And you guys thought *I* was nuts.

[Betruger]

Tom - It is not hard at all to not come across guns endangering you in any way during a whole lifetime in the USA.

You don't choose parents/birthplace and in crappy neighbourhood cases it is not hard to get out. Study and take the working life's train to elsewhere.

[Diogenes]

I would suggest that it is a necessary part of human nature which creates new humans, and once having initiated the process, it is the tampering or interfering with it which is wrong. If tampering is acceptable, then Eugenics is likewise justified.

I always find arguments around eugenics difficult. It is, historically and for obvious reasons, repugnant.

However, suppose a couple have a medical disorder which means they are 75% likely to have a Down's Syndrome child. That would not put everyone of, but would you blame them from choosing not to have children? If they are RC the contraception method could be natural.

Anyway just because eugenics can be implemented through tampering, as you call it, and is objectionable, it does not logically imply that all tampering is necessarily objectionable.

I would suggest that this, as in all other discussions regarding good and evil, depends on mens rea.

[Diogenes]

This argument contains a logical flaw. it assumes most violence is rational. If on the other hand most violence is irrational, done by people who momentarily (or perhaps psychopathically) have lost control, a cold consideration of likely outcomes will not act as a deterrant, whereas making extreme violence easier will increase the incidence of violence.
So it is down to careful analysis of data.

In the United States 70% of violent crime including homicide is gang/criminal related probably connected with the drug trade. It is not the "impulsive" behavior of a madman but the deliberate behavior of criminals. Likewise the gov violence against their own citizens.

BTW - most violent criminal behaviour is impulsive. One of the strongest personality correlates with criminality is exactly impulsiveness. Pretty obvious really, it is not long term a good life being a criminal.
e.g.
James, M. & Seager, J. A. (2006). Impulsivity and schemas for a hostile world:
Postdictors of violent behaviour. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 50, 47-56.

It is "impulsive" because the belief is that they can get away with it. Again, no one is "impulsive" in attacking a grizzly bear.

[Diogenes]

As for gov violence against citizens is this high in the states? It is very very low in UK, but then we have strict gun controls even for police...
Are you claiming that police without guns more less likley to kill or hurt people than police with guns?

Generally armed violence against citizens by gov is low in the US by world standards I would say. Strict gun controls for police work only if you assume that the higher ups don't want the police to hurt citizens, maybe true in the UK, not true if you are a dictator. In Egypt during the "arab spring" uprising the police started shooting the demonstrators, only stopping a bloodbath when the military told the police to stop. Usually in an oppressive state, the police/military are on the same page when it comes to shooting the citizenry. Where the people are disarmed they have no ultimate protection against the naked power of the state, rules in theory or not.

Ghandi did pretty well in India.

I think this argument is a bit theoretical. Are you saying that if every Libyan had a handgun Ghaddaffi would not have been able to rule? I doubt that. Handguns don't work against tanks.

In the UK anyone in the police who wanted to kill citizens (even criminals) would be quickly removed. The only allowance is where it is genuinely thought killing is the only way to prevent immediate harm to self or others others.

And what are you doing about knives? I've been reading all sorts of references to the upswing of knife and club attacks in England. The criminals are emboldened by the sure knowledge that their victims are likely unarmed.

[Diogenes]

For the intents and purposes of your differentiation they are. Sapience is the ability to exercise judgement. Non sapience is your threshold for killing.

Nope. At least not precisely. Smart humans are not "more sapient" than stupid ones. Sapience is more like a phase change rather than a temperature. My suspicion is that it happens when the brain splits into two and one can be aware of ones own awareness. When that happens is probably definable, but until it is I would tend to err on the "sooner rather than later" side.

You are trying to slice a continuum. There is no identifiable point which is different from another except at the beginning.

But for the sake of argument, what is your methodology for deciding that one microsecond a zygote is not sapient, and the next microsecond it is?

Don't have one, see above.

Then I guess you miss the point of the discussion. When creating a law, you have to make a decision. You don't have the luxury of saying "I haven't made up my mind yet."

By what scientific method would you decide a particular point in time over any other particular point in time so as to have a proper basis for a law?

Show me that sharp boundary between the one condition and the other so that we may clearly define it by law.

IBID.

Au contraire, mon frère! I have shown the only clear dividing point in the continuum that is human life.

[Diogenes]

Well, some food for thought: Babies usually dont recognize themselves in the mirror until they are about 6 months old.

The "Sapience" argument is just another dodge.

[KitemanSA]

For the intents and purposes of your differentiation they are. Sapience is the ability to exercise judgement. Non sapience is your threshold for killing.

Nope. At least not precisely. Smart humans are not "more sapient" than stupid ones. Sapience is more like a phase change rather than a temperature.

You are trying to slice a continuum. There is no identifiable point which is different from another except at the beginning.

Nope. Sentience is a continuum. Sapience is a character. It is or is not. Though without mutual language, it is sometimes difficult to tell which.

[KitemanSA]

Then I guess you miss the point of the discussion. When creating a law, you have to make a decision. You don't have the luxury of saying "I haven't made up my mind yet."

True, but you DEFINATELY have the option of saying, "We will draw the line at the beginning of sapience which we take to be "here" because of XYZ but this is subject to change as better understanding of sapience becomes available. The law would be "sapience". The line position would change as supported scientifically.

By what scientific method would you decide a particular point in time over any other particular point in time so as to have a proper basis for a law?

I suspect I would conduct hearings / colloquia / symposia, whatever, among scientists in the various related fields (NOT including surgery) and ask for their best consensus on the conservative (earliest) side.

Show me that sharp boundary between the one condition and the other so that we may clearly define it by law.

IBID.

Au contraire, mon frère! I have shown the only clear dividing point in the continuum that is human life.

Actually, you haven't. Death is another. Might just as well allow abortion until death.
But it is human SAPIENCE that counts for unique "human" rights. So such "dividing points" are immaterial for the "right or wrong" of it.

And oh by the way, is that first point fertilization? Implantation? First cell division? First organ differentiation? Is it ok to prevent fertiliazation? Is the woman guilty of murder if a fertilized egg fails to implant? Can she adjust her body chemistry to PREVENT implantation? Is she guilty of murder if fertilization occurs in vitro and at the second cell divide the doctor splits the mass into two identical twins and uses one to study the other's potential for genetic problems? How about if problems are found and she decides NOT to implant the remaining mass? Is that murder?
Just how intrusive are you proposing to be?

[tomclarke]

Tom - It is not hard at all to not come across guns endangering you in any way during a whole lifetime in the USA.

You don't choose parents/birthplace and in crappy neighbourhood cases it is not hard to get out. Study and take the working life's train to elsewhere.

Very true, though if you believe propaganda and have a gun easily accessible in your home you are of course at more danger regardless of neighbourhood!

I live in UK and never have any fear of our streets or countryside, because I choose not to go to the (very few) areas which are decidedly not good. Where I live is not particularly expensive, but a good area, and as safe as anywhere.

I would hate to live in a place where I worried about my children going out at night.

[Diogenes]

Further, if zygotes are people then coil contraception is murder.

It is the intentional killing of a unique human DNA shortly after it's creation.

Right. And is that like klling a human? I can create unique human DNA in a testtube pretty easily, or on a computer by combining two sequenced patterns. It is random, and easy to do.

You seem to be leaving out the chain reaction component of it. It is not just the creation of the program (Which I doubt you can make one that "runs" correctly) but it is the loading and running of it.

I can load any program into memory, but only when I launch it does it become instantiated. A Theoretical human loaded into memory is not the same thing as an operational one.

But let us consider another aspect of it. Supposing you could and did create unique DNA, it would presumably be your property. At what point would it cease to be your property, or would it ever? (Slaves?)



Another aspect of this of which I have just now considered is the possibility of taking aborted tissue and growing a new child from it. If it is okay with the law to kill it, why should it be objectionable to the law to grow it a new body?

I wonder how many people would be comfortable with having to face the child they killed in later years?

As our knowledge of molecular biology increases we will in the end be able to create artificially all the mechanics of a human cell. In which case this + DNA means artificailly created zygotes. Do these collections of proteins and amino acids suddenly become people? If so at which stage in their creation do they assume personhood and human rights?

Exactly the question I am trying to get you to answer! As I see an unbroken continuum subsequent their creation, it is contingent upon you to define some characteristic between Fusion and Death as the appropriate boundary for legal protection.

So. Just as there is no hard and fast boundary, so legal protection need not be binary. We protect legally against certain types of animal killing, but with much lower penalties than for human killing. In UK, where laws on this subject are still rational, illegal abortion is a bad crime, but not as bad as murder.

Here in America, we allow people to pull the body of a child out of it's mother while leaving the head inside so that it can be punctured and have it's brains sucked out. But if the head comes out accidentally, the law will protect the child. Apparently the boundary between life and death is a few inches wide.

I personally see this as completely irrational and unscientific, but you may see a world of difference between the one condition and the other.

As I have mentioned, Egg laying certainly clarifies the distinction between one creature and another.

I'm agreeing with you about the impossibility if a precise boundary, disagreeing about the necessity.

And I'm consistent in this, since you still require a precise boundary. You have chosen one that is logically less problematic, until molecular biology advances, but conceptually silly. I don't believe you think killing an undifferentiated zygote, with a contraceptive coil, is as bad as murder.

How "bad" something is depends on mens rea. Accidental killing is not as bad as intentional killing, though the victim is in the same condition regardless.

But let us examine for a moment, this concept of "less bad" killing. Does it apply to anywhere else in the continuum of human life? For example, is it "less bad" to kill a child than an adult, or is it worse to kill an adult? If we are to consider a flexible scale for how bad it is to kill a human in various stages of development, what is the logical basis for this scale?

How do we define the rules using a standard other than "Well, I just think it ought to be here, but not there. " (Arbitrary) Again, can we not get some scientific methodology to focus on defining this currently subjective boundary?

This reductio ad absurdum shows that absolute people/not people divide will in the end never be consistent. So we are left with according "human rights" to other entities in some (not easily defined) graduated way.

Oh, it's easy to define. Some people simply don't like the obvious and scientific answer, preferring instead to base their opinions on what is convenient and self indulgent to their existing predisposition.

This is the basic difference between us. I agree it is "obvious and scientific" but not that it is any proper basis for morality or legality. The only argument for it is if you insist on an unrealistic human/hot human classification.


Morally the argument against it is that you are distinguishing between how life is created. By your definition, a human born from "extreme artificial insemination" where the zygote itself was created artificually, even though functionally identical to a normal zygote, would be non-human and presumably could be raised for spare parts etc.

You will realise the problem this creates.

I don't think you do. Again, when does such a thing cease being the property of it's owner? Also, presumably any created DNA would have to have been initiated by existing DNA. Even if you were to use one of those chemical splicing machines, you must start with a pattern obtained elsewhere. You are in effect copying an existing design without resort to the "normal" copying process, but you are non the less still copying.

Personally I don't see that a non-sentient lump of 16 identical cells that could in a womb develop into a human is much more worth rights than an ovum which could given a sperm and womb also so develop.

One would think someone as intelligent as yourself could understand the obvious difference. Ovum and sperm in proximity to each other represent the early stage of probability as shown by this graph. It is only when they have fused that the probability spikes to infinity.





It is not just a function of mechanics, (biochemistry) but of probability as well.

Is that so? No zygote has a 100% chance of developing fully. 25% of zygotes spontaneously abort, so you have natural 25% death rate. No doubt this can be moved a few points up or down by dietary supplements etc. From sperm & egg close together you have maybe 50% chance of full development.

Where is the hard moral dividing line?

Mens rea.

You realise that I don't see the morality as relating to how humans are created, only to what they are, and what they can be. I would accord artificially created human life the same rights as 'natural' human life.

In fact the distinction between artificial and natural causation is another dubious topic - since humans are themselves part of the universe.

The argument that we are all part of the Universe, and that anything we do is therefore "natural" is a justification for Stalin, Hitler and Mao. There is a bigger picture, and every piece fits into it. The actual positions of those defending the practice are not based on any real concern for accuracy or scientific method, they are simply rationalizations of self-indulgent behavior. I will argue that evolution will decide the abortion question and I have little doubt as to how it is going to eventually come out.

[tomclarke]

In the United States 70% of violent crime including homicide is gang/criminal related probably connected with the drug trade. It is not the "impulsive" behavior of a madman but the deliberate behavior of criminals. Likewise the gov violence against their own citizens.

BTW - most violent criminal behaviour is impulsive. One of the strongest personality correlates with criminality is exactly impulsiveness. Pretty obvious really, it is not long term a good life being a criminal.
e.g.
James, M. & Seager, J. A. (2006). Impulsivity and schemas for a hostile world:
Postdictors of violent behaviour. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 50, 47-56.

It is "impulsive" because the belief is that they can get away with it. Again, no one is "impulsive" in attacking a grizzly bear.

Take the case of a man whose wife and children have been attacked and killed by said bear, and who confronts it impulsively in his rage?

I agfree it is not typical. It is pretty difficult to have an escalating argument with a grizzly...

[Diogenes]

"What they are and what they can be".

Before somone leaps onto the inconsistency, killing babies or children is the greatest crime. But logically, you would think that killing fully developed adults is a greater crime.

Otherwise, if you include potential, then how can killing a zygote be different from killing an adult?

I think my morality includes not just rational calculation of this but the way we all feel. We feel that young innocent children must be protected above all else. Perhaps, evolutionarily, because otherwise killing helpless offspring would be just too easy. And it would not be good for our species, because pregnancy is so costly. (Compare with rabbits, where fathers will sometimes kill young, but young are very cheap).

So when a child is born would be my starting point for murder. Before that point there is a balance of rights between mother and foetus that changes with the development of the foetus. In evolutionary terms the value would relate to the cost of the pregnancy so far. That is not so far away from the way many people feel.

Best wishes, Tom

So apply this to chicken eggs. Is it only "murder" after the chick breaks out of the shell?





So philosophically, the boundary of the law should be the thickness of an egg? Sorry, I fail to see a great deal of distinction between the one condition and the other.

[Diogenes]

Here in Austria, we have a limit for how long an abortion is legal:
3 months
After that it can ony be performed if there is a medical necessity (e.g. the mothers life is in danger) and then only of the mother agrees.

And what is the basis for determining 3 months is the appropriate point to draw the line? It smacks of arbitrariness to me. It is odd that it has a nice whole number to define it. I would find it more credible if someone had said 3.437 months. It would lead me to believe that someone had actually calculated something as opposed to pulling a number out of their @ss.

So why should it be 3, rather than 2.9, or 3.1? How does the Science behind this law arrive at the number "3"?

Personally, I think that this regulation is pretty good and I am not in favor of abortions. If my not yet born doughter ever had an abortion, she would hear it from me. Would I want her to go to prison for that though? Of course not! There are certain situations where I would favor an abortion though. E.g. in case of a rape. I would not want my wife or doughter to have to give birth to the bastard of a rapist.
In that case I woul from my moral POV even find an abortion after 3 months excusable.

In past application of law regarding abortion, the women did not go to jail. They were used as witnesses against the man who actually committed the murder. There were doctors sent to prison for performing abortions. For what it's worth, I will point out that Mengele made his living performing abortions. It seems to be an appropriate vocation for people who have always killed people for a living.

And therein also lies a salient philosophical point. It is usually someone else who is not the woman that does the actual killing. The woman just enables him.

[tomclarke]

"What they are and what they can be".

Before somone leaps onto the inconsistency, killing babies or children is the greatest crime. But logically, you would think that killing fully developed adults is a greater crime.

Otherwise, if you include potential, then how can killing a zygote be different from killing an adult?

I think my morality includes not just rational calculation of this but the way we all feel. We feel that young innocent children must be protected above all else. Perhaps, evolutionarily, because otherwise killing helpless offspring would be just too easy. And it would not be good for our species, because pregnancy is so costly. (Compare with rabbits, where fathers will sometimes kill young, but young are very cheap).

So when a child is born would be my starting point for murder. Before that point there is a balance of rights between mother and foetus that changes with the development of the foetus. In evolutionary terms the value would relate to the cost of the pregnancy so far. That is not so far away from the way many people feel.

Best wishes, Tom

So apply this to chicken eggs. Is it only "murder" after the chick breaks out of the shell?





So philosophically, the boundary of the law should be the thickness of an egg? Sorry, I fail to see a great deal of distinction between the one condition and the other.

The equivalence would be for murder defined after the hen has laid the egg - and it is therefore an independent living organism. At that point you have no pics of advanced stage foetal chicks.

[tomclarke]

Here in Austria, we have a limit for how long an abortion is legal:
3 months
After that it can ony be performed if there is a medical necessity (e.g. the mothers life is in danger) and then only of the mother agrees.

And what is the basis for determining 3 months is the appropriate point to draw the line? It smacks of arbitrariness to me. It is odd that it has a nice whole number to define it. I would find it more credible if someone had said 3.437 months. It would lead me to believe that someone had actually calculated something as opposed to pulling a number out of their @ss.

So why should it be 3, rather than 2.9, or 3.1? How does the Science behind this law arrive at the number "3"?

Personally, I think that this regulation is pretty good and I am not in favor of abortions. If my not yet born doughter ever had an abortion, she would hear it from me. Would I want her to go to prison for that though? Of course not! There are certain situations where I would favor an abortion though. E.g. in case of a rape. I would not want my wife or doughter to have to give birth to the bastard of a rapist.
In that case I woul from my moral POV even find an abortion after 3 months excusable.

In past application of law regarding abortion, the women did not go to jail. They were used as witnesses against the man who actually committed the murder. There were doctors sent to prison for performing abortions. For what it's worth, I will point out that Mengele made his living performing abortions. It seems to be an appropriate vocation for people who have always killed people for a living.

And therein also lies a salient philosophical point. It is usually someone else who is not the woman that does the actual killing. The woman just enables him.

Many worthwhile distinctions are not clean, as you would wish.

And of course precise boundaries are arbitrary. Take the analogy with statutory rape. We all agree (I expect) that sex with children is bad, between grownups less bad. So where do you draw the line for extreme penalties? Why (in UK) 16 years, why not 15.5 or 16.2?

The lack of precision does not invalidate a distinction between paedophilia and adult consensual sex.