[chrisprice]

So, while I agree if you are taking self-awareness as the measure then this opens the door for infanticide, and also that self-awareness is not entirely black-and-white, I don't see it really posing any problem for abortion. No new-born is self-aware.

So does everyone agree that if they think that killing toddlers is morally wrong, they shouldn't use the "self-aware" test?

[Maxim Litvinov]

Well, chris, there are two things to say on that issue:

1] Your options, if you want to stick to the concept: 'killing toddlers is always wrong' are:
i) abandon the self-aware test being used on its own.
ii) supplement the self-aware test

Now, in terms of supplementing the test, you might want to also qualify the morality of killing an infant with the effect that it has on the mother and immediate family. So, a murder of an infant by a non-mother is still a murder, for instance. Similarly, the murder by a mother could only be justified on certain grounds.

2] There is a real problem with arguing from 'what you want to believe', if you want to arrive at a cogent argument. Imagine the same argument at Copernicus' time. You have Copernicus showing his scientific proofs for the notion that the planets revolve around the sun, and you have his nemesis, chrisprice, saying to people: "So, does everyone agree that if they think the Ptolemaic system is cool, they shouldn't bother with what Copernicus is saying?"

Of course, it is a false kind of argument. If people just went with their gut feelings, and used it to 'suppress' logical arguments against their feelings (ie - the notions of self-awareness), then we would still live on a flat earth at the centre of the universe.

The point of this thread is to arrive at coherent arguments for and against abortion. Whether or not you *think* something is moral doesn't mean that this is a good argument for proving it.

[Bryan]

chrisprice wrote:

I have given arguments why the zygote is a human, but no one has countered the argument itself other than to simply say it is not true for functional reasons. I will assume the argument cannot be countered until someone demonstrates that it is false.

Now there is a whopper. You have presented no such arguments at all. I and others have presented significant evidence that contradicts your opinion. Read a few of my posts. You have not responded to any of my points. You pointedly ignore all the logic and continue your rants. You throw out some irrelelevant words and sentences, then pretend you actualy responded.

Most people of your postion ignore all the facts and positions that don't agree with yours. Then you claim that everyone must live by your standards.

The only reason you are more than a simple bore is that you and those of your ilk are a pain in the ass for intellegent and/or thinking people.

I wish you well. Take care and maybe someday you will learn to think.

Now its your turn. Rant and rave for a while and tell me off. It will make you feel righteous and pious.

[grambling]

But what if the mother has given HIV or another fatal disease? Would you want your child to live a life of pain?

I would want my child to live. Period. If you kill the child, you are also killing any chance that the child might have to succeed, whereas if you go through with the birth you are at least giving the child a chance. Plus you are also saying that you don't want that woman to have a child? If the mother has a disease that can be transferred through blood or genetics, the chances are pretty high that the child will get it too, so are you saying to keep getting pregnant, then aborting, and repeating until you get your 'ideal' child? What methods of abortion are you aware of? Let me tell you it is not a process that can repeated over and over again with out any reprocussions.

[chrisprice]

Maxim Litvinov, I think you underestimate the relevance of moral intuitions and sensibilities as well as the role of presuppositions in argumentation. We could certainly debate every side-topic that comes along, but if most people don't find it controversial, then there is no point. I was hoping (perhaps naively) that most people think killing toddlers is just obviously wrong. Passing on the debate would have the added bonus of not giving the vile idea any credence. But I wasn't substituting that for an argument against the self-aware criterion. Do you see the difference? Much of my argumentation has attempted to leverage shared presuppositions. Occasionally we have to clarify them or even argue for/against them. But you can't avoid that. I hope you get my point.

[chrisprice]

Now there is a whopper. You have presented no such arguments at all. I and others have presented significant evidence that contradicts your opinion. Read a few of my posts. You have not responded to any of my points. You pointedly ignore all the logic and continue your rants. You throw out some irrelelevant words and sentences, then pretend you actualy responded.

Then we must have a misunderstanding. I think I have answered your points...which one did I leave unanswered? Nor have I read any of your posts as answering the genetic definition of humanity, but instead reaffirming the similarity of a zygote to a sperm swimming to an egg in a petri dish. Tell me point blank what is wrong with the genetic definition. Keep in mind that my definition removes the subjectivity that tends to lead to counter-intuitive conclusions like killing toddlers and the senile are moral options. Wouldn't this make it superior?

The only reason you are more than a simple bore is that you and those of your ilk are a pain in the ass for intellegent and/or thinking people.

Not sure what this means, but it sounds good...thanks

someday you will learn to think.

Now its your turn. Rant and rave for a while and tell me off. It will make you feel righteous and pious.

I can understand why one would feel unconfortable holding beliefs that imply that oviously heinous acts are dandy. But don't blame the person who exposes it.

[Maxim Litvinov]

chris - my problem is that you start off from a position of some acts being "obviously heinous" as though this judgement can and should exist outside some set of moral rules and parameters. If you start off with this position, then your anti-abortion arguments are really less a set of coherent logical statements that develop some framework, and more a straight application of an assertion.

Of course people's preconceptions and presuppositions influence their moral positions. But this does not deny the worth of having premises that are based upon some logical first principles rather than intuition. So, while acknowledging the role of moral intuition in decision-making, I do not think that we should be guided by our intuitions when it comes to justifying such points.

I accept that killing toddlers is widely held as being 'wrong' in the community. I intuit that it is generally wrong. But I don't see this as an argument, or the basis for one - although it perhaps helps us identify what sort of moral principles we 'naturally' or 'culturally' hold.

From the point-of-view of the 'person' argument, there are several things to be said about killing toddlers -
i] killing toddlers is still wrong where those responsible and closely related to the toddlers are damaged/distressed by this action.
ii] killing toddlers is wrong if they are persons.
iii] killing toddlers is wrong if it is gratuitous or unnecessarily violent, in the same way that torturing animals is wrong.

But, for the sake of argument, if a mother was the only one who knew a toddler existed, packed it in a cardboard box one day when moving house, it suffocated peacefully, wasn't a 'person' and no-one ever missed it, then I do not think that is particularly immoral.

[The Flaming Jalapeno]

[quote="chrisprice]
Of course they were human. In fact, this example disproves your point.[/quote]

How so?

I have given arguments why the zygote is a human, but no one has countered the argument itself other than to simply say it is not true for functional reasons. I will assume the argument cannot be countered until someone demonstrates that it is false.

You believe a zygote is human because it has he potential to develop into a full fledged human. I believe that although a zygote has the potential to become human, the zygote itself is not a human. We have a difference in opinion, that's all.

Further, we have spent a great deal of time on the zygote. That is fine. But most babies are killed much later than this stage. So if we are to debate abortion, we are being fed a red herring. If you support that killing a fully developed fetus is morally justified, it certainly can't have anything to do with the zygote's inability to do calculus.

Again, a difference in opinion. I believe that a human must be biologically independent from others, but you do not.

I'm getting at the fact that only humans naturally create human cells. My finger is not the whole organism, but the zygote, being one cell, is the whole organism. So you cannot kill it w/out killing the whole guy.

Let's elaborate on this, shall we? Forget the whole human thing for a second. Let's use plant seeds. I think we can both agree that plants are alive. But do you believe that seeds are alive? If so, take into account that seeds do not grow, although they do have a small zygote-like starter cell, this cell can remain inactive for a very long time. Seeds that were discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs that were buried for over 3000 years were put in water and began to grow.

Furthermore, do you believe that seeds that are still growing on plants are alive? Do you believe that a developing seed is a separate organism? If you eat, say, some peas, do you believe that you care killing the plant they would have become?

I was referring to you personally making an assumption (but a reasonable one) that you don't know how to read DNA. If all we did was read the DNA of the zygote, embroyo, fetus...teenager, we would get the same genetic data. That should be good enough to determine species.

No, because asexual and sexual reproduction are two different things. If you took my DNA and were able to synthesize it into an organism, you would be cloning my DNA. But in sexual reproduction, half of my DNA and half of a girl's DNA come together to create a new human.

It is a shame that you have just defined a great many infants and disabled people out of the human race. Of course, it doesn't make sense. Their humanness is not a function of their actual ability, but their biological membership. But taken seriously, we must be prepared for atrocities…led by the Flaming Jalapeno. Congratulations!

Of course that definition does not work for every human on earth. Don't be silly. If you want my definition for whether something is human enough, I would say that something must be developed enough so that is able to live biologically independent for it to be considered human.

[grambling]

[quote="The Flaming Jalapeno"]
Let's elaborate on this, shall we? Forget the whole human thing for a second. Let's use plant seeds. I think we can both agree that plants are alive. But do you believe that seeds are alive? If so, take into account that seeds do not grow, although they do have a small zygote-like starter cell, this cell can remain inactive for a very long time. Seeds that were discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs that were buried for over 3000 years were put in water and began to grow.[quote]

The seed in your analogy does not represent a whole human zygote, rather it is more like male sperm. I would say that in your story, the plant seed is the sprem and the soil, combined with water, represents the female egg. Seperately, you are right, the individual entities will not develop. However, once the two are combined, the process of growing has begun, and destroying that new identity would be like killing the plant as a whole.

[The Flaming Jalapeno]

Depending on the plant, the seed can be either sexual or asexual. If it's sexual, the seed is the egg and the pollen is the sperm, but asexually the seed can grow on its own (given the right conditions of course.)

It's not a very good analogy, I admit, but raises a good discussion point.

[grambling]

Yes it does raise a good discussion, but I think what it comes down to is a difference of opinion. You seem to be more of a pro-choice type of guy, whereas I am more pro-life. That's what it comes down to.

[Yeddi]

It doesn't reallly work though.
If you are to say that 'life' begins at the moment of conception, when the first living cell of a human is create, then to using symmetry you must also consider death to be when the last human cell dies. And that leaves you with dilemmas.
I personally believe that 'life' begins when the cortex begins to function, and symmetrically death has occured when the cortex ceases to function. The cortex begins to function somewhere around 25 weeks or so. HOwever that still doesn't mean i would consider it a person.

[Maxim Litvinov]

Well, the idea that something is sacred when it 'lives' I think isn't born out in our treatment of animals and plants.

From this point of view, the mere act of 'living' does not mean anything, it is a particular type of 'living' that makes the problem of killing people a moral one, on most accounts. It is a conscious and self-aware form of living - of interacting and providing one's life with a sense of meaning. Which is *very different* from simply being able to breathe or photosynthesise.

I'm not sure if I'd speculate about the cortex, but just wanted to say that breathing or *not being dead* should not, in and of themselves, mean anything.

[Yeddi]

I'm not sure if I'd speculate about the cortex, but just wanted to say that breathing or *not being dead* should not, in and of themselves, mean anything.

I would agree, i was merely placing it into the field of discussion as it seems to me that others in this debate, Jalapeno for one, seem to be focusing on the idea of when something becomes human with the use of the seed analogy. I was just trying to stimulate discussion w

[chrisprice]

chris - my problem is that you start off from a position of some acts being "obviously heinous" as though this judgement can and should exist outside some set of moral rules and parameters. If you start off with this position, then your anti-abortion arguments are really less a set of coherent logical statements that develop some framework, and more a straight application of an assertion.

What started this whole diversion is that I chose to use a reductio-style move to avoid getting side tracked. I think that this was a harmless move. For those who don't know, a reductio ad absurdum argument simply follows a premise to its logical conclusion to see where it goes. If it leads to a contradiction or other generally undesirable conclusion, the arguer concludes that the original premise was unacceptable. I merely showed that if the "self-aware" criterion for humanity entailed that toddlers could morally be killed (a generally undesirable conclusion...for most people), that it probably shouldn't be used. This is reasonable since if those I was debating agreed, we could dispose of the criterion. So far you are the only one to object to this move. But notice, I was not claiming that this is an argument against killing little kids. But most people wouldn't need one...thankfully.

I do not think that we should be guided by our intuitions when it comes to justifying such points.

I do not disagree with this claim. Nor was I guilty of doing it.

On killing toddlers:
Toddlers are just a step in the progression of human development. It is just as immoral to kill her as it is to kill a fetus, but it has more of a psychological impact than killing a fetus. In fact, in many cases, there is more of a psychological impact on killing a child than killing an adult. But the immorality is the same.

[chrisprice]

Of course they were human. In fact, this example disproves your point.

How so?

I guess what I meant is that if we are likely to call the creatures in the incupods from The Matrix human, then this would disprove your point that humans must be biologically independent. But this position (if it is yours) is made idiosyncratic by the fact that many adults are not biologically independent. Must we debate their right to live too?

You believe a zygote is human because it has he potential to develop into a full fledged human. I believe that although a zygote has the potential to become human, the zygote itself is not a human. We have a difference in opinion, that's all.

I'll be fine with a difference of opinion once we understand each of ours. You have misquoted me by saying that I believe that a zygote is human b/c it can become a "full-fledged" human. Rather, I am saying that it is human because it is a living organism with all the genetic information of an adult. So it can't be anything else. I'm not saying it is human because of what it will become, but what it is currently.

I believe that a human must be biologically independent from others, but you do not.

Would you say that the violinist in the Judith Jarvis Thompson paper is not a human because he was necessarily attached to a human to keep him alive? Doesn't that sound like a counter-example to your independence criterion?

Let's use plant seeds. I think we can both agree that plants are alive. But do you believe that seeds are alive?

I think a better analogy for the zygote would be a germinated seed, since it is growing. So of course the germinated seed/zygote is alive. The fact that you can germinate them years later is not a problem. You can freeze sperm, eggs, and embryos for that matter. Some day you will be able to freeze more complicatedly developed humans too.

If you took my DNA and were able to synthesize it into an organism, you would be cloning my DNA. But in sexual reproduction, half of my DNA and half of a girl's DNA come together to create a new human.

Actually, cloning involves taking a human egg and removing the DNA and replace it with one individual's DNA. But the result is the same as a zygote, it is not a living organism until the cells are fused. So my original point remains: that the growing zygote is a living human in virtue of being a growing being with all the genetic information of an adult.

Of course that definition does not work for every human on earth. Don't be silly. If you want my definition for whether something is human enough, I would say that something must be developed enough so that is able to live biologically independent for it to be considered human.

But I like to be silly! What you said then exposes a disagreement with Maxim who thinks that toddlers could be killed in some circumstances. But your definition of independence is waiting for a response to my objection above.

[chrisprice]

If you are to say that 'life' begins at the moment of conception, when the first living cell of a human is create, then to using symmetry you must also consider death to be when the last human cell dies. And that leaves you with dilemmas.

Actually, I think this objection is interesting. I'm not sure it is insurmountable, but nontheless interesting. One thing that could be said is that the zygote is unique since the organism is one cell, so killing it would mean killing the whole thing. Kind of like shooting a grown human with a phaser set on "kill".

[Maxim Litvinov]

Well, yes, I do understand the making of a reductio ad absurdum argument... What I'm saying is that you have failed to reduce the argument to a state where it is logically or morally unacceptable. It certainly isn't logically unacceptable to say that killing toddlers is not always wrong, and I think that if people reading find it morally unacceptable it is due to an over-emphasis of cultural and intuitive beliefs, rather than rationally-held ones.

Which is why I have a general problem with your argument. You constantly appeal to what people might already think is right or wrong, without actually forming a logical case for why you or I *should* believe it to be moral. This, I believe, is an appeal to emotion and intuition.

Incidentally, on the morality of killing toddlers, I understand that several other people here adopt a similar position to mine, but have just been engaged in other elements of the debate.

So, after explaining your argument's style (though not really its substance), you end with this rather forthright assertion:

On killing toddlers:
Toddlers are just a step in the progression of human development. It is just as immoral to kill her as it is to kill a fetus, but it has more of a psychological impact than killing a fetus. In fact, in many cases, there is more of a psychological impact on killing a child than killing an adult. But the immorality is the same.

My questions:
1] If toddlers are a step in the progression of development, doesn't that make it *worse* to kill them than something less advanced along that path?
2] You admit that the circumstances behind a toddler's death are likely to be more traumatic, yet refuse to call it any more or less immoral. Don't you believe that the consequences of an action are at all a consideration in its morality? Is not killing a child when you know it is most probably going to draw its mother and family into bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies more immoral than killing a child when you know its death might actually save lives and not have traumatic effects?
3] Thirdly, by seemingly failing to take heed of morality as dependent on consequences, it seems you are only left with asserting some teleological ethics system. Yet you never give a good explanation for why your system is rational and how immorality is automatically bestowed upon the act of abortion.

[chrisprice]

you have failed to reduce the argument to a state where it is logically or morally unacceptable.

Of course I've answered this many times. I didn't intend to. I was saving us a diversion from having to justify something most people agreed with (or what I thought most people agreed with). There is nothing wrong with doing this, since only controversial premises need extra support. If you had to justify every premise, then recursively you would never get anywhere.

You constantly appeal to what people might already think is right or wrong, without actually forming a logical case for why you or I *should* believe it to be moral.

Don't know what you mean by "constantly" appealing. The only time I recalling doing anything like this is in the case mentioned above. But even then I was only appealing to what people already believed, or what I thought they believed. The rest of the time I have argued why the pre-born are human. Sure I have assumed that it is wrong to kill humans, but again that was not being challenged, only the minor premise was.

My questions:
1] If toddlers are a step in the progression of development, doesn't that make it *worse* to kill them than something less advanced along that path?

It may result in worse consequences, yes. But minimally immoral is still immoral. If I kill person A who is a homeless loner, I have done something immoral. If I kill person B who is a father of many, I have done something worse (by harming more people). However, in both cases an immoral act was committed. If you ask me which is worse, I’d concede that killing person B. But that doesn’t mean killing person A is okay.

2] You admit that the circumstances behind a toddler's death are likely to be more traumatic, yet refuse to call it any more or less immoral. Don't you believe that the consequences of an action are at all a consideration in its morality? Is not killing a child when you know it is most probably going to draw its mother and family into bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies more immoral than killing a child when you know its death might actually save lives and not have traumatic effects?

I think I answered most of this above, but I’d add this: Consequences are considered, but not primarily. Weighing consequences primarily only pushes the question of goodness to an evaluation of the type of consequences we find good. How do you justify the utility principle of say, happiness or whatever you wish to say constitutes a "good" consequence...by it's consequences? Though important to the present discussion, it would be off-topic to discuss it in detail. Perhaps a new thread?

3] Thirdly, by seemingly failing to take heed of morality as dependent on consequences, it seems you are only left with asserting some teleological ethics system.

Actually, consequentialism is also a teleological system. Perhaps you mean “deontological” system? But as I mentioned above, I don't ignore consequences.

Yet you never give a good explanation for why your system is rational and how immorality is automatically bestowed upon the act of abortion.

First of all, my argument style has only attempted to exploit pre-existing beliefs of people to show why it commits them to the belief that abortion is immoral. If you believed that killing humans is wrong (major premise), and you believed that the pre-born are humans (minor premise), then you should believe that killing the pre-born is wrong (conclusion). Just because I don't justify the major premise doesn't mean I "failed" to justify it. I am working with where people are. Further, while I think that putting a full ethical system together is interesting, it is not as important as getting people to stop aborting babies. So if people already believe the major premise, it would be foolish to open up the can if my objective is to convince people of the conclusion. I would think that as a consequentialist you would embrace this method. Incidentally, premises only need support if they are reasonably challenged. If a premise is common knowledge, then justification is not necessary, or at least it is not considered a deficiency of the argument if support was not provided. Prior to your entry into the conversation, the topic was about the humanity of the pre-born. It was reasonable to ignore the other issue since it was taken to be uncontroversial.

[Maxim Litvinov]

Right. I think much of my problem with your stance stemmed from the statement (concerning the killing of toddlers compared to adults):

But the immorality is the same.

By this I took you to mean that the degree of immorality was the same (and hence the morality is never determined by individual consequences), but you seemed to mean that 'they are both immoral acts'.

If all you're trying to say is 'killing humans is wrong', and then trying to imply that foetuses can be 'human', then I'd agree that these statements marry nicely, without accepting the first premise.

But I'm yet to read your explanation for the premise I would not simply *take as given* - namely why 'killing humans (that is, 'things' with flesh and blood and not 'persons', or things that have higher intelligence, self-awareness and consciousness) is wrong'. Perhaps you could deal with this? Otherwise, you're pretty much preaching to the converted.