Yes. In fact I am.

I guess I’m not making sense to you.

Hope you are okay too then.

Maybe you are annoyed I keep asking “what” when you want to go in to the motions of “how”.

You told me to fill in “whatever” on what a “person, human, baby, but not a cyst” thing is.

Seems like a hole in any argument based on that just waiting fo open up to me.

I mean “whatever” has as much a definition as any other term, it’s just really broad in practice, so you are pointing to “mere definitions” and “backbone” by pointing to “whatever” anyway. May as well define something more specific. See what “whatever” is really useful and whatever is not. Or maybe you don’t care.

Definitions are the backbone and morality valuations are in the movement of that backbone. (Judgment is in both positions but I digress.)

We all have to play with essences. It’s called having a conversation. A dialogue.

I’m asking the scientific question: if a pregnant woman was considering whether to carry to term or have an abortion, and she asked “Is a human fetus at any stage a full enough thing to be called a person, human being, thing like me, little baby?”

What is your answer? Not how to live morally with ambiguity. We can get to that later. What would you be able to say to her using your reason and experience (since you have been a person all of your life, or maybe not, or maybe you can’t say that either, or…)?

I think the more meta/physical/empirical questions here are way more interesting. Let people figure out what to do about it for themselves.

Neither of us should think we’ve said much if we are trading value judgments without sharing a context, like a basic definition.

Without definitions, we may only be monologuing, and about abortion no less. Painful.

You define stuff all the time here. Come on, play with it a bit. Humor me. What are the essential qualities of a living human being, that we must be able to measure in some way to demonstrate the coming to be of this human being?

REVISED:
And if you were really wondering if I was ok, thanks for asking. I am ok. To give you a more specific answer to whatever “ok” means, I am a bit longing for some actually stimulating conversation, but that’s still within my definition of “ok”. I am being more specific for you answering your question to try to convey something meaningful, so that this might be a conversation. Any definition of a human, person, not a cyst, Mrs Smith thing would be appreciated.

use whatever you like — Banno

Really? That is as specific as it gets? No other starting point than “whatever”?

That a cyst is not of the same value as Mrs Smith remains true. I — Banno

True. And Mrs Smith is not of the same value as a newborn baby. And a blind and deaf four year old is of different value, etc etc.

Of course.

mere definitions — Banno

I’ll take a “mere” definition.

You keep relying on Mrs. Smith to make your point. What is a “Mrs Smith”?

If you need to call on mere definitions to give your moral theory some backbone, then it's a shit poor theory. — Banno

If you don’t give any thought to the definitions, you don’t even have any “bone” in some other “shit poor theory.”

I get it.

But do you?

I haven’t really been talking about the moral question at all. Rather engage on something more concrete, more scientific, something we can abstract objects from and with logic discuss them here...

You have to moralize about something, or else there is nothing to say. “Mere definitions.”

“Mrs Smith is of greater value”. So what? What is a “Mrs Smith” then if you think you can move on to the morality surrounding the moments before and after birth for something like a “Mrs Smith” (“whatever” that is..)

Get my question?

Every definition of “human being” I come up with either starts with conception, or it is some point well after the day I was born. So in the context of abortion, there is no logical reason to grant special protection to newborn lumps of flesh.

We can play moralist politician and preacher about the subject, or we can just say what it is.

Fuck value! Kill ‘em all! (That’s a Metallica album - don’t kill anyone.)

Value WHAT!!?

What counts as a human being is a decision — Banno

Based on what physical or metaphysical evidence can we make a decision about “what counts as a human being?”

A foetus was killed. — Banno

So a human foetus is not a human being?

I’m waiting for the qualities of an organism that make it a human being.

note that the act of abortion itself, the act of killing this organism, is rarely mentioned in these discussions from an abortionist standpoint — NOS4A2

:100:

You take a new born baby and cut its head off and you are Hitler. You take a 6 month old human fetus and cut its head off and no one can say what just happened.

No one who supports abortion will give a definition of a human being that includes a new born baby, yet everybody seems to think new born babies are precious, cute baby human beings; put it back in the uterus and we need to look for minds and higher consciousness, or value before they will say what it is.

I actually don’t mind calling us only meat in this discussion. This conversation about moving physical bodies around and what the nature of those bodies are. We are defining objects and motions like “pregnant woman” and “fetus” and “abortion tools that terminate the life and/or remove the fetus”, etc. It’s all meat, from the moment of conception. That’s all we need to define a whole human life. That’s all we can objectively measure. They want to add “mind” to the meat or “consciousness of pain” or other abilities and functions. But these are not essential to answer the question of what a new zygote is. Just because a zygote, like a new born baby, might one day be self-aware and have a mind, those remain possibilities, not actualities in the meat at those stages. The actuality in the meat is at least the unique DNA, along with the fact that it is unique DNA making it a whole organism as opposed to a human kidney or appendix.

It’s really quite simple. An organism has a beginning middle and end both in time and in space. The beginning in time is the moment of conception. A unique organism begins to take up space upon its conception. All the things that this human zygote may or may not become or do won’t change what it is.

Bugs might have some kind of primitive minds, but probably not. — RogueAI

Does a human being have a mind when it is sleeping? Even a primitive one?
How about when it is knocked unconscious? It is not “brain dead” but it cannot be roused. Is there a “mind” there.

Are unconscious states, such as sleeping and unconsciousness, are these states and time periods during which no “person” is present?

How is a person present in a body that cannot wake up? Due to drinking alcohol and passing out?

Do you really want to require certain behavior of a human being, such as “minding”, be present before you see essential qualities present upon which we can legislate pregnancy? We are going to tell pregnant women when they can and can’t kill fetuses. You are saying “mind” makes the difference?

And how about a dog or a chimp, do they have minds?

brain-dead children — RogueAI

So, by your logic, you are saying a brain dead child is not a human being. Is that right?

Mrs. Smith is a bunch of cells and a mind. Any minded organism trumps any mindless organism, like a zygote. — RogueAI

So the equation is bunch of cells plus a mind equals a human being? Is that the magic formula? No mind, no human being?

Watch anything by Jeffrey Kaplan on YouTube. He’s got whole intro to philosophy courses online and he’s great to watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFfIQJsUFL4

My approach, then, is not to try and settle the issue of whether the developing entity is a person or not and then extract the moral implications of this; rather it is to take what our reason tells us about the morality of abortions and extract from this a conclusion about the status of the developing entity. — Clearbury

Hi Clearbury, welcome.

I could easily be misunderstanding, but I think I have to disagree. I don’t think you can reason about morality without some concrete matter in hand to be moral about. And to have a concrete matter in hand, you must have already defined for yourself certain terms (such as “human being” and even “new human being”).

Morality is the morality of actions, and actions are in a physical, shared world that requires us to define objects and transact with those objects among other human beings. We need multiple human beings, individuals interacting, before we can make moral statements about, for example, killing them as good or bad, or stealing from them as good or bad, etc. I don’t see how you start by evaluating what our “reason tells us about the morality of abortion” without already defining the objects involved in an abortion. Just saying “abortion” shows we already started somewhere that is clearly specific and full of definitions and objects; “abortion” delineates as distinct: women, pregnancy, fetuses, removal before birth, and fetuses that would otherwise become a baby. If we don’t define these terms in some way (and I suggest the clearest and most precise manner we can muster), how would we know how to apply any moral analysis at any stage in a pregnancy? As an example, If the developing entity is not a person, no moral question even arises to evaluate. We don’t wonder about the morality of killing a kidney (at least not in the same way as the morality of aborting an 8-month old human fetus).

I do think we can stipulate the question “what is a person?” We can say for sake of argument, a fetus at 4 weeks is not a person but a fetus at 8 months is a person. We can then create our morality around all the permutations that might arise within those definitions. Or we can try to refine our definitions…and then refine our moral reasoning…

But we always need the definitions of the involved parties and objects and processes, or some general parameters for each, in order to develop the morality. Otherwise, to me, we may only be using bad facts to develop a bad morality.

This is the process used in the sciences, where theories are compared not just against each other but against how things are. — Banno

And science is the process where we inquire about what a human being is, what a pregnancy is, comparing newborns to adults to zygotes. Science, like metaphysics, physics and biology, theory of mind, psychology, but in the context of abortion, really mostly biology and medicine.

In ethics we compare the theory against how things ought be. The point of doing ethics is that how things are never tells us how things ought to be. We have to decide that for ourselves. — Banno

I agree that morality and ethics are a separate inquiry, where we take what science tells us, whatever we now agree is most rational/factual/state of affairs, develop our ethical/moral/legal norms, and apply them to the state of affairs. We say “this a pregnant woman and as a human being, she is entitled to many rights, and ought be treated as all human beings ought be treated.”

So how should things be? Well, for one thing, a bunch of cells ought not be evaluated as of the same worth as Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith has qualities not had by the cyst that qualify her as of greater value. If a theory does not agree with this evaluation, it has gone astray. — Banno

Mrs. Smith is a bunch of cells. Calling a human zygote a bunch of cells or a cyst doesn’t say anything.

Saying Mrs. Smith “has qualities not had by the [zygote cyst creature you call it]” is an assertion about what a human being is, but it’s not an argument.

Are you saying that only entities who demonstrate certain “qualities” that are of “greater value” shall be recognized as human beings? (That’s a scientific question.)

Or are you saying that a human zygote is a human being, and Mrs. Smith is a human being, but because Smith at the later stage has these high value qualities, and the zygote human doesn’t, we can kill the zygote anyway due to some moral law manipulation and exception creation surrounding the prohibition against killing human beings? (That’s the moral/legal question?)

The monotony of this for all of us is that some pretend the science to talk about ethics, and others pretend the ethics to talk about science. No one is attempting to simply get it right.

And we should do the science first. Who cares about abortions in the first month if we metaphysicians and biologists can say “a 4 week old human fetus can’t be a human being because all humans must have A, B, and C, and a zygote doesn’t have any of those.”??

The answer to when in the unfolding of time does a new human being come into being (such that we can no longer kill it morally) is an essential part of this debate, because only after there is any human being can there possibly be a life of any sort or value that could be be treated immorally.

So let me ask you the scientific question: Does a brand spanking new born baby have enough of the same high value qualities as Mrs. Smith, that it makes sense to protect them both as human beings, as persons (which the whole world already does)?? Why are new babies more special than “cysts” or the human zygote stage? What are the qualities of living bunches of cells that cross the threshold and have to be called “human beings” and when in the history of any of us adult humans does that threshold get crossed?

I’m hoping you to choose some behavior and functioning (some qualities is better) occurring after conception and before natural, adult death.

I’d be surprised if the human qualities you state, beyond having human DNA, will include both a newborn baby (which is more like a plant, or like a fetus without its needed uterus/ life support system) and Mrs. Smith? What human qualities cover the adult and the newborn but leave out the human zygote? Maybe some abortions do not involve killing human beings (at 3 weeks) while others do (at 8 months)? So what are the high value qualities of human being that cover both? Or should we be making it legal to kill unwanted baby children? I’m open to those discussions if the science takes us there.

Yes. It would be wrong to kill sufficiently intelligent extra-terrestrial life, even though they are not human. — Michael

So the moral pivot point for right killing and wrong killing for you is “intelligence”?

Is that your position?

It's wrong to kill me because I am a sufficiently intelligent organism. — Michael

That’s it? You are sufficiently intelligent?

This has nothing to do with laws regulating when and how you can and can’t conduct an abortion.

I’m not going to waste time figuring out “because you are human”. There is a law already - it is wrong to kill a human. That’s the law we are grappling with. Is a a 7-month fetus one of those same things that the law already applies to. Forget “because” word game issues. Be honest.

It’s not a word game to a pregnant mom. Help her think it through.

What kind of animal it is has nothing to do with the conventions of the English language. — Michael

You are just playing epistemology games and post modern metaphysician.

So no one can know or say anything about the “real world”. That’s your answer. Probably resolves the discussion with anyone who disagrees with you (at least in your mind).

Impossible to argue with the “word game” resolution to the question of what a particular thing may actually be.

But the government isn’t playing word games. They are assisting some people with killing fetuses and punishing others for doing the same thing based on physical evidence like a dead fetus and calling it a “human being” and a “person” in order to apply laws against homicide.

So you might want to get in the game.

I've addressed it. The question makes no sense in context. The term "human being" isn't like the term "bachelor" with an explicit set of necessary and sufficient conditions; it's more like the word "game".

Either way, what does zygotes being or not being human have to do with whether or not it is wrong to kill zygotes? — Michael

Are you serious?

A human being in the context of abortion is at least a body, clearly able to be defined and delimited. Body like a pregnant mom. Body like a fetus that can be distinguished from the mom, scraped out and thrown away.

A human being is the thing that pops into existence at birth. No need to delve deeper once it is born. It’s that thing. No more gaming is needed in the context of abortion. The lawmakers and doctors and mothers are done with the hand-wringing at that point. The little bundle of popping joy is the same human being as all of us adults.

Separately, most people agree it is usually bad to intentionally kill human beings. Throwing a newborn baby out a 5 story window would be bad, for instance. It is bad, so they say, because the newborn is a human being and, so they say, killing human beings is bad. (That’s a logical argument.)

So, some people wonder if maybe, aborting a 7 month pregnancy might be like throwing a baby out a window, for instance. Hence the debate.

1. Are zygotes human? — Michael

No. Are human zygotes human beings?

Unless that is the question you haven’t entered the abortion debate.

And you sound like an essentialist every time you point to some distinct object. Like a zygote.

When it's a foetus call it a foetus. When it's a baby call it a baby. — Michael

When it’s born, the government calls it a human being. Are they right about that?

You need to abandon this essentialist view of the world and language. — Michael

Not if you are a lawmaker making policy on when a woman can and cannot decide what to do with her own pregnancy.

Ridiculous argument.

According to you, there could never be a controversy surrounding any abortion. It’s just word games and platonic form manipulation easily avoided by playing other word games.

But there is a controversy if you haven’t noticed. It’s about the essence of a physical object that is either aborted or carried to term at which point it is recognized in all governments as a human being. And it’s about the balancing of the rights between a pregnant human mother and a pre-born human being. If it’s not a pre-born human being, there is no controversy (or the controversy would be resolved), and if you establish or stipulate that it is a human being, then you get into the balancing act.

You are basically avoiding the whole discussion.

This is why most of the arguments made here are non sequiturs. Whether or not it is wrong to kill a zygote does not depend on how we use the word "human being". — Michael

Ok I found the closest thing to an argument in your post. But that’s dumb. If a zygote IS NOT a human being, it is certainly not wrong to kill it and the debate is over. No one cares about killing a skin cell or a cyst or a lung.

What is a new human being, is one of two essential questions at the heart of the discussion. Otherwise, the state would have little interest in a zygote, like they have little interest in a cyst, and there would be no need for the various governments to make laws regulating women’s pregnancies telling them when they can and can’t kill the fetuses.

Using the word “non sequitor” is a tactic without argumentation.

You whole post here has no argument in it.
You just make statements.

I thought we were talking about abortion and why someone would be “pro-life”.

You mentioned “the word” human being. In the context of abortion, that’s a newborn baby. Every government and regulation says so.

So your philosophical mind isn’t the least bit curious about when a human being actually starts being a human being.

Either way, a woman's bodily autonomy has precedence over a zygote's life. — Michael

Let’s grant this point you made with no argument at all. Grant it. I’ll even grant that the woman has precedence over a toddler and she can throw them into the ocean to drown. Is a zygote a human being, like a newborn baby is?

And pro-life views evaluate the behaviour around abortion in an appallingly bad way! They claim that a cyst has more worth than Mrs Smith!

Thanks for making my case! — Banno

I hate the term pro-life. Using it leads everyone to imprecision about everything. Just like “pro-choice.”

I’m “anti-private-right-to-abortion-without-exception.” Makes a great T-shirt.

There is no pro life position that a cyst is worth MORE than Mrs. Smith (even if what you mean by cyst is an ectopic pregnancy).

1. Persons are not, traditionally, identical to human beings. You used them interchangeably throughout the conversation, and most people are going to deny that rights are grounded in the organism—they usually believe it is grounded in personhood. The question becomes: “(1) when does a human being become a person, and (2) what is personhood?”. Conventionally (right now), personhood is mindhood: it is to be a person. The more I think about it, the more I want to use ‘personhood’ in the pre-modern sense: to have a nature that sets own out as developing into having a mind with a proper, rational will. — Bob Ross

I appreciate that. I am conflating distinguishable concepts of human being and personhood. But I am trying to treat this more plainly. I see the distinction between a human being and it's personhood as a distraction. I am focused on one key moment (or time frame) in the existence of the full human person - when did it first come to exist? Birth? conception? Age of reason? In the mind of God before all time? Never? When.

Further, this is a speculation about the nature of the human subject for sake of addressing the following already established, immovable objects: a newborn baby is a human being and it is one that has a right to life. We can ponder whether a this newborn has a mind, can experience, displays "personhood" etc., but it doesn't matter what we find - we already cannot kill a newborn baby. So the sole focus is, "is there a time before birth, possibly at conception or sometime after, when this newborn being that we now cannot kill and recognize as having rights, should still be treated as a person so as to cause us to protect its body from abortion?" If we stick to physical, demonstrable, observations to base our definitions and conclusions, the moment of conception seems plain. If we stray into the nature of mind, and personhood as if these are distinct from the body, then we will either show that even newborns are not persons, or I'd love to hear a good definition of a human being that clearly demonstrates that a newly conceived fetus is not simply the first moment any of us came to be.

2. For those who are pro-choice, if I were to iron man there position, they have no problem with providing the asymmetry between infanticide and abortion: the latter is the killing of a person, the former (in all permissible cases) is not. The reason I think you, specifically, think this is a problem, is because you are equivocating ‘human beingness’ with ‘personhoodness’. — Bob Ross

I think people are conflating two different issues as one. The moral vagaries surrounding killing persons, and the definition of persons. On the one hand, there is "what is a person/human being (the thing we protect after birth) and when does it begin?" Do we start being human beings the day we are born, which is the same day our right to life is recognized (depending on the state of course, but that's a third issue)? Or do we start being a human being sometime earlier than that or later than that? That is one issue. On the other hand there is the question of, "Because killing human beings or persons is wrong, when is abortion potentially wrong?" The answer may be always, or never, but it is a different issue.

3. When life begins, does nothing to comment on when a life has rights. You are right that, scientifically, it is uncontroversially true that your life began with conception; but this doesn’t directly address if you have any rights upon beginning to exist. You need some further argument for that. — Bob Ross

We are stipulating that all new born babies are human beings, with rights. If it is uncontested that a human life began at conception, and it is a human being such as a baby that has a right to life, I do not see any good arguments grounding a removal of those rights before the baby is born while retaining the fact that it is a human being. What happens in the womb that is so different from a new born that would allow this otherwise individual human life to be seen as not have the same rights as anyone? All the arguments I've seen contradict themselves.

4. “killing people is bad”, as you put it, is not really a good representation of pro-life positions (if we iron man it): a pro-life person (usually) thinks that human beings acquire their rights immediately upon beginning to live and the ends do not justify the means, so it is straightforwardly immoral to abort. — Bob Ross

I'm anti-private-right-of-abortion-without-exception. I'm not pro-life. This conversation has so many permutations. I think people like delving into the minutia before even admitting the common ground they share.

Newborn is a human being.
Killing human beings is to be avoided.
A newly conceived zygote is a prior stage in the life of the newborn.
So a newly conceived zygote is a human being, the killing of which should be avoided.

Avoided, but for any subsequent exceptions somebody might argue for.

Two zygotes can fuse into one, creating a chimera. One zygote can split into two, creating twins. — Michael

True. But how do these possible turns of events detract from what I'm saying occurs at the moment of conception, a conception that occurs prior to any of these other moments anyway?

The mechanics of conception may be broad and are a moving process themselves, true. But the result is the object (or possibly objects in your case) we still have to call a new human zygote. I am saying a new human zygote is the best place to start defining a new human being. Are you saying you agree that a human being started being human at conception and that some of these human beings live for a short time becoming a "chimera" or twins (starting newer human beings in a different way than typical conception)?

The question of what is a human being and when does it come into being is only one question in this discussion, but it is a key question necessary to define what an abortion itself is (removal of a human fetus before birth). Is abortion the killing of a human being or not?

As soon as you accept that the zygote's right to live is not absolute – that sometimes abortion is acceptable – the claim "abortion is unacceptable because the zygote has a right to live" is accepted to be a non sequitur. There is always an explicit "unless there are good reasons to abort". — Michael

You've moved on to address when an abortion is acceptable. I'm just trying to say what an abortion is.

You talk about exceptions. I have to presume you mean exceptions to some rule. Presumably exceptions to a rule like: killing human beings, such as you and me and new born babies, is to be avoided. For example, a rule like: With exceptions in cases of the life and health of the mother, abortion is to be avoided, because abortion is the killing of human beings and killing human beings is to be avoided.

So if you want to have a conversation about exceptions, I have to assume you think that abortion involves the killing of a human being. Otherwise, if the zygote/fetus isn't a human being, killing it does not implicate this rule or its exceptions.

If continued pregnancy will kill the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy will paralyse the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy is not what the mother wants then abortion is acceptable. — Michael

How is that last one an exception? What is your rule, that, without the exception, it would otherwise be wrong for a mother to terminate her pregnancy because she didn't want to be pregnant and/or have a baby? What makes "pregnancy is not what the mother wants" an exception to what rule?

We just disagree on what constitutes good reasons. You might agree that if the mother is at risk of death or paralysis then the reasons to abort are good, but not agree that if the mother doesn't want to continue the pregnancy then the reason to abort is also good. — Michael

I really hadn't commented on my reasons why abortion might be acceptable or not. I never said I agreed that killing any human was a bad thing or not, nor whether killing is sometimes good and best. I merely said an abortion is the killing of a human being.

I agree abortion is acceptable at times. Do you agree abortion is killing a human being?

For purposes of a conversation about when a woman can terminate her own pregnancy, most of us, for some ambiguous reason, agree, that the moment of birth demonstrates a sufficiently formed thing we can justifiably call a human being. Maybe it actually starts sometime before birth, or maybe even a few months after birth, but despite those possibilities, most of us stipulate that the moment of birth is at least the moment a new human being can clearly be individuated and identified as such.

For some other ambiguous reason, we all also agree that all human beings share a similar (maybe not identical) right to life, that human life is valued and to be granted as a right to all who have such life. Murder is wrong, because human life is of value, etc.

All sides of the conversation basically agree with these above statements. We all know we won't go killing any babies once they are born without owning up to killing a baby person, and we all would admit killing baby persons is a big no-no because such things are human beings with the right to life.

But when we now ask of ourselves, "can we abort the human fetus sometime after pregnancy but before birth?" intractable disagreement erupts, confusion runs rampant, and logic plays second-fiddle to emotion and posturing.

Can we abort the human fetus sometime after pregnancy but before birth? It depends on two things: whether all humans deserve the same right to life (are there some humans who can justifiably be killed?); and it depends on whether a newly conceived zygote is a human being, or such a zygote is not a person until much later.

The easier question is: is a newly conceived zygote a human being? Or when does a human life come to exist as a human life? (It's an impossible metaphysical pickle, but a straight forward question.)

It occurs to me, if no one ever wanted to abort a fetus, why would anyone question what we were when we were two-days conceived? We would simply see our two-day-old stage of being whatever we are. This is the basic biology of it. All life works that way. Procreation of a species starts at the moment of conception, and ends with two adults having sex, to start it all over again, and again... these are what each human being most fully is. We are living, changing beings now, in the most basic sense, just as we were living, changing beings the day of our conception. All just different stages and functionings along the same simple way of life.

If someone asked me, "What is the oldest moment when anything about you, anything at all relating to just you, first came to be? When did anything about you make it's first appearance?" I would not answer when I was born. I would have to point to when my unique DNA started doing it's human DNA thing. Just like each one of us. We did not exist, and then we existed, and the oldest piece of what is happening in me right now that I can physically prove and demonstrate in the world today, is connected to the information contained in the DNA present at my conception.

Any moment to claim a new human being first comes to be after conception (such as birth) is arbitrary, unless you want to pick the moment of self-consciousness or some higher function (in which case you are way after birth). Science has to go on the demonstrable and testable - which is, for a human body, the moment of conception. Conception is one demonstrable limitation in the life cycle of a human being - it is the limitation I call, it's starting point. I see no better moment or time period during which a new human being first comes to be.

So maybe the only reason to do the mental acrobatics needed to define the moment a new person comes-to-be as happening sometime after the moment of conception, is to see if we can more easily justify abortion?

If a human being comes to be sometime after conception and before birth, then during the time the zygote is a not a human, we can abort it with as much or little consideration as removing an unwanted mole or kidney. We don't have to address the harder, moral question surrounding when can we kill human beings anyway.

But let's assume that two-day-old human zygotes are little baby people. What demands that the woman refrain from booting the new house guest from the premises? Seems to me nothing does, but a convention regarding the value of human beings. Because we can easily use reason to say "Adult women are more valuable than unformed zygote humans, and as human zygotes only exist within the pregnant woman's body, she should get to decide what to do about the zygote.

This argument is both ridiculous (as it undermines the function of any moral law) and impossible to refute (as no one agrees on an objective morality beyond the vague, ambiguous, "killing people is bad").

So can a woman abort her tiny one-celled human being?

So my approach is, the intellectually honest position is to admit you first existed at the moment you were conceived in your mother's woman, as all humans beings trace their presence back to this moment and nothing before then. And then admit we adults all have a choice when it comes to morality - do we want a universal morality or not? If we don't, we can let people decide for themselves which human zygotes get to go on living (squatters that they are), and which do not. If we do want to say "All humans have an equal right to life" then we have to say "I will not kill human zygotes." (We can deal with exceptions to the rules later, as when the life of the mother and zygote compete with each other, or other reasons.)

And my approach to this is, there is no morality without an objective morality. If we live in a world where each of us gets to decide whether to kill this or that person, we may as well say we live in a world where there are no rules. People are idiots, including you and me. Maybe we shouldn't value ourselves at all, in which case abortion makes total sense. But if we, for some ambiguous reason, want to say human beings are wonderful flowers on the face of this universe, highly valued and not to be killed, then we are stuck with the beauty of two-day-old baby Ziggy too.

To be a law of logic, a principle must hold in complete generality
No principle holds in complete generality
____________________
There are no laws of logic. — Gillian Russell

To be an argument, words as premises and words as conclusions must be related with [laws of] logic.
Gillian Russell made an argument.
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There is [laws of] logic.

I think this distinction is resisted in contemporary culture because it's politically incorrect. There's an aversion to the Christian doctrine … It's today's 'popular wisdom'.

There's also the sense that we believe Darwinism has shown that we're on a continuum with other species, and this provides the satisfaction of us being part of nature...

This is where I think a philosophical critique of naturalism fits in, but I won't advance it again, as it's clearly not registering. — Wayfarer

It registers here.

People invest a lot in the observation that we humans, like many other animals, are “higher” animals on the evolutionary continuum. This allows them to humble human beings making them closer to the animals (and with no need of religion). But still allows pride in the argument as we human apes reign as the highest in rational ability. We are still the only animals who do, in fact, rank continuums.

I would say, this ranking process (called rationality to generalize it) requires something that the animals do not need to exhibit to explain their behavior. Instinct and structure are all my dogs need to be so brilliant.

My take is, in order to discuss this topic with a truly skeptical eye, to hell with the hierarchies and even all continuums. There is no evolutionary continuum between chemical motions and biological motions. At some point chemicals mixed enough to begin a new occurrence called the evolution of life. Before that, there was no selection and mutation in any species. Evolution was once new. And then, by my observation, humans (and only humans) at some point started talking about it all. The human mind (with reason, language, concepts and judgment) was once new as well. So just like at some point chemicals stopped just being chemicals and life began being life, at some point animal consciousness stops being animal consciousness and started being human, being personal.

We are personifying the other animals by placing them on our same human continuum, just like a single-cell would be speaking metaphorically if it said saline “come to life” when you mix H2O with NaCl. There is no life in saline solution. In my view, there is likely no deliberative, rational process in my beautiful dogs.

We can have some other conversation about whether persons are higher than other animals or animals are higher than plants, or life and evolution are higher than chemical motions. But for now, I just see the differences, not the continuums.

There are such vast differences between what humans are and what the other “higher animals” are. Like there are vast differences between what early RNA was doing and what chemicals do.

“Evolution” has been fetishized to explain too much.

Wonder if it would catch on.

I guess the only thing I would add is I would make the outcome either come sooner, or less up to we human beings. To me, what God has done is enough, and we’re all getting there, but he’s given us so much power over the process. I like being free though (when I occasionally am free), so maybe he knows what I want better than me.

“The World’s Religions” by Huston Smith.

I'd take the form of a man, live a simple life, teach everyone how to be and what is true, withstand the rejection and keep teaching and being an example, die a public humiliating tortuous death on a cross at the hands of the rest of us, be buried, rise again to give everyone hope, forgive anyone who asked for forgiveness for the crap we pull day-in and day-out (such as killing God for telling us to love one another), and tell everyone to keep trying and that I would be with them.

I wouldn't write a word down either while I was here because of our post-Heideggerian deconstructionist tendencies. (Total hassle leaving people free to think for themselves, but it yields the best people - people who consider "best" as something to consider.)

God is interested in people. So interested he became one of us to make it easy for us to understand that. So interested, that he would take a punishment for wrong-doing, to show us that wrong-doing leads to misery and death (because despite the hangovers after drinking too much, we fail to learn anything that isn't easy and continue to destroy ourselves), and take this punishment in a painful way even after living a life free of any wrong-doing whatsoever, and so, be the recompense none of us can be for each other, and physically rise from the dead to show us what this is all about - living with God as his friends, his family by adoption, forever.

But then, if I would do this if I were God, I'd be doing much better now. Good thing for the rest of you (and myself) that I'm not God.

Determinism is happening. That’s a given. Things are the way they are because of the way their causes were, and things become what they become because of the way they are.

But people, at least, in reflection, remove themselves from the causal chain and make decisions. These decisions are essentially giving their consent to the fact of the causal chain.

So we create the conditions for freedom, namely, a position removed from the deterministic causal chain, by reflecting on the objects perceived to be within the causal chain, and then developing a future possible state, selecting one future possible state, and then, now consenting to this state in the selection, rejoining the causal chain to enact a physical and fact or result of one’s choice.

Sounds fantastical. But what is reflection but a view once-removed from the initial “flection” - it’s a reflection, and so removed from the initial stimulus. (Removed from the initial movement.)

We make this reflection in our minds and in this reflection can evaluate and make a “choice”.

So the question then becomes, is anyone in control of when they will stop to reflect and consider the possibility of a making a choice? Is anyone in control of which objects they will conceptualize about and consider as choices?

I think it is difficult to actually be free - one has to be free from oneself as well as the rest of the causal chain in order to be truly removed enough to make a truly free choice, but the mechanism for freedom exists in the mechanism of self-reflection.

And in the end, a free choice is more like consent than it is a development of what someone wants. We think of freedom as arising in a desire or what we want. Like “I want ice cream and so freely choose strawberry because I like strawberry better.” But life is more like this: “whether you like it or lot, whether you want it or not, you are going to eat ice cream and you are going to choose strawberry today - do you consent?”

Basically, we on all on the causal, deterministic roller-coaster ride of life, but we have the ability to reflect on this while we are twisting and turning and looping around the tracks - we can reflect on where we are headed and consent to it, take responsibility for it in our reflection, or we just continue along the ride, leaving all physical effects to their physical causes, never reflecting on it.

Freedom, therefore, goes hand in hand with reason. There is no room for freedom in a world without reflection (reasoning), and there is no space or time for reflection absent a moment or mind where one withholds consent.

My view is close to compatibilism, but I give the free agent, the reflecting mind, enough weight to actually impact the outcome and effect change in the causal chain - to be a cause.

We stop the chain (or remove ourselves from it) by reflecting, and we create a new, uncaused object out of our concepts and choices, then consenting to this choice within our reflecting minds, effect something back in the causal chain but now creating an effect based on our choice in reflection, not an effect based on the physical chain of causes only.

We invent ourselves, invent our choices, identify ourselves with those choices, then consent to our bodies which have physical causes and effects being identical to these choices and identities in reflection thereby closing the loop and rejoining the causal chain.

Really hard to explain and really hard to make a truly free decision. We are all slaves by default. If we can identify biases, physical forces, use reason, we might be able to choose something that is otherwise uncaused by anyone but this reflective process (which is ourselves).

only one - so far - is capable of inventing technology, medicine, politics, religion and torture. — Vera Mont

That is my point. We are the only one who invented knowledge and concepts and base our actions on these.

If you would even say “only one” you should able to see my simple point.

I don’t saddle my dogs with the ability to behave according to whatever faculty in me invented “politics” or language. My dogs are not doing a simple version of thinking like me, they are doing a complex version of instinct like me. Only people think or conceptualize their own consciousness.

However, sometimes domestic animals do chase imaginary prey or cringe from non-existent threats. — Vera Mont

So sometimes animals are irrational? And there is mental illness? So more rational is better than less rational or irrational? If so, is something that behaves without using reason at all, say a river flowing downstream, is much lower and less than a rational thing?

You didn’t address any distinction between instinct as a cause of behavior and thinking as a cause of behavior.

And you missed the distinction between seeing rationality in something, like seeing it in the pile of characters “2+2=4”, and using thought and logic and reason to form a choice and then acting on that thought and choice. If you say a dog is behaving reasonably, you aren’t saying the same thing as the dog is using reason in order to base his behavior. That’s two different things. Rationality may be everywhere. Only humans seem to notice it and manipulate it with thoughts and concepts (or give a damn to bother with these constructions).

Animals are better than us because they don’t use reason, or even need to. Saying they do is just a quick and easy explanation, making them like us, like reason is so special and instinct is less special.

Seems to me that is an explanation for everything.
You are mistaken (hasty generalization). — 180 Proof

What else is there besides vacuum fluctuations?

Humans see a lot of things that are not there; some of these things are more plausible than others. — Vera Mont

By “see” you mean more precisely “conceive of” because we are talking about thinking, not just vision.

If you think animals think, then you are saying animals must conceive of a lot of things that aren’t there as well. (Why would you do that to animals?)

Do you think rational animals are higher, better beings than say, a vegetable too?

the universe is only an expanding (cooling, or entropic) vacuum fluctuation that is/was random / acausal / non-intelligent. — 180 Proof

Would you say that explains everything?

A cat is only an expanding (cooling or entropic) vacuum fluctuation? A supernova? 14 galaxies? A number? Your self?

Seems to me that is an explanation for everything. Mic drop type “wisdom” for the ages. Conversation over. Whatever the next question is the answer is some other vacuum fluctuation. Chocolate and vanilla are both the same - versions of vacuum fluctuations.

1. There is a difference between rational behavior, and behaving according to reason. It is certainly rational to pull one's hand out of fire if one wants to keep one's hand from being destroyed. But we don't say: "Boy, when your hand went into that fire and you pulled it out, you did some quick thinking and came up with a really rational response." The hand was not pulled out of the fire because of a thought process, balancing various concepts, choosing the most logical and then taking action. It is instinctual to pull a hand out of fire. It's not behavior that is according to reason; it's behavior according to instinct or reflex. Those instincts can later be rationalized (saving hands from destruction is the purpose of the reflex, or at least the result of the development of that reflex), but the actor, the person with the hand, wasn't behaving according to reason when his own hand flew out of the fire. Human beings can both recognize the rationality of certain actions and functions (after the fact, post hoc), and they can use reason to develop causes behind their own behaviors before they behave according to those thoughts. People who are saying animals are simpler versions of humans using reason are seeing rationality after the fact and asserting the animal must have seen that rationality before the fact and then acted according to that reason. But rationality in a function doesn't mean there is an actor who thought about that rationality before the function occurred and then acted according to that rationality. 2+2+4 shows rationality, but we don't need to think 2 is being rational when it adds 2 more to itself to make itself, now plus the other 2, equal to 4. That's silly. There are no agents or desires or things communicated within the rational pile of characters "2+2=4".

2. I'm talking about behaving according to reason. Do animals use reason to inform their actions before they act? People seem to be saying that animal behavior, like human behavior, shows evidence of being influenced by some level of that animal's thoughts. Thinking, conceptualizing, wanting and choosing leading to actions. I disagree, for many reasons.

A dog wants to lick a bowl. So the dog begs. When the person looks at the dog, the dog moves his eyes to the bowl to communicate or tell the person what he wants. The dogs sits very still like a good boy, wags his tail, gets the person's attention and looks at the bowl and looks at the person, and looks at the bowl. The dog must be conceptualizing licking the bowl and using reasonable methods to bring about a future state of actually having the bowl and getting the person to help him bring about that future state by communicating that conceptualized mental state in the dog. Right? Sounds like a rational explanation for why the dog looks at the bowl and then looks at the person and begs. We insert rational agency into the dog and use it to explain behavior. Makes sense.

Eyeballs are designed to sense light and the brain uses this to locate objects. The system works very well, especially for some birds. The development of the binocular vision is so complex, so purposeful, it doesn't seem like it could have arisen without a designer. Therefore, to explain the existence of eyeballs, we can insert a rational designer at work over millions of years to bring about a purpose called vision.

That's what we are doing when we insert rationality in animal agents. We can't explain their behavior without saying it is like our behavior, so we just say they must be doing what we are doing. But like intelligent design, saying a dog is using reason and thinking things, is not the only explanation, nor the simplest or demonstrative of the most evidence.

3. Instinct. Humans are animals and dogs are animals. Both, at times, act according to instinct. We just do what we do because of the stimuli and the way we are structured. Humans, like those on this thread, sometimes, instead of instinct (maybe), conceptualize things like "behavior" and "communication" and other things we are talking about here on this post. We think. Humans, use the concepts to develop "reasons" or optional choices for ourselves, and then, sometimes, base our actions on these thoughts. We choose to hold our hand in the fire no matter how much it hurts because of thoughts that this will make some brilliant philosophical point (or whatever). We act both according to instinct (pull the hand out quickly), and according to rationality (keep the hand in, or never touch the fire, or whatever the thought is).

Do we really need rational thought to explain what animals do? Couldn't their instincts be so highly developed that they never need any thoughts to move from the present into the future? I say, certainly could. I do all kinds of rational things without thinking. A ball is hurling at my head and I duck and the ball misses me - does that make me really smart? I need to move a heavy stone, so I set up a lever and move it - does that mean I've communicated my desire for the stone to move to the stone?

This speaks to all of the accusations that saying animals do not use reason or thought to inform their actions is elitist; saying humans think they are better than animals because we can use reason. But it is just as elitist to say humans and dogs both use reason, but humans are just better at it.

Who cares for a minute whether instinct or reason is more complex or better than the other? Not me. I'm trying to make a reasoned argument, communicate it to other people. My dogs could care less about any of this - that makes them innocent and pure, maybe geniuses, not stupid.

So the creature who uses reason, the human, sees rational thought all over the universe - is it possible that we are narrowly, simple-mindedly, rationalizing or personifying all of these other things to be just like us? I say yes. No wonder we see animals as rational agents - we are too proud of being rational agents ourselves to deny it of other creatures.

If a dog could talk (and therefore display evidence of an ability to think and reason), might they say "keep your slow moving thoughts and reasons to yourself - I need none of it ever."

I say, for sake of this point I'm making, instinct is way better than reason. If the goal of living things is to live, to procreate and live more, then the sequoia tree or the fungus is way more advanced than we reasoning animals. If the sequoia tree could talk they could say "take my lifespan and shove that up your hierarchical, rationalizing ass - plus, I don't have an ass."

Instinct is good enough. Amazing enough. Complex enough.

4. Philosophy of Mind. Saying my dog is communicating with me when he begs for food is placing a mind of his own in the dog. This places all of the epistemological problems of knowledge, the mind-body problem, questions of free-agency and choice, all in the dog. To simply think "I am hungry" is to think "I am." So we are saying dogs create the same illusory, ill-defined "self" in their consciousness and build communication methods like begging postures in order to share these self-reflections with some other self for a that dog's purposes and conceptualized intentions. We are saying the dog, in some simpler fashion, feels his hunger and then thinks of ways to communicate the concept of hunger (not the feeling itself) to some other creature in response to this thought. But why saddle the dog with all of this "rational" activity of mind? Neither humans nor dogs are behaving according to reason when they feel hunger. We don't think "I need to consume energy to live, so I should make myself feel hungry." We just feel hungry. Like an instinct. Dogs, it seems to me, don't feel hunger and then ask themselves "what can I do to satisfy this hunger?" Just like the hunger just is because of their structure, begging just is because of the dog's structure. There need be no theoretical, hypothesis formation in a dog's mind; they don't have to think "If, theoretically, I beg, and look cute, I can convince that person to move the bowl to the floor." They don't form this hypothesis and then experiment with different cute acts second. They just feel hunger; this produces certain other behaviors; I happen to think it's cute; and sometimes this produces licking bowls. All of the rationalization of what should "I" do next to communicate "my mind" to that "other mind" so that the "other mind" will take certain actions that "I want" - that's all just as weak of an explanation as intelligent design to explain why the earth needed a moon to regulate the tides - God placed a moon there to help build the earthly environment, like I place a mind in a dog to help build a rational explanation for how good he is at obtaining bowls to lick.

5. What I am saying and what I am not saying. I am saying this: the chemical is not a living thing. Fire is a chemical reaction. Fire consumes fuel, produces waste, breathes oxygen, moves itself. But fire isn't alive. We can "breath life into the hot coals and revive the fire" but this is metaphor. The plant is a living thing. Plants are not better than fires because plants live and fires don't. Plants are different than fires. Period. Animals are alive like plants, but animals can move themselves to food, better adapt to acute environmental changes (like run from a forest fire), but animals can accidentally jump into fire or run themselves to a place where there is no food at all, or fall into the sea and drown. Animals are not better or higher than plants either, just like a living thing isn't higher or better or more complex than a chemical reaction. Humans can use reason. Reason can be used to obtain food, adapt to environment, etc. This does not mean humans must be better than animals or higher than animals because they use reason; I see no reason to saddle other animals with reasoning minds, like I see no reason to saddle fire with being "alive" in a biological sense (not a metaphorical sense). The chemical is not a living thing. The plant is not an animal. The animal is not a reasoning mind. These are all different. All with their own complexities and goods and beauties, and simplicities, bads, and uglinesses.

Lastly, none of the above speaks to what reason really is. Reason happens in a mind. Minds happen in a consciousness. Animals have a consciousness. So, just like my dog, I am a conscious, sensing, perceiving being. Somewhere in the evolutionary process, animal consciousness, along with sense perception, came to include concepts and thoughts. Like the chemical became the protein, and the protein became the cell, and the cell became the animal, the human animal became "self" conscious or a thinking, reflecting thing.

I think many people are too enamored with the idea that humans are on the same scale as the other higher mammals. We are, but, just like it is imprecise to say a fire and a dog are living beings, it is imprecise to say that all animal consciousness must involve concepts, thoughts, logic and decisions.

We personify the universe in intelligent design. And we are doing it again talking about what our dog is "thinking" and communicating to us. My dogs have no time to think. Only we humans take time to think about whether something else thinks about anything. We just do. They just don't. That's okay with me. In fact, it makes them more amazing to me. I can't imagine getting through this life without thinking and planning and testing and planning again at some point, yet they do such amazing things I could never do, all by instinct and their complex, beautiful structure.

She is a highly educated and successful woman, but under the circumstances, she was like a barking dog towards me. — Athena

When the air in my house is above 75 degrees, the air conditioning goes on and the house is cooled and the thermostat reacts to the cooler temperature and shuts off the air conditioner.

I could say that my air conditioner uses its thermostat to sense the temperature and then desires to cool the house so it rationally engages the air conditioner until the house reaches the system’s desired temperature.

Or I could just say it’s all a system of stimuli and responses with no inner life, self-awareness, decision-making capability or rational capability.

We could say the same thing about animals.

Determinists (use reason) to say the same thing about humans.

Maybe the better question is do humans have the ability to reason? My answer would be that formulating a question like that displays behavior of a being capable of reason.

Animals don’t ask questions. Ever.

I have two dogs. I love them. But they aren’t using reason. They are predictable because of their structure, not because of their adherence to reason. My dog is sitting at my foot leaning on me right now. He’s not communicating or hoping I like what he’s doing. He just feels good enough to pass out at my feet right now. When he begs at the dinnner table, there is no plan or thought or reason behind how his ear flops and looks cute enough to convince me to give him a treat. He’s just does what he does, and benefits from it working. If it didn’t work, he wouldn’t wonder how it didn’t work because it was perfectly reasonable to him and try to improve the reasoning. He would just be pushed into the next posture and position. Probably licking something.

We can’t even understand the nature of our own behavior when we use reason or make a choice or reflect on our own minds, but for some reason, because we love them I suppose, we see so much reason and choice and mental activity in animals.

we still read off their reasons — Ludwig V

Because we use reason. Animals don’t read reasons. Otherwise we read off of smells and visions and feelings. Like other animals. And “read” in this context is metaphor for sensation. We read reasons, Animals don’t read anything (except metaphorically).

Rational behaviour is not just a set of behaviours distinct from everything else - talking, pondering etc. Rationality is on display in nearly everything that we do. — Ludwig V

Barking is a behavior.
Dogs and humans might sense the loudness of the barking and so you might say as a metaphor that dogs and humans sense the loudness of this behavior. A dog doesn’t wonder if he is barking loud enough, if the volume of his barking is a reasonable volume to convey its fear of the cougar to the rest of the pack. The dog sees the cougar, and the dog barks.

Dogs don’t read the rationality of this behavior. We humans alone exhibit reason and rationalize about it. Dogs just react accordingly. We humans can judge a dog’s reaction as a rational response or not, but I see no evidence that a dog is using reason prior to any response or after the fact, or during a “communication.” A dog is built to receive certain sensations and built to respond to those sensations. We watch a bunch of dogs and start to see patterns and then say “that dog is barking for a reason, that reason being there is a cougar in sight.” But really, the dog’s body sees the cougar and the dog’s body starts to bark (all the dogs that saw cougars and don’t bark were eaten and weeded out of the gene pool). The dog didn’t see the cougar and use reason to know barking loudly makes the most sense is the most rational behavior among a list of other behaviors. The dog just barks, making no choice, having no thought behind it, utterly unaware of the rationality that can be found in this by humans.

I see reason and thinking and willing and judgment and language all tied up together. You have one of these, you say one of these words, you also conjure up the others. Reason involves logical inference, representational language, judgment and choice. We have to use reason to deliberate and make a choice. We have to use judgment to choose what objects are the most reasonable objects to deliberate about. When we focus our reason on a subject, we are choosing that focus. These are all human things.

Dogs don’t need any of that to exhibit all of the behaviors they exhibit.

Man sees a cougar and instead of yelling “look out!” he deliberates how best to save the people that don’t yet see the cougar. Should the man consider the bird flying overhead? Should the man be thinking about whether yelling at the cougar will trigger it to pounce? Should the man be thinking about chocolate ice cream? If he is trying to help those other people, some of those thoughts are reasonable. Some aren’t. Should the man be thinking that he is wasting time thinking and he should react right now instead? “Look out for that cougar!!!”

Dogs don’t bother with all of that. They always bark, which works good enough for the majority of dogs.

The very fact that we humans see “rationality” in the universe at all, and then talk about it, is behavior exhibited nowhere else besides humans.

It may be rational in a human being’s eyes for a dog to feel fear and bark at the sight of a cougar. We humans can make these connections and see this rationality in the dog’s behavior. But it does not appear to be “rational” to the dog. Is see no evidence that the dog itself used reason or had a reason for barking. The dog never appears aware of the rationality or irrationality of anything (or the dog might start trying new things or discussing options and choices with his pack mates, or the barking would have to become language and more complicated “communication”.)