Do you not know what consciousness is? I mean something like the ability to think, or to be aware that you are thinking, or to feel desires and aversions, and the other things associated with having a mind.

This is, as far as we know, false. The zygote exhibits none of the markers of having a capacity for consciousness. It doesn't have a sufficiently developed brain, it doesn't exhibit the behavior we associate with consciousness, and so on.

I think you are confusing the potential for consciousness with the capacity for consciousness. The zygote does have the potential to develop into a being with a capacity for consciousness, but does not now have that capacity.

The adult human in a coma has the capacity for consciousness. When exactly the fetus develops a capacity for consciousness is difficult to determine as we still don't understand the brain very well. This capacity requires more than just any brain activity--it is generally thought by scientists that the fetus has developed this capacity after about 5-6 months of development.

However, let's just say that it has developed it at 7 weeks. Would you then agree with me that abortion before that 7 week mark is not morally wrong?

If you want to have a serious conversation about the morality of abortion, then you can't just decide that central issues in the discussion are boring to you and so you don't want to discuss them. You believe that living organisms with human DNA are morally important, but living organisms with non-human DNA are not. If you don't want to tell me why, that's fine, but then don't kid yourself into thinking that you've given a defense of your views.

I've never seen Space Odyssey, but under most current understandings of morality, if we ever do develop true AI, then it would be immoral to destroy it.

Again, these persons have the capacity for consciousness.

So far I've refrained from speculating about your own obsessions with controlling women's sexuality. This is because such speculations make a rational discussion about such a controversial subject very difficult. I would ask you to do the same.

Your claims here are about your own rhetorical choices--there is no larger intellectual point you are making. And I don't agree with your rhetorical goals. So,you are obviously wrong about the nature of "choice." I "choose" which college to go to, what job to take, whom I marry, and so on. These "choices" are central to my life in important ways so your attempt to trivialize our wanting to make our own choices is just stupid and wrong.

Second, the question is not whether women choose to get pregnant (about which you are again wrong--choosing to have sex is not choosing to get pregnant), but whether they can decide whether to have an abortion or not. You wish to deny them the legal right to make that choice.

OP,

Sorry, my friend, I'm calling bull**** on this.

With all due respect, you don't have the foggiest clue what I wish in this matter, but I'm sure painting me as some Nazi that wants to subjugate women fits your meme for people that disagree with you quite nicely. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Since you seem curious about my wishes, I'll let you in on them so you won't have to speculate.

As abhorrent as I find the practice of abortion from the POV of my particular moral compass, and I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but I sort of espouse Bill Clinton's position when he once said something like , "I believe abortion should be legal and rare."

I read your link and found none of its philosophical arguments particularly compelling. The notion that a developing human is described as a "human life form" (could any description be more sterile, marginalized or alien?) and the discussion was really about at what mystical-magical point that this quasi alien human life form became or attained "personhood" however that is nebulously defined. But one gets the idea that amazingly coincidentally this magical personhood arrives at a non-specific date.... but likely after the second trimester. What a bloody coincidence, ehhh.

The argument of the Sickly Violinist I found entirely lol-tastic. But all that being said... back to legal and rare.

The legal part gets all the attention, but the rare part gets neglected. How to make abortion rare (or at least rarer)? Education with emphasis on personal responsibility. Making condoms available at the school nurse and showing how to roll them over a cucumber isn't sufficient.

Human sexuality has to be part of an early teen curriculum in public schools. Teaching abstinence has to be part of it, but not to be a sexual nazi, but rather to explain most 15 yr olds would likely be better able to deal well with the emotional component of a sexual relationship at 18 rather than 15.

Contraception needs to be emphasized for both partners for prevention of stds as well as pregnancy. The notion that there are consequences for irrational behavior has to be drummed into their little heads.

That would be a start. Hopefully, over time, people will look at abortion the way we look at how 18th century physicians treated various maladies with things such as bleeding patients. You mean in the late 20th century , they vacuumed developing humans from the womb as a birth control of last resort? Amazing!

So you think abortion is murder, but you're fine having it be legal? This I don't get.

I'm a little confused on this part. How exactly is it coincidental (like, what other piece of information makes this a coincidence)?

Given that we can't definitively define life/personhood, don't you think that having a fuzzy date is more honest and true than a specific moment in time like you're going with?

Not really sure what you're calling BS on. You seemed to ignore almost my entire post.

Fair enough. I have assumed that you think that abortion should be illegal. My argumentation has focused on the morality rather than legality of abortion, but I'm mostly interested in responding to those who think abortion should be illegal. Since you don't, we mostly agree.

Also, I said (somehow you read the opposite) that I'm not really interested in speculating about your motives, and I think you should refrain doing so about mine.

This continues your pattern of not responding to arguments with anything other than emotive rhetoric. You object to how the fetus is characterized, you claim that the result is a coincidence, etc., but you provide zero argumentation for your own view.

The issue isn't that complicated. You've claimed that organisms with human DNA are morally valuable, but organisms with non-human DNA are not morally valuable. Why?

Once more, you declare an argument to be silly, but don't bother actually responding to it.

I recognize it is not murder according to our current law. While I believe abortion is an enormous human tragedy, being a secular person who takes his own marching orders from my own sense of morality ( not the Bible) , but subjugates my individual positions to the US Constitution and the rule of law, I recognize the current law doesn't agree that abortion is murder. Since I am a believer in the civil society, I don't grab a gun and shoot people that do things I consider immoral.

If I was King of the world, I would use all my powers to make the frequency of abortions as close to zero as possible. I also believe where an individual has been violated, the moral choices are far less clear and in those cases abortion may be a sad, but reasonable option. So I do believe abortion should be legal.

Before you jump in and say, "Well... that's not a consistent position," let me say there are very few things where one can be truly absolute. I believe killing is about as horrible a thing a human can do, but I'd organize a parade down 5th Avenue for the guy that shot Hitler in 1939 right between the eyes and feel very good about it. Absolute moral purity and consistency is the realm of philosophers. The rest of us riff --raff and hurley-burrly have to muddle along as best we can within the shadow of the philosopher's ivory tower.

I can see how killing Hitler in 1939 could have won the war for the Nazis.

Geez, I thought just reading the first paragraph would lake its lol-tastic-ness self evident, but I'll humor you:

g. Thomson and the Argument of The Sickly Violinist

Judith Jarvis Thomson presents an interesting case in her landmark article A Defense of Abortion (1971) in order to show that, even if the fetus has a right to live, one is still able to justify an abortion for reasons of a woman’s right to live/integrity/privacy. Thomson’s famous example is that of the sickly violinist: You awaken one morning to find that you have been kidnapped by a society of music lovers in order to help a violinist who is unable to live on his own by virtue of his ill-health. He has been attached to your kidneys because you alone have the only blood type to keep him alive. You are faced with a moral dilemma because the violinist has a right to live by being a member of the human race; there seems to be no possibility to unplug him without violating this right and thus killing him. However, if you leave him attached to you, you are unable to move for months, although you did not give him the right to use your body in such a way (Thomson 1984, 174-175).

Where do we start? Hmmmm.... how about at the beginning for a novel notion. I will readily concede it is somewhat reasonable for the singular case of rape. Other than that, I deem it lol-tastic for the following reasons:

First, from a purely stylistic and intellectually honest POV the fail is exhibited in the first line. As a bit of background, this passage is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I am assuming OP included this link as an objective philosophical look at the issue at hand. The author tips his hand as to his bias in the first line when he writes, "Judith Jarvis Thomson presents an interesting case in her landmark article..."

It is an "interesting article"" and it is a "landmark" article". Poison the well much Mr. Author! The use of these modifers are quite clear. If it is an "interesting" article , that's code speech for if you are really really smart, you'll agree with it. It is worthy of your perusal because of the place it will take you. Calling the article "landmark" imbues the moral authority of Moses to it.

If the author was interested in unfettered intellectual discourse, he would have written something like," JJT presents her case in the article blah, blah blah..." There is a giant difference in those two opening sentences. One is meant to present a an argument in an unbiased way, while the other means to poison the well before the argument is presented.

So let's just say, I'm going to look at the argument with a particularly jaundiced eye from this point forward. But I read on.

The author's case is built around this supposition:

"]You awaken one morning to find that you have been kidnapped by a society of music lovers[/B] in order to help a violinist who is unable to live on his own by virtue of his ill-health."

Kidnapped is the key word. Excluding the case of rape, the analogy is an enormous fail. A woman that indulges in consensual sex and becomes pregnant with full knowledge of this possibility isn't in any way, shape or form analogous with a person who is kidnapped in its sleep and awakens to find itself surgically attached to a random violinist. Personally, I cannot imagine a possibly less analogous situation.

The author also argues privacy when she says:

"even if the fetus has a right to live, one is still able to justify an abortion for reasons of a woman’s right to [B]live/integrity/privacy."

Of course, a person's privacy is violated in this case where she is kidnapped and surgically attached to another human without her consent in every moral as well as legal sense. However, that isn't in any way analogous to what happens in 99% of the abortions resulting from consensual sex.

A better analogy would be the person consents to save the sickly violinist's life by being attached to the violinist or by donating a kidney, but then 2 months later decides it is just too much trouble and petitions to undo the surgery with full understanding the violinist is a dead man. I would argue when she originally consented to the surgery, she forfeited her so called right to privacy and she has to stay attached to the violinist for the next 7 months. People consensually and quite legally forfeit their natural rights all the time.

The author again uses overkill when she writes:

"However, if you leave him attached to you, you are unable to move for months"

In the real world, with pregnancies, how many women are "unable to move for months"?

In closing, yeah, I thought this argument so lol-tastic on its surface that going through it point for point seemed like clubbing a baby seal.

Am I to assume you see it as a wonderful example of objective reasoning?

I think some of your criticisms of Thomson's argument are worthwhile and others are not. However, I'd rather focus on the arguments that I (or bunny) have made in this thread, so why don't you respond to those rather than other arguments no one in this thread has made.

Once again, the question is this: Why is it that you think that living organisms with human DNA are morally valuable, but living organisms with non-human DNA are not?

A+.

Life is full of justifiable contradictions that is why philosophy exists.

A lot of philosophy is thinking stripped to the bare bones without reality or human psychology.

Imagine thinking you went around all day every day worrying you weren't being logically consistent. For instance: you hate birthday parties but your sweet old granny has one coming up. "Oh no I have a dilemma. I hate birthday parties but I love grandma"...what does the logical person do? Why he tussles over it. He thinks: I can't go to that party I won't be logically consistent to my beliefs". Bunk. I go to the party. I don't worry for 2 seconds over "logical consistency". Grandma is worth more than logical consistency imo and that is exactly how the world works alot of the time.

I'm confused OP, ......aren't you the guy who took me to task in post 604 for making a snarky comment about the "sickly violinist" when you wrote:

"Once more, you declare an argument to be silly, but don't bother actually responding to it."

So, I take a half hour to point out the Torquemada-esque torturing of reasoning the sickly violinist's author uses, and your response is yeah I agree and disagree with you without stating where and why. Thanks. And , quite frankly, the whole argument is so bizarre and lol-tastic, I don't really care.

Now you say:

"...so why don't you respond to those rather than other arguments no one in this thread has made."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph...are you not the one who posted the link with the sickly violinist in it and are you not the one who took me to task for not buttressing my opinion that it was lol-tastic???

Now. as far as the superiority of human DNA on planet earth, I am not a philosopher and have never considered anything about that subject and I can't for the life of me see the utility in wasting my time considering it. However, if you have a position and would like me to comment on it, present it in its totality and I'll give it a shot, but please make the connection to the abortion debate at hand. Otherwise, it will be a complete waste of time with respect to this thread.

I can give you my general position; whether one believes in so called intelligent design or evolution (my particular preference) humans aren't autotrophs who get their carbon and derive their energy from the air and Sun. We are heterotrophs that derive those things by eating other living things. Darwinian evolution lead to humans being omnivores, so I don't have any particular problem eating most anything.

But you clearly have some trap you are waiting to spring that I am sure will back the case for abortion, so I'll be happy to play the role of the sacrificial lamb

Since this is confusing you, I haven't and won't ask you to respond to the arguments made by people outside this thread. The bolded part is the relevant bit--neither of us care, so let's drop it.

Okay, here's my view. We should accept a presumption of liberty--that women have the moral right to make whatever choice they wish regarding their own health and future. If a women gets pregnant, remaining pregnant affects both her health and future in significant ways. Therefore, there is a presumption that women should have the moral right to make whatever choice they wish regarding whether to remain pregnant or have an abortion.

There are limits to this presumption of liberty. Specifically, when a person's choices directly harm other people, we can sometimes limit those choices. So, the question is whether abortion directly harms other people. It doesn't seem to, except perhaps for the fetus. However, the issue here is not whether abortion harms the fetus (or embryo)--it clearly does. The issue is whether the fetus is a person--i.e. a being that should be protected by certain moral rights.

So, what are the criteria of personhood? One method I use to determine this is to look at the clear examples of persons (adult humans) and non-persons (rocks, wheat, ants) and try to identify relevant differences. One difference is DNA. If we think this is a necessary and sufficient criterion for personhood, then everything with human DNA is a person and anything without human DNA is not a person. Since fetuses, embryos, and zygotes all have human DNA, under this conception of personhood, we should regard them as qualifying for protection of basic rights.

However, I don't see what makes human DNA morally special such that beings with this particular DNA should be protected by moral rights but beings without it shouldn't. So that doesn't seem like a very good candidate. If you disagree, feel free to tell me why.

I think there are other more plausible accounts of personhood. For instance, it seems to me like a necessary (although maybe not sufficient) condition for personhood is the capacity for consciousness. I can support this by pointing to thought experiments--imagine a scenario where we discovered mold on Mars. We wouldn't think that this mold--although a living organism--had any rights. However, imagine we discover conscious living organisms on Mars--we would then probably regard them as being morally significant--it would be wrong to just kill them willy-nilly.

Therefore, I regard the capacity for consciousness as at least a necessary condition for personhood. Since the fetus only gains this capacity at around the 5th to 6th months, the abortions that occur before then (the vast majority of abortions) do not harm any persons. Hence, at least these abortions should be regarded as morally permissable since we have a presumption of liberty.

Yeah, I don't think you understand my question--hopefully I cleared it up above.

I agree women should have free choice in the matter of reproductive issues. They have absolute power over whether to engage in sex or not.They also have the right to control their own health issues. This is why I advocate the right of abortion in cases of force or serious health of the mother.

However , liberty isn't absolute. When one engages in consensually welcoming sperm into one's body with the full knowledge they may start another human life in that process, imo, things change.

For example, many times as a prerequisite of employment, people make non-disclosure agreements forfeiting their 1st amendment rights. When one consensually welcomes packets of 23 human chromosomes into one body, they similarly subjugate some of their so called privacy rights to the developing human.

You couch your argument in semantic parsing terms: is a fetus a people... is it a person... is it conscious.... is it 'capable of consciousness'. You can throw all the semantic barriers to de-humanize it any way you please, but that doesn't change the inarguable fact, your so called fetus is nothing other than a member of the human species in an earlier stage of development than you or me. Imo, your fetus is a developing member of **** sapiens taxonomically and therefor has value whether one calls it a people or a person or a fetus.


This seems like a pretty easy question. Believe in Darwin much? Humans (who are chock full of human DNA) are morally special on this planet for a number of reasons. From a Darwinian perspective , we have won the lottery. Humans are the most highly evolved group on the planet as far as the ability to even contemplate morality. Human morality is better evolved (in most cases) than , say, dog morality.

It is true we may have gotten lucky along the way with a rogue asteroid helping mammals out along the way. Had that asteroid not slammed us, the most moral and highly evolved species on the planet might look something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StarTrek-Gorn.jpg

From a Darwinian perspective through the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest and the development of our powerful brains that can actually contemplate the abstract concept of morality humans rule the roost and are more valuable by any reasonable metric. Since our DNA sequence is what differentiates us from, say, an oyster human DNA has more value. I'm surprised a secular Darwinist has difficulty with that concept.


I'm pretty sure I have zero idea what mold on Mars has to do with abortion. Can we confine our arguments to this planet, plz.


As I've said earlier, even though I find "the capacity for consciousness" a term strictly crafted to rationalize abortion and hardly compelling, I am stunned that you don't agree a fetus has the capacity for consciousness. If you leave the fetus alone at any gestational age, in the vast majority of cases it will develop consciousness in the vast majority of cases.

Just leave the bloody thing alone and it will meet every semantic hurdle all the philosophers that can dance on the head of a pin can erect

I like this view of it.

I think you're missing the key point of a discussion. If you just say that your view is an 'inarguable fact' while we continue to argue against it, then can't you see how we're not getting anywhere?

So your claim is that humans have value because of our ability to contemplate morality? Hmmm, this seems to have little to do with DNA and a lot to do with consciousness.

Wait, but you just said that it was our brains, not our DNA. Which of these do you actually value?

It's a simple situation. If we found a mold on Mars, would you care if we killed it? If we found an intelligent being on Mars that could converse with us, would you care if we killed it?

And as he's told you before, capacity and potential are not the same word.

I always liked the sperm's pov since I watched my first Woody Allen movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRsGV1WOsls

The fun really starts around the 2:30 mark. The giant lactating tit is pretty epic , also

Here's the view you've been assuming all along.

1) All living organisms that are taxinomically **** sapiens are morally valuable.
2) The fetus is a living organism that is taxonomically a **** sapien.
3) The fetus is morally valuable.

Now, I think this argument fails. The reason why is that I think (1) is false. I don't think that all living organisms that are **** sapiens are morally valuable. Specifically, I don't think that the fetus (at least at early stages in the pregnancy) is morally valuable.

However, all you do in response to me is tell me over and over again that (2) is true. But so what? I haven't claimed that (2) is not true. I'm willing to accept (2). What I want from you is a defense of (1).


What does this have to do with our DNA or being **** sapiens? I'm having difficulty understanding your point here. Are you saying that humans are morally valuable because humans have developed a better form of morality?

There are a lot of things that differentiate us from oysters. One is our DNA. Another is that we have the capacity for consciousness and oysters don't. Why are you assuming that what makes us special is our DNA instead of our capacity for consciousness?

For instance, let's say that we discover that oysters actually are conscious beings with a language and the ability to feel pain. Would you still think it okay to eat oysters for dinner?

Here's my view about why humans are morally valuable.

(4) Any organism that has the capacity for consciousness is morally valuable.
(5) Healthy human organisms develop the capacity for consciousness at around the 5-6th month of pregnancy.
(6) Therefore, healthy human organisms at around the 5-6th month of pregnancy are morally valuable.

I support my first premise by appealing to a thought experiment. Imagine we discover life on Mars. If this life didn't have the capacity for consciousness (e.g. if it were just a kind of mold), we wouldn't consider it inherently morally valuable. If, however, it did have the capacity for consciousness, we would consider it inherently morally valuable. If this capacity for consciousness was as well-developed as, say, humans (e.g. let's say these Martians are like E.T. and able to converse with humans), then we would consider these Martians to have basic moral rights similar to the moral rights we think humans have.

However, in this thought experiment, these Martians would neither be human beings nor have human DNA. Thus, we see that having human DNA is not a necessary condition for being morally valuable. However, the capacity for consciousness does seem like a sufficient condition for being morally valuable.

Understand now what role these martians play in my argument?

I think it is impossible to say when life begins just as its impossible to only assign moral value to consciousness.

The best human beings can do is learn self control, a sense of responsibility and respect towards each other.

This is what happens when you think reason is in charge of everything. It obviously isn't if you can't determine when life begins to all parties satisfaction.

Besides I think your argument for assigning moral value to consciousness is based on an appropriation of authority. You think the logic of your argument must lend it authority but a lot of parties are going to take exception to your assumptions.

You are correct that I assuming that reason is the best way we have to resolve this question.

I think the question (which nobody asks) is if people should have control and even be able to reason about abortion.

The reason why I say that is right around the time that people started to frown less on permissiveness and agitate for the legalization of abortion is also when the teen pregnancy rate increased. I'm sure you could google on it. Out of wedlock teen pregnancy rates today are a lot higher than in most of earlier history and teen pregnancy puts a burden on society in all kinds of ways. Family and society used to always put a lot of pressure on women to marry before having children. Women knew they were stuck if they weren't careful. But not today. People now think they can mechanically control things and they've given themselves a free pass. You have to wonder if the free pass is a good thing or if it didn't de-value human life across the board. I disagree with Pletho that life starts with the baby's first breath. I don't think he has enough scripture to back that conclusion. Also the NT is about loving and putting other people first. Abortion seems to be the exact opposite of that attitude. It's a very important socio-spiritual attitude and it has to be cultivated and you don't cultivate it by devaluing human life.

I am doubtful that teen pregnancy has risen. It is possible that out of wedlock teen pregnancy has risen, although even about that I'm not sure. Also, in general I think women's lives are improved by more permissive attitudes towards sex.

More investigation would be needed if we really cared about this, but this paragraph from wiki tells us some things (I'll bold some parts):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_pregnancy
"The teenage birth rate in the United States is the highest in the developed world, and the teenage abortion rate is also high.[3] The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate was at a high in the 1950s and has decreased since then, although there has been an increase in births out of wedlock.[14] The teenage pregnancy rate decreased significantly in the 1990s; this decline manifested across all racial groups, although teenagers of African-American and Hispanic descent retain a higher rate, in comparison to that of European-Americans and Asian-Americans. The Guttmacher Institute attributed about 25% of the decline to abstinence and 75% to the effective use of contraceptives.[15][16] However, in 2006 the teenage birth rate rose for the first time in fourteen years.[17] This could imply that teen pregnancy rates are also on the rise, however the rise could also be due to other sources: a possible decrease in the number of abortions or a decrease in the number of miscarriages, to name a few."

Of course, if the average age of marriage used to be much lower, then comparing the births out of wedlock to teens today and in the past would certainly yield skewed results.

And as an aside, I learned something else from that wiki article that I hadn't previously known: "Perhaps the most famous teenage pregnancy in history was Mary, Mother of Jesus. She is generally believed to have been 13 years old when she gave birth to Jesus.[102] Other sources place her age as high as 15 years."

Lucky there are no absolute morals on statutory rape or God would be in trouble.

She said she was 18 though

I wasn't specific enough in my wording above. I meant out of wedlock pregnancies.

I don't think women's lives are necessarily improved since that would vary on a case by case basis and is subjective. I tend to think the sexual revolution was a social mistake based on partially exaggerated and misinterpreted sexual research. The revolution took off before people knew how the female sexual brain actually functions so some women may not have benefitted from it.

I don't think studies have been done comparing the lives of women in pre-Sexual Revolution times with the lives of women in the post-Sexual revolution era with regard to how the brain operates so I'm intuitively doubtful that the sexual revolution worked in their favor. All it seemed to really do was shift the burden on women that's always been there into a different type of risk/burden and because women don't know the pitfalls of their own brain chemistry a lot of the freedom that came from permissiveness could be an illusion. I base this opinion on Helen Fischer's research which came out long after Kinsey, Masters and Johnson and Margaret Mead had had their say and influenced society. Though I could change my mind if a study is ever done showing otherwise.

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