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My worry is that if infants are only partial people, then people might come up with arguments that it's ok to kill them in some situations. And it opens the doo

My worry is that if infants are only partial people, then people might come up with arguments that it's ok to kill them in some situations. And it opens the door to start classifying other people as partial people (e.g. disabled people). Which is why I say there's no such thing as a partial people.

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
But that was precisely my point. We shouldn’t classify anyone as partial people, which means we need to draw an intelligently chosen line separating the two. Choosing fertilization as this point seems irrational to me, and the consequence of this irrational choice harms an enormous number of women.
- Thorrez 1y ago
  My point is that there isn't any point that can be chosen except fertilization, due to the continuum of development.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    My response last time you said that was that fertilization is also a process which takes place on a continuum. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8406655/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8406655/ > In mammals, fertilization involves multiple ordered steps, including the acrosome reaction, zona pellucida penetration, sperm–egg attachment, and membrane fusion. All development is a continuum.
    - Thorrez 1y ago
      That's a good point. However, it doesn't mean fertilization isn't the point when personhood begins. When choosing the point at which personhood begins, we should look at the stages of development to identify the most likely candidate. Fertilization is the most rapid period of development. Fertilization is the point at which the organism is formed. Before fertilization, there is no entity with a full set of DNA. After fertilization, there is an entity with a full set of DNA. Before fertilization, there is no entity that will typically grow into an adult human. After fertilization, there is an entity that will typically grow into an adult human. All these factors point to fertilization being when personhood begins. If there were abortions that take place during the process of fertilization, then we would need to look into fertilization to determine exactly when during fertilization does personhood begin. But since that's not the case, we don't currently need to examine the substeps within fertilization to determine that. It's sufficient to say personhood begins some time during fertilization.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        I think you and I look at the philosophical element of this really differently and it’s making it hard to agree. I think we tend, as humans, to use certain heuristics to navigate our world which are evolutionarily and socially defined. One of the most fundamental is our tendency to see “an object” rather than the parts of the object. Since we don’t have electron microscopes built into our heads, we wouldn’t get much out of looking at a rock as a collection of things rather than a single thing, but that’s what I think a rock is. A collection of many things which behave together, likely with near-infinite further divisibility. The choice of where to stop dividing in your perception of an object isn’t set somewhere in the fabric of the universe, it’s a product of what’s useful for your perception and reproduction. The problem for me is when people make very fundamental moral claims about what I think they see as the nature of reality off the basis of these very important, but arbitrary in relation to some fixed universal morality, heuristics of perception. The idea that we are each only one thing, singular and indivisible, has historically been a very enticing idea, but I feel that science and philosophy for the last maybe hundred years have also been realizing and grappling with the idea that we’re more group organisms, that what makes us us isn’t the material that constitutes our bodies but the dynamics of our separate parts, the same way a society is found in the dynamics of relations between people more than the people themselves. This makes it hard for me to accept the idea that any stage of development could constitute a step change, not just from our arbitrary perspectives, but in the grand scheme of things (which is what matters morally). The dynamics between sperm and egg, when placed in close proximity, constitute a set of real forces acting in the world to bring about a person. The fact that two becomes one seems irrelevant to me; both the sperm-egg system or the zygote system of dynamic, interplaying forces may eventually bring a person about. The one undeniable fact that to me could make a person a person is sentience; conscious awareness, because in observing the fact of our own conscious experience we avoid making our determination on the basis of something arbitrary. To the experiencing person, there’s absolutely no doubt they’re experiencing. I think when we make our moral codes we should be doing so not to protect particular assemblies of matter or dynamic interplays of forces, but to make our best effort at bettering and protecting the desired continuity of subjective, conscious experience. It seems like the only rational thing for us to do. We don’t know exactly when or why all the stuff of a human body leads to a conscious experience, but we do know certain things it’s correlated against, e.g. people without brains seem not to demonstrate conscious awareness. Absent more information, I think the best thing that we can do to protect and better conscious experiences in general is to select an intelligible point in development where we think all the “machinery” for consciousness is present in the fetus and draw the line on abortion there. If I’m correct, we avoid harming what I think matters as much as we really can. > Before fertilization, there is no entity with a full set of DNA. After fertilization, there is an entity with a full set of DNA. Before fertilization, there is no entity that will typically grow into an adult human. After fertilization, there is an entity that will typically grow into an adult human. I hope you can see what my response would be already. A full set of DNA isn’t morally significant in my opinion, nor is there a meaningful difference between an entity, here defined more as physical body, which will grow into an adult human and a collection of physical bodies which will do the same. If in some weird universe (Asimov story) our life cycle had us develop as three independent beings which merged together at a later age, my answer would be exactly the same. If the independent beings or something about their interaction can be reasonably thought to lead to conscious experience, then they’re worth the ethical consideration we give to people.

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

But that was precisely my point. We shouldn’t classify anyone as partial people, which means we need to draw an intelligently chosen line separating the two. Choosing fertilization as this point seems irrational to me, and the consequence of this irrational choice harms an enormous number of women.

Thorrez 1y ago
My point is that there isn't any point that can be chosen except fertilization, due to the continuum of development.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  My response last time you said that was that fertilization is also a process which takes place on a continuum. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8406655/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8406655/ > In mammals, fertilization involves multiple ordered steps, including the acrosome reaction, zona pellucida penetration, sperm–egg attachment, and membrane fusion. All development is a continuum.
  - Thorrez 1y ago
    That's a good point. However, it doesn't mean fertilization isn't the point when personhood begins. When choosing the point at which personhood begins, we should look at the stages of development to identify the most likely candidate. Fertilization is the most rapid period of development. Fertilization is the point at which the organism is formed. Before fertilization, there is no entity with a full set of DNA. After fertilization, there is an entity with a full set of DNA. Before fertilization, there is no entity that will typically grow into an adult human. After fertilization, there is an entity that will typically grow into an adult human. All these factors point to fertilization being when personhood begins. If there were abortions that take place during the process of fertilization, then we would need to look into fertilization to determine exactly when during fertilization does personhood begin. But since that's not the case, we don't currently need to examine the substeps within fertilization to determine that. It's sufficient to say personhood begins some time during fertilization.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      I think you and I look at the philosophical element of this really differently and it’s making it hard to agree. I think we tend, as humans, to use certain heuristics to navigate our world which are evolutionarily and socially defined. One of the most fundamental is our tendency to see “an object” rather than the parts of the object. Since we don’t have electron microscopes built into our heads, we wouldn’t get much out of looking at a rock as a collection of things rather than a single thing, but that’s what I think a rock is. A collection of many things which behave together, likely with near-infinite further divisibility. The choice of where to stop dividing in your perception of an object isn’t set somewhere in the fabric of the universe, it’s a product of what’s useful for your perception and reproduction. The problem for me is when people make very fundamental moral claims about what I think they see as the nature of reality off the basis of these very important, but arbitrary in relation to some fixed universal morality, heuristics of perception. The idea that we are each only one thing, singular and indivisible, has historically been a very enticing idea, but I feel that science and philosophy for the last maybe hundred years have also been realizing and grappling with the idea that we’re more group organisms, that what makes us us isn’t the material that constitutes our bodies but the dynamics of our separate parts, the same way a society is found in the dynamics of relations between people more than the people themselves. This makes it hard for me to accept the idea that any stage of development could constitute a step change, not just from our arbitrary perspectives, but in the grand scheme of things (which is what matters morally). The dynamics between sperm and egg, when placed in close proximity, constitute a set of real forces acting in the world to bring about a person. The fact that two becomes one seems irrelevant to me; both the sperm-egg system or the zygote system of dynamic, interplaying forces may eventually bring a person about. The one undeniable fact that to me could make a person a person is sentience; conscious awareness, because in observing the fact of our own conscious experience we avoid making our determination on the basis of something arbitrary. To the experiencing person, there’s absolutely no doubt they’re experiencing. I think when we make our moral codes we should be doing so not to protect particular assemblies of matter or dynamic interplays of forces, but to make our best effort at bettering and protecting the desired continuity of subjective, conscious experience. It seems like the only rational thing for us to do. We don’t know exactly when or why all the stuff of a human body leads to a conscious experience, but we do know certain things it’s correlated against, e.g. people without brains seem not to demonstrate conscious awareness. Absent more information, I think the best thing that we can do to protect and better conscious experiences in general is to select an intelligible point in development where we think all the “machinery” for consciousness is present in the fetus and draw the line on abortion there. If I’m correct, we avoid harming what I think matters as much as we really can. > Before fertilization, there is no entity with a full set of DNA. After fertilization, there is an entity with a full set of DNA. Before fertilization, there is no entity that will typically grow into an adult human. After fertilization, there is an entity that will typically grow into an adult human. I hope you can see what my response would be already. A full set of DNA isn’t morally significant in my opinion, nor is there a meaningful difference between an entity, here defined more as physical body, which will grow into an adult human and a collection of physical bodies which will do the same. If in some weird universe (Asimov story) our life cycle had us develop as three independent beings which merged together at a later age, my answer would be exactly the same. If the independent beings or something about their interaction can be reasonably thought to lead to conscious experience, then they’re worth the ethical consideration we give to people.