Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

Hotblack Desiato

recedite wrote: »

Dude, antiskeptic was using a rhetorical device when he suggested yayheists (ie Yes-voting atheists) were attempting to to cheat evolution, and referred to it as "the very god that created them". That's a god with a small "g".
I thought it was a good post, but obviously it went waaay over some peeps heads, like.

You've become a parody of yourself Recedite, and it's sad to see.

end of the road

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

So what? Not your womb, not your choice, not your resulting child to raise and not your difficulties to overcome.

I support the right of every woman with a prenatal DS diagnosis to abort, whether 1% or 10% or 100% choose to do so is irrelevant.

nope, human being, right to life. the view you subscribe to is irrelevant and not credible due to the reality that people of such a belief would have a different attitude if it was a newborn. the unborn are also not property but are human beings who due to nature, have to live in the mother's womb for a time

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Utter lies.

Public servants took 3 rounds of pay cuts.

The cuts to new entrants were unilaterally imposed by FF/Green government and were NOT part of any agreement with unions.

Your ignorance is profound.

oh it's really not. there is no ignorance or lies. his comparison is actually a good one, one lot of workers losing out for those higher up. other members of humanity being shafted for the members seen as higher on the ladder in the case of abortion on demand.

Zubeneschamali

end of the road wrote: »

nope, human being, right to life.

Sentence, words, missing.

aloyisious

end of the road wrote: »

the view you subscribe to is irrelevant and not credible due to the reality that people of such a belief would have a different attitude if it was a newborn.

That's a strange comment. If the recemtly unborn was now a newborn, then the pregnant woman could hardly have been of the belief to abort it.

nozzferrahhtoo

Nice to see you are not ignoring ALL my posts. Just the ones specifically having a conversation with you.

recedite wrote: »

Only that in some countries they are routinely aborted, and that has become the new "normal". Its not a cure for DS, its a cull. Whether you agree or disagree with the cull, its still relevant to the overall abortion discussion.

But AGAIN, if you are already against people having choice based abortion, then it is blatantly obvious you will be against it for the purposes of dealing with a diagnosis of DS. If however you see no issue with choosing to have an abortion, then there is no particular argument against having one specifically for this reason.

That is what I mean by not understanding it's relevance.

recedite wrote: »

If you seek differences you will find them. Confederate slave owners used to say black people did not have the same rights because obvious differences are obvious.

recedite wrote: »

Your attitude is based on a similar prejudice. As long as you are in the advantaged group, you are quite happy.

Pretty poor attempt there. The group distinction you are speaking of does not exist in my positions on this matter. Because the "group" you seem to think "disadvantaged" are not a group at all. They simply are not people yet.

The group that I see as ACTUALLY being "disadvantaged" here are the group of pregnant women who have their medical choices, freedoms, well being and more curtailed in deference to biological agents that are not even sentient yet.

But I guess as long as you are neither pregnant nor female.... as long as you are in the advantaged group, you are quite happy.

recedite wrote: »

Not just the plantation owners, slavery has been a feature of human societies for most of history.

Relevance? The attempts to link a thread on abortion to slavery is about the most desperate move I have seen to date on this forum (though it was trumped on the PROC forum by someone who took pictures of a still birth from an article in a news paper and started claiming it was an abortion).

recedite wrote: »

First establish that a particular group is sub-human for whatever reason. Find a reason or a difference, its easy enough if you look for one. Then it follows that their human rights can be "repealed".

Not comparable because the groups YOU talk of actually are human and attempts to dehumanize them are failing more and more in our modern world.

The group THIS thread is about has not been shown to be human in any other sense but taxonomy. No other meaningful sense of what it means to be "human" is being linked to the fetus. And the only people who even TRY to do so, do it by appealing to things they might be in the future, and attempt to have us lend that credence in the present.

recedite wrote: »

Sentience, intelligence and the capacity to live independently of parents are things that develop very slowly in humans.
But when they are fully developed, which is not until many years after birth, they make us the smartest creature on earth, and allow us to dominate every other animal.

Wow way to not actually answer the question you were directly, and quite clearly, asked.The question was "Does a 12 week old foetus possess sentience for instance?" and the answer, just so you know, is "No, we have absolutely no reason at this time to think so. At all. Even a little bit".

recedite wrote: »

Neither of us can say when the first drop of magical sentience appears.

Wow dodged it twice in a row, that's wonderful stuff. Again however your answer here is a complete deflection, even if it is essentially true. It IS true that we do not know when the "first drop" appears. But that does not mean we are unable to point at a time and say "Ok, but is there any reason AT ALL to think it has appeared HERE".

You were asked specifically about "12 weeks" not "When do we think it had appeared". And at 12 weeks the answer is that we currently have ZERO arguments, evidence, data OR reasoning on offer to suggest anything of the sort has appeared, or begun to.

recedite wrote: »

Is sentience your benchmark for determining humanity, and if so, what level of it turns an animal into a human being?

I do not think we need to equivocate between "levels of it" at all for the purposes of abortion.

An analogy: If you are about to blow up a building, then it is useful to know that the building has no people in it. If there is, then it really is irrelevant how old they are, how many there are, how they got there, how long they have been there, what they are wearing, or just about everything else. But if they are wholly absent, you can blow up the building at will.

The same is essentially true here with abortion. As long as you can be sure (as sure as science gets, because of course we are not "sure" of anything in science) sentience has not come on line..... then the building is empty and you can blow it up. Equivocating about attributes it might have later on, is about as useful as wondering whether the people who might go into the building tomorrow are wearing Nike or Reebok.

So it is red herrings, and little more, you offer us here.

recedite

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The group THIS thread is about has not been shown to be human in any other sense but taxonomy. No other meaningful sense of what it means to be "human" is being linked to the fetus.

FWIW I'm not ignoring your posts. I know your position and you know mine. We disagree, and there is nothing more to say about it.
Its a glass "half full or half empty" scenario. You can't prove the foetus lacks personhood/human beingness or whatever you want to call it. I can't prove it fulfills all the requirements 100%.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

An analogy: If you are about to blow up a building, then it is useful to know that the building has no people in it. If there is, then it really is irrelevant how old they are, how many there are, how they got there, how long they have been there, what they are wearing, or just about everything else. But if they are wholly absent, you can blow up the building at will.

Nice analogy, but like all your arguments, it is based on the same old false premise from my POV.
You've seen and heard "beings" still inside the building, but decided that they were sub-human, and so declared the building to be "empty".

ohnonotgmail

recedite wrote: »

FWIW I'm not ignoring your posts. I know your position and you know mine. We disagree, and there is nothing more to say about it.
Its a glass "half full or half empty" scenario. You can't prove the foetus lacks personhood/human beingness or whatever you want to call it. I can't prove it fulfills all the requirements 100%.


Nice analogy, but like all your arguments, it is based on the same old false premise from my POV.
You've seen and heard "beings" still inside the building, but decided that they were sub-human, and so declared the building to be "empty".

Not that they are sub-human but that they have not yet obtained those qualities that we use to define humanity. A decision that can be backed up logically and scientifically and not just a gut feeling.

Pete29

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Not that they are sub-human but that they have not yet obtained those qualities that we use to define humanity.

What are those qualities which define humanity?

ohnonotgmail

Pete29 wrote: »

What are those qualities which define humanity?

well sentience for a start. a 12 week old foetus doesn't have any.

Pete29

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

well sentience for a start. a 12 week old foetus doesn't have any.

Either does a new born. A new born doesn't show signs of sentience or consciousness until around four or five months after birth.

Is it ok to kill them ten minutes after birth?

ohnonotgmail

Pete29 wrote: »

Either does a new born. A new born doesn't show signs of sentience or consciousness until around four or five months after birth.

Is it ok to kill them ten minutes after birth?

Really? what are you basing that on? At the 24 weeks the physical building blocks required start to develop. During (natural) birth the brain abruptly wakes up. So while we cannot say what level of sentience a newborn has we definitely cannot say that they have none. We cannot say the same about a 12-week old foetus.

aloyisious

Pete29 wrote: »

Either does a new born. A new born doesn't show signs of sentience or consciousness until around four or five months after birth

Would you count recognition by eyesight at around 3 months as sentience, or voice recognition within 24 hours of birth as sentience, or define them as something else?


Here's a link to the voice recognition ability of a new born's brain:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101215195234.htm

BTW, it's from 2010.

Hotblack Desiato

Here's a polling station in Dublin 12...







I've emailed the Dublin City returning officer, those posters better be gone by Friday morning or the Gardai will be contacted. Entirely inappropriate and illegal.

Ridiculous having a polling station in the grounds of a church in the first place though. Walking past statues into a room with a crucifix on the wall ffs.

Pete29

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

During (natural) birth the brain abruptly wakes up.

Yes, I too can use google

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/

There is no question that the baby is awake. Its eyes are wide open, it wriggles and grimaces, and, most important, it cries. But all that is not the same as being conscious, of experiencing pain, seeing red or smelling Mom’s milk.

Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation.

Even if a child isn't conscious in the womb, it will be conscious and to rob it off that possibility is wrong.

Appledreams15

Pete29 wrote: »

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

well sentience for a start. a 12 week old foetus doesn't have any.

Either does a new born. A new born doesn't show signs of sentience or consciousness until around four or five months after birth.

Is it ok to kill them ten minutes after birth?

Pete, a question.

Are you comfortable with the 80 per cent male government in Ireland?

Are you comfortable with the huge anounts of rape and sex abuse against women that happens in Ireland?

The huge amount of suffering that women go through in Ireland just because they are born a woman.

Surely, these are things that vitally need to be addressed in our home country.

ohnonotgmail

Pete29 wrote: »

Yes, I too can use google

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/





Even if a child isn't conscious in the womb, it will be conscious and to rob it off that possibility is wrong.

*sigh* round and round in circles we go. Do you know who is definitely conscious and sentient? The woman who is pregnant. You think the foetus is as important as she is. and that to me is nonsense. #RepealThe8th

antiskeptic

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him

Leo will be looking forward to tonight's debate with some trepidation so. First up: Minister, you say abortion on the grounds of disability will be prohibited"

nozzferrahhtoo

recedite wrote: »

Its a glass "half full or half empty" scenario. You can't prove the foetus lacks personhood/human beingness or whatever you want to call it. I can't prove it fulfills all the requirements 100%.

It is usually the Theists who come into this area of the forum pretending to completely misunderstand where the burden of proof lies in the arguments around here. But the "You can not prove it lacks it" argument is no more valid from you here than the "You can not prove there is NO god" approach we see from them. A move we never accept from them, so why you think it valid here is beyond me.

So the rest your post saying my premise is faulty is better directed at the mirror. Because the building still remains empty, regardless. Even "sub-human" is the wrong word and imports premises that are not my own. So the comparison does not hold.

But I am not even sure what you mean by "prove" here. What is it you think requires "proof"? We can decide what defines a human person, and then we can use our science to go check if the attributes defined are present and in play.

antiskeptic

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

We can decide what defines a human person, and then we can use our science to go check if the attributes defined are present and in play.

Forgive hopping into the discussion - and I may be grabbing the wrong end of the stick. How does one suppose one's approach is the correct approach in the first place.

If the chosen approach is a belief-based approach (in that I think this the best way to go about establishing something) surely one is left with it being an act of faith on the matter?

ohnonotgmail

antiskeptic wrote: »

Leo will be looking forward to tonight's debate with some trepidation so. First up: Minister, you say abortion on the grounds of disability will be prohibited"

what part of the proposed legislation says that disability is a grounds for termination?

nozzferrahhtoo

antiskeptic wrote: »

Forgive hopping into the discussion - and I may be grabbing the wrong end of the stick. How does one suppose one's approach is the correct approach in the first place.

Not sure I understand the question. One does not need faith to agree on the definition of terms. It is we as a species that should define what we mean by "Humanity" or what we mean by "Human Person". And then having done so we can use our science to check if the attributes used to define it are even there at given stages.

Which part of that requires faith?

Mark Hamill

Pete29 wrote: »

Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation.

Our proposed laws will allow abortion up to 12 weeks, past that only for FFA or danger to health of the mother, so what has something that only appears past 24 weeks got to do with anything?

Pete29 wrote: »

Even if a child isn't conscious in the womb, it will be conscious and to rob it off that possibility is wrong.

Should travelling for abortion be made illegal?

nozzferrahhtoo

Pete29 wrote: »

Either does a new born. A new born doesn't show signs of sentience or consciousness until around four or five months after birth. Is it ok to kill them ten minutes after birth?

Not showing outward signs of it that you and other lay people would recognize does not mean A) it is not showing ANY signs of it or that it does not have it though. So your question here is rather simplistic and entirely missing the point.

Pete29 wrote: »

Even if a child isn't conscious in the womb, it will be conscious and to rob it off that possibility is wrong.

That is the assertion I have heard a few times during the weeks of this debate. Mostly from just two users, one of whom invented a "Right to become sentient" but then ran away every time he was challenged on the existence of such a right.

But aside from asserting it, I am not seeing anyone present a single reason to support it. Perhaps you can do what they have not, and adumbrate the line of reasoning that leads to this assertion. If something is not at all sentient, and never has been, what arguments specifically place an onus on us morally and ethically to allow it, or even specifically to aid it, in achieving that potential?

To illustrate this point I tried an analogy once but it sent one of the cohort espousing this assertion out of the room screeching "irrelevant". But imagine for a moment I created an Artificial Intelligence that would be every bit as sentient, and conscious as you or I. With equal, or even higher, ability to attain suffering or well being.

All that remains is for me to hit the "ON" button. Why do I have a moral onus to press that button rather than, say, taking apart the entire system and using the parts to build toasters for my mates instead?

recedite

Pete29 wrote: »

What are those qualities which define humanity?

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Really? what are you basing that on? At the 24 weeks the physical building blocks required start to develop. During (natural) birth the brain abruptly wakes up. So while we cannot say what level of sentience a newborn has we definitely cannot say that they have none. We cannot say the same about a 12-week old foetus.

I'm not impressed with your "building blocks" and your brain "suddenly waking up".
It is, in fact, pseudo-scientific nonsense.

aloyisious wrote: »

Here's a link to the voice recognition ability of a new born's brain:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101215195234.htm

BTW, it's from 2010.

Yes, voice recognition also happens within the womb. The foetus can be stimulated into kicking and moving around after recognising a voice, or even the theme tune to mother's favourite TV soap opera.

ohnonotgmail

recedite wrote: »

I'm not impressed with your "building blocks" and your brain "suddenly waking up".
It is, in fact, pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Not like Scientific American to post pseudo science. I'm glad i have you to correct them.

recedite

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

It is usually the Theists who come into this area of the forum pretending to completely misunderstand where the burden of proof lies in the arguments around here. But the "You can not prove it lacks it" argument is no more valid from you here than the "You can not prove there is NO god" approach we see from them. A move we never accept from them, so why you think it valid here is beyond me.

Well no, "absence of evidence" does not equate to "evidence of absence". That is a standard scientific assumption which I am adhering to, and you are not.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

So the rest your post saying my premise is faulty is better directed at the mirror. Because the building still remains empty, regardless. Even "sub-human" is the wrong word and imports premises that are not my own.

No the building is not empty, and sub-human is the correct term. You have agreed that the foetus is entirely human from a "taxonomic" POV but then declare that "it lacks sentience". Even if we accept this description, we have something that is not quite a human being, ergo a sub-human. Not "a nothing".
Perhaps if you explained your definition of "sentience" we could take this further. IMO there are two broad definitions of the word.

Number 1 is the original definition, which distinguishes an animal from say, a rock. It feels. For example, if you poke an earthworm, it feels that pain stimulus and tries to escape in the opposite direction.

Number 2 is the science fiction definition. This is the one where Data in Star Trek attains sentience because he thinks and behaves much like a human, but one with a better memory.

I don't think either of these definitions can be used as the yardstick for defining humanity. The first because it defines animals, and the second because it is only fiction.

Now we can move the goalposts a bit further apart if you like, and include other definitions such as self awareness, consciousness, intelligence..
All tend to be quite difficult to pin down. For example crows show excellent problem solving abilities, and a curiosity to examine themselves in a mirror, yet they are obviously not human. But by these metrics, they are more human than a 2 week old human baby.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

But imagine for a moment I created an Artificial Intelligence that would be every bit as sentient, and conscious as you or I. With equal, or even higher, ability to attain suffering or well being.
All that remains is for me to hit the "ON" button. Why do I have a moral onus to press that button rather than, say, taking apart the entire system and using the parts to build toasters for my mates instead?

Here we go again with the science fiction. Lets divide this into two parts.
a) Are we going to help the AI as a fellow human? The answer is NO, because your AI lacks humanity in taxonomic, biological, visual, gut instinct sort of way. Therefore it fails to engender the sort of feelings of empathy that we would naturally have towards fellow humans (born or unborn) The sort of feelings that those on the pro-abortion side must carefully keep under control by objecting vociferously to any exposure to visual images of the unborn, or what actually happens in an abortion.


b) Now we come to the science fiction part. Will we help it out of respect for an alien intelligence? IMO the answer is No. There is no ethical reason to bring into existence an intelligence that would logically turn against humanity and destroy us.

If an alien intelligence arrived from another planet, then it gets more complicated. We would have to recognise their rights, and they would have to recognise ours. If either side failed to do that, there woud be war, and in war one or both sides always lose.

recedite

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Here's a polling station in Dublin 12...







I've emailed the Dublin City returning officer, those posters better be gone by Friday morning or the Gardai will be contacted. Entirely inappropriate and illegal.

Ridiculous having a polling station in the grounds of a church in the first place though. Walking past statues into a room with a crucifix on the wall ffs.

I agree this is a ridiculous situation, but the church is entitled to display its own posters on its own private property. The problem arises here because the state funds the church school, and now wishes to use the school for other state functions (polling booths).
What we have here is a fine example of a "reductio ad absurdeum" argument against the state funding of religious schools.


Let us know how you get on though.

Zubeneschamali

recedite wrote: »

Well no, "absence of evidence" does not equate to "evidence of absence". That is a standard scientific assumption which I am adhering to, and you are not.

"There is a live elephant in your office".

Looks around - concludes that no, there is no live elephant in my office.

Because of the absence of evidence for the elephant.

Absence of evidence when presence would leave evidence absolutely is evidence of absence.

Now, this is not always the case. "There is a teapot orbiting Mars" - we have no evidence, but is is not something we would see evidence for if it were true, so the lack of evidence is not evidence of an absence of space teapots.

Outlaw Pete

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am not seeing anyone present a single reason to support it.

Would you come off it, Nozz.

Dozens of users over the years have thoroughly rebutted and dismantled your nonsense sentience arguments. For almost a decade now I have watched users painstakingly do it only for you to act like they haven't. Users just end up letting you have the last say (/ last thesis) and you of course then act like you're the victor and accuse them of just running away from you but that's not remotely true.

I myself have debated you many times of course, both here and on Politics.ie and without fail, when holes in your position are pointed out, you just obfuscate over and over and tell users they are making things up. I'd be a rich man if I had a Euro for every time you have told a user either that they were running away from you, or that they were making stuff up. You accused me of lying about a quote to strengthen my position in one thread and when I linked to the report where the quote was made, you then switched to saying that the researchers were just unprofessional. Since then you have regularly suggested I believed the research showed that fetuses were trying to talk in the womb, rather than merely looking 'as if' they were, as the researchers had said, despite my having done nothing of the sort. When presented with an article quoting NHS staff to back up another point I was making you replied: "That they have said it does not mean it is true however."

I remember the days when you were posting links to your Atheism Ireland essays about abortion (in the late noughties) and the word 'sentience' (new Boardsies will be astonished to hear) didn't appear once. In fact it was The Corinthian who first suggested to you that you were confusing consciousness with sentience in the following exchange:

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

As I said, since it is FROM our consciousness that the notion of rights comes from I think it is also TO that we assign it. If you find another conscious species which holds this concept of rights then by all means let us re-open the discussion and talk of extending the definition to them. I am not aware of any animal which holds a concept of "Right to life" however, are you? In fact we alone seem to be the only species that is aware that it is definitely going to die.

The Corinthian wrote: »

You are confusing conciousness with sentience...

And from that moment on you haven't stopped using the word of course. That was also around the time that you used to suggest that a woman who aborted a sentient fetus, or even threatened to, should be imprisoned:

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

If two beings are to be considered to have the "right to life“ then if one person is threatening an action on the life of another, I advocate incarceration.

I stick to that regardless of whether we are talking about you and me, or a mother and baby.

You still believe that? Just curious, as I don't think I've ever seen you say it since.

ohnonotgmail

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Would you come off it, Nozz.

Dozens of users over the years have thoroughly rebutted and dismantled your nonsense sentience arguments. For almost a decade now I have watched users painstakingly do it only for you to act like they haven't. Users just end up letting you have the last say (/ last thesis) and you of course then act like you're the victor and accuse them of just running away from you but that's not remotely true.

I myself have debated you many times of course, both here and on Politics.ie and without fail, when holes in your position are pointed out, you just obfuscate over and over and tell users they are making things up. I'd be a rich man if I had a Euro for every time you have told a user either that they were running away from you, or that they were making stuff up. You accused me of lying about a quote to strengthen my position in one thread and when I linked to the report where the quote was made, you then switched to saying that the researchers were just unprofessional. Since then you have regularly suggested I believed the research showed that fetuses were trying to talk in the womb, rather than merely looking 'as if' they were, as the researchers had said, despite my having done nothing of the sort. When presented with an article quoting NHS staff to back up another point I was making you replied: "That they have said it does not mean it is true however."

I remember the days when you were posting links to your Atheism Ireland essays about abortion (in the late noughties) and the word 'sentience' (new Boardsies will be astonished to hear) didn't appear once. In fact it was The Corinthian who first suggested to you that you were confusing consciousness with sentience in the following exchange:





And from that moment on you haven't stopped using the word of course. That was also around the time that you used to suggest that a woman who aborted a sentient fetus, or even threatened to, should be imprisoned:



You still believe that? Just curious, as I don't think I've ever seen you say it since.

Quoting a 9 year old post? How desperate are you?