Brains are not necessary for sentience. — Gregory

Find me a scientist who agrees with this statement.

Most people don't really understand anything about philosophy, apparently you included (after all, you asked for "proof" for the soul lol, gee) — Gregory

No, you're right I don't understand anything about philosophy, I only have an honours degree in it from one of the world's best universities.

Go and enrol on a proper philosophy course at a decent educational establishment, and come back to this forum when you've completed it. At the moment you're just talking utter nonsense.

I think Moore´s point of view is more metaphysical or ontological, we have statements like "pleasure is good" and at the same time we would never know what is "good" for sure. — Antinatalist

I suppose another way of putting that would be to say that Moore thought we can't know what 'good' refers to - what property it denotes. But it seems to me that we can't decide that issue until we have worked out what the word 'good' actually means, i.e. what function it performs in ordinary discourse. R.M.Hare, whose lectures I attended long ago when life was simpler and we all had more and longer hair (well, I did), reformulated Moore's open question and thought that in so doing he had made it unanswerable (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2252015?seq=1).

However, Hare's argument only succeeds if we agree with Hare on two points: that descriptions can never also be evaluations, and that the sole function of the word 'good' is to commend. The first of these is what we are trying to establish, so Hare's argument begs the question; and I think 'good' does more than just commend. When we say 'that was a good dinner', I think we are not just commending the dinner, we are also saying something about it, i.e. we are attributing to it some property. It would be closer to the truth if we said that we are claiming that the dinner was commendable, i.e. deserved to be commended (and of course we would then be commending the dinner by implication). However, I would want to cast the linguistic net somewhat wider, and point out (a) that commending is an activity which displays a positive attitude to something, and (b) that there are several other activities which display positive attitudes, such as approving, desiring, seeking out, etc.. It seems to me that 'good' gestures to all of these kinds of activities without specifically selecting any one of them; so I would claim that when we say 'that was a good dinner', what we actually mean is 'that dinner was such as to merit a positive attitude or activity', where the set of available positive attitudes and activities includes approval, commendation, desire, seeking out, etc..

Having established that, the next question is: is there something in nature that intrinsically has this property? I think pleasure does. By 'pleasure' I mean, strictly speaking, pleasantness. Many things can have the property of pleasantness, but it is the property of pleasantness that I think has the property of meriting a positive attitude, rather than the thing that is pleasant. So, for example, I find Beethoven's 6th Symphony pleasant, but it is the pleasantness of my experience in listening to it that has the property of meriting a positive attitude, not the symphony itself. Making someone who doesn't like Beethoven listen to the 6th Symphony would not result, for them, in an experience that merited commendation or desire or seeking out; but if I could give them my experience of listening to the 6th Symphony, then their experience, like mine, would merit those attitudes and activities.

So I think Moore had it all wrong. My metaphysical and ontological thesis about 'good' would be that pleasantness is good, and unpleasantness is bad, and therefore we do not have to look to non-natural properties (whatever they may be) to find what 'good refers to or denotes'; what it denotes is the meriting of positive attitudes and activities that is a property of the pleasantness of our own, entirely natural, experiences.

What other value, apart from the value of valuers do you imagine might exist? — Janus

I think nature comes with some built-in values.

Why do we think it is wrong to be cruel to animals? Presumably because it causes the animals pain. We know from our own experience that pain is bad, and we think it is generally wrong to do things that have bad results. That pain is bad is a fact of nature. It is also a value judgment, which shows that there is not such an absolute break between fact and value as some philosophers have claimed.

Babies have heart beats and brain waves by the tenth week. They are alive and sentient at conception. — Gregory

Your first statement does not provide any grounds for accepting your second statement. Was it supposed to? If not, what is the first statement doing there? Do you understand how to construct a logical argument?

↪Herg

It's not about insults. — Gregory

That's like a burglar telling me it's not about theft.

Your abortion stance is contrary to what your soul tells you.

An atheist who believes there are such things as souls is a new one on me.

There are no such things as souls. If you think there are, provide evidence.

While I'm thinking about this, tell me: on what grounds do you, as an atheist, draw an absolute moral line between humans and other animals? I can see why a theist might do it, because theists, or at least Christians, believe that only humans are made in the image of God; but on what grounds do you do it?

Moore had said if good is defined as pleasure, or any other natural property, "good" may be substituted for "pleasure", or that other property, anywhere where it occurs. However, "pleasure is good" is a meaningful, informative statement; — Antinatalist

I don't think 'pleasure is good' is informative to any being that has experienced pleasure. I think it's something every being that has experienced pleasure knows to be true, even if they don't have language in which to express it. My dog knows pleasure is good. He also knows pain is bad, which is why he cringes if he thinks I'm going to hit him. (I never do, but he's a rescue, and I think he probably had a bad start in life.)

Moore got it wrong, I think.

I believe that if we are still around in 100 year or so, humans will be looking back and wondering WTF we were thinking. — James Riley

You're more optimistic than I am. Nice poem, BTW. As we're sharing, I'll post one of mine.

The Vivisector

Observe this man. His searching eyes
stare at you with a cold surmise.
He would strip naked, if he could,
your circuitry of nerves and blood,
probing the mysteries within
the smooth frustration of your skin.

You're safe. Enlightened laws decree
that rat and cat and chimpanzee
must lie beneath his knife instead.
The soft-boiled egg of each new head
he slices open, and extracts
its yolk of appetising facts.

What, though, if in that brain of brains
a spark of pity yet remains?
Does he not fear to one day stand,
the scalpel shaking in his hand,
struck by one paralysing thought -
the weltering horrors he has wrought?

The risk is slight. This man is wise,
and knows, behind his scalpel eyes,
a truth no saint or sage has taught -
truth none the less, and dearly bought:
strokes that tear others' lives apart
cauterise the human heart.

This man is pure in his ideals.
The more he learns, the less he feels.
Down corridors of pain, he sends
his fellow creatures to their ends,
and some god in a hell of ice
is well pleased with the sacrifice.

↪EricH

You're trying to dissect pregnancy with a Nazi-like mind. — Gregory

Hey, EricH, now you and I are BOTH Nazis! If you're not too busy tomorrow, shall we invade Poland?

D'you think maybe Gregory is trolling us all? I really hope so.

↪tim wood

It's not about logic on paper but real life reality (existential reality). Hitler said Jews weren't people. The president of Poland said gays aren't people. Pro choicers are doing the same thing with a group of individuals because the littler persons are invisible to the eye without ultrasounds, etc. — Gregory

False analogy. Jews and gays are sentient, pre-sentient foetuses are not. When are you going to face up to this?

James Riley

Actually it is up to men to control woman in some ways because women can't be happy unless they are controlled by men in some way — Gregory

And YOU have the nerve to call ME a Nazi?!!?

Where is Margaret Atwood when we need her?

It doesn't respect pregnancy but you can't see that because you want to be an abortion doctor. — Gregory

*sigh* No I don't. It sounds like a rather messy and unpleasant job, and there's a high risk of being assaulted by deluded pro-life extremists like you.

'Respect pregnancy'? Why should I? Pregnancy is not a person. I respect sentient beings. In this universe, as I keep pointing out (and you have no answer to this), sentience is the only thing that matters to itself, and hence the only thing that matters morally.

You know, if you would stop caricaturing me and actually consider what I'm saying, maybe even your scrambled brain would begin to understand the point I'm making. But you'll never get there while you persist in thinking of me as some cartoon figure in a bloodstained white coat. Your prejudices are stopping you thinking clearly.

(I imagine you're not too keen on the idea of pets at all - would I be right?)
— Herg
You are right, but I'm a hypocrite. I have a dog and three cats. — James Riley

We're in the same boat. We currently have one dog, and in the past we've had three other dogs, 16 cats, and 24 guinea pigs. We feed our dogs and cats on tinned food which no doubt comes from intensive farming of cows, sheep and pigs, which I disapprove of on moral grounds. so I am also a hypocrite, but I don't have time and energy to give them meat from kinder sources, and besides, we're vegetarian, so we don't have meat in the house. It's an ethical quagmire.

But I've often wondered if domestication of species was original sin. You take something and deprive it of it's essence. That can be utilitarian but I don't think it's good.

Well, I wouldn't talk of essences, not believing in them, but yes, I think it's bad. But we're all in it up to our necks. Slavery of humans was largely abolished in the 19th century, but we still enslave animals. If there's a God, he's not going to be happy with us when we finally meet him.

'm not going to respond to you on this because there were other ways to respond to what I initially said instead of saying you'd be happy to perform an abortion. Since you're a Nazi I'm not going to reason with you because it's my reason connected with ethical sense vs your reason connected to evil. There no real way to have a discussion with you even though your arguments are the same as others. It's just about the best way to deal with you — Gregory

Ridiculous. What is wrong with someone who supports abortion of pre-sentient foetuses saying they would be willing to perform the abortion themselves? It merely shows that I am honest and consistent. I can't help it if you are too squeamish to accept the fact that I would practise what I preach.

BTW, stop calling me a Nazi. It's factually incorrect, it's libellous, and it demonstrates for all to see that you are so incompetent at philosophy that you have to substitute insults for argument.

Whenever I hear people sympathizing with a prey animal under attack, I try my best to sympathize with the predator trying to put food on the table (and feed his/her own kids) while some dickhead human comes to the rescue of the "innocent" little prey animal. — James Riley

I sympathise with both prey and predator, but generally more so with the predator, because a quick death by having the neck severed is preferable to a slow death by starvation. I have occasionally rescued prey animals from domestic pets, but that's because they can be assumed to be well fed without needing to catch and eat prey on their own initiative. (I imagine you're not too keen on the idea of pets at all - would I be right?) I live in the suburbs, and we quite often get foxes wandering around in the daytime looking for food, looking very thin and, to my inexpert eye, mangy. They are a by-product of human society, which fucks up the natural order and doesn't care what misery it causes to other species.

Imagine you watched a nature show where a female bear violently hits her side against a tree to kill her cub inside her. You would feel your soul (you could feel that anywhere in the body I suppose) recoil in shock from it. Yet it's ok for humans to do it? — Gregory

If the bear knows she has a cub, then presumably the cub must be pretty well developed, so when you say 'yet it's ok for humans to do it', what you mean is that it's ok for humans to kill a well developed foetus. No, it isn't ok, because by that time, the foetus is a sentient being, and therefore has interests of its own which deserve to be considered.

If you are going to come on here and argue against pro-choice people, you should at least be able to distinguish between people who think abortion is ok at any stage, like James Riley, and people who don't, like me and Antinatalist.

It's people who say "not enough life there for me to respect" when they obviously don't have the right to say that. — Gregory

I am not saying that. I am talking about sentience, not life, and you have not had the guts to face up to my arguments. I am not denying that a pre-sentient foetus is alive. I am not denying that aborting a pre-sentient foetus is taking a human life. I am claiming that a human life can have no value to itself if it has never been sentient, so taking that life is not taking something of value. Could you value something if you could not think and feel? Of course you couldn't. Face up to this argument like a decent human being, stop evading the real issue, stop hiding behind youir supposed 'common sense', which is really just cowardice and prejudice, and answer my arguments, if you can. And if you can't, step up and be a decent human being and admit that you can't. If you don't do this, you have no right to be here on this forum.

The basic premise of pro-life belief is that we follow common sense and respect all human life. It's not about philosophy. People used philosophy to justify slavery, killing Jews, and some philosophy some day may say anyone over 60 is no longer human. — Gregory

Why are you here at all if you hate philosophy so much?

↪Herg

I'm not going to argue philosophy with a doodoo elderly Nazi — Gregory

Well, you don't really argue philosophy at all, do you? You've just come on this forum to preach at us and hurl insults. And now you've added ageism to your other delightful qualities. BTW, I'm not a Nazi, politically I'm pretty much middle of the road.

Nevertheless, I'm here whenever you wish to engage with MY arguments and give reasoned replies, instead of insults.

Have a nice day.

Yes. Do you know what a circular definition is?
— Herg

Yes. Your criticism of my statement was accurate. Your turn. — T Clark

LOL. No, I don't engage in philosophical ping-pong just for the sake of it. I concede the field to you. Have a nice day.

You have no proof a fetus isn't as sentient as you — Gregory

I do, as it happens. Here it is, in two parts:
1. It is obvious that an embryo in the first few days could not possibly feel anything, since it is no more than a few living cells. So the real issue is not WHETHER a foetus becomes sentient, but WHEN it does.

2. The nervous system, which would be required for sentience, does not start to develop until the 3rd week of pregnancy:
"Following fertilisation, the nervous system begins to form in the 3rd week of development." (https://teachmeanatomy.info/the-basics/embryology/central-nervous-system/)
So a foetus cannot be 'as sentient as me' until at least the 3rd week of pregnancy. QED.

My personal view is that the ability to feel pain, rather than mere sentience, is what counts. The latest evidence is that a foetus cannot feel pain until it is at least 12 weeks old:
"Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks." (https://jme.bmj.com/content/46/1/3)

So I think I would say that it is morally okay to abort a foetus less than 12 weeks old.

We are to treat others as we would be treated. — Gregory

This injunction only applies if the 'others' are sentient, because if they aren't sentient, it can't matter to them how they are treated, so it shouldn't matter to us.

Would you have aborted yourself?

Your question contains an error. If I had aborted the pre-sentient foetus that later became me, it would not have developed into me, so it would not be myself that I was aborting. You should have said, 'Would you have aborted the pre-sentient foetus that later developed into you?' And the answer is 'no', because both my parents were healthy and able to look after me without harm to themselves, they both wanted me to be born, and who am I to stop them having a child if they wanted one?

Well, it wasn't me that introduced this red herring, was it?
— Herg

Do you even know what the phrase "red herring" means? — T Clark

Yes. Do you know what a circular definition is?

↪Herg

Scum of the earth.. — Gregory

ROFL.

The word "natural" is not the subject of this thread. The subject is "naturalism." — T Clark

Well, it wasn't me that introduced this red herring, was it?

Abortion doctors should all literally be crucified. — Gregory

Nice to see the true spirit of Christian love is alive and well on this forum. ;)

If you wouldn't actually kill a fetus yourself you shouldn't be supporting it

I'd be perfectly willing to kill a pre-sentient foetus, but you don't get a lot of opportunity when you're a retired computer systems designer.

That would imply that there was nothing natural until the scientific method came along. That doesn't seem right.
— Herg

Do you think the world didn't operate in accordance with scientific principles before there was science? Was there a different set of rules that operated before there were sentient beings? — T Clark

No, I'm suggesting that since the word 'natural' pre-dates the scientific method, it must then have had a meaning which did not depend on the scientific method, and may well still have the same meaning. For instance, in the days when science was called 'natural philosophy', what did people mean by 'natural' in that phrase? I would also point out that 'natural' is a word used in everyday talk, and I'm sure most people don't think about the scientific method when they use it; they may not even have heard of the scientific method.

I would also point out that your definition is circular:

the natural is what is allowable under natural laws — T Clark

How can this be a definition of 'natural' if the word 'natural' is in both the definiendum and the definition?

The definitions are pretty specific - the natural is what is allowable under natural laws established using the scientific method. — T Clark

That would imply that there was nothing natural until the scientific method came along. That doesn't seem right.

In my opinion sentience does not define life. But I think, most valuable and meaningful life is sentient. — Antinatalist

The life of a sentient being can have value both to that being and to other sentient beings. Thus my life has value to me, and also to my dog (because I feed him). By contrast, the life of a non-sentient being, such as a pre-sentient foetus, can only have value to other sentient beings; because it is not sentient, it can have no value to itself, which is to say, it does not matter to the pre-sentient foetus what happens to it, or whether it continues to live or not.

The value of a being's life to itself, rather than to others, is the core of morality. Without it, all we have is the value of sentient lives to others, and if that is all we take into account, it leads to many abuses of sentient beings for purposes that are against those beings' interests, e.g. killing them for food just because we like the way their flesh tastes, or depriving them of their liberty if they state publicly that they disagree with the way their country is being run.

A non-sentient being, such as a pre-sentient foetus, has never had value to itself. If it is aborted, it never WILL have value to itself. That is why it is not wrong to abort a non-sentient foetus. It is also why a non-sentient foetus should not be given human rights. We should only give human rights to human organisms whose lives have value to them, or have had value to them, or will at some future date have value to them. An aborted pre-sentient foetus falls into none of these categories. The idea of giving rights to something that is incapable of valuing anything, something to which it can't matter how you treat it, is absurd.

Does this mean we should allow the killing of sleeping people? I would say no. This is not because it offends against the moral rule-of-thumb that only beings that ARE non-sentient should be killed; it's because it offends against the moral rule-of-thumb that beings that HAVE BEEN sentient should not be killed. There are good reasons why, in most cases, we should follow these rules-of-thumb, the main one being that not following them tends to lead to cruelty against sentient beings, and this causes unhappiness, which is intrinsically evil.

↪Herg "because 'the never-to-be-conceived person' fails to denote anything."

What makes you say that? — Xanatos

The fact that if nothing is ever conceived, nothing exists which could be denoted. You can only denote something that exists, has existed, or will exist. See Russell, 'On Denoting' (https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Russell(1905).pdf)

I think a woman should have the unfettered right to do whatever the hell she wants with her "baby" up until parturition. — James Riley

I think you need to be more precise. Parturition involves several stages (https://www.healthline.com/health/parturition#stage-3). At which of the following stages do you consider that the woman no longer has the 'unfettered right'?
1. Latent phase of dilation of the cervix.
2. Active phase of dilation of the cervix.
3. Passive phase of expulsion.
4. Active phase of expulsion.
5. Delivery of the placenta.
6. Clamping of the placenta (if it occurs).
7. Cutting of the placenta.
(I've added 6 and 7 for completeness.)
Having chosen one of these, please explain why you chose that stage rather than any of the others.

In other words, refusing to conceive someone and thus depriving this person of a future of value is perfectly acceptable; — Xanatos

'Depriving this person' is confused. If there is never to be a conception, then there is no person to be deprived, and so to refuse to conceive a person is not wronging the never-to-be-conceived person, because 'the never-to-be-conceived person' fails to denote anything.

↪Antinatalist not quite, the logic is following the essence not the accident — Alexandros

I take it you mean some sort of essence that makes humans human. This is a myth, there is no such thing. Humans are composed of matter and energy, like other material objects, and as far as anyone has been able to discover, nothing else.

let's make it concise, in your example there are no moral subjects as morality only exists in human consciousness, there are different degrees of consciousness. Animals are conscious too. Anyway, morality can exist in that dimension only and it doesn't affect the objectivity of it. Objectivity which is going to be attained through intellect. You have an analigy with numbers or ecuation pointing out relations objectively existent outside the realm of the mind, we just discover them through intellect. Regarding morality, it exists only when there are moral subjects and its universal values are objective in logical thinking. We disagree in a point in which discussion cannot go further because you are sustaining ammorality as a basis for every other point you want to make. — Alexandros

I still don't understand what you mean by a 'moral subject.' Please say what you mean by it. Are you using it the way it is used here: ('A moral subject is anything that can be harmed', https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/moral-agent-subject-of-moral-worth), or are using it to mean something else, and if so, what?

Morality exists only in human consciousness. Therefore in your example there is no moral subject. Ergo, it proves nothing. Next point, the value of human life is morally objective. — Alexandros

The first and last statements here are incompatible. If morality exists only in human consciousness, then there are no objective moral truths; but if the value of human life is morally objective, then there ARE objective moral truths. You can't hold both positions, they are contradictory.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'moral subject'. If you mean there is no-one in a position to make a moral judgment, you're wrong, because you and I and others reading this thread are in that position. If you mean that there is no-one in my scenario who is affected by anything such that their being affected is a moral issue, then yes, that is precisely the point I was making.

That's the basis of Morality.

Well, as I've said, I disagree. My example of the last man alive is an argument to support my position. You've given me no arguments to support yours, only assertions.

Next points you've written are not even arguments

They weren't meant to be formal arguments, they are simply facts which shed some light on the reasons why people claim that human life is something special.

It's easy, Morality implies the value of human life objectively.

Do you think it is immoral to beat a dog for your own amusement? If you don't, then your view is immoral. If you do, then you hold a moral view which does not imply the value of human life.

I know two people who were almost aborted because of those trends of pseudo philosophy and pseudo science. And they are happy to be alive. — Alexandros

If the fact that two people who were nearly aborted turned out to be happy is a good argument against abortion, then presumably the fact that a lot of people who were not aborted turned out to be unhappy is a good argument for abortion.

In fact neither is a good argument. You can't have people having babies just on the off-chance that they might grow up to be happy. They might not.

A human life has a moral value in its essence. — Alexandros

No, it doesn't. Suppose that there was only one man left alive, and he was so brain-damaged that he could never feel anything again. It would not matter to him if he died. His death would only matter to him if he could somehow regain sentience and start to feel again. And of course, since he's the last man left alive, it can't matter to anyone else either. So the death of such a man would not matter at all, because there is no-one for it to matter to; it would therefore have no value, positive or negative. This shows that human life and death only matter, only have value, insofar as sentience is involved. It is sentience that confers value, and without sentience, there is no value. Human life in itself has no value; it only acquires value where there is sentience.

The view that human life has a moral value per se is, in practice, a covert species prejudice. People who say that human life has moral value generally believe that any human life has more moral value than any non-human life. This is irrational, anti-scientific, and immoral. There's no scientific or rational basis for the attachment of value to human life rather than non-human life; humans are just a species of animal, one among many. Humans just think they matter more than other species because they're biased in their own favour. It's like white people thinking they matter more than black people: it's fundamentally immoral.

Again, there is a whole potential in process already, which you are terminating, if you didn't do anything, the development is going to be a persona. — Alexandros

Exactly: 'if you didn't do anything': that's the whole point here. It's only if you don't abort the foetus that the foetus turns into something that has moral significance, i.e. a being capable of feeling pleasure and pain, a being to which it matters how it is treated. But if you abort the foetus before it becomes sentient, the potential is never realised, so the foetus never becomes something that has moral significance, i.e. never becomes something to which it matters how it is treated. That is precisely why it is not immoral to abort pre-sentient foetuses.

You are equivocating your terms, — S

You're right, there is an equivocation in step 4 of my argument between experientially bad and morally bad. Should have spotted that. I concede.

Good game.

Ciao. :)

You merely assume or assert controversial premises and reason from that point onwards, which is the fallacy of begging the question. — S

Very well, since you evidently lack the energy to discuss whether my premises are true or false, I will present my reasons for believing them to be true. You will find that I am not, in fact, begging the question.

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
Babies have a similar enough physiology and behaviour to mine and yours for it to be reasonable for us to infer, from the fact that you and I experience pain when boiled, that babies do too.

2. Pain is bad.
If you went to a doctor and said, 'doctor, this pain is bad', you would have good reason to be annoyed if his reply was, 'ah, so you have a personal dislike of pain, do you?' Everyone whose views have not been tainted by bad philosophy knows that pain is bad - this is a truth we learn by experiencing pain. If you wish to pretend that you aren't aware of this truth, then of course that is up to you.

3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
Entailed by 1 and 2.

4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
'Wrong' here is simply the equivalent of 'bad' when applied to actions: that we happen to say 'wrong' rather than 'bad' is an accident of linguistic history. The material point is that the badness of the intended result of an action necessarily infects the intention with which the action is performed. The two cannot be reasonably separated, and therefore if an action is intended to have bad consequences, the action itself must be a bad action.

5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.
Entailed by 4 and 5.

You don't seem to have put any real effort into defending your stance against obvious objections. — S

And you have put no effort at all into making any.

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. [\quote]
— Herg

Again, if morality is a judgment or assessment of behavior, how can someone else make a judgment for us? If you're saying that we literally receive a judgment from someone else, how does that work? — Terrapin Station

It was only for my third category that I was claiming objectivity, not the first two. They were just anthropological notes, and I don't wish to defend them at all.