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

I prefer person, rather than human being, which is vague. A brain-dead child is not a person anymore. It's a hunk of meat being kept alive by machines. Remember the Terry Schiavo case? Same thing. She wasn't a person. Her husband had the right to take her off life support.

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

Yes, this is why parents can order life support removed from brain-dead children and have their organs harvested.

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

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

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Moral theories have to handle real world situations, like Trolley Car. If a moral theory says we should not sacrifice bugs or zygotes to save people, it's a failed moral theory. I don't know why you have trouble seeing that.

Suppose you believed in moral theory X. Moral theory X entails that, in a trolley car situation, one must never sacrifice an ant (or any insect) to save any people. If a bug is on the tracks, you ought not pull the switch and save the five persons. Would that consequence of moral theory X- that bugs cannot be sacrificed to save people- be devastating to moral theory X?

You are begging the question: whether or not my theory arrives at an “immoral position” is exactly the essence of the abortion debate, which you are supposed to be engaging with me on. — Bob Ross

No, we've shown with examples that the life of a zygote pales in comparison to the life of a person. For example, if an orphanage and fertility clinic with x amount of zygotes (where x is whatever huge number you want) are on fire, you save the orphanage. In a trolley car situation, you run over x zygotes to save a child (again, where x is any huge number you want).

When your moral theory arrives at an immoral position, then your moral theory is wrong. Giving a zygote standing over Mrs Smith is immoral, and hence so is any moral theory that reaches that conclusion. Your moral theory reaches that conclusion. Hence it is wrong. — Banno

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In my mind the answer is clear; always do what you can to save the baby, irrespective of how or how many zygotes are killed in the process. — Michael

Correct.

The answer is still no, I would not use the zygotes to put out the fire. I've elaborated in detail why that would be wrong: please ask questions if you are confused at all on it. — Bob Ross

OK, your position is absurd.

But you would pour zygotes on a burning building to put out the fire and save a child trapped inside, correct?

Exactly. The morality of killing something depends on its level of sophistication.

If the question is: "let one person die (to make it easy, assume they are 100 years old) or every woman in the early stages of pregnancy in the world miscarries, it seems an easy choice to make. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Women who have miscarriages can suffer extreme emotional stress. Some may kill themselves. Also, miscarriage itself can cause death. Your scenario muddies the water. It's easier to use a trolley-car situation like what Michael is doing.

The point that Michael has made, which seems irrefutable, is that a zygote's life is nothing compared to an actual person's life, and any number of zygotes can be killed/sacrificed/used to save a person.

OK, construct a trolley-car type scenario (or any scenario really) where you refuse to sacrifice zygotes to save actual persons.

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I am asking you why you believe that a zygote does not have the same fundamental right to not be killed when innocent like a woman does — Bob Ross

So you would let a child die rather than save their life by sacrificing/using zygote(s)? I think your position is absurd. I also don't think you would let the child die, if push came to shove.

There have been votes; and red states vote no; and blue states vote yes. There is no consensus.
— Bob Ross

Without checking, from what I recall this is not true. Since the Dobbs decision, when there’s a vote on the ballot in red states it goes pro-choice. Legislatures in red states don’t always allow the issue to be voted on, however. — praxis

Yeah, Bob is wrong.
https://www.npr.org/sections/2022-live-primary-election-race-results/2022/08/02/1115317596/kansas-voters-abortion-legal-reject-constitutional-amendment

if I had to go use the zygotes to put out the fire to save the child, then I would be doing something immoral — Bob Ross

If you could save one child by pouring billions of zygotes on a burning building to put the fire out, again, do you really have to think about what to do? You wouldn't let the kid die.

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I am asking you why you believe that a zygote does not have the same fundamental right to not be killed when innocent like a woman does — Bob Ross

If you had to choose between saving a fertility clinic where a million (or a billion or a trillion) zygotes are stored or saving an orphanage where a dozen kids are trapped in the burning building, do you really have to think about which to save?

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. — jkop

If we could build a working brain our of inorganic parts that was functionally equivalent to a working organic brain, wouldn't the non-biological brain be conscious?

All else being equal, we would expect the doctors to do everything they can to rehabilitate them and keep them alive. Circumstances matter, though, as, e.g., the doctors may have to prioritize one sick patient over another; but this is a reflection of limited resources and not a disrespect for human life. — Bob Ross

Should the parents be allowed to authorize the doctors to remove life support?

What if my leg gets amputated and kept alive in a nutrient bath? Am I now less of a person? Is my leg a separate "I"?

What about the case of the brain-dead child being kept alive by machines? Do parents have the right to pull the plug and authorize the doctors to harvest the organs?

There is a living human being that is created upon conception; so that is where it begins as a living being. After birth is not at all when it becomes a human being: that makes no sense. — Bob Ross

It's not a person. That's the salient point. All things being equal, it would be nice to allow it to develop into a person, but all things aren't equal, and that would entail violating the woman's bodily autonomy rights.

Highly? No. Speculative, yes, but all cosmological origin ideas are. This one is the one and only counter to the fine tuning argument, the only known alternative to what actually IS a highly speculative (woo) argument. — noAxioms

As an idealist, I sympathize with your claim the universe might not "exist", and therefore, doesn't have to have a cause (I may be summarizing your claim terribly, feel free to correct me), but I also recognize that to most people, that's a very "wooish" take on things.

Trying to dissect rights in terms of when a being currently has personhood vs. merely being alive doesn't really work; whereas analyzing the living thing in terms of its substance works great. — Bob Ross

How would that work with a braindead child being kept alive on life support after a car accident? Do the parents have any say in removing life support and/or letting the doctors harvest organs? Do the doctors have to provide heroic actions to keep the child alive?

Unbounded rolls are part of the chaotic inflationary theory of cosmology, with countless bubbles of spacetime with random properties are generated from a single structure. Only the ones with exact optimal settings (the odds against has an insane number of zeroes) are suitable for generating a mind capable of gleaning the nature of the structure. — noAxioms

This is highly speculative. We don't know if a multiverse exists, how many universes it contains, or what kinds of universes they are.
https://bigthink.com/13-8/multiverse-no-evidence/

Why would this happen? How exactly would Russian troops be flattened in Ukraine? — boethius

Ukraine has been able to invade Russia and hold a chunk of its territory indefinitely. If NATO forces entered the fray, Russian forces would be rolled up like a wet carpet. You really dispute this?

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No, 'nothing' cannot be a cause. I don't posit that the universe is the sort of thing that 'came into existence', something that only describes objects within our universe, such as a raindrop. Treating the universe as an object is a category error. — noAxioms

Maybe not an object, but the universe certainly exists, so what caused it to exist? The only way around that I can see is to say it's eternal.

So premise 1 is a premise that only applies to objects IN the universe, and even then it isn't necessarily true except under fully deterministic interpretations of physics. — noAxioms

Nothing caused the the universe to come into existence? How does that work?

But we're not permitted to kill the unconscious, so that must not be the basis for deciding if someone is a person. — Hanover

If a child is brain dead and being kept alive on life support, the parents can decide to harvest the organs and remove life support. This society puts a lot of emphasis on the (supposed) personhood-brain connection.

Everything is a footnote to Plato. Just say that.

Assuming that all forms of strategic bombing involve deaths of innocents, do you think it's always immoral? For example, suppose a well placed bomb in WW2 could wipe out the Nazi leadership but also destroy a school. Would the Allies have been wrong to do it?

Good points!

Let's suppose aliens come down and tell us that we're all going to wiped out unless we give the aliens any death row convict. If we do that, we'll all live. If we don't, we'll all die, except the death row convict. What should we do?

I think it would be wrong to throw the switch. We should not sacrifice people.

Anyone is free to sacrifice themself. Fine if the one says, "Throw the switch! Better I die so many can be saved!" — Patterner

What if we raise the stakes to ridiculous levels where the fate of the world rests on running over the guy on the tracks?