(June 9, 2021 at 1:59 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 9, 2021 at 1:40 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Assume it's a person, assume it's a killing.  We gonna lock her up on manslaughter charges or create a lesser crime of killing just for this purpose?

I'll leave the legal debates to someone else. However, in the infamous Scott Peterson trial several years ago, Scott was convicted of two murder charges: His wife Laci, and unborn child Connor.

I am curious if pro-choice advocates think that second ruling should be overturned?

Yeah, there are a ton of places where you're going to be charged with two murders.  Do you think that murdering your wife and child and having an abortion are remotely similar? Aren't you a pro-choice advocate as well, if you really gave it thought? As I understand it, you're not interested in sicking johhny law on loose women. What else do you think pro choice means?

(June 9, 2021 at 5:52 am)brewer Wrote: I think you should read about acardiac/trap twin, and take note of the effect on the pump twin. Then come back and talk to us about the trap twins inherent value.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3939538/

Given that you are a retired medical professional I'm surprised you question the value of the acardiac twin. The appropriate response is clearly to look for an early intervention to prevent any developmental anomalies, and blood perfusion problems, from ever occurring in the acardiac twin.

The goal of medicine should be to save both twins, not classify one as worthless from the start, wouldn't you agree?

And insofar as you do classify one as valueless and not the other you are proving Neo's point. Such differentiation wouldn't be possible unless embryos are living human organisms from conception, and could lose their life and development. Unless your response is that both the normal twin and the acardiac twin are equal to each other before they are born, I'm not sure how this helps your case.

(June 8, 2021 at 11:09 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 10:47 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: That's an excellent question. If I had to make a choice, I would save the baby. It's not unlikely the elderly person would want me to save the baby too. All stories must come to an end, and I personally would rather have mine wrapped up a few pages sooner than I planned than live with the knowledge that my survival came at the cost of someone with their whole life in front of them.

I think the reason we would choose an infant over an elderly person (and you hinted at something similar) has something to do with Thomas Nagel's famous argument: Death is evil insofar as it deprives us of life. Therefore, the younger you are the more life you can be deprived of, and the more tragic the death. And abortion, I would argue, logically deprives an organism of the most life possible.

ps. I hadn't thought about your pregnant vs nonpregnant scenario before, and I think its a question that reinforces my object permanence argument, given that a pregnant woman can be visualized in a way that an embryo cannot. Therefore, I suspect that someone who would be fine with a two-month abortion on paper, would nevertheless be inclined to save a woman that is pregnant over her twin sister that is not.

What about the baby vs. the viable embryo in a tube?

---

(June 8, 2021 at 11:09 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 10:30 am)Foxaire Wrote: it's something a fetus lacks.

Do you have an argument for why this is so? Or is it something you just know?

How would you persuade someone of this?

I know this question wasn't directed at me, but: To the same extent that I know a rabbit doesn't have full personhood because its brain isn't capable of undertaking person-level activities, I know a fetus with fewer brain cells than a rabbit isn't yet a person. The only way to argue that a fetus is already fully a person is to bring in supernatural qualities that can only be claimed, not detected. If justifed belief is knowledge, my position has that justification while the opposite position is based on nothing that can be verified at all.

---

(June 8, 2021 at 12:05 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 10:47 am)Helios Wrote: In the event of a fire, you would save your [emphasis added] 5-month-old baby over a stranger [emphasis added] 5-minute old fetus as would just about everyone else.

Are you familiar with confounding variables? Your addition of kinship is one such example. Any novice scientist would know to control for such a variable, or would otherwise properly incorporate it using a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

So make it your 5-minute old embryo vs. a stranger's five-month old baby. What's your answer then?

---

(June 8, 2021 at 1:15 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: (Note that my object permanence argument also predicts this outcome.)

On the object permanence matter, assume the embryo is in a transparent tube and you can see it, while the baby is in a crib out of sight and someone has only told you where it is. And there's a chance the baby is already dead.

(June 9, 2021 at 10:31 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: What about the baby vs. the viable embryo in a tube?

I believe you are reading through the comments so you might have seen my answer by now. I would choose the baby, but I think the reason I would do so is because of an evolutionary predisposition to do so.

(June 8, 2021 at 2:25 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 1:18 pm)Helios Wrote: Nope the scenario remains the same and yes it does address it

Then why does replacing the words frozen fertilized egg and baby with a neutral term like organism remove the emotional coloring? Saving a one-week old organism vs 40-week old organism changes the tone despite being logically identical. It normalizes the categories in such a way that people can no longer resort to Type I fast thinking (see Kahneman).

Because then it's pretty unclear whether the organisms you're talking about are biologically human. We're talking about human blastocysts, zygotes, embryos, fetuses, and babies.

---

(June 8, 2021 at 5:36 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 5:20 pm)Ravenshire Wrote: If a zygote is human, so is a genital wart, no matter what it may or may not be capable of growing into.

"Wart ≠ Zygote" -Biology

Take it up with Neo, who is the one claiming it's genetics that makes something human.

(June 9, 2021 at 10:31 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: On the object permanence matter, assume the embryo is in a transparent tube and you can see it, while the baby is in a crib out of sight and someone has only told you where it is. And there's a chance the baby is already dead.

Under such an assumption I think most people will show a measurable hesitancy in their choice. Take a look at the comments in this video (as well as watch the video itself). Being able to see an actual growing embryo definitely flips a switch in people's head. 

(June 8, 2021 at 7:06 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 8, 2021 at 6:11 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: You've compared zygotes to toenails. That places you at a serious intellectual disadvantage. Your arguments would improve greatly if you distanced yourself from false equivalencies.

I wanted to raise chickens in my back yard, so I thought I should buy some fertilized chicken eggs to get started.

The guy at the chicken store told me I'd get the same results if I just bought a bunch of molted feathers, though, and they were cheaper.

I'm not sure why the farm hasn't worked out.

So clever. /s

---

(June 8, 2021 at 8:03 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: I was clearly talking about the unborn as human organisms and not as body parts in the context of a discussion about the inherent value of human life. Maybe I am not very artful but at least I am not a grammar scold.

Again, your cheek scraping could be used to create a clone of you. Do you still maintain that 'genetically human' is sufficient to maintain the a human egg is a human being from the point of fertilization?

---

(June 8, 2021 at 9:48 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Parasites are defined by their function and behavior—to exist like a parasite is to be a parasite.

I exist like a 40-year old, so I must be 40 years old.

---

(June 9, 2021 at 1:33 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 9, 2021 at 1:12 am)Foxaire Wrote: Bolded: The placenta uses a cloaking device.

Okay, and do you understand why the placenta needs to hide from the mother's immune system? Because, contrary to many pro-choice arguments (and I understand not everyone goes this far), this is not the woman's body. The embryo is a separate organism, with a separate genome, and a separate blood supply.

Which is what makes the pregnant woman the host for the developing fetus.

(June 9, 2021 at 10:52 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Take it up with Neo, who is the one claiming it's genetics that makes something human.

Unless I missed something, all Neo said was that the unborn were human from conception. That's not the same as "its genetics that makes makes something human." That appears to be a strawman you are using to make comments about "cheek scrapings."

(June 9, 2021 at 2:05 am)Helios Wrote:

Quote:It most certainly does. There are other symbiotic terms reserved for when the relationship isn't harmful, or beneficial: Commensalistic and Mutualistic.

Nope wrong

How so? Bearing in mind that the developing fetus definitely causes some harm and is a risk to its host.

---

(June 9, 2021 at 10:50 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 9, 2021 at 10:31 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: What about the baby vs. the viable embryo in a tube?

I believe you are reading through the comments so you might have seen my answer by now. I would choose the baby, but I think the reason I would do so is because of an evolutionary predisposition to do so.

You are right, I've been catching up. It's a fast-moving thread. My apologies.

---

(June 9, 2021 at 10:54 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Under such an assumption I think most people will show a measurable hesitancy in their choice. Take a look at the comments in this video (as well as watch the video itself). Being able to see an actual growing embryo definitely flips a switch in people's head. 

I think you have a point. But will it flip anyone to saving the embryo instead of the baby?

---

(June 9, 2021 at 11:06 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(June 9, 2021 at 10:52 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Take it up with Neo, who is the one claiming it's genetics that makes something human.

Unless I missed something, all Neo said was that the unborn were human from conception. That's not the same as "its genetics that makes makes something human." That appears to be a strawman you are using to make comments about "cheek scrapings."

Neo's reasoning was that the embryo is biologically human from conception. Any undamaged human cell is biologically human. Being biologically human doesn't make something a human being.

(June 9, 2021 at 11:06 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Neo's reasoning was that the embryo is biologically human from conception. Any undamaged human cell is biologically human. Being biologically human doesn't make something a human being.

Right; he is using human as a noun—the embryo is a human being from conception. You're referring to human as an adjective—human hair.

Here's a word I learned from vulcanlogician: totipotency. It's the power of a cell to produce an entirely new organism.

So human genetics + totipotency + any other relevant factor = New Human (noun) organism.

Human zygotes meet this criteria. But without the cells in your cheeks achieving totipotency, for example, we cannot compare them to zygotes or call them human beings. Once they do that's another story.