5 ms·

Do you think abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? I think a zygote is clearly incapable of experiencing suffering, just like an animal clearly is ca

by eurleif 14y ago

Do you think abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? I think a zygote is clearly incapable of experiencing suffering, just like an animal clearly is capable.

jonah 14y ago
I think capability to feel pain is the wrong criteria. Following that line of thinking, would it be OK to kill someone while they were anesthetized? They wouldn't feel pain. It's the destroying of a genetically unique individual human that is the issue. No matter how far along the continuum of development they are.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Why stop there and not say that any viable egg is the issue? And your definition would allow the abortion, or even adult slaughter, of a twin, or two of a triple. That is an interesting opinion.
- eurleif 14y ago
  An anesthetized person has a mind with which to experience suffering. It's just not currently engaged. Genetically unique? So it's ok to kill an identical twin?
  - jonah 14y ago
    Capable of experiencing suffering or will experience suffering. That's an interesting distinction. What are your thoughts on it. Edit: Also, what is suffering and is it different from pain? I had two qualifiers in there: unique and individual. Each twin is its own individual.
- EGreg 14y ago
  What about destroying sperm cells or preventing an ovum from implanting or being released?
  - jonah 14y ago
    Bio 101: Sperm and ova each carry only 1/2 the genetic material.[1] Once the egg is fertilized and becomes a zygote it is genetically unique. (An ovum wouldn't implant. That would be a zygote.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatozoon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatozoon
    - aneth4 14y ago
      Most sexually reproducing organisms are genetically unique. That's hardly a basis for a moral judgement. Ethics and morality in philosophy are generally based on minimizing the experience and perception of suffering, not promoting diversity - though diversity can certainly help reduce suffering.
      - marknadal 14y ago
        Please don't make generalized statements that are not true, it is a key indication you have no expertise in the field. Disclaimer: I have no expertise in the field of ethics and morality. My girlfriend is however (has worked under Paul Bloom at Yale specifically in moral development, and is in a fully funded PhD program for moral development), and "minimizing the experience and perception of suffering" is not the "general basis". Note: The author of the parent comment was not trying to make a moral judgement, but a biological and evolutionary one. That abortion is mathematically not beneficial - so there is no need to make a moral argument when there is a scientific one. (That is, not to say, that a moral one ought not be made.)
        aneth4 14y ago
        From the second sentence of the Wikipedia article on ethics, they quote an "expert" (i.e. someone with "expertise") defining ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures". Certainly you can argue about a billion types of ethical frameworks, some of which may differ from this statement, and you can argue about the definition of ethics and morality. The prevailing basis of morality and ethics is most certainly minimizing suffering. Without sentient experience, ethics are meaningless. That's why in most frameworks we don't worry about the treatment of non-sentient things outside the context of the sentient experience of them, and we debate whether ethics apply to things based on whether they are sentient. Notwithstanding issues relating to these objects relationships to other sentient beings, we don't worry whether it's ethical to sit on a chair or pee in a toilet. The parent comment was drawing an ethical conclusion from a biological fact, and certainly did not say anything about abortion being or not being "mathematically beneficial," whatever that means.
- A1kmm 14y ago
  Neither your criterion, nor the pain criterion, are meaningful unless you believe in supernatural things like gods or souls. Believing in the supernatural without evidence is not what I would call rational - if you believe that, why not also believe in pixies in your garden, or Russell's Teapot? Humans are just self-replicating collections of atoms that emerged through chance and evolution, and pain is just an emergent phenomenon formed by electrical impulses travelling over neurons to signal things that we evolved to avoid. So there is no absolute moral reason to protect the coherence of a particular collection of atoms over another, or to favour a doctrine of hedonism over pain. Ultimately, to optimise for something, we need a criterion on which to optimise. For the above reasons, I consider preserving human biodiversity, or some kind of hedonic pleasure-pain balance as a fairly meaningless thing to pick as a fundamental thing to optimise for in the scheme of things (although it may emerge as a result of another more meaningful optimality criterion). I consider the diversity of information / knowledge (that is, information that encodes something true about the world, not just random entropy) recorded in the universe in a form that can be processed by intelligently acting constructions to be a more fundamental thing to optimise for. Obviously, picking what to optimise for is completely arbitrary - it is used to justify everything, but it is like an axiom - there is nothing else to justify it in terms of. Optimising for such knowledge means protecting the intellectual independence of constructions that create, process, and support the construction of such knowledge. Since this is primarily humans at the moment, this means ensuring that humans are not oppressed. Pain and fear of death are means of oppression of humans, and so it makes sense to ensure that living, thinking humans capable of knowing fear and feeling oppressed do not have to fear that they will be subjected to arbitrary death or pain for their intellectual activities. One way to do this is to strictly enforce a no humans killing humans older then some certain amount of time after conception. If the amount of time after conception is too high, an age at which the person can know that they are at risk of death and fear it, then it will be oppressive. However, an embryo or fetus is very unlikely to be know that abortion exists, or to do anything differently to avoid it, and therefore abortion cannot be oppressive like murder or torture is. Anyone capable of knowing about abortion is too old to be killed deliberately by it.
  - jonah 14y ago
    > an age at which the person can know that they are at risk > of death and fear it, then it will be oppressive No one would really know about or have reason to fear getting killed for at least a few years after birth at the earliest...
- haberman 14y ago
  Women over 45 have an over 50% risk of miscarriage. If a zygote is a person then sex with women over 45 is criminal endangerment.

by eurleif 14y ago

Do you think abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? I think a zygote is clearly incapable of experiencing suffering, just like an animal clearly is capable.

jonah 14y ago

I think capability to feel pain is the wrong criteria. Following that line of thinking, would it be OK to kill someone while they were anesthetized? They wouldn't feel pain. It's the destroying of a genetically unique individual human that is the issue. No matter how far along the continuum of development they are.

Evbn 14y ago
Why stop there and not say that any viable egg is the issue? And your definition would allow the abortion, or even adult slaughter, of a twin, or two of a triple. That is an interesting opinion.
eurleif 14y ago
An anesthetized person has a mind with which to experience suffering. It's just not currently engaged. Genetically unique? So it's ok to kill an identical twin?
- jonah 14y ago
  Capable of experiencing suffering or will experience suffering. That's an interesting distinction. What are your thoughts on it. Edit: Also, what is suffering and is it different from pain? I had two qualifiers in there: unique and individual. Each twin is its own individual.
EGreg 14y ago
What about destroying sperm cells or preventing an ovum from implanting or being released?
- jonah 14y ago
  Bio 101: Sperm and ova each carry only 1/2 the genetic material.[1] Once the egg is fertilized and becomes a zygote it is genetically unique. (An ovum wouldn't implant. That would be a zygote.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatozoon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatozoon
  - aneth4 14y ago
    Most sexually reproducing organisms are genetically unique. That's hardly a basis for a moral judgement. Ethics and morality in philosophy are generally based on minimizing the experience and perception of suffering, not promoting diversity - though diversity can certainly help reduce suffering.
    - marknadal 14y ago
      Please don't make generalized statements that are not true, it is a key indication you have no expertise in the field. Disclaimer: I have no expertise in the field of ethics and morality. My girlfriend is however (has worked under Paul Bloom at Yale specifically in moral development, and is in a fully funded PhD program for moral development), and "minimizing the experience and perception of suffering" is not the "general basis". Note: The author of the parent comment was not trying to make a moral judgement, but a biological and evolutionary one. That abortion is mathematically not beneficial - so there is no need to make a moral argument when there is a scientific one. (That is, not to say, that a moral one ought not be made.)
      - aneth4 14y ago
        From the second sentence of the Wikipedia article on ethics, they quote an "expert" (i.e. someone with "expertise") defining ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures". Certainly you can argue about a billion types of ethical frameworks, some of which may differ from this statement, and you can argue about the definition of ethics and morality. The prevailing basis of morality and ethics is most certainly minimizing suffering. Without sentient experience, ethics are meaningless. That's why in most frameworks we don't worry about the treatment of non-sentient things outside the context of the sentient experience of them, and we debate whether ethics apply to things based on whether they are sentient. Notwithstanding issues relating to these objects relationships to other sentient beings, we don't worry whether it's ethical to sit on a chair or pee in a toilet. The parent comment was drawing an ethical conclusion from a biological fact, and certainly did not say anything about abortion being or not being "mathematically beneficial," whatever that means.
A1kmm 14y ago
Neither your criterion, nor the pain criterion, are meaningful unless you believe in supernatural things like gods or souls. Believing in the supernatural without evidence is not what I would call rational - if you believe that, why not also believe in pixies in your garden, or Russell's Teapot? Humans are just self-replicating collections of atoms that emerged through chance and evolution, and pain is just an emergent phenomenon formed by electrical impulses travelling over neurons to signal things that we evolved to avoid. So there is no absolute moral reason to protect the coherence of a particular collection of atoms over another, or to favour a doctrine of hedonism over pain. Ultimately, to optimise for something, we need a criterion on which to optimise. For the above reasons, I consider preserving human biodiversity, or some kind of hedonic pleasure-pain balance as a fairly meaningless thing to pick as a fundamental thing to optimise for in the scheme of things (although it may emerge as a result of another more meaningful optimality criterion). I consider the diversity of information / knowledge (that is, information that encodes something true about the world, not just random entropy) recorded in the universe in a form that can be processed by intelligently acting constructions to be a more fundamental thing to optimise for. Obviously, picking what to optimise for is completely arbitrary - it is used to justify everything, but it is like an axiom - there is nothing else to justify it in terms of. Optimising for such knowledge means protecting the intellectual independence of constructions that create, process, and support the construction of such knowledge. Since this is primarily humans at the moment, this means ensuring that humans are not oppressed. Pain and fear of death are means of oppression of humans, and so it makes sense to ensure that living, thinking humans capable of knowing fear and feeling oppressed do not have to fear that they will be subjected to arbitrary death or pain for their intellectual activities. One way to do this is to strictly enforce a no humans killing humans older then some certain amount of time after conception. If the amount of time after conception is too high, an age at which the person can know that they are at risk of death and fear it, then it will be oppressive. However, an embryo or fetus is very unlikely to be know that abortion exists, or to do anything differently to avoid it, and therefore abortion cannot be oppressive like murder or torture is. Anyone capable of knowing about abortion is too old to be killed deliberately by it.
- jonah 14y ago
  > an age at which the person can know that they are at risk > of death and fear it, then it will be oppressive No one would really know about or have reason to fear getting killed for at least a few years after birth at the earliest...
haberman 14y ago
Women over 45 have an over 50% risk of miscarriage. If a zygote is a person then sex with women over 45 is criminal endangerment.