3 ms·
Personally I'm not seeing a foetus as being a conscious creature either. At some point it becomes one when its complexity level can support that, but not early
by spacedcowboy 4y ago
Personally I'm not seeing a foetus as being a conscious creature either. At some point it becomes one when its complexity level can support that, but not early on. Certainly it has the potential for that, assuming all goes well, but at the maximum point of normal abortion in the UK (24 weeks), I'm not buying it.
- iforgotpassword 4y agoI'm fine with abortions being accessible, more power to you, but this is something that makes me uneasy at a philosophical level, if that makes sense. Because you start asking yourself when exactly that moment is. Like, I get it, it's the stereotypical engineer/scientist kind of thinking, but there has to be one moment where the fetus isn't a conscious creature, and one second later it is. Can we ever know? Is a newborn even conscious? It hardly looks like it to me. It's pretty much acting on instincts only.
- derac 4y agoThere are levels of consciousness. For instance, a brain dead boy lived for 12 years with a rare disease in which his brain was replaced with fluid. With a brain stem he could still react to light, sound, and other stimulus - but not much else.
- rayiner 4y agoA baby isn't any more a "conscious creature" at 24 weeks than at 4 weeks post birth. The vast majority of the final trimester is spent gaining weight and finishing lung development, not on fundamental brain development.