I don’t know what you mean by asking if we “must” see a difference. If we have working eyes then we will see a difference. — Michael

Words are always important, but they don’t need to be the focus as when making a semantical point. I think you split hairs on “will/must” without the distinction making a difference in your point.

If you cannot visually determine that a human has a head and that a zygote is a single cell then you are either blind or hallucinating. — Michael

You are saying anyone with eyes will see the difference, and if those eyes are working they must see a difference or else they are “blind or hallucinating.”

So I still see you asserting facts, visual differences in an objective world no longer subject to debate or choices, that working eyes will see, must see, are clear…

So I still see you asserting facts, visual differences in an objective world no longer subject to debate or choices, that working eyes will see, must see, are clear… — Fire Ologist

Well, yes. I’m not a solipsist or an idealist. There is an independent material world, and two facts about that material world are that adults have heads and that zygotes are a single cell. Given the way objects reflect light, the way light stimulates the eyes, and the way the brain responds to the eyes, looking at an adult is going to cause a significantly different visual experience than looking at a zygote.

I honestly have no idea what it is you’re trying to argue here.

Who speaks for the unborn? I don't know, but i know who sings for them.

Are you just a collection of particles or are you something more? This is where religion probably comes into play. — RogueAI

I’m at least a collection of particles.

That’s all I need to be to have this conversation.

The conversation, to me, is can we draw a line, a distinction between me and say, my clothing, naming me a “human being” and naming my clothes “not a human being”. So we are taking clumps of particles and distinguishing them from one another giving them names.
And the conversation, to me, is can we draw a line and say when, the clump of particles we now call a human being because of its distinction from clothing and other clumps, when did this human being first pop onto the scene?

That’s it for me. Rather we pretend no one ever thought of religion or even morality. I think this is enough material for tons of further analysis.

I’m at least a collection of particles.

That’s all I need to be to have this conversation. — Fire Ologist

The law is said to have its letter, and also its spirit. I don't see why you and I need to manage with less?

I don't think you trust my answers for some reason. And I'm curious why but really would rather hear some sort of argument relating to abortion from you. — Fire Ologist

Very well, let's proceed and assume all things you've said are true. It will force me to make some assumptions about your views and it would be far more productive if you simply said what your views are, but I'm game.

What we know about your views so far:

• You think abortion should be legal for up to six months.
  
• You are personally against abortion.
  
• You belong to a religion.
  
• You can't reveal what religion you belong to.

There's a good chance of survival for birth at six months. This could be critical. Perhaps the religion that you belong to requires the ritual sacrifice of babies as young as possible or at least younger than six months. This could account for the wish that abortion be legal for up to six months. Killing babies after that cutoff date would be useless. It may even anger the God or Gods to be offered a sacrifice that's past its stale date.

I'm guessing that you're personally against killing babies because hemophobia prevents you from plunging the sacrificial knife yourself.

Maybe you can't say what religion you belong to because it's a secret sect of :naughty: Satanism :naughty: and you would be killed if you said anything.

Sound about right?

There is an independent material world, and two facts about that material world are that adults have heads and that zygotes are a single cell. Given the way that objects reflect light, the way light stimulates the eyes, and the way the brain responds to the eyes, looking at an adult is going to cause a significantly different visual experience than looking at a zygote. — Michael

I agree with all of that.

But that means to me, neither of us have any choice in the matter.
“There is an independent material world”.

I’ll even stipulate that we could revisit this as a question and maybe there is no material world. But for our purposes, sharing our thoughts in a conversation, and for purposes of having a conversation about abortion, “there is an independent material world.”

So maybe we are choosing to stipulate this together, but for now, the choice is made. Everything we say further will rely on this as a fact that neither of us can choose to ignore it or we will no longer be addressing the subject.

“There is an independent material world” is itself an essentialist, objectivist position. Such a world is independent from our choices, correct? Maybe we only engage with it through choice, but it, in itself is independent, or you wouldn’t have said “independent”.

Do you want to keep going? Eventually I’d be talking about the independent differences between a fetal, a newly born and an adult human organism, and whether these differences are independent of me and my choices, or not.

That is exactly right. No goofing around. You nailed it. I had no idea who I was dealing with. Impressive.

Now. Do you have any of your own views? Or…where do you want to go with this? I mean I don’t want to waste your time.

That is exactly right. — Fire Ologist

If I'm right then you've just sealed your death warrant by revealing the secret sect of Satanism.

I don’t think it helps at all to have this conversation in religious terms.

I think some religious people think that the reason human beings are valuable is because they have a soul, and souls come from God at conception. Great. Wonderful for them. But there is nothing to argue about there, nothing to talk about, nothing to measure and no explanatory power. You just end up replacing one question “what is a human being” with another “what is a soul” and now there is less chance of answering anything.

you've just sealed your death — praxis

Kind of creepy. But really spot on analysis.

“There is an independent material world” is itself an essentialist — Fire Ologist

That’s not essentialism. Essentialism is “the idea that things have an ‘essence’ or ‘form’ that defines their identity.”

For some things this makes sense, e.g. being a triangle, but for other things it doesn’t, e.g. being a game.

Whether or not some entity is a member of some biological taxonomy is of the latter kind, not the former.

Secret religions and abortion at six months is definitely creepy.

I don’t think it helps at all to have this conversation in religious terms. — Fire Ologist

"The spirit of the law" is not a religious term. But I don't think it helps to have the conversation in purely physical terms either, and that is my point. Matter and cells - some we are made of, some we eat, What's the difference?

Whether or not some entity is a member of some biological taxonomy is of the latter kind [a game], not the former [essentialist like asserting a triangle]. — Michael

The issue doesn't have to be whether the distinctions we make refer to objects that are independent of us, or objects we invent as part of the game of conversation. I am just saying we can't keep shifting the ground on which we rest subsequent assertions, or we get nowhere.

If you say adults have heads and zygotes don't, which I say as well, we can't move on to the next point without leaving this as fixed, either fixed in an independent material world, or fixed as a choice we've made to continue the discussion.

To skip all the painful steps in between, I'm sure we agree on a lot of the facts (gamed or gleaned).

It is coherent to me to say that a person is an organism that thinks, desires, values, etc. A zygote cannot do any of those. Therefore, a zygote is not a person. That's coherent.

Further, I think it would be coherent with the above to say that an infant doesn't think, desire or value anything. It's more like a zygote. So an infant is not a person either. (You can still say that an infant has great value to many adults, and therefore, we will protect it's life because we want to, but it would not be because it is a person...but that's another conversation.)

Staying within the game we've started, you could go the biological route and show how a infant does think and desire, and is thereby a person, or not.

Or, we could start over and say that a person is a thing (organism) with 46 chromosomes and that is sentient. So now infants certainly fit the bill, and we would place the moment a new person comes into being closer to 6 months development after conception. That's also completely consistent.

Now I know that all of the above might make you cringe because of all of its essentialist-speak, but saying "If you cannot visually determine that a human has a head and that a zygote is a single cell then you are either blind or hallucinating." is using the same type of language I'm using.

Matter and cells - some we are made of, some we eat, What's the difference? — unenlightened

Are you asking "what are 'we'"? Are you acknowledging that we are made of cells and asking "what else are we?"

That's what I'm asking. The spirit of the conversation is an answer to that question. Pre-valuation of any cells, or eating.

Living things go through changes. They are still one living thing. That is not a premise, it's a conclusion so maybe you agree or disagree with this conclusion. But I'm operating under the assumption that there are things, objects, like a person, and these living things go through changes, and these changes don't redefine what type or individual thing they are, they extend it. A puppy is one thing; when it becomes an adult, it is still that one thing, now grown.

So let's say a person is a thinking thing. An organism in the zygote stage can't think. So if a person is a thinking thing, a zygote is not a person.

Fine, no more need to discuss it, and we can apply this to abortion however we like.

But some say, hey, but a baby doesn't look like it thinks at all. We measure brain waves and we can't see enough similarity to an adult thinker, so it is really these brain waves that are the structure and foundation of when a new human being comes into being. We might apply abortion questions to the baby then however we like.

So let's say instead, that a person is a being that can sense pain. If we leave it at that, we cannot tell the difference between a person and goat, at any stage in any life. So we need more. A person is an organism that can sense pain and has 46 chromosomes. Great, now we have a person first coming into being around 6 months or something of gestation. We can apply this to abortion however we like.

My argument is everything is arbitrary after you have a living organism with 46 chromosomes. Waiting for thought capabilities, or desiring or sentience is like waiting for laughter or pooping, or any other activity. Also, my argument is a sort of reductio ad absurdum - if a person is thinking, then to be consistent, many newborns are not persons. I think that's not an explanation of person that anyone is after.

Aside from my values being out of whack for even asking the question, I'd like to hear how actively thinking and/or sentience must be occurring before we have a person actively being. I think there are good arguments for that, but I'd like to hear some from somewhere else. I keep having to make all the substantive points for all of us to pick apart.

First you were talking about being human, now you're talking about being a person. These are not the same thing (e.g. intelligent aliens would be non-human persons). It would help if you were consistent with your terminology.

My issue is with the notion of being human. Humanity evolved from non-human life, but there was never some generation where two non-human parents birthed a human child. It's a gradual process from Homo heidelbergensis to Homo sapiens, with a large grey area in between where there is no non-arbitrary justification to call it a member of the one species or the other.

My other issue is that this is utterly irrelevant to the abortion debate. Membership of a species simply doesn't matter. The claim that it's acceptable to abort one baby because it's Homo heidelbergensis but not another because it's Homo sapiens is absurd.

As I keep saying, it can be unacceptable to kill something even if it's not human, and it can be acceptable to kill something even if it's human.

Whether or not it is wrong to kill something is determined by something other than its biological taxonomy. Consciousness, to me, is a morally relevant characteristic. At the very least I can say that it's morally acceptable to kill any organism that clearly has no consciousness, e.g. plants, bacteria, and so on (and assuming that doing so does not entail consequences that impact conscious organisms, such as the destruction of all plant life causing us to starve).

The degree to which an organism must be conscious for it to then be morally unacceptable to kill it is certainly a problem worth consideration, but at the very least we have accepted that the presence of some degree of consciousness is a necessary requirement, and zygotes lack this entirely.

Secret religions — praxis

By the way. I've stated what my religion is more than a few times in the forum. It's no secret. I'm just not telling you here. Because Satan told me, not to worry, he'll take care of you.

I found a great quote:

"Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of enlightenment."
- Immanuel Kant, 1784

So I'll ask one more time. What is your thought and supporting argument on the topic of abortion and new human life, etc?

I think some religious people think that the reason human beings are valuable is because they have a soul, and souls come from God at conception. Great. Wonderful for them. But there is nothing to argue about there, nothing to talk about, nothing to measure and no explanatory power. — Fire Ologist

Actually, there is indeed something important to argue about: public policy. It is understandable that the sort of religious person you described would want to stop people from killing zygotes, and there's no reason why they can't try to influence public policy.

Regarding the core matter that we're discussing, I'd just say that "individual human being" is a fuzzy concept, so there is no objectively correct answer as to when a developing entity is a full-fledged human being.

When I saw you quoting someone saying that a "human has a head...", I thought of Abby and Brittany Hensel, conjoined twins that share a single body (one torso, one set of arms and legs)- so (by every definition I've seen) they comprise a single organism , but it wouldn't make sense to treat them as a single person.

My argument is everything is arbitrary after you have a living organism with 46 chromosomes. — Fire Ologist

Even that doesn't work. People with Klinefelter syndrome have 47 chromosomes, and there is also a condition where a person has 48 chromosomes.

(e.g. intelligent aliens would be non-human persons) — Michael

So, on earth, where do you find persons?

If you want to draw a distinction between a person and a human being, you have to show me what a person has or does, and what a human being has or does. You are distinguishing them. That's perfectly fine.

Presumably persons are where we find thinking/self-awareness/desires etc., and human beings are just a category? So "person" is the thing, and "human" is the biological category that is a non sequitur?

People with Klinefelter syndrome have 47 chromosomes, and there is also a condition where a person has 48 chromosomes. — Relativist

We could figure out exceptions to the rule. But we need a rule first. Is anything a human being?

My argument is everything is arbitrary after you have a living organism with 46 chromosomes. Waiting for thought capabilities, or desiring or sentience is like waiting for laughter or pooping, or any other activity. Also, my argument is a sort of reductio ad absurdum - if a person is thinking, then to be consistent, many newborns are not persons. I think that's not an explanation of person that anyone is after. — Fire Ologist

There isn’t just one aspect to being human obviously. NOS and Frank are dissatisfied with the humanity of pre-borns and feel they must be somehow humanized. I suggested playing classical music for early enculturation. Not sure what else could be done.

There isn’t just one aspect to being human obviously. — praxis

Great assertion. How about some aspects.

How about some aspects. — Fire Ologist

Music appreciation.

It's like asking for the difference between a human and a language user. On Earth it happens to be the case that humans are the only language users, but being human and being a language user do not mean the same thing. Something could be a language user but not be human (e.g. alien life, artificial life, or some future species that chimpanzees could evolve into), and something could be human but not be a language user (e.g. suffer from severe aphasia).

Can anyone else say that what a person is, or what a human being is, and most importantly, when either one of these pops into existence?

I assume all those reading this popped into existence sometime. And you are human type organism doing personal things. Except for Praxis. Praxis might be God. For anyone else, when would you say you started existing?

Can anyone else say that what a person is, or what a human being is, and most importantly, when either one of these pops into existence? — Fire Ologist

No.

That's the bit you are missing.

We could figure out exceptions to the rule. But we need a rule first. Is anything a human being? — Fire Ologist

Exceptions demonstrate the problem with a rule. Suppose we establish the rule (as a law) that a 6-month fetus is a human being. There are instances where the carrying to term of a (damaged) 6-month fetus will kill the mother. The rule would necessitate killing the mother.

No rule, no definition of "individual human being" can work universally because "individual human being" is fundamentally a fuzzy concept. Any definition will have exceptions - and that was the point I was trying to make. Establishing a definition in the law (if that's what you're after) is therefore pointless. Rather, the law ought to be based on the reality that it IS a fuzzy concept. This permits individuals to make their own decisions in their own circumstances.

No — Banno

I thought your argument was that you can tell by sight.

Can anyone else say that what a person is, or what a human being is, and most importantly, when either one of these pops into existence?
— Fire Ologist

No. — Banno

So is this because:
no one can say it?
no one can know it to then say of it?
nothing can be known?
or, there is no such moment (or time frame) when I first existed?

Seems unscientific to not be able to even address when something is and when something is not, like a person for instance, or like a value-making-subject for instance. I mean, if I am a values granting subject, and I am pretty sure I am doing this value-making in space and time with a body among bodies, and I am pretty sure I didn’t used to be here, isn’t there a moment when I first came to be?

Seems like there has to be an answer.