This thread is filled with mind readers.
Just a quick point. This is, as it is framed later, actually a grossly unfair question to ask. The reason is that you are trying to show absurdity in an argument through an inherently absurd situation.
In this situation
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I am more than capable of carrying both a three year old and a petri dish simultaneously, and so that is what I would do. A genuine situation where you can only take one, and you cannot make two trips is extremely rare and contrived.
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More seriously, given our current technological status I think even from a pro-life point of view the correct answer is “get the 3 year old”. Not because the three year old life is worth more than the petri dish life. Because from a simple triage view the girl has a much higher chance of a continued life outside the fire, and so you do whatever has the best chance of maintaining life. Rightly or wrongly many embryoes are destroyed through IVF and similar programs, and I think this colours how we view embryoes. If there was a 100% guaranteed life sustaining IVF method (unlikely, given the fact the body itself doesn’t act like that) then our perception of embryoes and their survivability would change such that taking the 5 embryoes would seem like a much more reasonable position. If that was the case then you should take the petri dish because you can save more life that way.
Thre are other situations where it is right to choose one life over many other lifes as well. So for instance if we exchanged the 5 embryoes with 5 people with advanced bubonic plauge or something you should take the girl there as well because even if you pull the other 5 out of the fire they are going to die soon anyway. Life is better maintained taking out the girl who supposedly will live a lot longer than the plauge victims.
So really whatever absurdity you find in this situation I think is from the way it is set up, not from the actions of those in it.
Stagger Lee
Nicely put, Stagger Lee. In the impossible scenario, where five embryos have a 100% chance of surviving and being implanted, then the intellectual choice is clear. But life doesn’t operate that way. That was the essence of my “what are they destined for” question.
(1) My understanding is that most IVF embryos are destined for destruction, and (2) doesn’t seem like they’d survive long in an unprotected petri dish. That’s where the hypothetical gets stretched into the absurd, generally: “Assume that the unprotected petri dish has magical properties so that the embryos survive Startocaster’s toting them through a burning building, then trying to find a facility that knows the proper way to store them; and also assume there are woman waiting to accept them to be implanted; and also that all will survive the process, despite the fact that this does not typically occur in real life.” Um, OK, I guess I’d take the embryos. Especially if you throw a few adorable puppies into the hypothetical, maybe attached to the petri dish. And one of the embryos grows up to cure cancer. 
I am not reading minds, just trying to figure out how you would evaluate the 5 embryos to an already born person, if they are persons you would be saving 5 lives over 1 child.
Monavis
From what I understood by George’s question was that you had just enough time to save the embryo’s or the child. In your later response you said you would choose the embryo’s if they could survive, so an unborn possibility would take presedence over the little born girl. What if the Child was your born daughter? would you then save the embryos?
What if the embryo’s grew up to kill a member of you family or became a Hitler or Bin Laden? Jesus said it would have been better if Judas had not been born, yet if it wasn’t for Judas there may not have been a death of a savior and Christianity would not be a religion now.
Monavis
What if the little girl had been torturing and killing Jewish puppies?
I think though you are missing the point of what Stratoctaster and I are saying about George’s question. While only he knows his true intention it falls down as a method to test the internal consistency of someone’s position because it requires bringing in impossible situations to work. Because of the obvious liklihood of 5 embryoes in a petri dish of dying that natural answer is “take the girl” because the other 5 embyoes, while human lives themselves, are almost certain to die without impossible medical care. You can’t test the internal consistency of someone’s logic by presenting them with impossible situations.
Obviously since I believe the embryoes to be fully human lives, then IF they had a good chance of living then logically I should choose them over the girl. The reality is though that the situation as presented is inherently silly, and getting people to respond to it reveals little about their position. It is too hard for many to simply accept the premises of the silly situation.
Stagger Lee.
No, but I realize this is an emotional decision. I would save my child at the expense of a roomful of adults, I suppose, if forced to make the decision.
Is this part of the hypothetical now? OK, I wouild not save Hitler’s embryo. I’m on the record.
Then she’s definitely on her own. Wait, are they cute puppies or one of those ugly breeds?
One of the puppies was going to grow up and bite Jesus, and one was going to bite Hitler.
Will either of them be rabid? Will either of the puppies be hooked up as life support to a violinist while biting Hitler or Jesus?
Now sir you’re just being silly.
Hey, it’s these details that add clarity to the hypothetical. If we don’t know whether the little girl is abusing a puppy who, while biting Hitler, is rabid, ugly and hooked up to a violinist as life support, then what are we really answering? You might as well ask if it’s wrong to shoot the man about to perform an abortion in Reno, just to watch him die. These things just aren’t black and white, like some people want 'em to be.
No, it’s a Morton’s Fork, a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives, and I don’t see what’s absurd about the way it was set up.
If we were discussing animal rights, this quote from Ingrid Newkirk, “When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” would help create a bright line between the opposing positions.
An animal rights Morton’s Fork,
A rat, a pig, a dog, and a boy are trapped in a burning building. For reasons I’ll leave to your imagination, you can only save one.
Which do you pick?
If the answer I got was,
That’s a grossly unfair question to ask, life doesn’t operate that way. It’s an inherently absurd situation, but my intellectual choice is clear.
or
I’m more than capable of carrying the rat and leading the pig out simultaneously, then I’d make a second trip for the the dog and boy. A genuine situation where you can only take one, and you cannot make two trips is extremely rare and contrived.
I’d say either,
{A} You don’t really believe they’re the same,
or
{B} You don’t have the balls to say “Yes, I think it’s completely ethical to let a human being die, I’d save one of the animals instead”.
**
George Kaplin**'s question is an easy one for me.
I don’t think a zygote/blastocyst/embryo is the same as a baby.
I grab the child, and don’t give a second thought to the petri dish
(though I might get a laugh later, imagining the rat and dog sharing a last meal of fried eggs and ham).
Oh, and who threw the question down the rabbit hole, into the land of the absurd?
So lets change it to two things that you can’t carry at the same time.
It’s not a genuine situation, it’s a hypothetical, YOU ONLY GET ONE TRIP!
The pro-life position is “a fertilized egg is a human being”, right?
No triage, no best chance of maintaining life, more than one human being or one, that’s the choice.
So lets get rid of the petri dish and substitute a dewar flask.
[
](D Budget | The Scientist Magazine®)So no magical petri dish needed, as long as you get it out of the building, your golden.
None of the embryos are destined for destruction and there are women waiting to accept them, although I don’t understand why this should matter, “a fertilized egg is a human being”, right?
You are a fireman.
A hospital is on fire, you only have time and arms enough to save:
A) A liquid nitrogen dewar flask, with 1000 cryogenically frozen fertilized embryos.
Lets imagine it’s this one,
A Janis Research Company
Model LN-20
Capacity: 20 Liters
Daily Evaporation Rate: 0.2 Liters
Outside Diameter: 15"
Height: 24.6"
Filled Weight :60 lbs
or
B) One healthy crying 6 or 7 year old child.
Lets imagine it’s this one,
Dan
Height: about 48"
Weight: 60 lbs
This fire is out of control, and the O[sub]2[/sub] and highly flammable anesthetic gases are gonna level the building, so bye bye to the dewar, and the 1,000 innocent little babies it holds!
A or B, 1 child or 1,000 children.
Funny,
“Abortion Stops a Beating Heart”
“[del]Slavery[/del]. [del]Holocaust[/del]. Abortion. Two down, One to go.”
“Abortion doesn’t make you unpregnant, it makes you the mother of a dead child!”
“It’s not abortion–It’s murder!”
“If its not a baby–you’re not pregnant!”
“It’s a CHILD… There IS no Choice!”
“It’s not your Body…It’s a Baby!”
“HOW COME AMERICA??? We BRAKE for ANIMALS, we SAVE the SEALS, and PROTECT the WHALES, BUT We Murder Our Unborn Children!!”
sounds like some folks think it’s pretty fucking black and white.
CMC fnord
Their is an inverse relationship between the time it takes to construct a post and the degree to which it contributes to a discussion. (Hentor the Barbarian’sLaw of Posting Composition)
No, the question as it is stated is borderline entrapment. The problem is that the situation is itself impossible, as there is no embryoes that have 100% chance of survival. Because the situation is impossible the hypothetical is meaningless.
It is kind of like the question “If God told you to kill 1000 people, would you?”. If you say no, (and you believe in God) then you are accused of being hypocritical. If you say yes, then you are accused of being a hateful muderer. There is no right answer for this question. It totally ignores the view that God wouldn’t tell people to kill lots of others without some just cause. It really only serves to entrap those that answer it.
The same thing works here. The problem is that in the question you assume an (impossible) survivability for the embyoe, but then in analysing people’s responses go back to assuming that the embyoe is normal. IF the embryoe has 100% chance of survivability then in saving 1000 embryoes you are saving essentially 1000 lives. The problem is that in the real world it doesn’t work like that, and so there is the inherent tendancy when looking at how people answer to revert back to reality. So if you save the embryoes then you are a fanatic who puts their ideals above the lives of others. If you save the child then you are a hypocrite. There is no right answer. The question just serves to entrap people and open them up for mocking.
If the question was framed in a way that was actually possible, like in the original human vs animal forumlation, then it may be interesting. But if the question invovles inherent impossibilities then it is a non-starter.
Secondly in denying any thought of triage you are reducing the situation to a clear absurdity. Triage is one of the first thing that they teach emergency workers like the fireman that you proposed. As I said before you could re-jig it 1 helathy person vs 1000 mortally wounded people and the clear choice would still be the one healthy person. Denying triage to get it to work just shows the absurdity of the situation that is being proposed.
Stagger Lee.
CMC wins.
Entrapment?
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Likewise, no children, or adult human beings for that matter, have a 100% chance of survival. If they did, life insurance would sure take a hit.
Stretch your mind a bit wider, cuz it sure aint impossible. In the west wing of the hospital, lies the flask. In the east wing of the hospital, there is a child. Not enough time to run both east and west, pick one.
Tell that to the Hittites.
Or the Amorites.
Or the Canaanites.
Or the Perizzites.
Or the Hivites.
Or the Jebusites.
Or point out logical absurdities, take your pick.
Why does this matter? Let’s say that there’s only a 1% chance of any embryo ‘surviving’ to become a sentient human. 1% of 1000 is not a small number when we’re talking about human lives.
Actually, there are rarely ‘right answers’. And for the record, I would think that someone who saved the embroys was, defnitely, someone who I disagreed with on a point of ontology but not a ‘fanatic’. I would think that they were wrong, that they’d made a choice I never would, and that their system of values was totally different than mine. But I would not consider them a fanatic.
If you view there being no ‘right answer’ perhaps you lack the courage of your convications.
It’s intersting when you refuse to talk about a position or its implications lest it open you up for being mocked.
You can evade the example, you can claim that answering it will open you up to be ‘mocked’, you can claim it is ‘entrapment’, but at the end of the day you’re simply refusing to hash it out.
Sometimes a hypothetical is so absurd that the only way to answer is by saying “And then a hypothetical giant squid with a raygun kills everybody and eats them, thus solving the problem.” (Hitler glue is also an option)
This is not one of those times.
Absurdity, or pure logic and conviction. Could go either way, I guess.
Or, even, your convictions.
A hypothetical giant squid put an extra ‘a’ in there.
The bastid.
Look, my bottom line with regard to this whole business is this. There are people who believe the morning after pill should not be available because it can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, thus causing an abortion. This is one of the main reasons it’s not available over-the-counter, despite studies saying it would be safe to have it available that way. (I can rustle up some cites later if need be.) There are people who think the most effective forms of birth control should be illegal because they can prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, thus causing abortions.
Taking the position that these forms of contraception should not be available because a fertilized egg is a child, yet at the same time believing that, “rightly or wrongly many embryoes are destroyed through IVF” is, at best, a moral disconnect to me, and at worst, hypocritical. To be fair, Stratocaster hasn’t voiced opposition to those forms of birth control and the South Dakota legislator said specfically that their bill was not intended to ban them.
I’m a pragmatist. Despite my own doubts, I don’t expect to change Stratocaster’s mind about when life begins, nor is he likely to change mine, although I’d muddy the waters still further and say it’s not about life, but rather when a human being becomes ensouled. Despite the long attempt to define what is to me undefinable, at least with our current technology, to me this thread has been about what South Dakota is going to accomplish. To me, the answer seems to be the birth of a few more babies which people seem willing to wash their hands of. There’s a lot of grandstanding, a lot of talk about the sanctity of life, yet it seems to me little will change over the years. Some more children will be born; some of them may not live long enough to make it to kindergarten, especially if they happen to be Native American. Some women who would have chosen to have an abortion will give birth; others will go out of state to have an abortion. Still others who can’t or won’t travel out of state will choose to have illegal abortions. Some of those will be badly injured; others will die. Ah, yes, but the pro-life politicians will have scored some cheap political points by closing down one clinic which performs abortions one day a week, so a great moral victory will have been attained.
CJ
Your post was a lot of work given the fact that I did in fact answer the hypothetical based on the terms offered, however unlikely they were, my facetious posts notwithstanding. You realize that, right? And did you really take my statement in context…
…as not being facetious? If so, you need to try a little harder. Your outrage is misplaced.
Again, as interesting as this meta-argument is (and it is interesting), Stagger Lee also effectively answered the hypothetical…
…unless I missed something subsequent that retracted or clarified this somehow. So, all the huffing and puffing about refusals to address the question and about “who wins” seems a non-starter to me.
Feel free to continue to belabor this contradiction that the hypothetical–which was asked and answered–is being unfairly ignored.