Vote?
Vote in their democratic elections according to the opinions they hold, as modified by whatever facts, reasoning or persuasion they have encountered, say, in a debate on a message board.
Kel Varnsen:
The process of becoming a person is a gradual one. The development of the higher brain functions begins during the third trimester and continues after birth. It’s arguable that a newborn infant or a 6-month-old is not a person but no one is arguing that. This issue is taking place in the Real World and in the Real World the law often has to draw a line in the midst of a grey area. The moment of birth is an obvious and convenient place to draw the line, and society confers a “provisional” personhood status at that point; the entity will become an actual person soon enough. We’re also reluctant to perform abortions in the final weeks of pregnancy in order to provide an additional margin of safety.
Some primitives tribes practice infanticide when the going gets tough and don’t consider it murder, but our modern society can afford to provide absolute protection to infants as though they were persons. No one is lobbying for a change in that law, so it’s a moot point. They are lobbying to maintain the window of opportunity for women to abort earlier in a pregnancy, since the costs of out-of-wedlock births–both to individuals and society–are great enough to overwhelm the flimsiness of the argument that fetuses deserve protection at that stage.
OK. I just can’t fathom why
“Monet in a room sitting next to a blank canvas and some paint”
is equivalent to
“Monet in a room working on a half-finished painting”
but suit yourself.
And neither can I fathom
“Two separate cells after meiosis”
is not equivalent to
“Two separate cells before syngamy”
But suit yourself.
Unlike you, I do not speak solely in analogies (but feel free to revisit those of clouds and patches of mould I brought up earlier).
In both cases there are two cells. You propose that one is an “entity” while the other is not. I do not understand this dichotomy.
Let’s see:
“Two separate cells after meiosis”
I suppose you mean one egg and one sperm just after they were produced via their respective meiotic processes
Versus
“Two separate cells before syngamy”
I suppose you mean one egg and one sperm just before they unite.
If this is what you are talking about, the two situations are identical, nothing has happened yet. Neither is an “entity”.
Now, after the union of the sperm with the egg, *that * is an entity.
What was your point again?
No, I meant the two daughter nuclei of the fertilised egg, as we went over before.
You’ll notice that this debate is remarkably similar to the one we had for Political Compass #19, wherein you again proposed endless analogies illustrating your belief that conception conferred some “special status” which made it less arbitrary than some other point. You do not appear to appreciate that I and many others find these analogies, and indeed your entire premise, unconvincing
I’m afraid we appear doomed to another such Groundhog Day unless we both understand that an analogy is not an argument. I’ll be stepping off this carousel soon thanks, but as ever I’ll leave you the last word.
So you see no difference between sperm+egg pre-fertilization, and two cells after the first post-fertilization split.
What is your proof of this? Since you don’t like using analogies, how do you prove the above equivalence? “Just because”?
I did notice, and I assumed you did too. Nice to see you kept it going.
Speak for yourself. Others can chime in and say if they find the entire premise unconvincing. I can just as easily say “I and many others find your statements, and indeed your entire premise, unconvincing”.
And just stating your beliefs is not an argument either.
Analogies, although not proofs, are better than just saying “because I say so” (which is what you do), because they propose a similar situation and if the corresponding conclusion cannot be reached in the similar situation, it makes the conclusion in this situation suspect.
Actually, I just found my copy of “Predicate Knowledge” by Howard Pospesel (college course in logic) and on pages 112-113 we see
So, actually, proof by analogy is accepted as formal proof.
And, be honest, have you never used an analogy when trying to make a point?
What does “as ever” mean? Have we debated countless times and I always have the last word? Nice ad-hominem you slipped in there.
You may have the last word.
The cost is greater to the woman. The embryo is denied possibly a blip in the scheme of infinity of which it will never be aware. It will return to the state from which it came and to which all of us must return. The woman has a lifetime of relationships, family, obligations and responsibility to consider. It is also a blip in the scheme of infinity, but she is aware and lingers under an illusion.
Other than what I have described above, there is a fair chance that if, against the mother’s wishes, the embryo is left to develop into a female, she will live to see her right to make decisions about her own body made by someone else who feels an embryo has more rights.
The risk of death from abortion is considerably lower than the risk of death while giving birth.
So you are pro-choice as long as someone besides the mother has the choice. Is that what you are saying?
Kel, in your abduction analogy, the obvious solutiion to me would be to send the person back where she or he was taken from.
(asides)
Roger, you are one of the funniest people alive.
Funny you should mention that. That happened to me today. Unfortunately, the “company” was the U.S. Treasury and the money was supposed to go into my husband’s account. For “one brief shining moment,” I thought he had decided to have his recently acquired Social Security payments deposited in my account.
(Exit with echoing Katharine Hepburn laugh.)
Just think what you’d have missed out on if my tumour-carrier had chosen to abort me.
I understand, my point was just that the Veil formulation ads nothing to this particular debate, because it all depends on a factor that the Veil cannot help decide: whether “aborted fetus” or even “fetus” is a “position” one can actually be granted. Personally, I think the Veil formulation is a little weak and somewhat discredited anyway (for all the various risk aversion objections and so on), but that’s another story.
Like you, I agree that birth is a morally arbitrary line, and the reality is that even most pro-choice people regard birth as a good pragmatic place to draw the line, not a fundamental one. Of course, few pro-choice people really support abortion up until the instant of birth anyway, so it’s something of a moot point. Natural viability is probably a more sensible pragmatic line, in IMHO, though still not any sort of meaingful hard and fast one. And for me, the development and energizing of a nervous system is the line before which no sane argument can be made that does not rely on arbirtrary declarations of magical powers onto the fetus. Of course, even at that point, with a functioning nervous system, I question very much why one would show special concern for a fetus and not for a cow, given that at that stage the cow is far and away a more sentient and feeling being.
And anyone who thinks that the death penalty is ok (killing a sentient and self-aware person who fears their death with all the horrors that go with that death), and that killing a glob of stem cells is a horror is, seems to me to be a monstrous fraud of a human being.
Or two entities? Or six? Or a million potential entities? Depending on what later happens to the clump of cells?
Of course, to claim that they work in “unison” is a little questionable too. While we see a larger end point that we focus on conceptually (an end point which is not even naturally inevtiable, but only occasional), at the cellular level there is a actually something of a struggle going on, as cells win or lose special positions in the developing fetus, depending on what sort of hormonal baths they can work their way into. Cells may sometimes work in unison, sometimes not, even in a fully grown human being. I would hope my very humanity does not rest upon whether or not I have lupus.
SM is, of course, quite right. You wish to argue that something is an entity, but entities are definitional conceptions, not facts. They are very useful conceptions, because they simplify the task of thinking immensely, but there are times, such as these, in which they simplify things too much. The proper question is not whether or not a zygote is an entity, because it can or it can’t be depending on what you are looking at, but rather what is it about these cells that makes them different from the separate sperm and egg cells in a way that’s relevant to whether or not to give them rights? You haven’t said: you’ve merely tried to jump the gun, assume that “entity” is all that matters. Break it down farther. Go below the concept of entity, which anyone with a good arguement should be able to do, and explain the difference.
I’m on a winning streak. To be called one of the funniest people alive and a monstrous fraud of a human being on the same day. Must buy a lottery ticket.
Thanks, Polerius. (My “as ever” actually meant to signify that I always leave my opponent the last word, to avoid debates-of-attrition).
We are debating here. One can only prove empirical facts, not opinions - they can only be supported by reason and argument. This is what we’re both doing here, and it is all we can do: presenting our arguments and reasoning for the audience to consider for themselves. So I’ll make it two last words if that’s OK:
Informed Democracy.
If how “sentient” a being is, is what gives us permission to kill it, how about a human in a coma with verifiably no brain activity? Surely a cow is far and away a more sentient and feeling being, but we still are not comfortable with killing the person in the coma (or at least I am not).
Since it can’t be his degree of sentientness, what exactly is it about the person in the coma that gives him the right not to be killed?
Very funny, but you haven’t proposed any other rule as to why a bunch of objects are considered to form an entity. And you do seem to imply that the 10^k cells that are in your body, form the entity known as “you”. What rule are you using to lump all those cells together into the definition of “you”? Is a virus you contracted part of “you”? If you don’t like the “working in unison” (which I admit is a bit of an over-simplification), what is your rule?
I would say that if I have some cancer cells in my body, I don’t consider them to be part of “me”. I consider all the other cells in my body that are working *for * me, not against me, to be part of “me”.
Anyway, as you mention, we shouldn’t get too caught up in the debate about what is an “entity”, because that is not specifically what is being debated.
The only reason that “entity” came up is because, in response to the following post by Kel Varnsen:
SentientMeat responded
To which I responded that
because I thought that it was an erroneous refutation of **Kel’s ** argument.
Whether Kel’s argument has other problems with it is another issue, but I didn’t see how calling a separate egg and sperm as an entity was a valid way to refute the argument, because we don’t have any chance of being two disjoint “microorganisms”.
Well, actually, in this specific debate, I wasn’t adressing the rights of the zygote, all I wanted to show was that behind the Veil of Ignorance we do have a chance of being a zygote, but not being two disjoint cells (egg+sperm).
If we were to accept that “since the egg+sperm lead to a zygote then we have an equal chance of ‘being’ an egg+sperm”, then we would have to accept that “we have an equal chance of ‘being’ billions of molecules scattered about the earth, since that is what the zygote will eventually consist of”. I think this is stretching the definition of ‘being’ a bit too much.
Polerius:
The ethics of “pulling the plug” has been debated for some time now. A lot of people believe that it isn’t murder because they’re already dead. OTOH, the coma patient has already been sentient and might still be brought back. A coma is an unusual situation. There’s a fully formed brain that simply isn’t working right now, so it’s a rather dicey prospect for the law to withdraw recognition of personhood.
Besides, coma patients aren’t inside someone else’s body. Keeping them alive doesn’t ruin anyone’s life or threaten the planet the way fetuses do. Society can afford to make an exception to the normal rule of sentience.
Whoa,there!
The human has had brain activity in the past: they had an identity and hopes and dreams and expectations. If there is any hope for their recovery, we might look towards the wishes that person might have had as to what should be done should they be in such a state: wishes that we would want to see respected given that we too could end up in such a state. Of course, if there is no brain activity and never will be again, it’s hard to see why killing the coma patient would be wrong: can you explain why you think it would be, other than it just being an unquestioned assumption?
A zygote has NEVER developed any sort of sentience or identity for us to refer back to in the way we can with the coma patient. There are no prior wishes, and there is no expectation about whatever happens to it happening to any other sentient being (i.e. coming to the end of it’s sentience)
On the contrary, I have said that there IS no rule. Entities are helpful concepts, but they are ultimately matters of perspective and relevance in the same way that analogies are.
It depends on the particular purpose I want to put the concept of “me.” In some sense, my hand is certainly “me” but cut it off and I am still “me,” in some sense diminished, in other senses totally unaffected.
In some sense, yes, in others no. For instance, the bacteria in my gut are a necessary component to my body continuing to function properly. But it’s not clear whether one should think of them as part of “me” or not. I all depends on the purpose to which you want to put the concept of “me.”
As I have said, there is no rule. It’s a concept: there are no bright lines others than the ones we draw for a particular explanatory purpose.
But this is a conception based on the understanding of what “for” you means. Other purposes might require a different conception. In lupus, the immune system is attacking the body. Is it “for” you or not? It could kill you. It’s still a part of you, no?
But that is important, because we do in SOME sense. As I noted, I don’t think we have ANY chance of being a zygote either: that’s because I don’t see how any legitimate case can be made that a zygote anyone at all. Zygotes are necessary precusors to people (but are they? What if we could bypass that stage: would the result not be a human with a life worthy of protection? Would a synthetically constructed human with no fetal stage not be worthy of rights, and why not?) but they are not themselves people. And they are precusors to people just the same way that sperm and eggs are. If we can “be” zygotes, then why can’t we be sperm/eggs, or whatever other disjointed entities were the precursors of our current forms?
roger thornhill quipped that had he been aborted, he never would have existed. But the same would be true if his parents had never slept together, or never met, or even if a different sperm/egg combination occured. It would be true if the fertilized egg failed to implant, and it would be true if, as is very common, the pregnancy aborted naturally. Any of those things would have prevented him from being here to be a card today, but it’s not clear why that should make abortion ONLY the bad thing that removes him from history, when any number of things, deliberate or no, could have prevented it.
Which is exactly my point: saying we can be a zygote is exactly the same sort of stretch. Just because it was part of the process doesn’t make the values we developed to regard the end product travel backwards in time.
Remember, our value for other human beings didn’t develop in a vacuum. It developed because of a long long history of developing empathy with each other, or fighting for particular values for particular people, of learning about and experiencing harm done to us. It developed because things like murder and torture and so on did specifically harmful things to others that we could come to empathize with and see as being harmful to our developing ideals and sense of humanity. To say that “killing humans is wrong” is a gross simplification of all that (making a complex argument into a justificationless rule of thumb), and to then try to argue that killing zygotes is wrong simply by extending the definition “human” to them (which is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, since “human” is a concept) is illegitimate (it’s basically the fallacy of equivocation). We developed our values against killing other humans with a PARTICULAR concept of human that basically encompased those gross gangly apes we see and interact with everday. You can’t then use a different concept of “human” to then apply the values developed for that original concept of human into an entirely new context, all without doing ANY of the work to explain of justify why its wrong to kill the particular beings we think it’s wrong to kill.
That’s why I suggested going to a deeper level of justification. Don’t rely on the crutch of a concept like “human” which can have many shifting meanings that we might not agree on. Instead, see if you can explain precisely why it is wrong to kill a zygote without the help of unquestioned assumptions as to why it is wrong to anything human. My value of sentience and expecation and feeling and so forth allows me some pretty easy answers: I can explain why it’s wrong to kill a person (even instantly and unawares), a cow, a fetus of a certain development, and so on, all without need of reference to a broad concept of what the being is. I can go from more fundamental principles as it were: make the arguement all over again from scratch without the need of special definitional categories like “human/not human” or “working together/not working together.” I can ask "does this thing, however conceptualized, have X, which I value? And does doing Y violate that X?
What is morally valuable about a zygote that killing it destroys? What is the exact moral cost of destroying it?
What is morally valuable about a human that killing it destroys? What is the exact moral cost of destroying it?
You never explained why “we [came] to empathize with” the harmful things that “murder and torture” resulted in. Or why these things were “harmful to our developing ideals and sense of humanity”
If you want to break the zygote down to the most fundamental level, let’s do the same for all humans.
You talk about empathy and “our developing ideals and sense of humanity”, but I suggest that these are bogus concepts, because I can just as well apply them to fetuses. That is, someone could say “I have empathy for fetuses and killing them is harmful to our developing ideals and sense of humanity”. This is just as arbitrary as saying it about humans.
In reality, there is no “moral” reason not to kill humans. This is just an invention of society because (1) societies which don’t make killing immoral are in chaos and (2) we, as individuals, like a rule that forbids killing humans because we feel it protects us.
I.e. both are practical and selfish reasons (which is fine by me)
So, yes, if you want to be practical and selfish, adding “fetuses” to the catogory of things we can kill should be fine since it will not cause society to go into chaos, and will not harm you in any way (since you’re not a fetus any more).
But let’s not bring “moral issues”, “empathy” and “developing ideals and sense of humanity” into it, if you want to go to the most fundamental principles.
I’ve already explained my rationale. You may not like my rationale, but at least I have laid it bare to be examined, as you so far have not.
I should think it would be rather obvious what empathy is. More below.
Okay.
How can you empathize with a zygote? It can’t feel any of the things you feel. It’s like saying that you have empathy with a rock. Now, a fetus, as you say, there is definately room for some degree of empathy there. But again, why more for a fetus than a prawn, which can feel all the same things but has slightly more awareness and volition with which we can empathize?
Well, break it down far enough, and no morality can be logically justified: we just take some values as givens. If you think it is okay to torture and kill a person who screaming for you to please please stop, I can’t necessary present a fully justified logical arguement as to why it’s wrong, but the “invented” morality of human society and human nature still revolts at it. I would argue that empathy and the golden rule are ultimately the core of most people’s ultimate sense of why it’s wrong to kill or hurt. Causing something pain or fear is something that we can sincerely appreciate as bad because we can imagine it happening to us. At a more basic level, we know that we hate to have our interests thwarted, and understand that others feel the same way. Either you respect that about other beings or you don’t (and are generally regarded as a monster), but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold that out as the basic sort of human morality that we have developed and recognize as valid.
But those are the more fundamental principles. They are fundamental because they do not pre-suppose certain categories of beings to which they apply: they can instead be used to figure out to which beings they apply.
So far, it seems that you have no underlying rationale to present as to why it is wrong to kill the particular being that a zygote or a fetus is. This you should find to be most troublesome. Instead of being defensive, perhaps you should present one.