% chance patient B will awaken, based on examples of similar coma patients.

Both A and B are vegetative beings. They cannot do much that is interesting. However, I am saying patient B has this variable *, the information learned in their life and their personality.

I don’t need to do anything to prove they have *, but point in a general direction of information theory, neuroscience texts, etc. It is self evident that B’s complex behavior, when they were able to function, requires stored information in their mind. In addition, since I can show an MRI scan showing that most of B’s brain is still present, the * still exists.

In fact, I can preserve the maximum * by perhaps waiting until enough time has passed that the chance of reawakening is under 1%, then preserve B’s brain in a way that preserves all of the fine nanoscale structures at each synapse. I would argue that B’s brain on a shelf or in a freezer is still a person. (and the rest of their body, whether it was donated or incinerated, is not a person, just some spare parts)

While the fetus is not. Physical chemistry has trouble showing how much heat an object has directly, because you can only measure temperature directly, not enthalpy.

Similarly, present day humans can’t just scan or copy a living brain and grab all the important data from it. So you can’t trivially show how much * exists. But you can show when there was no data input to generate any nontrivial amount of *.

Since the fetus cannot manipulate it’s environment, it cannot isolate more than a negligible amount of *. I could explain why but this post is already too long.

[Scylla]

@GIGObuster

And you replied with a followup that made no sense.

…that you understood.

[QuickSilver]

@Scylla

That is a misrepresentation of my position. My body is a meat sack, too and it can’t produce another meat sack. “Meat sack” is actually a rather generous term, when you consider this mildly pressurized bag of fluid, bile, excrement and meat with it’s ridiculous internal supports that leave all the dangling soft parts flapping around.

There are few things that I am absolutely sure of. One of those is a terrible dark secret, that can only be learned at the cost of almost inconceivable pain, but that thing is that you are not your body. You are something else. There is no mysticism in that statement, no positing of a soul, but that. Is. A. Fact.

Your body works very hard to convince you that you are it, so that you will serve it. It has very powerful and persuasive tools to convince you. If by discipline or by accident you come to circumstances where you cannot or will not heed it’s most strident attempts to coerce you, than you will realize you are not your body. Afterwards you can make it do anything you want.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that most people never learn this.

So yeah, it’s a “meat sack.”

I have a rather more affectionate view of my body than you describe. I’ve put it at great risk just for the skills, thrills, chills and spills And yes, it’s let me down more than once, including lessons in pain where the attending physician gives you a scale of 1-10 and your dial is already cranked to 11. I still push harder than I should and it pushes back in no uncertain terms. But to me, that’s living. When it stops, I stop, I suspect. I’m not me without it. And short of an actual conscious uncoupling, you won’t catch me dead without it.

@Scylla

That’s my current thinking, too but not for anything you said in this post. I think all our talk about the sanctity and value of human life is shown to be a sham consistently by our actions, we let people die or be killed needlessly for all kinds of stupid reasons, pay nothing but lip service to our stated values. If we treat lives that are wanted and loved and nurtured and productive so callously, how can insist someone make sacrifices against their will to bring forth a life nobody wants?

That’s why I am pro choice.

Mazel Tov. First round is on me.

[GIGObuster]

@Scylla

…that you understood.

Well thanks for showing all that you are doing that to avoid replying to what I pointed out. That ‘guest’ or critter or whatever you call it is not a person. And it is very silly to claim that it would be the same to cut something that is not a person vs someone that it is.

[Scylla]

@SamuelA

You don’t understand the model.

I am saying there is a difference between 2 example patients.

Patient A is a human fetus, 8 weeks old. It is currently alive in it’s mother. It’s never manipulated it’s environment and observed the results, and thus the amount it can realistically have learned is little to nothing. It also is incapable of exhibiting any complex behavior and never has.

Patient B is a coma patient, 20 years old. This person was an average high school and average high school student up until a severe auto accident. MRIs reveal that patient B’s brain is damaged but most of it is still there. In addition, the damage is to one side, and the brainstem, spine, and cranial nerves are mostly intact. There is a 5% chance patient B will awaken, based on examples of similar coma patients.

Both A and B are vegetative beings. They cannot do much that is interesting. However, I am saying patient B has this variable *, the information learned in their life and their personality.

I don’t need to do anything to prove they have *, but point in a general direction of information theory, neuroscience texts, etc. It is self evident that B’s complex behavior, when they were able to function, requires stored information in their mind. In addition, since I can show an MRI scan showing that most of B’s brain is still present, the * still exists.

In fact, I can preserve the maximum * by perhaps waiting until enough time has passed that the chance of reawakening is under 1%, then preserve B’s brain in a way that preserves all of the fine nanoscale structures at each synapse. I would argue that B’s brain on a shelf or in a freezer is still a person. (and the rest of their body, whether it was donated or incinerated, is not a person, just some spare parts)

While the fetus is not. Physical chemistry has trouble showing how much heat an object has directly, because you can only measure temperature directly, not enthalpy.

Similarly, present day humans can’t just scan or copy a living brain and grab all the important data from it. So you can’t trivially show how much * exists. But you can show when there was no data input to generate any nontrivial amount of *.

Since the fetus cannot manipulate it’s environment, it cannot isolate more than a negligible amount of *. I could explain why but this post is already too long.

I understand everything you are saying and have also read about this. I’m not sure you are on a track though that makes sense. I do agree that a human being needs information input. What is not clear is how you think it makes it a person. I am neither a fetus, nor a coma patient, but if I want to do my best thinking, I cut sensory input as much as possible. If you have ever gone into an isolation tank, you will know that isolation from input is actually a very rich experience from the standpoint of sensation and cognition. One’s brain is working very hard, it tends to do so in a way that is different from the way it does when it is receiving input. It’s pre verbal in nature, but it is intense. You are still you in isolation, arguably more you.

There are times when input is helpful and times when it is not. It depend on what your brain is doing and what it is ready for.

And, far from being a tabula rasa, there is a huge amount of information inside that fetus, being used to build a human, being unpacked and sorted and prepared everything needed to build and run a human being, all the instincts, built in behaviors. Based on signals being received from communication through hormones from the mother, epigenetic options are being sorted, considered, modified implemented or discarded. Limbs are moving. A lot of shit is going on, a lot is being processed. Is it thinking in any sense of the way that you and I, almost surely not

Patient B is broken in a potentially fatal way. By your example, it was less of a chance of shaking your hand and talking with you in 5 years than A. In the normal course of events A is a person. B is in a kind Schroedingers box.

Another way of looking at this is by an example of a building.

Building A is being built. It’s got a foundation, framing walls, all the general structure is there, but nothing is really finished. It’s all been paid for though and the crews are working diligently
To get the job done.

Building B is a full and complete building that just went through an earthquake. It is uninhabited and uninhabitable in it’s current state. It is unclear whether it can ever be fixed. Using your example’s math there is only a 5% that anything can be done with it other than to condemn it.

Which of these fits the definition of building?

I don’t know, but I know which one I would feel comfortable signing a lease.

[Scylla]

@QuickSilver

I have a rather more affectionate view of my body than you describe. I’ve put it at great risk just for the skills, thrills, chills and spills And yes, it’s let me down more than once, including lessons in pain where the attending physician gives you a scale of 1-10 and your dial is already cranked to 11. I still push harder than I should and it pushes back in no uncertain terms. But to me, that’s living. When it stops, I stop, I suspect. I’m not me without it. And short of an actual conscious uncoupling, you won’t catch me dead without it.

Oh, I suspect you are not you without it, too. Software is useless and nothing without a computer to run it, and a computer is a paperweight without software, but they are separate, not the same thing at all.

I am glad that you have a sense of what I am saying here. Marvin Minsk’s said this much better in “society of mind.” If this kind of concept intrigues you.

Mazel Tov. First round is on me.

Well… I am not particularly happy about it. I think It would be a much better place if we did live up to and respect our stated values regarding human life, to such a degree that the pro choice argument held water.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Scylla

That I don’t know. I suspect you are something like an executive program in the software that runs your brain, and produces consciousness and your sense of self.

I’m still a little confused. Isn’t that “executive program” comprised entirely of electrochemical signals passing around through the brain? I’m not denying consciousness, but I am denying that it has any existence independent of my body.

In the Science Fiction Future, it may be possible to replicate the pattern of my existence and place it in an iPadXtreme or whatever. AT THAT POINT, it’ll be fair to say that my consciousness, or identity, or whatever is independent from my body.

But until that point, my self is inextricably a part of my body. You destroy my body, you destroy my identity. You cannot take my body and leave my identity alone. That renders it different from any form of property.

[Scylla]

Dorkness:

I take your post as agreement with my point. Yes, we can’t separate the two without destroying both, but that does not make them the same thing. And, as you say, you can conceive of yourself being yourself without your body.

[SamuelA]

@Scylla

If you have ever gone into an isolation tank, you will know that isolation from input is actually a very rich experience from the standpoint of sensation and cognition. One’s brain is working very hard, it tends to do so in a way that is different from the way it does when it is receiving input. It’s pre verbal in nature, but it is intense. You are still you in isolation, arguably more you.

And, far from being a tabula rasa, there is a huge amount of information inside that fetus, being used to build a human, being unpacked and sorted and prepared everything needed to build and run a human being, all the instincts, built in behaviors. Based on signals being received from communication through hormones from the mother, epigenetic options are being sorted, considered, modified implemented or discarded. Limbs are moving. A lot of shit is going on, a lot is being processed. Is it thinking in any sense of the way that you and I, almost surely not

Patient B is broken in a potentially fatal way. **By your example, it was less of a chance of shaking your hand and talking with you in 5 years than A. **

I don’t know, but I know which one I would feel comfortable signing a lease.

1. You cannot think in isolation in a meaningful way (and be able to express what you thought of to others) without (1) a bunch of experiences or a problem to think through (2) a common language to express your thoughts in.

2. Local memory of robotic individual cells operating is uninteresting and if this made a fetus a person, so would a plant. Which we have no choice but to kill.

3. The future doesn’t matter with respect to what you would be destroying now. You can always make another fetus, the question is whether there is anything unique to this one that is lost if we destroy it. And there isn’t.

[Scylla]

@SamuelA

3. The future doesn’t matter with respect to what you would be destroying now. You can always make another fetus, the question is whether there is anything unique to this one that is lost if we destroy it. And there isn’t.

Horrifying

[thorny_locust]

@Scylla

And, as you say, you can conceive of yourself being yourself without your body.

I can conceive of peace in the Middle East, too. That doesn’t make it so.

Of course you are your body. Some people don’t want to be made up of meat and dangly bits. They are, just the same.

And the argument’s nonsense as applied to abortion, anyway. If people aren’t their bodies, then the supposed person that some are claiming exists in the zygote/blastula/embryo/fetus isn’t a body either; so it couldn’t possibly matter what happens to its physical form.

On pretty much all the rest of this burst of additional argument I’ve already said what I was going to say, and see no point in typing it out all over again. I’ll just throw in here that people resting their arguments on what they think is “natural” a) appear to have very little idea of the range of behavior in the natural world in regards to sex and to reproduction and b) are carrying on this very argument by a technique that defies any “natural” state of human communication.