Qooper on 10/5/2023 at 09:58
Quote Posted by RippedPhreak
Why do you keep banging on about zygotes? The main "abortion issue" isn't about a zygote. Leftist extremists want the right to kill a baby that could survive outside the mother's body. That's really what people are fired up about.
Let's keep political accusations out of this thread, thank you :) You're of course welcome to join the discussion on abortion here, but if you wish to discuss it from a more political aspect, I think the Roe v Wade -thread is more suited to that.
And also let's at least try to keep discussion respectful.
Tocky, I'm at work currently, but when I get home, I'll respond.
Qooper on 11/5/2023 at 21:53
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Every time I try to work it around to that it goes off on what the word "is" means or some such and frankly that makes me want to tear my hair out. I never said definitions were not decided.
My earlier points may seem unimportant to you, but let's put them together, along with your admission that definitions are decided, and see what happens. Earlier in this thread you claimed that 'science is a process of examining facts so it is in no way a logical fallacy and there is no "science authority"'. I decomposed the scientific method and pointed out that there is an objective part to it (measuring the physical reality) and a subjective one (deciding on definitions and how to interpret the data). Finally you agreed that definitions are decided. Thus, the definitions very much come from a science authority. Objective truth is difficult to disagree with, since it is not a matter of opinion, but saying that the decision of a science authority may not be disagreed with is very dogmatic.
The importance of this is very significant when definitions are chosen a certain way to escape moral responsibility. The definition "humans are animals" is particularly appealing, because it gives justification and permission for sexual immorality.
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The only important thing is when an embryo becomes a person. I don't care if you want to call it human or any other word.
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What I was doing was trying to define with science and what we have previously determined is alive and human. Can we possibly do that?
Sure. Let's define that life begins at conception, because as soon as an egg is fertilized by a sperm, completely new and unique DNA begins to form. It's a human in the womb from that instance onward.
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It not only is very damned useful it is going to be very damned used once codified into law. We do have an idea what a person (human or whatever damned term you choose to use) is. We do also have a good idea of what consciousness is and both are determined by a level of brain activity.
Making this definition has the following consequences. If personhood is tied to level of brain activity, then we are less of a person when we are asleep, and much less of a person when we are in a coma. Also brain activity slows down the older we get. You'd be less of a person than I am, Tocky.
I hold the position that personhood is intrinsic. Putting my previous points together, just looking at a clump of cells is not very useful. No embryo exists in a vacuum of reality, but instead every embryo has begun at conception. The substance is a clump of cells, but the purpose is the child of the mother that carries them. Defining personhood in a certain way doesn't relieve us from morals.
We see that consciousness and brain activity share a connection, but that is still far from understanding what consciousness is. It's easy to think that we understand more than we do, a part of being human is the embarrassing easiness to delude oneself. That's why I'm very careful not to accuse of someone else of being confused until I absolutely understand what they mean and where they're coming from, and even then my motive is to help, not to attack.
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I have no idea why anyone would deny that in favor of placing value on philosophical discussion particularly when a woman's life is at stake who is and can be defined as a human or person or whatever nomenclature you wish to label.
I think we can both agree that if only one can be saved, either the mother or the child, then it is acceptable to perform an abortion to save the mother.
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After you do that you can have all the morals and convictions you want. Have a big morals and convictions party if you want. Not discussing the important detail and dancing around it is driving me crazy.
Science doesn't determine morals, but instead should be guided by them. You make it sound like you place little value on morals. I hope I'm gravely misunderstanding you, Tocky.
Tocky on 12/5/2023 at 04:03
Well it appears we have misunderstood each other gravely. I assure you I have a strong moral code. But I have logic to guide it. And I know that the absolute non brain activity of a just fertilized egg is a ridiculous thing to call a person. When something only has the potential to be something it is not that something yet. Completely new DNA means exactly jack shit. It can be expelled and nobody calls the wad of tissue which is expelled a human. It isn't even human when it forms to look vaguely so. At that point it still has no capacity for thought. You can't side step that by just siting DNA. My spit has DNA. Cancer has a unique DNA.
What about our moral obligation of interpreting data as closely to reality as possible? Science gives definitions of reality. It's results are provable and reality is an authority you cannot escape. Unlike skydaddy who does not even follow his own moral code and is not provable it has as it's most sacred moral code to bind itself in the provable. If one cannot start with what is real and provable then potentialities mean nothing. The definitions of science are its embrace of what is real and provable. It's subjective part is in service of mankind, based in a love of it's fellow beings, and looking forward to a future of ever greater knowledge.
I may not often speak of it's subjective role because that can be stripped away and science is still left but in as much as it exists it exists to serve it's fellows and that is a damn noble thing. It exists knowing that the individuals who strive to find knowledge to better all of us will die and what is discovered will carry on and help all of us. It does so knowing that when the individual is dead it ceases to exist. It does so often times without reward. It burns it's life away in study to discover truth. It burns itself away in radiation to discover truth. It straps itself to tons of burning fuel that may explode at any moment to discover truth. It seeks the deepest depths and the infinite of height in the most inhospitable climes where each mistake is death to seek the truth. It will die in poverty or suffer the disdain of all mankind to hold onto precious truth. Decompose it how you will, reality is the only truth. Science wants more or that. Reality is it's authority, it's undeniable authority, and on that it bases it's definitions.
Escape moral responsibilities? There is more moral responsibility in science than exhibited in all of religion. Religion seeks to subjugate, not science. Do you really want to compare the two? I've got some choice examples if you do. Authority? Science seeks the authority only of truth. It is the opposite of dogmatic. It bends for provable truth every time. Religion does not. It retains it's stance in spite of truth. It contradicts itself and adheres to disproven things. It punishes doubt and intellectual pursuit in favor of stubborn dogmatic belief based on the little men knew thousands of years ago.
Permission for sexual immorality? Just because it points out the truth of being an animal? By what unholy knot did you tie those two together? Science does not make those kind of judgements. Religion does. And then it does the sexual immorality because it will be forgiven. Save me that sort of crap. Also how dare YOU decide MY morality and try to tell ME what to do based on something you can't prove that was made up thousands of years ago to control people.
Personhood is tied to a level of brain activity. Even sleeping people have brain activity. Even those in comas have brain activity. If there has been and it can be restarted that is still counted though it only happens when a healthy person drowns in cold water or the brain is capable or repairing itself enough in coma and even then there is a level of brain activity. Medical science induces those comas in hopes of repair. But there has to be brain activity in the first place to call something human. And no, I am definitely not less of a person than you are. I assure you I am firing on all cylinders.
Much of what you said just did not make sense. Personhood is intrinsic? No it isn't. No embryo exists in a vacuum? Well sure but where it does exist it exists as dividing cells with no brain activity for a long period and only as a potential future being. It is not PRESENTLY ONE and that is important. We do not have to understand the full extent of consciousness to know that no brain activity equals no consciousness, we just have to establish a base line. It's not being confused to scratch my head over some of your declarations. I'm confused on how you can make them based on moral conviction without evidence and that is derived through science.
Something else that confuses me is why you think YOU get to be an invisible unprovable beings proxy for deciding morality. What gives YOU the right to decide for someone else what has happened in THEIR body?
Nicker on 15/5/2023 at 03:51
Remembering that we are not disputing conclusions but rather methods...
The "blob of cells" (The Blob) argument is the same formulation as the "life begins at conception" (LBAC) argument and the "every sperm is sacred" (ESIS) argument. The Blob has been repurposed so it can masquerading as a pro-choice argument.
That's a category error.
If LBAC and ESIS are structurally flawed as arguments then The Blob is similarly unsound. One cannot assert, with intellectual consistency, virtue for The Blob while discrediting the other two.
But if they are in anyway cohesive, then The Blob is the least convincing among them, having the least concision of the three. The Vatican's line in the sand (ESIS) is drawn through the billions of potential humans represented by the myriad of unrequited unions. Deliberately preventing these unions is murder, says the Vatican (while gleefully condemning millions to death from preventable but deadly STD's).
LBAC is a simple and clearly identifiable moment along the continuum from "gleam in the eye" to live birth. Occam smiles on LBAC.
The Blob argument is blobby. Indistinct. Interrupting the path from zygote to baby is permissible because it's just a blob of cells, until it isn't just a blob of cells anymore, at which point it's not permissible. Exactly where that point lies is a matter of opinion. It is not an exact science or even a fact for science to interpret.
In the concision rankings, LBAC is the winner. Complete bullshit but on that point, victorious.
The Blob is avoidance of the real issue, bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is a universal concern for all people, womb or no womb. It's not just a reproductive rights issue.
Don't shy away from the actual issue with pseudo-science. The real issue is messy and moral and, most importantly, only the business of the person occupying the body in question, regardless of where their I Am seems to reside.
Tocky on 15/5/2023 at 17:36
I did not say "the blob". I said "a mass of dividing cells" which is LITERALLY what it is. There is nothing indistinct about it. It puts a picture in ones head which is not at all indistinct. What is indistinct is your insistence it is anything but. It has potential but is not now what it could be. If I can call a car a car then I can call the zygote a mass of dividing cells. What I cannot call a car is a single bolt. I can't even call a handful of bolts a car. They are very distinctly bolts, however, just as the zygote is very distinctly cells.
You make a lot of unsupported declarations like "But if they are in anyway cohesive, then The Blob is the least convincing among them, having the least concision of the three" and " LBAC is a simple and clearly identifiable moment along the continuum from "gleam in the eye" to live birth. Occam smiles on LBAC" which are in no way true as if we are supposed to just accept it. I can think of nothing more foolish than accepting that what could be is currently. That is NOT Occams razor.
I go to the trouble of explaining my thinking and you give me statements in no way proved and say you have won- "In the concision rankings, LBAC is the winner. Complete bullshit but on that point, victorious." That's just lazy. It's as if you have gotten these statements elsewhere (they sound religious as in not needing explanation because they haven't any) and assumed they were true. You can't do that and be taken seriously. There has to be a logical progression of thought as in the bolt verses car argument.
But you do hit on things in amongst unproven and false declarations which are true-"Interrupting the path from zygote to baby is permissible because it's just a blob of cells, until it isn't just a blob of cells anymore, at which point it's not permissible. Exactly where that point lies is a matter of opinion. It is not an exact science or even a fact for science to interpret." Where that point lies is not an opinion to science. It has yet to be determined at what point but it has to do with provable fact and not opinion. Religion sets a great store upon opinion because it does not have fact. Science does. Religion has to borrow from proven science to even have an opinion. It does seem to chase it's tail on etymology to avoid those facts though.
I haven't shied from any ACTUAL issue and it is not psuedo science. I'm sticking to straight science- not opinion- not the meaning of words- actual science. Calling actual science pseudo-science is just another way of avoiding dealing with it's truth while casting aspersion on it.
There is some valid points here to address- "The Blob is avoidance of the real issue, bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is a universal concern for all people, womb or no womb. It's not just a reproductive rights issue."
Although you purposely misname the mass of cells "the blob" to downplay the point that it is a mass of cells, you are correct in that it is bodily autonomy being discussed. A mass of cells does not have that. Hell, it doesn't even have a body. But at a point it does. It still does not have what makes us human- a base level brain function. There is no autonomy without that. Cells don't know what they are doing so how can they have autonomy? That would give lie to the meaning of the word and words DO HAVE meanings whether they evolve over time or not. You can't just change them to avoid argument.
No opinion means anything until base level facts are established and one of those is that dividing cells do not have autonomy and are of worth only as a potential person and not an actual one. THE START. The other is the end point of when an abotion can be done. It has generally been viability- when it can live outside the womb with assistance. But if it can be proven to be earlier as far as brain activity then that should be a consideration as otherwise it is just discarding tissue with poterntial to be a person.
I have painstakingly gone over this while declarations are made at me with no logical support for them given. There isn't any point arguing against those sorts of statements. THEY are NOT arguments.
Let's take some of the "mess" out by not discussing morality. It doesn't seem to have much going for it when it places the dividing cell as a person already and treats the mother as if her actual automomy made no difference in the matter.
Pyrian on 15/5/2023 at 22:55
"A mass of dividing cells" is not a scientific term. All living human organisms
have dividing cells. A Zygote is a single cell. For a few days, it divides into undifferentiated cells. By day 4, there are differentiated cells. By day 8, there are non-dividing cells (embryonic red blood cells). From this point (roughly just after implantation!) onwards, a fetus is no more a "a mass of dividing cells" than
we are. Unless by "a mass of dividing cells" you mean something very different from a mass... Of cells... That divide.
Which seems likely, given that you later mention brain function.
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Where that point lies is not an opinion to science. It has yet to be determined at what point but it has to do with provable fact and not opinion.
Nah.
Science can tell us (roughly now and in more detail in the future) which brain functions start working at roughly what age. But there's never going to be some magic moment or clear dividing line. Brains... Grow. Little by little, bit by bit. Electrical brain activity can be detected in a fetus around week 5 to 6. It will continue to have substantial physical growth until early adolescence(!) and significant development until the mid-to-late 20's(!). The point at which it becomes a
person isn't going to be answered by having more details on this process; if anything, it's likely to just become muddier and muddier, because your
hope for assumption of a "provable fact" of the dividing line of personhood is not a thing that's ever going to happen. We
already know that a lot of brain function is already present at birth and a lot more is developed afterwards; the hypothesis that science will find some clear dividing line between pre-person-brain and person-brain is already disproven.
Nicker on 16/5/2023 at 04:47
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I did not say "the blob". I said "a mass of dividing cells" which is LITERALLY what it is.
And I didn't say The THING so I figured a little turn-about would be on the table but it seems that is a one way street. Don't demand respect unless you offer it.
"
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I go to the trouble of explaining my thinking and you give me statements in no way proved and say you have won-
I didn't say "I Won". I said that, when comparing the three formulations of the "when does a person begin" argument, the "at conception" is the most concise. Your "a mass of dividing cells" is far less concise, as you admit: "Where that point lies is not an opinion to science. It has yet to be determined at what point but it has to do with provable fact and not opinion."
But you have no facts to support your assertion or your opinion. You cannot provide a point at which the mass of cells stops being a mass of cells and becomes a person. Is it when the spinal cord develops, when the heart starts beating, when ANY basic brain function develops, when self reflection emerges? WHERE?
There is no clear, objective, factual line at present and I can't see what will change to create one. Because to do that we need to define what a person is and that will always be an opinion.
"When does a person begin" is a crap argument, whether you use it or your opponents do.
Stop dodging the real issue.
Nicker on 16/5/2023 at 05:07
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Electrical brain activity can be detected in a fetus around week 5 to 6. It will continue to have substantial physical growth until early adolescence(!) and significant development until the mid-to-late 20's(!).
I seem to recall that in the early 80's. Robert Heinlein suffered a brain injury of some sort, during which time he issued some truly extreme opinion pieces, which the "science" magazine "OMNI" gleefully published. Among them was an opinion that if a child failed to develop a demonstrable capacity for mathematics by age 7, they could be considered a candidate for post-term abortion. I believe he later retracted the essay series in its entirety.
Of course I might have hallucinated the whole thing.
Philip K. Dick did write a short story on the same theme, about a service provided by authorities where they would collect and dispose of children who had proven to be unsatisfactory to their parents.
Cipheron on 16/5/2023 at 10:00
Quote Posted by Qooper
Definitions are ideas and as such don't exist in the physical world. Definitions vary between cultures, people and ideologies, as do classifications. The scientific method does not give us definitions.
That's right. Some things have no clear line. As in Sorites Paradox and the related Continuum Fallacy.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox)
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The sorites paradox (/soʊˈraɪtiːz/; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?
Like a "heap", "person" has no scientific meaning, so the exact point something goes from non-personhood to personhood is not well defined either, and is a matter of opinion.
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The continuum fallacy (also known as the fallacy of the beard, line-drawing fallacy, or decision-point fallacy) is an informal fallacy related to the sorites paradox. Both fallacies cause one to erroneously reject a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as one would like it to be. Vagueness alone does not necessarily imply invalidity. The fallacy is the argument that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states.
This applies to "both sides" arguments, for example, the "when does an embryo become a person" debate.
But it's also seen when people state that because there are a continuum of gender traits, then discernable genders don't exist at all. But that's like saying you can't tell plains from mountains because there's a smooth spectrum of states between them.
Tocky on 16/5/2023 at 14:47
Quote Posted by Nicker
And I didn't say The THING so I figured a little turn-about would be on the table but it seems that is a one way street. Don't demand respect unless you offer it.
"
I didn't say "I Won". I said that, when comparing the three formulations of the "when does a person begin" argument, the "at conception" is the most concise. Your "a mass of dividing cells" is far less concise, as you admit: "Where that point lies is not an opinion to science. It has yet to be determined at what point but it has to do with provable fact and not opinion."
But you have no facts to support your assertion or your opinion. You cannot provide a point at which the mass of cells stops being a mass of cells and becomes a person. Is it when the spinal cord develops, when the heart starts beating, when ANY basic brain function develops, when self reflection emerges? WHERE?
There is no clear, objective, factual line at present and I can't see what will change to create one. Because to do that we need to define what a person is and that will always be an opinion.
"When does a person begin" is a crap argument, whether you use it or your opponents do.
Stop dodging the real issue.
I simply thought "The Thing" would be humorous and give you exact parameters for what I'm saying, that being that no part of us is the whole us. If there is to be a part thought of as us then it is the brain. We can hack parts off but until we get to the brain we haven't gotten to the person that we are. I don't give a shit if you respect me or not. I want you to listen to what I'm saying and respond to that (the factual aspects). THAT is the REAL issue and not what some goof with a degree says about what HE thinks is a human. I want YOU to think. In that way you will come to the conclusion that it takes more than dividing cells to make a person.
If doctors consider a person not truly alive and worthy of preserving who is brain dead then shouldn't we also at the other end of the spectrum consider the same thing? The moment of fertilization means jack shit. We accidentally ingest creatures more sentient than that. What is most concise and Occams razor simple is not accounting for the vast majority of facts. THAT IS the real issue.
What I have ARE facts to support my assertion and I have reiterated them and will do so again. Just because we haven't narrowed down the time frame to a specific second doesn't mean we can't at least get a lot closer. The reason it's so important is the autonomy issue. At what point does the embryo have autonomy. I'm not going to toss my hands in the air and say, "oh well, we just can't know because OPINION". I'm going to examine facts. That sure as hell beats opinion in my book. You can still have all the opinions on those you want but there has to be facts to base them on. That is where science comes in.
And then you claim I have no facts. I've yet to see anything but assertions of opinion being some impenetrable barrier for the discussion of facts. It isn't. Want facts? The spinal cord isn't what makes us a person. The heart isn't what makes us a person. Not even the lower brain functions which merely keep the other functions working to keep the part that makes us a person going. The upper brain. THAT is what makes us a person. When that is dead we no longer are. And when it hasn't formed and isn't functioning to a level that it can respond to its environment then it means we aren't yet.
When does a person begin is the only argument not crap and for the reasons I just defined.
Do you really think discussion of physical facts is "dodging the issue"? Are feelings and opinions really more important than that?
