p1 is about people like you and I , there is no mention the fetus in it

This point does nothing to the logic of the argument

It is an organism, and at the appropriate time in its life cycle it can reproduce.

Does wrong = immoral?

Why sometimes a future, when do they not have a future?

no, take a stab at where you think we are, sometimes it is best to hear back where we think we are. I have done a lot of heavy lifting here. Tell me in your words where you think we are.

and the last part


last caveat - this argument makes no attempt at the next level argument that even if the fetus has a right not to be killed because of it life of future value, that does not necessarily give it the right to the use of the woman's body, that is a different argument that is pointless to have until this one is done. when this one is done - i am happy to do that one.

Conclusion and exceptions

Conclusion
If P1 and one definition of murder is the loss of ones future of value and if P6 Shortly after the process of conception is complete, and very early in human development there is a unique human organism with a unique human future, and if P7 their awareness or desire for this future is not a condition of their possession of this future, taking of this human future of value is murder, and immoral.


Exceptions
This argument holds for most cases, but not for all. If it can be shown that that there is not a future of value, say thorough embryonic DNA testing that there are sever issues this argument would allow such abortions. Since the argument hinges on there being a unique human organism and there can be a sound biological argument that one does not exist until after twinning this argument would not omit the morning after pill. Finally this argument would not omit infanticide as commonly practiced today with severely premature and physically challenged children facing lives without value as we outlined in P1.

in light of use of mother's body? That is a separate argument than FLO we are having. It is perfectly possible that even if we agree the FLO argument is persuasive, that does not mean that it now has a de facto claim on the use of the mother's body, that would have to argued.

Thought I just addressed that here,

Banno one argument at a time please, other wise we just go round and round. We can discuss the right of the organism to the use of the mother's body, but first we have to see if it is such a thing that can have a claim. Think back on the summation you liked a few pages ago. We aren't there yet. — Rank Amateur

explain please. Complete thoughts make this go faster

neither the argument or I am making any claim of personhood for the organism. The only claim is, if left alone it has a unique future.

— Rank Amateur
But that future is in speculation only; that is, it could be: it could be this or it could be that, or it could be nothing at all. — tim wood

It could be anything, long short but if left alone it would have its unique future.

ok, give me another word, for the concept then, that if left alone it would experience a future. Just as when you and I were left alone we experienced our futures.

one argument at a time please, other wise we just go round and round. We can discuss the right of the organism to the use of the mother's body, but first we have to see if it is such a thing that can have a claim. Think back on the summation you liked a few pages ago. We aren't there yet.

Yeah, nuh. If something is not aware, how can it have a desire? And that would stand regardless of stage of development. — Banno

The concept of ideal desire goes, as in the premise, You banno, are in an accident, you are completely unconscious, and are in need of life support. I ask you, do you desire life support, but you don't answer. Should I assume you have no desire because you are not aware? The concept of ideal desire would say we should assume you would desire life support if not handicapped by the injury. I am extending the same concept to the organism.

not sure what the difference is. The point is, left alone, it would have a unique future that it would experience. I am not hung on word possess more to concept

think that works

I never gave, nor am required to give awareness or desire to the organism.

The argument goes, the lack of awareness and/or desire due to the stage of development does not impact its ideal desire. The concept of ideal desire would say, without this handicap of its stage of development, what would it desire. As the examples in the premise.

I was being, no pun intended, purposely precise, using organism. Avoids all the "what is a human being, and what is not a human being" stuff.

it was just for the embodied mind.

On your other point, you are just taking a characteristic, and modifying it so it it can't apply where you don't want it to. Which is fine as an opinion as you expressed it. But it is not an argument

never used the term human beings

P7 One’s awareness or desire for one’s future of value does not impact the moral permissiveness of taking it as in P1.



One is in possession of one’s biological future whether or not one is aware of it or not. One is possession of ones one’s future of value even if one ( in most cases) does not desire it. As an example there can be a seriously depressed person, who do to the nature of their illness wishes to kill themselves and have no desire for their future. I would argue that it is not morally permissible to allow them to kill themselves because their judgement that their future is without value is handicapped by their illness. The concept of “ideal desire” would apply, and our judgement on the moral permissibly of them killing themselves should be based on what their ideal desire would be if their handicap was not there, and we would assume absent their depression they, like us would desire their future. In the second instance assume there was a person is a catatonic state, but with the real prospect of regaining conciseness, we could not say, that since this person is unaware of their future at that time, they are not in possession of it, the concept of ideal judgement would apply, and we should assume that if they were conscience they would be aware of their future and we should not let the handicap of the catatonic state deny them of their right to it. I argue that the same concept of “ideal desire” applies in the case of the fetus, and their handicap of the state of their development is not philosophically different then the prior 2 examples and we should assume that absent this handicap they would be aware, and desire their future of value as we do.

the thought experiment that goes with it, is I get in car accident and my body is a mess, but my brain is fine, at the same time, do to some illness another person's brain is deteriorating. The doctors take my brain and put it in his body. Is the new person me or him?

P6. If P5, all human organisms as defined in P2 are on a unique time line that encompasses their unique human future much like ours — Rank Amateur

just making the point that past and future are part of the same time line.

Last Friday is your past today, it was your future on Thursday

4.3k
↪Rank Amateur A human being can be traced back to a zygote? Sure. — Banno

Technically, in the argument a about 2 weeks after the process of conception, after twinning is no longer possible, but close enough

ha

P5. All things that are part of a unique past time line as defined in P4, where at one time a future on the same time line. — Rank Amateur

P4. Each human being on the planet can directly trace their past as a biological creature on earth from now back to their unique human organism as defined in P2 — Rank Amateur

We ok with this

agree why I established the point after twinning

Sounds like we are kind of ok on P2 - on to P3

P3. All adult humans undergo the same process of development

Currently, there is no other way to become an adult human being, than to start as a human ovam, and a human sperm, to undergo the process of conception and fertilization and the various stages of embryonic development leading to a birth of some type.

I agree. The only claim in the FVOL argument about the fetus is it is a unique human organism. The overt purpose of the argument is to avoid the morass of personhood

could I have that parse in context?

agree on the human part. On unique meaning it can only make 1 specific and unique individual human. It can't make Tim wood and rank and s. It can only one specific human, with a unique genetic make up.

thanks, yea thought I had, but after pages and pages of explanation after explanation, I am sure there are lots of strings of words that can be highlighted and argued against

Here is the last pared down version of P1.


Unjustified killing of people like us is immoral, and an important part of what makes it immoral is it deprives them of their future.

And here is the original full one

P1. One definition of murder is the loss of one’s future of value

Any discussion on abortion needs to start with some theoretical account of the wrongness of killing. I would imagine most on here would have no issue with the assertion it is morally impermissible to, without justification, kill adult human beings like us.

But why is it wrong to kill people like us? While we may want to suggest it is the loss others would experience due to our absence. But if that was all it was, it would allow the killing of hermits, or those who lead otherwise independent or friendless lives.

A better answer would be the primary wrong done by the killing is the harm it does to the victim. The loss of one’s life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer. However is it simply the change in a biological state that make killing wrong? That seems insufficient.

The effect of the loss of my biological life is the loss to me of all those activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments which would otherwise have constituted my future personal life. These activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments are either valuable for their own sake or are means to something else that is valuable for its own sake. Some parts of my future are not valued by me now, but will come to be valued by me as I grow older and as my values and capacities change. When I am killed, I am deprived both of what I now value which would have been part of my future personal life, but also what I would come to value. Therefore, when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my future. Inflicting this loss on me is ultimately what makes killing me wrong. This being the case, it would seem that what makes killing any adult human being prima facie seriously wrong is the loss of his other future.

on to premise 2:

P2. From a very early point in a pregnancy there is a unique human organism.

After the process of conception is completed there exists a new zygote cell. This cell has a unique genetic makeup. This zygote is an embryonic stem cell with the ability to generate every organ in the body. For the next 2 weeks or so, or until it is at the 16 cell stage it has the ability to split and twin. After this time, there exists a unique human organism, and this organism can only develop into a human.

at least where I think we are now is agreement on P1. Summarized

Unjustified killing of people like us is immoral, and an important part of what makes it immoral is it deprives them of their future.

We good on this ?

I have, and we have already had this chat on justified killing, I think at least twice. I have allowed there are such things as justified killing, and asked forbearance in not having to go down the path of exactly what and when and why, in the hope of saving time, with an assumption that our position on it would not be sufficiently different to effect the argument in question

Here is the problem with personhood, in moral/ethical arguments -

The core issue is, is it biology or something else that makes us a moral actor? If biology, the answer is easy. If something else, what. And all criteria expect one fails on begging the question.

Entity A is not a person because it does not have characteristic X
However characteristic X is in entity B and entity B is a person
Then they modify characteristic X so it only applies to entity A

Leaving the logic: entity A is not a person because entity A is not a person

The exception is the embodied mind argument that our personhood has nothing at all to do with biology. We do not exist as persons until we are an embodied mind. Most often agreed to be sometime in early childhood. This argument is logical and persuasive, the only major issue is it allows infanticide, which as to your whole point above people generally reject.

The example above, is about a born human, take out their, and put in you.

I am still on premise one. It is wrong to kill Tim wood( people like us), and an important reason it is wrong is it deprives tim wood of the life you would have had (the future) if you were not killed.

— Rank Amateur
I imagine that he does, but you have kept referring to FOV as a something. I merely point out that on my best understanding of what that something might be, the value of that something might just depend on the probability of its possibility, and that such a probability decreases in the present of material risk. — tim wood

The entire concept is, how it is an important way someone is harmed, when their life is prematurely ended is the loss of all that they could or would have done and seen and been if they had not been killed. I don't understand why that is such a difficult concept.

well written and I agree.

However, while still the important concept legally, in most current academic treatment now about the ethics and morality if not admit, grant for sake of the argument the personhood to the unborn at a very early stage of development.

The core issue is, is it biology or something else that makes us a moral actor? If biology the the answer is easy. If something else, what. And all criteria expect one fails on begging the question.

Entity A is not a person because it does not have characteristic X
However characteristic X is in entity B and entity B is a person
Then they modify characteristic X so it only applies to entity A

Leaving the logic to entity A is not a person because entity A is not a person

The exception is the embodied mind argument that our personhood has nothing at all to do with biology. We do not exist as persons until we are an embodied mind. Most often agreed to be sometime in early childhood. This argument is logical and persuasive, the only major issue is it allows infanticide, which as to your whole point above people generally reject.

— Rank Amateur
When? Under what circumstances? And the how& etc? If it's the individual, then his FOV gets close to zero and even to negative values the more danger he's in. Or is this all abut unreal, speculative FOVs? What you apparently forget, and that Marquis never apparently even thought about, is that reality governs. FOV is presumably about reality (never mind how). If you're a combat soldier, your real FOV is affected by the combat. In any case, how that soldier's FOV would be calculated is a clear function of the risk he is subject to — tim wood

Are you saying the soldier does not value his future? No matter how uncertain it may be, if so make the case. But there is a sort of good point here, one can value something more than ones future, but that does not mean they dont value it at all


In the interest of time and space.

Do you think it is true or not true that people value their future, if not true why?

Any discussion on abortion needs to start with some theoretical account of the wrongness of killing.
— Rank Amateur
Why? What is being killed? I think most folks agree that at some point the fetus is essentially a person. I think currently - and in some places for a long time - either viability or quickening is the sign of nascent personhood, viability and quickening being not the same thing. And I think most people agree that aborting then is at least problematic. In any case, these occur after the first trimester. Viability, about 24 weeks. Quickening, 13 to 25 weeks. (That is, quickening as when the mother first feels movement.)

The first trimester is about twelve weeks. Answer: some part of a woman's body is being killed, but not the woman herself. Is a person being killed? Either a person is being killed or a person is not being killed. At the moment the accepted understanding is that a person is not being killed. — tim wood

The first premise of the argument has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fetus. The reason we need agreement that it is immoral to kill people like you and me first, because there is no logic in arguing the immorality of killing a fetus if you don't think it is immoral to kill a born human

This is just one more in now a long line of you not taking the time to understand, even a very simple point before commenting on it.

But why is it wrong to kill people like us?
— Rank Amateur
Irrelevant. No one is considering killing "people like us." — tim wood

Again see my point above, again with out any understanding of the argument being made you pick a group of words, out of context and the logic of argument- and go off on a meaningless tangent completely outside the logic of the argument

— Rank Amateur
If you merely said that killing people harms them, I think most folks would let that pass But you want to build an argument on it. So let's look at it. My point here is that you're a victim being killed only while you're alive. When you're dead, you're a dead victim and you are not and cannot be killed any more. Inasmuch as you're dead, whatever your future was, no part of it was actual. Indeed, no part of your or my future is actual, even while we're alive! How can we be deprived of something we neither have nor can have? — tim wood

If the point is, since there is no more harm that can be done to the dead person, than there is no harm left so the harm of killing ends at the moment of death. That is basically the FOVA. What did the victim lose at that moment? His past? His future memory of it, but his past is still there. Or is your point it is pure biology? Killing is wrong because it kills? The argument is one major harm of killing is the loss of all the things in ones future. I do not understand how your point changes that

And you still have not indicated how it is calculated. From above it appears to be the sum of all the wishful thinking a person might do: — tim wood

I have no clue still what you want me to calculate, it seems you are trying in some way to conflate the financial idea of future value into the use here and want me to discount back to some NPV. The argument does not do this and has no need to.

It rests on the point that no matter how much you want to parse it, we alive born human beings in a sane state of mind with almost no exception value our future. We make plans, we save money, we dream and hope about what is to come, we look forward to seeing our children grow, to see their children.... do you not value your future?

Are you here arguing that killing is never justified, cannot ever be justified? — tim wood

You have severe reading comprehension issues. I was assuming we all know there are types of justified killing- I was hoping we would not have to argue them all in this thread