5 ms·

Are fetuses not sentient for most of their growth, then?

by Natsu 5y ago

shkkmo 5y ago
Human fetuses become sentient sometime between 8-30 weeks (depending on who you ask and how they define sentience).
- Thorrez 5y ago
  >depending on who you ask and how they define sentience Natsu was assuming for the sake of argument that the definition of sentience is the one moeris gave, namely "that one is capable of feeling sensations".
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    That is the well established definition; no need to assume it for the sake of argument. However, "capable of feeling sensations" is defined in different ways and thus leads to the large differences in when people say a fetus is capable of feeling pain. Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain? All of those thresholds are crossed at different stages of fetal development so which threshold you use will change the answer you give for "when does a fetus become sentient?"
    - glenstein 5y ago
      >the well established definition Well, I don't think so. I like to think I've studied enough philosophy to be at least somewhat reasonably acquainted with the term, and it wasn't striking me as "well established." And I did a bit of googling yesterday that also seemed to suggest the "well established definition" being used here is not consistent with any of the normal definitions. And just now I consulted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and now I'm convinced it's not even remotely close to well established. Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything cited here to back that up, or even just an appeal to any informal, working understanding of the concept that makes me think "oh, of course, that's the definition." And normally I wouldn't ask for such a thing, except for the fact that, to me at least, a lot of people seem to be confidently wrong about what it is. >Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain? Pretty sure it's the last one.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        I can't find a single source that doesn't align with the definition provided by moeris. It can be phrased in many ways but the underlying concept is well established. People who are unfamiliar with the words may confuse sentience with sapience, but they are quite distinct concepts and not interchangeable. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sentient https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sentient https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sentient https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sentien... https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience > Pretty sure it's the last one. That last one makes some big assumptions given the adaptability and complexity of the brain, combined with our still limited understanding of it's inner workings. If I were to pick one, I would lean closer to the "capable of responding to pain" but really all of those criteria have flaws and serve more as heuristics than rigorous criteria. I purposly didn't take a stance in my original comment to avoid descending into uninteresting partisan bickering.
        glenstein 5y ago
        >with the definition provided by moeris I think I agree with you that the definition provided by moeris is basically on track, and it accords with everything in the links you shared. I would also recommend you review the term as it exists in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. So that's all good. However, you said something along the lines of "doesn't even require that there be consciousness" and merely "more than automatic" which struck me as not being quite right, and that is the idea that I wanted to challenge. I think all the links you shared make some reference or another to consciousness, which to me makes them different from "not requiring consciousness." So I'm not sure how you are looking at those links and seeing something that comports with "not requiring consciousness" and I'm also not seeing how your version of sentience comports either with those or what moeris said. I'm surprised you would look up and post all those links without noticing this, especially in a conversation where that's exactly the thing at issue. At best, I think you could say, the heartland, normal, well established definition makes reference to some amount of conscious experience, and it is certain fringe definitions could maybe be read as not requiring that. And I think even that would be an exceptionally generous interpretation of the thing you are spuriously claiming is a "well established definition." >That last one makes some big assumptions I really don't think it does. It's not making any assumptions about brains, it's taking a position on what sentience means. Maybe brains do a lot of stuff, some of which falls within our idea of sentience, and some of which doesn't. Again, all the definitions you link to are about sensation against the backdrop of consciousness. Meanwhile, only the last of the three of your proposed options was clearly suggesting consciousness. So I don't understand what assumption you think I am or am not making about brains. I don't think the other two options agree with the dictionary definitions you linked to, so I'm not really sure you should be in a position of confidently declaring that those are a "well established definition."
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  > 30 weeks 30 weeks?? Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy. It's ridiculous that we argue about lobster intelligence when most people don't even know the basic facts about their own human biology. (Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.)
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    > Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea. Are you suggesting the odds of that are so low that they’re laughable? Because they’re not..
    - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
      There's only (approximately) two days a month when a human female can get pregnant. It's not about frequency or intensity, rather it's mostly timing. (And sperm quality, but that's another thing people have no clue about.)
      - ComputerGuru 5y ago
        I was going to say three days, but it doesn’t matter. That’s 7% then turn it into a birthday problem (the world’s full of people having unprotected sex for the first time with someone at any given time) and there you go. Deduct points for bad form or bad sperm and it’s still a crazy number. It’s only a talking point when it’s the case, so it’s bound to sound like it’s happening to everyone.
      - nrclark 5y ago
        Sperm can hang around in the fallopian tube for almost a week. It's also possible to ovulate without a visible period, and it's possible to ovulate in-between "normal" periods. Don't assume any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to fertility, and definitely don't assume that somebody can only get pregnant two days out of the month. Our species would never have survived if that was really true. Biology is messy, imprecise, and very subject to external effects.
  - 5y ago
TehCorwiz 5y ago
By the above definition even amoeba and flatworms are sentient.
- glenstein 5y ago
  Amoeba can feel sensations? Not a rhetorical question, genuinely want to know.
  - NineStarPoint 5y ago
    They can react to negative stimuli. The question of if that means something can "feel" in the sense we tend to mean it isn't easy to answer.
    - glenstein 5y ago
      I mean, my tendon in my knee can "react" to "negative stimuli" when a doctor strikes it with a rubber hammer. I guess the question is about how these words are being used, and whether they're referring to automatic biological reflexes or something like a conscious experience, sentience, or sapience, depending on how you use the terms.
      - shakna 5y ago
        Sentience always requires more than just reaction, but a memory component. That is, it can take a proactive response to avoid that negative stimuli in the future. However, measuring both of those is generally very difficult, and so determining if something is sentient can be difficult. The bar for sentience is basically, "is it more than automatic". Which is fairly low and easy to clear. It doesn't even require that there be consciousness.
        jkepler 5y ago
        So robots programmed to learn could be considered sentient ?
ordiel 5y ago
[flagged]
drekipus 5y ago
of course

Are fetuses not sentient for most of their growth, then?

by Natsu 5y ago

Are fetuses not sentient for most of their growth, then?

shkkmo 5y ago

Human fetuses become sentient sometime between 8-30 weeks (depending on who you ask and how they define sentience).

Thorrez 5y ago
>depending on who you ask and how they define sentience Natsu was assuming for the sake of argument that the definition of sentience is the one moeris gave, namely "that one is capable of feeling sensations".
- shkkmo 5y ago
  That is the well established definition; no need to assume it for the sake of argument. However, "capable of feeling sensations" is defined in different ways and thus leads to the large differences in when people say a fetus is capable of feeling pain. Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain? All of those thresholds are crossed at different stages of fetal development so which threshold you use will change the answer you give for "when does a fetus become sentient?"
  - glenstein 5y ago
    >the well established definition Well, I don't think so. I like to think I've studied enough philosophy to be at least somewhat reasonably acquainted with the term, and it wasn't striking me as "well established." And I did a bit of googling yesterday that also seemed to suggest the "well established definition" being used here is not consistent with any of the normal definitions. And just now I consulted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and now I'm convinced it's not even remotely close to well established. Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything cited here to back that up, or even just an appeal to any informal, working understanding of the concept that makes me think "oh, of course, that's the definition." And normally I wouldn't ask for such a thing, except for the fact that, to me at least, a lot of people seem to be confidently wrong about what it is. >Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain? Pretty sure it's the last one.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      I can't find a single source that doesn't align with the definition provided by moeris. It can be phrased in many ways but the underlying concept is well established. People who are unfamiliar with the words may confuse sentience with sapience, but they are quite distinct concepts and not interchangeable. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sentient https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sentient https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sentient https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sentien... https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience > Pretty sure it's the last one. That last one makes some big assumptions given the adaptability and complexity of the brain, combined with our still limited understanding of it's inner workings. If I were to pick one, I would lean closer to the "capable of responding to pain" but really all of those criteria have flaws and serve more as heuristics than rigorous criteria. I purposly didn't take a stance in my original comment to avoid descending into uninteresting partisan bickering.
      - glenstein 5y ago
        >with the definition provided by moeris I think I agree with you that the definition provided by moeris is basically on track, and it accords with everything in the links you shared. I would also recommend you review the term as it exists in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. So that's all good. However, you said something along the lines of "doesn't even require that there be consciousness" and merely "more than automatic" which struck me as not being quite right, and that is the idea that I wanted to challenge. I think all the links you shared make some reference or another to consciousness, which to me makes them different from "not requiring consciousness." So I'm not sure how you are looking at those links and seeing something that comports with "not requiring consciousness" and I'm also not seeing how your version of sentience comports either with those or what moeris said. I'm surprised you would look up and post all those links without noticing this, especially in a conversation where that's exactly the thing at issue. At best, I think you could say, the heartland, normal, well established definition makes reference to some amount of conscious experience, and it is certain fringe definitions could maybe be read as not requiring that. And I think even that would be an exceptionally generous interpretation of the thing you are spuriously claiming is a "well established definition." >That last one makes some big assumptions I really don't think it does. It's not making any assumptions about brains, it's taking a position on what sentience means. Maybe brains do a lot of stuff, some of which falls within our idea of sentience, and some of which doesn't. Again, all the definitions you link to are about sensation against the backdrop of consciousness. Meanwhile, only the last of the three of your proposed options was clearly suggesting consciousness. So I don't understand what assumption you think I am or am not making about brains. I don't think the other two options agree with the dictionary definitions you linked to, so I'm not really sure you should be in a position of confidently declaring that those are a "well established definition."
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> 30 weeks 30 weeks?? Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy. It's ridiculous that we argue about lobster intelligence when most people don't even know the basic facts about their own human biology. (Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.)
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  > Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea. Are you suggesting the odds of that are so low that they’re laughable? Because they’re not..
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    There's only (approximately) two days a month when a human female can get pregnant. It's not about frequency or intensity, rather it's mostly timing. (And sperm quality, but that's another thing people have no clue about.)
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      I was going to say three days, but it doesn’t matter. That’s 7% then turn it into a birthday problem (the world’s full of people having unprotected sex for the first time with someone at any given time) and there you go. Deduct points for bad form or bad sperm and it’s still a crazy number. It’s only a talking point when it’s the case, so it’s bound to sound like it’s happening to everyone.
    - nrclark 5y ago
      Sperm can hang around in the fallopian tube for almost a week. It's also possible to ovulate without a visible period, and it's possible to ovulate in-between "normal" periods. Don't assume any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to fertility, and definitely don't assume that somebody can only get pregnant two days out of the month. Our species would never have survived if that was really true. Biology is messy, imprecise, and very subject to external effects.
- 5y ago

TehCorwiz 5y ago

By the above definition even amoeba and flatworms are sentient.

glenstein 5y ago
Amoeba can feel sensations? Not a rhetorical question, genuinely want to know.
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  They can react to negative stimuli. The question of if that means something can "feel" in the sense we tend to mean it isn't easy to answer.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    I mean, my tendon in my knee can "react" to "negative stimuli" when a doctor strikes it with a rubber hammer. I guess the question is about how these words are being used, and whether they're referring to automatic biological reflexes or something like a conscious experience, sentience, or sapience, depending on how you use the terms.
    - shakna 5y ago
      Sentience always requires more than just reaction, but a memory component. That is, it can take a proactive response to avoid that negative stimuli in the future. However, measuring both of those is generally very difficult, and so determining if something is sentient can be difficult. The bar for sentience is basically, "is it more than automatic". Which is fairly low and easy to clear. It doesn't even require that there be consciousness.
      - jkepler 5y ago
        So robots programmed to learn could be considered sentient ?

ordiel 5y ago

[flagged]

drekipus 5y ago

of course