So there's nothing behavioral that signals cognition to you. It's a matter of wiring? — frank

Yes, which is why it would be wrong to kill someone who’s asleep or unconscious or with locked in syndrome but not wrong to take someone who’s brain dead off life support.

Do they have enough cognitive capability to show up as human? — frank

I'd say it's with the development of thalamocortical connectivity, which occurs ~24 weeks after conception.

The biological difference between you as a zygote and you as an adult was that you were in a different stage of your development. — NOS4A2

And I have developed morally relevant faculties that a zygote lacks. The actual possession of intelligence is an important biological difference.

I believe members of the species homo sapiens have moral relevance. — NOS4A2

Being a member of the species homo sapiens just means having a particular genetic makeup. What about having that genetic makeup is morally relevant? Because I say that the possession of a particular set of chromosomes is insufficient, and having actually developed the appropriate cognitive capabilities is required (regardless of chromosomes, allowing me to extend the same or similar moral consideration to non-humans).

You never once deviated from being this particular human, you still occupy the same location in space and time, no matter what nouns you use to identify the state of your development. — NOS4A2

A zygote also develops into a placenta. Why not say that a zygote is a placenta at the moment of conception?

And a zygote can develop into twins. If each twin is a distinct individual then at least one of them is not identical to the zygote (and it would be special pleading to claim that it was one of them but not the other).

Biology and identity just doesn't work the way you claim it does.

At what stage in that development is killing her acceptable? Do all the complex cognitive functions need to be developed at the same time, or does one or the other function take precedence? — NOS4A2

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is no single point, much like with the Sorites paradox. It's acceptable when it's a zygote or blastocyst or embryo, not acceptable when it's due to be delivered in a day, and in between there's a large grey and ambiguous area as it develops more and more into a human like us.

It’s all too arbitrary for my tastes — NOS4A2

There is much more to an organism than its genetic makeup. There are very real, significant, and obvious biological differences between myself and a zygote. Your decision to only consider an organism's genetic makeup is not less arbitrary than my decision to also consider these other important aspects of an organism's being. But I do think that your claim that only an organism's genetic makeup has moral relevance is an absurd one.

I personally need a solid unit of value — NOS4A2

Well, biology and morality doesn't work that way, even if you "need" it to.

There is nothing else with our genetic makeup. There is only one extant species of human beings. — NOS4A2

That doesn’t explain or justify your assertion that it is wrong to kill anything with our genetic makeup.

My own take is that our genetic makeup is neither the measure of whether or not it is wrong to kill something (e.g. it can be wrong to kill an intelligent alien even though it would have a different genetic makeup) nor sufficient to entail that it is wrong to kill something (e.g. it can be acceptable to kill an embryo even though it has the same genetic makeup).

i.e. the claim “it is wrong to kill me because I’m a human” is as fallacious as the claim “it is wrong to kill Mork because he is an Orkan” and as fallacious as the claim “it is acceptable to kill a fly because it is not human.”

Whether or not it is wrong to kill something is not determined by its genetic makeup (whether that be human, Orkan, fly, or other), but whether or not the individual organism has developed sufficiently complex cognitive functions - functions that a fly, an embryo, and an early stage foetus have not developed, but that Mork and I have.

None of the things I mentioned are genetically similar to human beings in any way. — NOS4A2

That’s what I meant by “having human DNA”.

So why does anything with our genetic makeup deserve to live?

Which non-human organisms with human DNA are you talking about? — NOS4A2

All of them. You claimed, with examples, that some things can have human DNA but not be human. So I want to know what it is that makes something with human DNA human, and why having this thing entails that it “deserves” to live.

Here’s an interesting paper:

Could a zygote be a human being?

This paper re-examines the question of whether quirks of early human foetal development tell against the view (conceptionism) that we are human beings at conception. A zygote is capable of splitting to give rise to identical twins. Since the zygote cannot be identical with either human being it will become, it cannot already be a human being. Parallel concerns can be raised about chimeras in which two embryos fuse. I argue first that there are just two ways of dealing with cases of fission and fusion and both seem to be available to the conceptionist. One is the Replacement View according to which objects cease to exist when they fission or fuse. The other is the Multiple Occupancy View - both twins may be present already in the zygote and both persist in a chimera. So, is the conceptionist position tenable after all? I argue that it is not. A zygote gives rise not only to a human being but also to a placenta - it cannot already be both a human being and a placenta. Neither approach to fission and fusion can help the conceptionist with this problem. But worse is in store. Both fission and fusion can occur before and after the development of the inner cell mass of the blastocyst - the entity which becomes the embryo proper. The idea that we become human beings with the arrival of the inner cell mass leads to bizarre results however we choose to accommodate fission and fusion.

Many things have human DNA, like sperm or a pool of saliva. Human beings have more than DNA. — NOS4A2

So what distinguishes a human organism with human DNA and a non-human organism with human DNA, and why is this distinction the measure of whether or not it is wrong to kill it?

I use the term "human being" in the sense that it is a member of species homo sapiens, whether it is developed or not. A fetus is not of some other species. If a human lifecycle begins at conception, then we are speaking of human life and no other. This is an existentialist and "animalist" view rather than an essentialist view. — NOS4A2

And to be a member of the species homo sapiens is to have the appropriate ("human") DNA? So when you say that it is wrong to kill a foetus because it is human you are simply saying that it is wrong to kill a foetus because it has human DNA.

I fail to see how you get from "the foetus has human DNA" to "therefore it is wrong to kill a foetus".

You’d need as a premise “it is wrong to kill anything with human DNA” but I see no reason to accept such a premise.

The differences are, as far as I can tell, you place moral value on what human beings can do, while I place moral value on what a human being is. Is that fair? — NOS4A2

Yes. As related to my reply to Hanover above, what a human is depends on how we use the word "human", and how we use the word "human" is a contingent fact about the English language, open to change. If we use the word "human" to refer to anything with human DNA then embryos are human. If we use the word "human" only to refer to sufficiently developed organisms with human DNA then embryos are not human. It is a mistake to commit to some kind of essentialist view of being human such that we can be wrong in (not) using the word "human" to refer to embryos.

And whether or not it is morally acceptable to kill an embryo does not depend on whether or not it is conventional in the English language for the word "human" to refer also to embryos.

We need to look to more concrete facts. These concrete facts are biological, neurological, and psychological. Simply having human DNA is not sufficient biological grounds to entail that the thing "deserves" to live. Whereas being able to think and feel and so on is sufficient biological, neurological, and psychological grounds.

So it's not that entity X with attributes a, d, l, and q ought not be killed. It's that if entity X has the attributes that satisify what a person is then entity X should not be killed.

I do follow what you're saying, and maybe we're not saying anything terribly different, but you seem to be saying that "Person" is shorthand for saying "entity X with attributes a, d, l, and q," so we needn't elevate the term "Person" to mean something more or different. My view though is that entity Y with attributes a, d, l, and c and not q might also be a "Person," so it serves an important function to place entities X and Y into the "Person" catagorization because in our moral universe, People have special rights. — Hanover

Whether or not something "satisfies what a person is" depends on what the word "person" means which depends on how we use it. How we use the word "person" is a contingent fact about the customs of the English language and unrelated to whether or not it is morally acceptable to kill the things that we happen to describe as a person.

Unless you want to say "morally wrong to kill" is part of the definition of "person", in which case to say that we ought (not) kill something because it is (not) a person is to beg the question.

She doesn’t deserve to be killed. — NOS4A2

That someone doesn't deserve to die isn't that they deserve to live. Embryos and foetuses don't deserve anything.

Here it is: it is wrong to kill an innocent human being. A fetus is an innocent human being. Therefore, it is wrong to kill a fetus. Which premise would you disagree with? — NOS4A2

You equivocate.

The premise "it is wrong to kill an innocent human being" is being interpreted as "it is always wrong to kill an innocent human being", but then if I were to deny this premise you would misinterpret my counter-premise as "it is never wrong to kill an innocent human being".

It is sometimes wrong to kill an innocent human being and sometimes not wrong. It is wrong if the innocent human being is an adult, a child, a baby, or a sufficiently developed foetus. It is not wrong if the innocent human being is an embryo or sufficiently underdeveloped foetus.

My own take is that for the most part essentialism is false. There's no such thing as the essence of personhood; there's just the social fact that we use the word "person" to refer to certain types of organisms and not to others, based on some general characteristics (much like the word "game").

It happens to be the case that the general characteristics that prompt our use of the word "person" also also happen to be the general characteristics that 'grant' the appropriate moral rights.

So it's not exactly the case that we ought not kill someone because they are a person, but that someone is a person and we ought not kill them because they have thoughts and feelings and wants and so on.

Saying "we ought not kill him because he's a person" is just a more succinct phrasing.

it seems pretty clear that what's being done is recasting the indirect realist in a way that it can be subsumed under an extended version of 'direct realism'. — AmadeusD

Yes, something like this is argued in Semantic Direct Realism that I often quote. There's phenomenological direct realism, or naive realism, that indirect realism opposes (consistent with the scientific evidence), and then there's semantic direct realism which agrees with the indirect realist's rejection of naive realism but calls itself direct realism anyway.

I see something like that here as well, where some accept the existence of mental representations but still call it direct realism even though representationalism is indirect realism.

I think part of the problem is that some here think that "I see a tree" and "I directly see a tree" mean the same thing, when in fact the adverb "directly" modifies the verb "see".

I considered that part irrelevant, insofar as we know nothing of a thing by its effect on our senses, except that is “…an undetermined something….”. To say we know how they affect our senses is already given by sensation, which only informs as to which sense it is, but nothing whatsoever about the thing, except its real existence. — Mww

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

It is not a contradiction to say that the only thing we know about the magnetic field is how it affects the behaviour of metal (although it may be false).

And it is not a contradiction to say that the only thing we know about distal objects is how they affect our sensory experience (although it may be false).

Yes, it is wrong to intentionally kill a fetus for the same reasons it is wrong to kill any other human being. — NOS4A2

What are these "same reasons"?

Because I would say that it is wrong to kill other humans because it is wrong to kill humans with thoughts and feelings and wants. Embryos and (early stage) foetuses don't have thoughts or feelings or wants. They are more like the brain dead living on life support.

You can disagree with the premise that a fetus is a human being, or that it is not wrong to kill human beings, but it’s difficult to reasonably do so. — NOS4A2

It's not difficult when you make sure not to equivocate. See my post above.

What if the mother wants the child. Does the zygote then deserve a chance at life and become worthy of protection.. — NOS4A2

Only to the extent that the mother deserves her wants respected.

What biological differences make it not wrong to kill and embryo, but wrong to kill a baby? — NOS4A2

The biggest and most relevant difference is that a baby is no longer being carried in the womb of its mother, and so the mother's bodily rights are no longer an issue.

Another significant difference is that the thalamocortical connections that are required for consciousness do not develop until ~26 weeks of pregnancy.

I’ve already described my reasoning and the entities it applies to as best as possible. — NOS4A2

You've asserted that it is wrong to kill anything with human DNA (except in self-defence, etc.). You haven't shown what makes it wrong.

The baby was an embryo. — NOS4A2

It was an embryo, but now isn't. There is a very real biological difference between a baby and an embryo. This very real biological difference has moral relevance and is why it is wrong to kill a baby but not wrong to kill an embryo.

I would refrain as best as possible from positing phantom properties and folk biology. — NOS4A2

So are you now saying that it isn't wrong to kill a human embryo? Or are you refusing to show me what makes killing a human embryo wrong? This is why you are special pleading; you demand that we show you what makes something a person but refusing to show us what makes killing a human embryo wrong.

If I ask you to show me what makes it a person... — NOS4A2

And if I ask you to show me what makes killing a human embryo wrong?

If you’re going to condemn some human beings to death because you’ve relegated them to the status of non-person, you better have something better than your own thoughts and feelings. — NOS4A2

There is a very real biological difference between an embryo and a baby. They might share the same kind of DNA, but there is much more to an organism than its DNA.

I think it's important to avoid any equivocation.

This seems to be the pro-life argument:

a) "X is a human" means "X has human DNA"
b) It is never acceptable to kill a human
c) Therefore, it is never acceptable to kill something with human DNA

The pro-choice crowd deny that both (a) and (b) are true together; it's one or the other:

a) "X is a human" means "X has human DNA"
d) It is sometimes acceptable to kill something with human DNA
e) Therefore, it is sometimes acceptable to kill a human

or

b) It is never acceptable to kill a human
d) It is sometimes acceptable to kill something with human DNA
e) Therefore, "X is a human" does not mean "X has human DNA"

I don’t understand why I need to point to a property of “wrongness”. I also never said someone needs to point to a measurable property of being a person. I was saying there is no such measurable property, so it makes zero sense that I would say you need to point to one. — NOS4A2

Echarmion asked "is this supposed to mean that there's no evidence for personhood?"

You responded with "I understand, and have no problem with either term in common usage, but if I were to ask you to point to whatever it is you're referring to you would invariably point to your body, which has existed and grown since conception. That's what I'm hung up on."

I am simply explaining that being (or not being) able to point to something has no bearing on whether or not someone is a person, just as being (or not being) able to point to something has no bearing on whether or not something is wrong.

My argument this whole time is that it’s wrong to intentionally kill a human being (unless he deserves it or it is in self-defense), to deprive him of life. A fetus is a human being. — NOS4A2

And this is where there is disagreement. It is wrong to intentionally kill a born human, and perhaps a foetus of a sufficient age, but it is not wrong to intentionally kill an embryo or young foetus.

The possession of human DNA and the future possibility of being born is not sufficient grounds to force a pregnant woman to carry the child to term.

If not-A entails (B and (not-B)), then A is entailed. Is that what you're saying isn't the case?
Is B here the proposition that the universe has an nth term? And A is the proposition that there's a non-contingent entity in the universe's series of terms? — Hallucinogen

The example of the Presidents explains what I mean in simple terms.

You conflate "A is required for B" and "A is necessary". The former does not entail the latter.

given that all non-contingent entities are necessarily omnipotent and eternal — Hallucinogen

That's not a given.

To deny theism is to deny a necessary entity — Hallucinogen

One can believe in some necessary thing without believing that this thing is God. Theism does not have exclusive ownership of necessity.

Perhaps the necessary entity is a physical singularity of infinite density that underwent a rapid expansion known as the Big Bang. The atheist can accept this.

….but only know its appearance…..no. The thing-in-itself does not appear; if it did, it wouldn’t be in-itself. It would be that object of sense as mere appearance, hence the contradiction. — Mww

You should read the next part:

viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.

i.e. the only thing we know about distal objects is how they affect our senses.

"B and if not A then not B" does not entail "necessarily A".

B ∧ (¬A → ¬B) ⊭ □A

As an example, a 46th President of the United States requires a 1st President of the United States, but a 1st President of the United States is not necessary.

Regarding Kant's ding an sich, I think this quote provides a simple account of it:

And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.

As an analogy to this that the direct realist can accept; we do not see magnetic fields, only the affects that magnetic fields have on other things such as metal.

Kant (and other indirect realists) simply apply this same reasoning, arguing that metal is to phenomenal experience as the magnetic field is to metal (except, at least with respect to sight, there is not even direct physical contact between metal and the sense organ).

Of course, we are able to formulate mathematical models of this magnetic field, use these models to try to predict observable phenomena, either falsify or fail to falsify our models, and in doing so can be said to "know" something of the "thing in itself", but I'm not sure if this sense of knowing the thing in itself is the sense that is relevant to Kant's remarks above.

But then even if scientific realism is inconsistent with transcendental idealism, one can be an indirect realist and a scientific realist, so if this discussion is trying to equate indirect realism with transcendental idealism and argue that any problems with the latter are also problems with the former then I think it commits a fallacy. Much like the scientific realist, an indirect realist can accept that we can know something about things that we cannot directly perceive.

There’s a world, it’s really a world…..so what? World being, of course, an abstract entity. Sorta like Rawls (?)….where’s the university.
(Crap. I can't remember the author or the name of the paradox. Maybe identity. Guy sees all the accoutrements which constitute a university, but wants to know where the university he came to visit is located.) — Mww

Gilbert Ryle's category mistake from The Concept of Mind.

Funny, innit. An ordinary folk looks out, is perfectly convinced he sees a tree, but you the metaphysician tell him, nahhhh, you don’t. You see a thing, and that thing is only called a tree because somebody, somewhere, some long time ago, said so, and you’re just regurtitatin’ what’s been taught to you.

But then, there’s markedly more ordinary folk than there are metaphysicians, so…..there ya go. “I see a tree” rules the day. — Mww

A relevant passage from here:

Here is a kind of puzzle or paradox that several philosophers have stressed. On the one hand, existence questions seem hard. The philosophical question of whether there are abstract entities does not seem to admit of an easy or trivial answer. At the same time, there seem to be trivial arguments settling questions like this in the affirmative. Consider for instance the arguments, “2+2=4. So there is a number which, when added to 2, yields 4. This something is a number. So there are numbers”, and “Fido is a dog. So Fido has the property of being a dog. So there are properties.” How should one resolve this paradox? One response is: adopt fictionalism. The idea would be that in the philosophy room we do not speak fictionally, but ordinarily we do. So in the philosophy room, the question of the existence of abstract entities is hard; outside it, the question is easy. When, ordinarily, a speaker utters a sentence that semantically expresses a proposition that entails that there are numbers, what she says is accurate so long as according to the relevant fiction, there are numbers. But when she utters the same sentence in the philosophy room, she speaks literally and then what she asserts is something highly non-trivial.

You’re making nouns out of my adjectives. I don’t believe wrongness and rightness and rights are measurable properties of anything. — NOS4A2

So you claim that killing foetuses is wrong but don't need to point to some measurable property of being wrong because "wrong" is an adjective, and others claim that foetuses aren't people and need to point to some measurable property of being a person because "person" is a noun?

Such an argument from grammar is special pleading.

There needs to be some basis for granting rights in the first place. — NOS4A2

That doesn't really address the question. According to your own account of rights there's nothing more to rights than someone having said something like "so-and-so has the right to such-and-such".

So John says "foetuses have a right to life" and Jane says "foetuses don't have a right to life". Where do we go from here?

Do you want to argue that one of John and Jane is correct and the other incorrect? Then there's more to rights than someone having said something like "so-and-so has the right to such-and-such". And so, using your own reasoning, one must be able to point to some measurable property which is "the right" (independent of what either John or Jane say). Can you do that?

But then you also say above that it's not about rights but about wrongness and deservingness, which just shifts the problem: using your own reasoning, one must be able to point to some measurable property which is "wrongness" and "deservingness". Can you do that?

Or perhaps you simply need to accept that not everything is a measurable property that can be pointed to, whether that be "right", "deservingness", or "personhood".

I wasn’t necessarily speaking about rights. I was saying they deserve a chance to live and that it is wrong to kill them. — NOS4A2

I mean you said this:

Our bodies have largely evolved for the task of protecting human life in its earliest development, and many of us hold to right-to-life principles, for instance that a human being in its earliest development deserves a chance to live.

So forgive me for being confused.

Are you now suggesting that it can be wrong to kill a foetus and that a foetus deserves the chance to live even if they haven't been granted the right to live?

"Life begins at conception" is an imprecise short-hand for "a human life begins at conception". Stop picking the low hanging fruits: obviously a sperm is alive and so is my skin cells---we are talking about when a human being is alive. — Bob Ross

I was just explaining what Echarmion was saying. I understood you as misinterpreting him as saying that life begins after conception. Maybe I misunderstood you.

Einstein? The more you post the more evangelistic your approach becomes. This is a site for philosophical argument. Evangelism is literally against the rules. — Leontiskos

My claim is that the scientific evidence shows that naive realism is wrong, and I support this claim by referring to experts in the field, such as Einstein, who best know what the scientific evidence shows.

Are you claiming that Einstein and I are wrong in claiming that the scientific evidence shows that naive realism is wrong, or are you claiming that the scientific evidence itself is wrong?

??? . I can't tell if you are joking. — Bob Ross

I'm not. A sperm cell is a single-celled organism. It's alive.

It is an undisputed scientific fact that life begins at conception: it is the clear beginning mark of the ever-continual development cycle of an individual human being (until death). — Bob Ross

I believe the point he was making is that sperm cells are alive, and so that life began before conception.

Human beings have no rights other than those that have been declared and conferred by others. — NOS4A2

So a foetus doesn’t have a right to live unless some authority declares and confers that right?

Then what exactly are you trying to argue here? Because with the above in mind all we can do is describe the fact that in some places and at some times abortion is legal and in other places and at other times it is illegal.

No measurable property called “personhood” appears or disappears in any given human being — NOS4A2

Most of us are quite capable of understanding what “person” means, that rocks, embryos, and flies are not people, and that adult humans (and intelligent aliens) are people. The type of “personhood” that you think doesn’t exist isn’t the type of personhood that any of us are talking about.

So what grounds are there to make the distinction now? — NOS4A2

The very real and obvious observable differences between rocks, embryos, and flies on the one hand and born humans on the other hand.

The fact that an embryo has roughly the same DNA as me and will eventually grow into an organism like me simply isn’t sufficient grounds to grant it the same rights as me or even just the right to live at the expense of the rights of the woman who must carry it to term.

That’s one of their manifestations, sure. Grab any bill of rights and point to a right, you’ll have your answer in what it consists of. If there is more to it, go ahead and reveal it. — NOS4A2

That's not a right. That's a supposed description of a right. The words are not the thing they describe. I'm not asking you to point to words that describe a right; I'm asking you to point to a right.

As it stands it amounts to me pointing to the word "person" and saying that I'm pointing to a person.

It’s wrong to kill a fetus for the same reason it is wrong to murder a 40 year old. Both are deprived of a future against their will. Both have their bodies destroyed against their will. The world and the community are deprived of their presence against their will. In any case, any evidence or reasoning to support the claim that it is wrong to kill a 40 year old can be applied to any other human being in any other stage of its life, including early development. — NOS4A2

Killing a 40 year old isn't wrong just because "he is deprived of a future against his will". It's wrong because "he is deprived of a future against his will and is a person". The "and he is a person" has moral relevance. It is not wrong to deprive a foetus of its future against its will because a) it's not a person, and b) it doesn't even have a will.

Can I grow fetuses in order to harvest their organs and sell them, in your view? Why or why not? — NOS4A2

You mean like scientists growing ‘mini-organs’ from cells shed by foetuses or cultivating embryonic stem cells in general?

Yes, that's acceptable. It could save many lives.

Relevant paper on that last point:

Could Artificial Wombs End the Abortion Debate?

One should distinguish two aspects of abortion that are currently but not necessarily linked—extraction and termination. Abortion rights might be understood as the right not to be pregnant, the right not to have the human fetus in the womb, the right of extraction. On the other hand, abortion rights might be defined as the right to end the life of the human fetus in utero, the right to terminate not just the pregnancy, but also the life of the fetus. These two understandings of abortion, although distinct, are at least for the present linked, since one cannot currently accomplish evacuation of the human fetus from the uterus at an early stage of pregnancy without also terminating the life of the human fetus. Accordingly, one could advocate the right of evacuation or extraction, that is, the right to have the fetus removed from the woman’s body, and yet not advocate a right of termination, that is, the right to have the fetus killed within the woman’s body.