(June 7, 2021 at 7:16 pm)Helios Wrote: I specifically said type, not number. Please actually read what I write.

Interesting, my search tool failed to find the word "type" in your comment. But it did find Number; Less developed; and Development as accumulation. Are these not the phrases you used?

Quote:Yes, it is arbitrary there is no objective reason to value a put significance on fertilization as opposed to anything else. Simply saying "but a new organism " is no more significant than some else saying " but two people fucked " or "it now has eyes" you're simply attributing significance to it.

There's no need to ascribe value to fertilization; that is the beginning of a new organism whether you value it or not (and I know you do not). Fertilization also marks the beginning of a pregnancy (I know, this is all so irrelevant to abortion but humor me lol).

Quote:Nope, it's not avoiding it's simply not wasting time on irrelevant points or getting dragged down in pointless rabbit holes. That's the only thing I have demonstrated and there is nothing contradictory about it. Pro-choice is reasonable. 

Saying that fertilization and development (basically a pregnancy) are irrelevant to abortion, is like saying that the preparation of food is irrelevant to cooking. Pro-choice cannot be reasonable if it maintains such an unreasonable position.

(June 7, 2021 at 7:38 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 7, 2021 at 7:16 pm)Helios Wrote: I specifically said type, not number. Please actually read what I write.

Interesting, my search tool failed to find the word "type" in your comment. But it did find Number; Less developed; and Development as accumulation. Are these not the phrases you used?

Quote:Yes, it is arbitrary there is no objective reason to value a put significance on fertilization as opposed to anything else. Simply saying "but a new organism " is no more significant than some else saying " but two people fucked " or "it now has eyes" you're simply attributing significance to it.

There's no need to ascribe value to fertilization; that is beginning of a new organism whether you value it or not (and I know you do not). Fertilization also marks the beginning of a pregnancy (I know, pregnancy is so irrelevant to abortion but humor me lol).

Quote:Nope, it's not avoiding it's simply not wasting time on irrelevant points or getting dragged down in pointless rabbit holes. That's the only thing I have demonstrated and there is nothing contradictory about it. Pro-choice is reasonable. 

Saying that fertilization and development (a pregnancy) are irrelevant to abortion, is like saying that preparation of food is irrelevant to cooking. Pro-choice cannot be reasonable if it maintains such an unreasonable position.

Sorry, late to the party in this convo, but I think Helios' point is that fertilization is one milestone in a series of milestones. It is preceded (and succeeded) by a number of necessary milestones which eventually ends up in an alive and birthed human.

You could wind the clock back to when the couple first locked eyes at the bar: if that never happened it would be just as detrimental to the child being born as would an abortion. I think we tend to put emphasis on fertilization (as humans) because that's the point when "the deed is done" from a human perspective. No more human work is (necessarily) required beyond that point. Nature takes care of the rest.

Again, sorry if this point was made earlier and I missed it, but I always saw fertilization --not as arbitrary-- but at least not "extra special" as some pro-lifers tend to see it. As far as the organism is concerned it's one thing (among many) which must happen for the organism to eventually be born.

Quote:Interesting, my search tool failed to find the word "type" in your comment. But it did find Number; Less developed; and development as accumulation. Are these not the phrases you used?

I said "kind " which while a different word essentially means the same thing. Thus you still didn't address my point.

Quote:There's no need to ascribe value to fertilization; that is beginning of a new organism whether you value it or not (and I know you do not). Fertilization also marks the beginning of a pregnancy (I know, pregnancy is so irrelevant to abortion but bear with me here lol).

Sigh 

You ascribing value period. There nothing objectively significant about" the beginning of a "New organism " the before that when two people were fucking or after when "New organism" grows eyes. On the subject of abortion, The start of pregnancy is no more significant than the top ten blues albums of the 1970s and sure as hell doesn't resolve the issue   

Quote:Saying that fertilization and development are irrelevant to abortion, is like saying that the preparation of food is irrelevant to cooking. Pro-choice cannot be reasonable if it maintains such an unreasonable position.

No Saying that fertilization and development are irrelevant to abortion, is like saying that  Civil Law has nothing to with the way snails defecate. Pro-Choice gets along just fine without it. Anti Choice on the other hand is dead in the water with arguments like yours.

(June 7, 2021 at 7:57 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Sorry, late to the party in this convo, but I think Helios' point is that fertilization is one milestone in a series of milestones. It is preceded (and succeeded) by a number of necessary milestones which eventually ends up in an alive and birthed human.

You could wind the clock back to when the couple first locked eyes at the bar: if that never happened it would be just as detrimental to the child being born as would an abortion. I think we tend to put emphasis on fertilization (as humans) because that's the point when "the deed is done" from a human perspective. No more human work is (necessarily) required beyond that point. Nature takes care of the rest.

Again, sorry if this point was made earlier and I missed it, but I always saw fertilization --not as arbitrary-- but at least not "extra special" as some pro-lifers tend to see it. As far as the organism is concerned it's one thing (among many) which must happen for the organism to eventually be born.

Given that fertilization is the beginning of a new organism, I'm not sure how the preceding events have relevance? Whether those events involved sex, locking eyes, fertility clinics, or the vast array of colorful methods used by different species to bring gametes together, fertilization is the only necessary process by which a new organism is created. Likewise, the succession of milestones that occur after fertilization are highly variable. Development is the transformation of genotype to phenotype, which is as unique as the individuals themselves. The only constant variable across organisms is once again fertilization—the process by which your genotype is created and your developmental trajectory is initiated.

Quote:Given that fertilization is the beginning of a new organism, I'm not sure how the preceding events have relevance? Whether those events involved sex, locking eyes, fertility clinics, or the vast array of colorful methods used by different species to bring gametes together, fertilization is still the point at which a new organism begins. Likewise, the succession of developments that occur after fertilization are also highly variable, and may be present or absent in different organisms. Stated another way, development is the transformation of genotype to phenotype, which varies highly across individuals. The only constant variable is once again fertilization—the process by which your genotype is created and your personal developmental trajectory is initiated.

Literally nothing here creates objective relevance. You just subjectively creating one.

(June 7, 2021 at 8:16 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Given that fertilization is the beginning of a new organism,

But is it? Fertilization has causes. The egg would not have been fertilized were it not for "the couple had intercourse," or some other cause that is necessary for fertilization to happen in the first place. That's the point.

You're choosing the middle domino as the "beginning of a new organism," ... but what I'm saying is that there are many dominos before that (and after that) that are necessary for a human birth. Why not assign equal weight to those?

Now I understand Helios' use of the word "arbitrary." Because, in the grand scheme, fertilization is not an arbitrary process. But what's arbitrary is you naming it the beginning of the organism.

Quote:I'm not sure how the preceding events have relevance? Whether those events involved sex, locking eyes, fertility clinics, or the vast array of colorful methods used by different species to bring gametes together, fertilization is the only necessary process by which a new organisms is created.

There are single-celled organisms that bypass this process. And (hypothetically) you could do the same with humans. 

Let's consider a collection of totipotent cells. You could leave them alone to gestate into a single human life form... OR you could carefully separate them and create potentially hundreds of life forms.

So let's say that a scientist decides to create two humans from a collection of totipotent cells (otherwise he'd have left them to gestate into a single one). That means two "new people" would be generated instead of just one. And (in many senses) if the two people were generated, the one that would originally have grown would not. So how is "fertilization" (ie. the event that creates the collection of totipotent cells) responsible singly for any of these three potential lives?

(June 7, 2021 at 8:16 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Given that fertilization is the beginning of a new organism

Yep, this is the key point.

Before fertilization there is no discrete object with the complete genetic material required to be human. After fertilization there is. 

That's an ontological change, and after that it's developmental.

Quote:Yep, this is the key point.

No, it really isn't 

Quote:Before fertilization there is no discrete object with the complete genetic material required to be human. After fertilization there is. 

Yup and that has no significance whatsoever 

Quote:That's an ontological change, and after that it's developmental.

Yup and that has no significance what so ever

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(June 7, 2021 at 8:40 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(June 7, 2021 at 8:16 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Given that fertilization is the beginning of a new organism,

But is it? Fertilization has causes. The egg would not have been fertilized were it not for "the couple had intercourse," or some other cause that is necessary for fertilization to happen in the first place. That's the point.

You're choosing the middle domino as the "beginning of a new organism," ... but what I'm saying is that there are many dominos before that (and after that) that are necessary for a human birth. Why not assign equal weight to those?

Now I understand Helios' use of the word "arbitrary." Because, in the grand scheme, fertilization is not an arbitrary process. But what's arbitrary is you naming it the beginning of the organism.

Quote:I'm not sure how the preceding events have relevance? Whether those events involved sex, locking eyes, fertility clinics, or the vast array of colorful methods used by different species to bring gametes together, fertilization is the only necessary process by which a new organisms is created.

There are single-celled organisms that bypass this process. And (hypothetically) you could do the same with humans. 

Let's consider a collection of totipotent cells. You could leave them alone to gestate into a single human life form... OR you could carefully separate them and create potentially hundreds of life forms.

So let's say that a scientist decides to create two humans from a collection of totipotent cells (otherwise he'd have left them to gestate into a single one). That means two "new people" would be generated instead of just one. And (in many senses) if the two people were generated, the one that would originally have grown would not. So how is "fertilization" (ie. the event that creates the collection of totipotent cells) responsible singly for any of these three potential lives?

👏

(June 7, 2021 at 8:40 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: But is it? Fertilization has causes. The egg would not have been fertilized were it not for "the couple had intercourse," or some other cause that is necessary for fertilization to happen in the first place. That's the point. You're choosing the middle domino as the "beginning of a new organism," ... but what I'm saying is that there are many dominos before that (and after that) that are necessary for a human birth. Why not assign equal weight to those?

I understand what you are saying, but the middle domino (fertilization) is the beginning of a new organism. (This classification is not arbitrary; I've referenced to an embryology textbook before which you may have missed it.) The preceding dominos might be of relevance to fields such as evolutionary biology, which take an interest in sexual selection; and the succeeding dominos to fields such as psychology. But fertilization is of interest to embryology and obstetrics. Here's an excerpt: 

"Fertilization [emphasis added] is... a process of carefully orchestrated and coordinated events including the contact and fusion of gametes, the fusion of nuclei, and the activation of development. It is a process whereby two cells, each at the verge of death, unite to create a new organism [emphasis added] that will have numerous cell types and organs. It is just the beginning of a series of cell-cell interactions that characterize animal development" (p. 248).

Reference: Gilbert, S.F., Barresi, M. (2016). Developmental biology (11th ed.). Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, Massachusetts.

Quote:There are single-celled organisms that bypass this process. And (hypothetically) you could do the same with humans.

Right; the embryological definition is exclusive to sexual reproduction (and multicellular organisms like ourselves). I'm not entirely sure I understood your hypothetical (perhaps due to my ignorance of totipotent cells). I would most likely import information from asexual reproduction, or the embryology of twins, into my answer. But even if your hypothetical requires an entirely novel approach, I would consider it an exception to the rule (much like asexual reproduction). In other words, it would be in a class of its own, and would not affect our current definitions.

You can labor the same point over and over. It changes nothing.