Abortion

However, you do realize that aborted fetuses are put towards research to help save elderly people's lives, right? That could save you some day.

 

The fact that you agree doesn't add any strength to his argument. It is not possible to think by our definition, without a brain....obviously, WE have defined it that way. That's what I'm saying the problem is. We don't know if we've made our definitions correctly.

It's also quite audacious of you to go so far as to even capitalize the word prove. As I've said too many times in the last month or so, no observable phenomenon can be 'proven.' As a scientific researcher, one must throw the word 'proof' from their vocabulary. As a mathematician, one can 'prove' what is true, or rather what follows from certain axioms...but even then, one cannot prove the consistency of their own axioms.

However, I think you're gunning for a counter-example. Well, since we're not exactly at the height of medical technology, nor are humans open-minded beings (down to the core: we always look for facts to validate our own opinions / actions, instead of looking for those to the contradictory. This is 'proven' psychology, and also outlines the scientific method) I somehow doubt we'll ever find any evidence. Doesn't mean we're right, and infact, we're almost certainly not (I'm almost certainly incorrect too).

"We all must adhere to what we have to gain knowledge and what we have is current science."

This is an example of a 'closed-minded' statement I referred to. We have current science, we use current science and will search for evidence that we are correct. Scientific research doesn't go out hoping to prove themselves wrong; infact that's the whole idea behind the "Null Hypothesis" of the scientific method. We would probably know a lot more if we weren't so afraid to be wrong, and actually critically analyzed our own findings more often.

So as I said in the last post....it's pretty much a finger-pointing game at this point. "I don't have the right to tell someone to do something, they don't have the right to kill it." Pretty weak argument.

I'd also like to note that I've never said 'so and so shouldn't abort.' I've merely been pointing out things to challenge that right, and challenges to some potential validations for abortions.

 

That's a very what if scenario, maybe we did maybe we didnt. Regardless, its still our definition, and we can't act assuming there is another, thats stupid.

 

Actually, if I am the father of that child, then it does affect me. That's a son or daughter I'm not going to have anymore because of a decision to abort, and therefore, I think I have a say. The child may be carried in the mother's body, but that does not give her an exclusive claim on it.

Actually, it's a much more intellegent and intellectual line of thinking. Rather than just accepting that everything you know nad have been told is true, blindly believing in it, so to speak, such a train of thought strives to put aside preconcieved notions of true and false and examine the situation from all angles. It is more intellegent to say one does not know everything than it is to say everything one knows is true. The latter statement is ignorant.

This does not mean that automatically everything we know is false. Far from it. It's simply saying that we do not understand everything (in this case) anout the fetus, or of creatures that small. Maybe the fetus can think in ways which we have not yet discovered. Can I prove that? No. But unless you can disprove it, which you can't anymore than I can, than it is a possibility. Based on what we have been able to learn to this date, it can be said at the very most that your case is more likely than mine. But perhaps, someday in the future, new evidence and discoveries will make the opposite more likely. One never knows, and the best we can do is to make an educated guess.

This is not to say that this is wrong, or to say that the educated guess which you uphold has no weight. In fact I believe I have already said otherwise. My point is that it is far from "stupid" to accept that there may be somethign about the situation you don't know, and especially not stupid to take that possibility into concideration.


@Mike: I see what you're getting at with Schrodinger's Cat, but I think it works oppositely from what you have said. Schrodinger's Cat says that until you have witnessed the results, both outcomes are true. What you seem to have (or at least that's how I'm reading it) said is that neither is true.

For those who do not wish to read the article, here's the ides in a nutshell. Schrodinger has a cat. He locks his cat up along with a bowl of food with poison in it. He then walks away and leaves the cat alone. Since we have no looked in the room, we do not know whether or not the car has eaten the food and died, or has not eaten the food. And therefore, until observation shows us one way or another, the cat is assumed to be both alive and dead at the same time. Since neither outcome can be shown false, all outcomes are held to be true.

 

I understand all of that already. But not taking action because you feel like something will one day maybe sort of quazi be contradicted doesn't accomplish anything. Until something new arises that is in fact science's definition, and if you don't accept it then prove it wrong. But until you prove it wrong it is "fact". It's one thing to be open to change and another to expect change. If you expect a theory to be contradicted in 20 years, then come back and argue the point in 20 years. The politicians deciding to ban or leave this issue alone aren't thinking of schrodinger's quantam cat mechanic time zone theory, they are thinking of moral issues with the taking of plausible human life.

 

@Zenrot: EbAl posted a very nice defense, and put what I was trying to say very clearly.

For point 1, we're both right. You just have to realize that 'true and false' can both be 'true' statements (this is an exercise is propositional logic). It's kind of hard to put into words, so here's an example:

"It's true that the cat is dead." Clearly this statement has a truth value 'true.' However, "It's false that the cat is dead" does not. But if I rephrase it so I say "It is true that the cat is not dead" then it becomes true again.

If we're really finicky about logic, "It's false that the cat is dead" and "It's true the cat is not dead" are not saying precisely the same thing. However, in our human experience, we know that 'not dead' implies it is alive...so it holds in this case. (This is kind of dealing with that whole 'mutually exclusive cases' thing, where the cat may be neither dead nor alive, in a 'logic' perspective, however in reality this never happens). Hopefully I've convinced you though, that even though I was saying they're both wrong...I'm more saying "Both possibilities are true" where a possibility is the fact that a given outcome is false. Basically saying, "It is true that it is false."

As for the 2nd point, I just wanted to point out that it's a little stronger than your explanation gives credit. (I know you understand it EbAl, but just to stress an important point to those who don't wish to read it) It's not exactly that we don't really know which outcome happened so both are a possibility. Quantum Mechanics literally tells us, that the cat is BOTH alive and dead...at the same time...until we 'take a measurement' of it (ie. look at it).

This is kind of like the dual nature of light, if you're familiar. Light has properties of both a particle (It carries momentum) and a wave (it has interference patterns). Infact, it's been shown (and is the basis of quantum mechanics) that objects with mass also have wavelike properties (again, dual nature). That's where all this weird stuff about people spontaneously falling through walls and such comes from.

@EbAl: You probably know a fair bit about waves...I'm going to take a stab and assume you've learned a bit about optics as well. An interesting thing to note is that we can split light (ie. polarize light) into orthogonal components by using filters. This is the best picture I could find, even though it's not quite what I've described:

http://faulkes-telescope.com/files/faulkes-telescope.com/image/two_prisms_recombine.preview.png

The point is, we use mass to split light, and recombine it at another location. But the interesting thing is...we can split massive particles (ie. electrons) using sheets of light, and recombine them elsewhere analogously. There's a bit of role-reversal there.

EDIT: @Zenrot's new post:

It's not about whether or not something will be quasi-contradicted that sways one's decision. For instance, I don't need proof, or evidence, to feel that abortion is immoral. To me, it just is.

The exact thought process we're discussing now is as follows:

1) Something doesn't feel right, where do we draw the line, when does something become a human being?
2) Maybe we're messing with something we don't know about (infact, we are. as I was pointing out, we know nothing of this nature. This is the bulk of my discussion in this topic)
3) Perhaps there is something wrong with our outlook on certain issues (ie. 'how do we think?' 'What does it mean to be 'alive' ?')
4) I'll take the safe route, and be skeptical

I don't think we'll ever prove/disprove anything of this nature because we're too limited. The last point I've mentioned that you're discussing now, is that our scientific method is, in general, flawed. Maybe politicians should be looking at things such as quantum mechanics to gain an understanding of how the world works to add strength to their rationale.

So to summarize: I'm not 'not taking action because it could one day be disproven.' This isn't like researching some theory, where we have to make assumptions, and hope for the best. In that case, it would be silly to ignore a theory and just assume it's wrong. Instead, I'm 'not taking action because we're tangling with things we don't understand.'

We could be doing horrible things and not even realize. It's definitely not worth one night of pleasure to take this risk. It depends on one's conscience, but so does just about everything in life.

 

i didnt have time to read everyones posts but "keyofhope" umm..
how is it that you justify a soul
there is no such thing as a soul like there is no such thing as conscience
I understand some people are good and they have a guiding force but there is no way you could state "once it has a soul" as a fact
and how does a fetus become a fetus????
i think you meant to say once the fetus hits a certain point during the pregnancyit gains a "soul"

 

again "spirit"...
thats basicly what a "soul" would be
and none of that gives life
a child is always "alive"
as two different cells that eventual come together multiply and assign them selves as different cells and form tissues to organs and form a living being which is why any kind of male ejaculation or female menstruation is like abortion even if there was no choice

 

Along that line of thinking.

The argument here seems to be stages of development. So long as the fetus hasn't develped to a certain extent, you are relieved of moral responsibility. It's not a person yet, so it's okay.

But as has just been pointed out, it will be. So the question is, does it truly matter that it isn't yet. If left alone, it will become a person. Say a polkice officer witnesses a person walking into a bank. He sees the man has a gun. And he laos has the means to mask his face. The man seems pretty nervous. By law, this is called probable cause, and the police officer, seeing enough evidence to suggest that the man is going to rob the bank, has the legal right to intervene.

But he didn't rob the bank yet did he? By your logic, nothing has transpired, and therefore there is no bank robbery, and no crime, and no cause to intervene. The police offcier should go on about his business without even giving the man a second though. Only when the man holds up the bank, steals some money, shoots the teller and maybe a couple of customers, is there cause to intervene.

But honestly, what is the right thing to do? The right thing to do is to act based on what is going to be, not based on what hasn't happened yet. The same is true of the fetus. You're acting on what is and ignoring what will be. That baby is no less a human being that that bank robber is a criminal.

I'm not sure that was the best example, but hopefully you get my point.

 

Did you know that upon dying, the human body suddenly becomes lighter? Not to say this proves or is evidence of a soul, but it does demand several questions...none of which have been answered.

The title of the movie "21 grams" was based on this phenomenon (I've never seen it though, so I don't know if the movie is about this or not). The 'measured' decrease in mass which seems to contradict thermodynamics is approximately 21 grams, as was measured way back in the early 1900's. They've been repeated since then, as far as I know.

 

I understand and agree with you Al, but in my opinion it always goes back to whoever is actually pregnant. It is her choice whether or not she wants to go through the pregnancy, give birth, and care for a child.
If she truely does not want to give birth or deal with pregnancy then she should have the choice to abort.

 

People, this has just gone from arguing for or against to who's say is it. Ah well. Ignore me.

 

That's a pretty relevant discussion. All they're saying is "In the case that it is ok to abort, both parents should have an equal say in the matter."

Not that I have anything to add, I would agree with that statement (I would still argue for the side saying it's wrong).

I think the problem is people consider it their own body, and that they have a right to oversee anything that should happen to it. They don't really see that it's infact, a foreign body, with the exact same right.

And we come to, when does life begin?

 

In a way it is the same as the regular body. Just think of it as a very complex organ. If something happens to the fetus, that something is reflected to the mother. Miscarriages are pretty bad and the effects show on the parent who lost the child. A fetus makes a whole bunch of things happen. Hormones, bathroom breaks, need for food/water, etc. etc. I could go on forever.

 

The anatomist in me has to just stop and laugh...I'm sorry I don't mean to be offensive, but I just think that's a pretty silly thought...I'll tell you why:

You just wrote down a post saying why a fetus is different from an organ: an organ works to maintain homeostasis...a fetus pretty much does nothing but mess it up (ie. bathroom breaks, morning sickness, etc). A fetus also grows to eventually be expelled from the body.

I mean, one could argue that a fetus is a parasite...not an organ. Regardless, it's a foreign body.

 

look a fetus is a human plain and simple. i don't like abortion at all, and if the mother does'nt want the baby she sould'nt of been such a whore. there is no reason the baby deserves to have life taken away from it because of the parents mistake.