So, what are your thoughts on abortion?

[arriah]

note, this was not responding to your most recent comment

Lol sorry my reply took forever

[farran34]

farran34 said:

premise 2: The best argument we have for determining when one is a human is through it being biologically human



premise 3: Any argument attempting to determine when a being becomes a human except from genetically being a human is flawed



arriah said:

This is where we started to disagree. That as the best argument is subjective. I pointed out that by your own words stem cells would also be humans. At this point you referred to 3. However, the logic flow has been corrupted as a stem cells could still technically be human at this point.

Perhaps your counter example of stem cells is a bit more troublesome than it appeared. One could argue that a stem cell is not a human because it is not alive, and it is no different than a snake's body continuing to have muscle stimulation after death, but I know too little on the details of stem cell science to argue this effectively. If a stem cell is truly alive and contains human genetic material, I think it is possible to argue this is a counter example.

I could change premise 2 to being composed of: The best argument we have for determining when one is a human is through it being biologically human with the potential to be a rational, conscious agent

You may suggest this is a subjective argument, but unless you present a better argument for how we should determine humanity or show a severe flaw in its logic I argue it should be the objective standard for determining human life.

related to this, if you reject premise two, how do you define human life? As I have stated other methods are flawed, does this mean there is no objective standard for humanity?

finally note, premise 2 to premise 3 actually does not have a problematic flow in logic, it is just you disagree with my premise. My argument would still be valid, just not sound, as it is not the flow from logic causing the problems but the truth of the premise you are objecting.

Farran said:
premise 4: A fetus is biologically a human


Thus an innocent fetus has a right to life





Metis said:
Here are more problems. You never address the fact that stem cells are still potential humans and innocent.

Again, this is not a problem in logic. Lets suppose (I do not actually believe this, but for sake of argument) that stem cells are potential humans and innocent. How does this make my argument invalid? I do not have to address stem cells for my argument to be logically valid, but I perhaps have to address it to be logically sound.

Metis said:

You also make the claim that fetuses are innocent, which is not true in the case of a woman who wants an abortion, who is being forced to give up her body and nutrients, health, time, etc to the fetus, who does not have her consent. This means that the fetus is infringing the woman's right, thus making it no longer innocent.



You then proceeded to say that well, uh, the woman doesn't have rights because she have them up by having sex! Which further corrupts the already destroyed logic flow and taints logical flows on consent. You then proceed to say that the most affective forms of birth control are murder based off of your already flawed logic. This totally condemns the woman, unless she gets lucky every time.

Why is it wrong for a mother to kill her baby instead of caring for it? For surely if she cares for her baby it would be infringing on the woman's rights given your definition, she is forced to give up resources such as food, clothing, and other things if she must care for it. Most would say if the woman does not want to care for the baby it should be given up for adoption, but the adoption system is corrupt according to you, and will just lead to an unhappy life. Also would it not be better for society if every time a baby was born into an underprivileged family that decided it did not want to care for it, rather than force it into a terrible life and increasing the amount of unhappy and unproductive people, killing it would be rational?

I still disagree with you on the logic following from whether or not a woman has has given up her right to abortion by consenting to a form of sex (which sperm may enter into the vagina) and cause her to be pregnant. Your counter example from earlier did not work.

[Sgt_ROFLCopter]

A mutation doesnt stick around because it provides a benefit. It sticks around if it doesnt kill you or fuck you over so badly that you never get to reproduce. The acquisition of traits isnt an optimization phenomenon' the selection, however, is.

Do I literally have to spell out every little detail, or can you make a few small logical jumps? If I I was attempting to get a publication from my posts, the detail would be woefully short. Believe it or not, I dont believe that the mutations decide they are beneficial and thus to stay. But I guess since you seem to assume the absolute worst from my posts Ill spell it out for you. I said the mutations stays around because its beneficial. How this happens is that an organism with a beneficial mutation has a higher chance to survive than an organism without said beneficial mutation. This mutation is then spread to the organism off spring while the one without the mutation ends up possibly dying off. The same thing happens with negative mutations, only the organism with the negative mutation dies off. I feel like you have an understanding of biology so I trust I wont have to continue to expound on details that any 10th grader at a normal highschool could tell you.

You were using your fallacious statements as an argumentative basis for the topic at hand. It seems that others in the thread got the same impressions from your posts that I did.

[Sgt_ROFLCopter]

Traits are evolved by chance and are conserved if they confer an advantage.

Its easy to fall into the trap of teleological thinking where evolution is concerned. One of the hardest things to get new biology students to understand is that evolution by natural selection doesnt occur with a purpose in mind. I think its especially difficult to get farm and ranch kids to understand this as they have grown up seeing evolution by artificial selection, which does occur with a purpose in mind.

Sexual reproduction evolved long before the neurology necessary to make the sexual act pleasurable evolved. Conjugation in bacteria is a chemical response and in simpler forms of animal life it is a hormonal response' that is, two receptive organisms will always have sex when they meet, without thinking, due to a chemical response.

More complex animals have either evolved the ability to control their urges somewhat or reproduction has become seasonal. Either way it ensures that the organisms are spending sufficient time surviving and building up the energy reserves necessary to produce viable offspring, rather than just trying to reproduce all the time.

In organisms that can control their urges somewhat, a sort of evolutionary governing mechanism exists. Those members of the population that find sexual intercourse more pleasurable tend to have sex more often and produce more offspring, thereby transferring their horny genes to the next generation. However, those that find sex too pleasurable tend to ignore things necessary to survival like eating, drinking, and fleeing from predators and thus transfer less of their genes to the next generation.

In human society, this natural governing mechanism breaks down and must be replaced by an artificial governing mechanism. Males that are unable to control their sexual urges are called sexual predators and are artificially removed from the reproductive population by imprisonment (or, rarely, castration). However, this doesnt completely remove the overly-horny genes because the some males that cant control their urges also posses traits that make them very attractive to females and thus they can find many willing sexual partners. Females that cant control their sexual urges also are rarely removed from the population by imprisonment and tend to have more offspring (especially if the urge is so great as to preclude taking the time to use birth control). Therefore, the genes responsible remain present in the population.

+1

[Sgt_ROFLCopter]

I see his answer as conveying my point, but maybe Im wrong, or maybe its both.
What Im debating is wether your premises are based off of sound logic and follow a logical flow, which they dont.

How is this not sound logic:

premise 3: Any argument attempting to determine when a being becomes a human except from genetically being a human is flawed

The HeLa cell line is genetically closer to humans than bonobos are. Are you proposing that a Petri dish full of apparently immortal cervical cancer is more human than our closest living relative?

Also, for someone who claims to be so adept at philosophy you make very liberal use of universal quantifiers without any substantiating evidence.

[arriah]

Perhaps your counter example of stem cells is a bit more troublesome than it appeared. One could argue that a stem cell is not a human because it is not alive, and it is no different than a snakes body continuing to have muscle stimulation after death, but I know too little on the details of stem cell science to argue this effectively. If a stem cell is truly alive and contains human genetic material

All cells are alive and all of your cells have your genetic material.. This is like 5th grade science...

However, I had added an edit sometime after posting that I didnt expect you to tackle stem cell issue as I find it -- while not exactly irrelevant -- uninteresting, so I will disregard anything else about that, especially since you seem incredibly poorly educated in that area.

I could change premise 2 to being composed of: The best argument we have for determining when one is a human is through it being biologically human with the potential to be a rational, conscious agent?

You may suggest this is a subjective argument, but unless you present a better argument for how we should determine humanity or show a severe flaw in its logic I argue it should be the objective standard for determining human life

In this case, people in vegatative states are not human. I think you should rethink this, and I argue that it should definitely not be the objective standard.

(This post to be continued. I cant remember all the premises and my responses, lol)

[farran34]

Perhaps your counter example of stem cells is a bit more troublesome than it appeared. One could argue that a stem cell is not a human because it is not alive, and it is no different than a snakes body continuing to have muscle stimulation after death, but I know too little on the details of stem cell science to argue this effectively. If a stem cell is truly alive and contains human genetic material

All cells are alive and all of your cells have your genetic material.. This is like 5th grade science...

However, I had added an edit sometime after posting that I didnt expect you to tackle stem cell issue as I find it -- while not exactly irrelevant -- uninteresting, so I will disregard anything else about that, especially since you seem incredibly poorly educated in that area.

I could change premise 2 to being composed of: The best argument we have for determining when one is a human is through it being biologically human with the potential to be a rational, conscious agent

You may suggest this is a subjective argument, but unless you present a better argument for how we should determine humanity or show a severe flaw in its logic I argue it should be the objective standard for determining human life

In this case, people in vegatative states are not human. I think you should rethink this, and I argue that it should definitely not be the objective standard.

(This post to be continued. I cant remember all the premises and my responses, lol)

When I said stem cells are possibly not truly being alive I was not talking in a purely biological way, but in a more philosophical way, of course they are alive in the biological sense. We would not consider a chopped off finger that has muscles twitching to be alive in the sense we would consider a person to be alive, is basically what I was trying to derive from this. I do see there being possible problems in logic here, and would not particularly want to continue to defend my statements on this, also my wording was pretty poor (it is late). Also, I will admit my knowledge in biological science is not very high, as the main science that intrigues me is physics and astronomy, but I do know that cells are living in the biological sense lol...

Also I think it is fair to argue that someone who is brain-dead and lost their ability to regain brain activity, has lost their humanity in the philosophical sense. There is in fact some good reasoning for this which I may bring up later if you care to discuss this.

[farran34]

How is this not sound logic:

premise 3: Any argument attempting to determine when a being becomes a human except from genetically being a human is flawed

The HeLa cell line is genetically closer to humans than bonobos are. Are you proposing that a Petri dish full of apparently immortal cervical cancer is more human than our closest living relative?

Also, for someone who claims to be so adept at philosophy you make very liberal use of universal quantifiers without any substantiating evidence.

I addressed this some in my other post, as I believe there may be some problems with the premise as it is written.

[arriah]

[quote author="@farran34" source="/post/76421/thread" timestamp="1446788015"]related to this, if you reject premise two, how do you define human life? As I have stated other methods are flawed, does this mean there is no objective standard for humanity?[/quote]

Honestly I can't think of any right now, and I am only one mind. I am open to suggestions, though.

[quote author="@farran34" source="/post/76421/thread" timestamp="1446788015"]finally note, premise 2 to premise 3 actually does not have a problematic flow in logic, it is just you disagree with my premise. My argument would still be valid, just not sound, as it is not the flow from logic causing the problems but the truth of the premise you are objecting.[/quote]

I don't think I meant to write flow there. I have short term memory issues and often will forget where I am mid thought. You will have to give me some leeway on similar phrases

[quote author="@farran34"]

Farran said:
premise 4: A fetus is biologically a human


Thus an innocent fetus has a right to life

[quote author= "@Arriah"]
Here are more problems. You never address the fact that stem cells are still potential humans and innocent. [/quote]Again, this is not a problem in logic. Lets suppose (I disagree) that stem cells are potential humans and innocent. How does this make my argument invalid? I do not have to address stem cells for my argument to be logically valid, but I perhaps have to address it to be logically sound.[/quote]
I didnt say anything about logic here, only that you had still not addressed it. Sorry if I had that written confusingly.

Also, I got confused as fuck trying to interpret this because you quoted me with Metis's name and messed the quote tags up.

[quote author="@farran34"]
[quote author="@Arriah"]
You also make the claim that fetuses are innocent, which is not true in the case of a woman who wants an abortion, who is being forced to give up her body and nutrients, health, time, etc to the fetus, who does not have her consent. This means that the fetus is infringing the woman's right, thus making it no longer innocent.



You then proceeded to say that well, uh, the woman doesn't have rights because she have them up by having sex! Which further corrupts the already destroyed logic flow and taints logical flows on consent. You then proceed to say that the most affective forms of birth control are murder based off of your already flawed logic. This totally condemns the woman, unless she gets lucky every time. [/quote]Why is it wrong for a mother to kill her baby instead of caring for it? For surely if she cares for her baby it would be infringing on the woman's rights given your definition, she is forced to give up resources such as food, clothing, and other things if she must care for it. Most would say if the woman does not want to care for the baby it should be given up for adoption, but the adoption system is corrupt according to you, and will just lead to an unhappy life. Also would it not be better for society if every time a baby was born into an underprivileged family that decided it did not want to care for it, rather than force it into a terrible life and increasing the amount of unhappy and unproductive people, killing it would be rational?[/quote]
I really don't feel the need to address this, as you are the one arguing that abortion and contraception is murder, no matter how I answer I will be wrong to you, and since I don't think that abortion is the same as infanticide, there is absolutely no reason I should bother.

[quote author="@farran34"]
I still disagree with you on the logic following from whether or not a woman has has given up her right to abortion by consenting to a form of sex (which sperm may enter into the vagina) and cause her to be pregnant. Your counter example from earlier did not work.[/quote]

Working off the fact that consent may be withdrawn at any time, for any thing, for any reason, you are just wrong sorry.

[farran34]

I think I am still not writing my 3rd premise well, tomorrow I will come back to correct it if after sleeping I still think it is wrong.

[arriah]

All cells are alive and all of your cells have your genetic material.. This is like 5th grade science...

However, I had added an edit sometime after posting that I didnt expect you to tackle stem cell issue as I find it -- while not exactly irrelevant -- uninteresting, so I will disregard anything else about that, especially since you seem incredibly poorly educated in that area.

In this case, people in vegatative states are not human. I think you should rethink this, and I argue that it should definitely not be the objective standard.

(This post to be continued. I cant remember all the premises and my responses, lol)

When I said stem cells are possibly not truly being alive I was not talking in a purely biological way, but in a more philosophical way, of course they are alive in the biological sense. We would not consider a chopped off finger that has muscles twitching to be alive in the sense we would consider a person to be alive, is basically what I was trying to derive from this. I do see there being possible problems in logic here, and would not particularly want to continue to defend my statements on this, also my wording was pretty poor (it is late). Also, I will admit my knowledge in biological science is not very high, as the main science that intrigues me is physics and astronomy, but I do know that cells are living in the biological sense lol...

Also I think it is fair to argue that someone who is brain-dead and lost their ability to regain brain activity, has lost their humanity in the philosophical sense. There is in fact some good reasoning for this which I may bring up later if you care to discuss this.

Yeah but make up your mind are we being philosophical or objective??

[arriah]

I think I am still not writing my 3rd premise well, tomorrow I will come back to correct it if after sleeping I still think it is wrong.

Good night ^.^

[Metis]

I think I am still not writing my 3rd premise well, tomorrow I will come back to correct it if after sleeping I still think it is wrong.

premise 3: Any argument attempting to determine when a being becomes a human except from genetically being a human is flawed

The truth value of the premise is compromised by the ambiguity in the definition of the world "human."

Human: a member of the species Homo sapiens.

This is the genetic definition and is pretty clear-cut.

Human: a person as distinguished from an animal.

What makes a person? If human children are considered people, then could not Gray Parrots, which have the intelligence of human children and oftentimes use our words to express themselves, also be considered people?

Human: of, relating to, or characteristic of people.

To be human is to act humanely. In this sense any number of humane entities could be considered human, even artificial ones.

[Sgt_ROFLCopter]

The truth value of the premise is compromised by the ambiguity in the definition of the world "human."

Human: a member of the species Homo sapiens.

This is the genetic definition and is pretty clear-cut.

You''re not really providing a genetic definition at all. This definition depends on a genetic definition of Homo sapiens which depends on way more computing power than we currently have.

[amsterda]

One of those subjects where I think... "Why should I care about this?"

[noissance]

I dont know what everyone thinks, but google thinks this:

http://www.whosearchesthisstuff.com/my- ... -abortion/

[Metis]

@farran34

Just to let you know, you have me quoted above as saying some things that arriah actually said. I can see how this is easy to do when quotes get tunneled.

@sgt_ROFLCopter Hmm, I cant get this to tag, perhaps this is a pseudonym? Ah, it is.

@sgtroflcopter

We have mapped the human genome. We pretty much know the structure and locations on the chromosomes of all the genetic material. We may not know what all the genes do per se but we can "fingerprint" tissue and easily determine if it's from a human or not. Since all species, even humans, are constantly evolving, it would be impossible to have a complete genetic description of a species. One would have to approach it probabilistically.

On a related side note, when the human genome was mapped, geneticists were surprised to find that it actually contained a relative small number of protein-encoding genes, fewer than some so-called "simple" organisms have. What we are just now realizing is that epigenetics plays a much greater role than once thought. For instance, a sequence of DNA need not be read in a straightforward manner, coding for just one protein. It's sort of like having a building blueprint drawn up by an architect but, rather than building just that one structure, the workers begin to pick and choose from different parts of the blueprint to develop entirely new ones on their own.

This is why it's not entirely correct to say that because over 98% of our genetic material is shared between us and chimpanzees that we are almost the same as them. An organism's development is much more complex than even the enhanced blueprint analogy I gave in the last paragraph.

Let me try to explain it this way. Sodium is a highly reactive metal, which will spontaneously ignite when dropped in water. Eat a small lump of sodium metal and you will die a painful death. Chlorine is a highly reactive gas, breathe a sniff of chlorine and it will sear your lungs, causing then to fill with fluid and you will die a painful death. Burn sodium in chlorine gas and you create a tasty condiment that you can sprinkle on a steak.

Now extend this analogy to systems building on systems over the entire embryological development of an organism and you can see how even tiny changes, especially at the beginning, can cause large differences in the final organism. I used a fractal generator to show this to my students.

[farran34]

To avoid having to constantly quote (and maybe mess up quotes like I did before haha..) I am just going to go over my argument again with edits to it to address the argument.

Also note this will most likely be my last post in debating abortion (I would be willing to clarify my argument or something similar if needed however) as I do not enough time to write well written posts containing positive arguments against abortion, as it is much harder to make positive arguments compared to negative arguments (which most have been doing against me). It also becomes difficult and time consuming when I am debating 3 or more different people at once, who are all taking the opposite position. Anyway here is my revised argument.



In order to state abortion is wrong, it is crucial to argue that the fetus is a human being. For surely if it is not a human and just a hunk of flesh women should have the right to abort it, which I think most people would agree. If the fetus is in fact a human however, it should have a right to life assuming it is innocent. I argue that the fetus is a human being for the following:



It is crucial not to to discriminate among human beings on the basis of their varying potentialities. Once conceived, the being is recognized as man because he has man's potential. The criterion for humanity, thus, is simple and all embracing: if you are conceived by human parents, you are human.



This fixes the problem of counter examples given, such as stem cells. Stem cells do not have man's potential, and are then thus not human.



The counter example of a human in a vegetative is fixed to a certain degree (lets call him person X). Person X became human once he was conceived because he had man's potential, and whether or not he loses his humanity by being in a vegetative state brings up another discussion. If Person X has little to no brain activity, is not conscious, and has no chance for recovery, it is questionable as to whether or not he is really alive, or his body is just functioning by the life support he is connected to. While this is still debated, many would not see it morally wrong to "pull the plug" on someone who is truly in this state. Now lets change it slightly, person X has little to no brain activity, is not conscious, yet has a incredibly high chance to fully recover to his previous state in around 40 weeks. I do not know many people who would say it is moral to pull the plug in this case.



I also argued that it is crucial not to discriminate among human beings among their varying potentialities. If we attempt to establish humanity in any other way than from being conceived by human parents, we immediately run into problems. Most seem to agree with me that it is very problematic in trying to determine when someone really becomes human, yet they still do it anyway. We basically have three options when it comes to determining humanity, first option is to use my argument that any being conceived by human parents is recognized as a man because he has man's potential, second option is to determine humanity using some other form of distinction, and third is to say there is no such thing as humanity in reality since we cannot distinguish it properly.



Almost all pro-abortion advocates take option two, whether they realize it or not. We are making the distinction between being human and not when we claim fetuses not to be humans. This means we must have some sort of criteria for determining when one is a human or not. This leads to problems which I will address shortly. I do not know many who would take option three and state there is no such thing actually as humanity, because this not only seems intrinsically wrong, but would get rid of the right to human life. Option three seems very difficult to defend.


Going back to my argument, if we can establish that fetuses are humans, they should have the right to life. This means I just need to show option two and three are not viable, which would lead to option one.


I argue that option two does not work, because the distinctions most would use for what makes a being truly human would lead to either making infanticide morally permissible, or unjustly discriminating against humans. I actually would be willing to debate someone on what distinctions are viable for determining humanity, but I will refrain from further debate on other topics.


Option three I just argue is plainly wrong by intuition, and the fact that no one actually treats it as being true in every day life.

This would leave option one as being the best way to determine humanity, and thus making a fetus human. Again, all we have to do is determine the fetus is a human to make the killing of it unjust.


Final note (god this post is long as hell, but since I wont be making another on figured why not)

I would like someone to answer this statement I gave:

Why is it wrong for a mother to kill her baby instead of caring for it? For surely if she cares for her baby it would be infringing on the woman's rights given your definition, she is forced to give up resources such as food, clothing, and other things if she must care for it. Most would say if the woman does not want to care for the baby it should be given up for adoption, but the adoption system is corrupt according to you, and will just lead to an unhappy life. Also would it not be better for society if every time a baby was born into an underprivileged family that decided it did not want to care for it, rather than force it into a terrible life and increasing the amount of unhappy and unproductive people, killing it would be rational?

[Metis]

A few highly publicized cases to the contrary, most adoptive parents are actually better parents than your average biological ones. In order to adopt a baby the prospective parents have to go through a great deal of time, effort, background checks and expense. Over 50% of all pregnancies are unplanned. Adoptive parents oftentimes treat their child much better than natural parents do. I've seen a lot of biological parents treat their children like an unwanted nuisance.

adopted children are more likely to have health insurance
adopted children were less likely to live in households below the poverty threshold
adopted children were more likely to be read to
adopted children were more likely to be sung or told stories to
adopted children are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities
adopted children were more likely to have excellent or very good performance in reading, language arts and math



U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2007. National Survey of Adoptive Parents (NSAP).

[farran34]

A few highly publicized cases to the contrary, most adoptive parents are actually better parents than your average biological ones. In order to adopt a baby the prospective parents have to go through a great deal of time, effort, background checks and expense. Over 50% of all pregnancies are unplanned. Adoptive parents oftentimes treat their child much better than natural parents do. I''ve seen a lot of biological parents treat their children like an unwanted nuisance.

adopted children are more likely to have health insurance
adopted children were less likely to live in households below the poverty threshold
adopted children were more likely to be read to
adopted children were more likely to be sung or told stories to
adopted children are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities
adopted children were more likely to have excellent or very good performance in reading, language arts and math



U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2007. National Survey of Adoptive Parents (NSAP).

Good point

[spanky4ever]

think this debate should be aborted. You talk about abortion like its a matter of logic and rational philosophy - like we are pease of your hardware. Its quite sickening.

[farran34]

think this debate should be aborted. You talk about abortion like its a matter of logic and rational philosophy - like we are pease of your hardware. Its quite sickening.

Abortion is a topic in philosophy, specifically in the topic of applied ethics. It is also a topic in other disciplines, such as politics.

[spanky4ever]

think this debate should be aborted. You talk about abortion like its a matter of logic and rational philosophy - like we are pease of your hardware. Its quite sickening.

Abortion is a topic in philosophy, specifically in the topic of applied ethics. It is also a topic in other disciplines, such as politics.

I think its first and most a topic of humanism - whitch nobody in this tread have conciderd.

[Metis]

Abortion is a topic in philosophy, specifically in the topic of applied ethics. It is also a topic in other disciplines, such as politics.

I think its first and most a topic of humanism - whitch nobody in this tread have conciderd.

Then please expand on it.

[arriah]

I think its first and most a topic of humanism - whitch nobody in this tread have conciderd.

Then please expand on it.

Ive already made this argument!!!!!