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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but none of those are of the human species. A Hunan zygote is a unique living human organism, and I think history has shown us we must at least be very, very careful when we start arguing that some unique living human organisms are different enough from the unique living human organisms that matter that it should be morally acceptable to kill them.

Maybe this really is different from all the things about which we've later lamented, "Never again!" but we certainly ought not consider that criterion easily satisfied.

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> unique living human organisms are different enough from the unique living human organisms that matter that it should be morally acceptable to kill them

I think what we should care about isn’t human life, but human consciousness. A person in a vegetative state doesn’t suffer when you pull the plug. The difference matters and is unmistakable between large organisms which have gone through a long process of development and tiny ones which have not; we should reasonably presume that only one of the two is conscious given no further evidence.

The likely response is the potential argument, and I don’t care about that. I care about human suffering.

What about someone who is unconscious but will recover? Is it ok the pull the plug on that person? There won't be any suffering (unless friends or relatives mourn, but let's assume this person has no friends or relatives).

Regarding the size of the organism, and amount of time spent developing, what about a very early preemie who is unconscious but will recover?

In both cases I don’t think the plug should be pulled. In the first case, someone already had a complex experience with memories and dreams and whatnot and you’re contributing to them never waking up. The existence at some point in the past still matters.

In the second case there’s no reason at all to do something so drastic. Abortion is acceptable only because the mother’s body is being used and damaged, and she should have the right to prevent that use. The preemie doesn’t need to damage someone’s body to exist.

Edit: having read some of your other comments, I have a question for you. Why should we care about a zygote and not a sperm and an egg. Why is the act of fertilization the line between simple reproductive cells and a beautiful human life. Both have the potential to make a person, both are genetically human, both likely cannot experience things in a human-like way.

Are you genuinely not already aware of the biological difference between a (haploid) gamete and a (diploid) organism? This is like 7th grade science stuff, so I want to understand if you're questioning whether there is a difference or whether the difference matters.

Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, adolescent, and adult are all different stages of the life cycle of a human organism. Gametes are not. Before fertilization, there are gametes. Unless fertilization happens, no organism comes into being. But once it does, it is the same organism from then all the way until its death. This is a biological reality, not a philosophical one.

Yes, I took high school biology like anyone else. I’m surprised you don’t get my point. What I’m getting at is that in a zygote, we can easily understand that the machinery is all there to lead with probability to the later development of a multicellular human. My contention is that this is no less true for a sperm and egg in close proximity. All the machinery is there. Shouldn’t preventing fertilization be equally monstrous to destroying the zygote, since both lead to the potential person never coming into being?

Previously you said "I think what we should care about isn’t human life, but human consciousness." Now you're saying something different about past memories, and I think even that an unconscious preemie shouldn't be killed, as long as it's not harming/damaging anyone. So I think you've changed your position.

Regarding your new position: if someone's body was being used and damaged, would it be ok to kill the unconscious preemie to prevent that?

>Edit: having read some of your other comments, I have a question for you. Why should we care about a zygote and not a sperm and an egg. Why is the act of fertilization the line between simple reproductive cells and a beautiful human life. Both have the potential to make a person, both are genetically human, both likely cannot experience things in a human-like way.

A zygote is a unique human organism. It has the full DNA of a human. It will grow into an adult human unless it dies for some reason. A sperm and an egg are not human organisms. Individually they don't have the full DNA of a human. A sperm won't grow into an adult human. An egg won't grow into an adult human.

Sorry I see why it’s confusing; I had assumed by it being able to survive outside the womb that it was relatively far along in development. By unconscious I don’t mean asleep, I mean the lights aren’t on and they aren’t experiencing from a perspective. There’d no longer be a moral issue if you magically knew this about the preemie, but we can make a reasonable best guess as to when such a thing becomes possible based on all current knowledge of the brain, and this is where I’d want abortion methods to switch to nonlethal. I don’t see a big difference between killing a fetus that’s incapable of consciousness and preventing the reproductive cells from uniting; they’re the same from the nonexistent perspective of the fetus.

The memories thing is different. Fundamentally, you’re not causing immediate suffering if you kill someone and they never know. The problem is that you can know they likely want to continue to live and you're violating their agency. The key difference with the fetus is that it has no and never has had the ability to want.

> Regarding your new position: if someone's body was being used and damaged, would it be ok to kill the unconscious preemie to prevent that?

I hope I’ve made clear why it’s not a new position. I presume we’re talking about a fetus fairly far along in development, such that we can have doubts about its possession of consciousness. In this case it’s a matter of triage, you do the least harm you can with the tools you have. Abortion methods should be nonlethal when possible out of an abundance of caution. Beyond that, mostly defer to what the mother wants and what risks she’s willing to take.

Fetal/child development is a continuum. The only 2 instances of big change are fertilization and birth, but birth is more a change of environment, not a change of the child.

The way that wants are experienced changes over time. The way a newborn experiences a want is different from the way a 5-year-old experiences a want. We can infer what an embryo wants by what actions the embryo is taking. The embryo is working to grow into an adult.

If we want to go by when brainwaves are detected, that's 5 weeks fetal age, 7 weeks gestational age. There are only 5 places in the world that allow abortion for some age but ban a 7-week-gestational-age abortion:

* Turkmenistan (although for economic or social reasons, it allows up to 22 weeks)

* The US states of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina

* The Mexican state of Aguascalientes

In all 5 places, it's allowed later than 7 weeks in the case of rape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_by_country

>Fetal/child development is a continuum. The only 2 instances of big change are fertilization and birth, but birth is more a change of environment, not a change of the child.

I think the fact that these states constitute big changes is exactly why people intuitively latch on to them as points at which to assign moral value to a developing human. What I’m arguing is that the logic for this falls apart on closer examination, and that the only real reason I see to argue the conception idea comes from religious authority. Yet you haven’t used religion in your arguments so far, so why is it the point for you?

> The way that wants are experienced changes over time. The way a newborn experiences a want is different from the way a 5-year-old experiences a want. We can infer what an embryo wants by what actions the embryo is taking. The embryo is working to grow into an adult.

I absolutely understand this reasoning and I have a certain appreciation for it. The problem is, if you assign single-celled organisms the capacity to want from a perspective, yet you use the capacity to want as your bar for moral consideration, then you are more or less saying any organism of any scale should receive equal moral weight, yet seemingly arbitrarily deciding to restrict this to those with human dna. I don’t think that definition of want is useful; I think the capacity to want needs to be thought of as requiring conscious experience to make much sense here, which is also the thing I’m trying to assign value to.

> If we want to go by when brainwaves are detected, that's 5 weeks fetal age, 7 weeks gestational age.

You’re on the right track. I’m not trying to convince you of a specific cutoff, but of the logic I think should lead those developing a cutoff. I’d want experts in fetal development and brain development and so on to be the ones who decide so that risk of harm is minimized. I imagine there are studies on this; I’ve seen indications the result would be anywhere between 7-24 weeks, but I don’t know precisely when.

Is personhood development a continuum? Or does it happen in an instant? If it's a continuum, then for a period of time you have someone who's a partial person. That doesn't make sense to me. How can someone be a partial person? That's why I think it needs to happen in an instant. And the only 2 developmental instants are fertilization and birth.

I value a human's life more than any other animal's life. I think that's the same for most people. Without that, we might conclude that a dog's life is more valuable than a newborn baby's life, due to development time and abilities.

> 7-24 weeks

Curtis Means was born at gestational age 21 weeks 1 day and survived. If personhood might begin at 24 weeks, does that mean that Curtis might not have been a person when born?

> And the only 2 developmental instants are fertilization and birth.

Well not really though, neither takes place in an instant. Both are complex processes that span some time composed of numerous simultaneous and sequential steps. I think some kind of partial personhood is more or less a given because biological processes don’t really happen in discrete steps. As for how that might make sense, a very crude example might be coming out of anesthesia or being extremely drunk. These are states where memory, sense of self, and consciousness can fade in and out independently; perhaps partial consciousness is a reasonable thing. Certainly many of the things we consider essential to our internal sense of personhood develop gradually, like our sense of self and, for that matter, our senses of the external world. We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood.

> Curtis Means was born at gestational age 21 weeks 1 day and survived. If personhood might begin at 24 weeks, does that mean that Curtis might not have been a person when born?

My intuition is that curtis would qualify, and that 21 weeks could be too late for lethal abortion methods. At the same time, if a baby were born braindead I wouldn’t assign it personhood. Being born isn’t enough.

I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people. That's been used as a justification throughout history for causing harm to groups of people.

>We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood.

I agree. I think this supports my view, that someone can be morally a person, even when lacking aspects we'd associate with personhood.

In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion.

>I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people.

I think you need to in certain areas if you want to understand the world better is all. A braindead person isn’t the same as a non-braindead person, and there’s likely a continuum between them. My response is to suggest assigning a reasonable point between the two past which someone is a person.

>In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You seem to be agreeing there's not much difference between a fetus and an infant. But you're saying that this isn't an argument against abortion, because... are you saying killing a born infant is ok?

Nope, you’re reading way too far into it. Given that born infants almost certainly possess a kind of “partial personhood,” the reason we assign them full personhood isn’t out of recognition of observable fact, but out of practicality and necessity. It wouldn’t make sense to structure society in such a way that newborns weren’t people, and would likely result in lots of moral harm. The idea of partial personhood doesn’t work in law or politics, even if its biologically founded, so we should choose a cutoff point that makes the most sense and prevents the most harm before which we don’t consider fetuses people, and after which we do.

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.

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.

My point is that there isn't any point that can be chosen except fertilization, due to the continuum of development.

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/

> 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.

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.

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.

Is a newborn conscious? Is a dog conscious? If we want to value a newborn's life more than a dog, I think we need to consider more than just consciousness, but another factor: humanity.

So now there are 2 factors: continuation of consciousness and humanity. Is it possible 1 factor is more important than the other? There are several things that to me weaken the strength of the continuation of consciousness factor:

* It's continuation of consciousness instead of consciousness. Consciousness is somewhat intuitive. Continuation of consciousness is less so. Since it's a level removed from what's intuitive, that weakens the factor for me.

* Consciousness throughout life takes many forms. A newborn, an adult, someone with dementia, people with various other types of mental illnesses. It makes it hard to define consciousness.

* The fact that continuation of consciousness cannot stand by itself, it needs the other factor: humanity.

These 3 reasons make me think that humanity is more important than continuation of consciousness. In fact, I think humanity is so important that continuation of consciousness isn't essential. I think a human life is valuable even if consciousness hasn't developed yet.

> 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.

I'm not familiar with the story, but I think that's quite a different scenario. Those 3 beings each have value on their own, not because they might later merge into another being. Whereas a sperm and an egg have no value on their own.

The reason I dismiss the value of a sperm and an egg isn't because they can merge. If 3 adult humans could merge into 1 superhuman, I wouldn't dismiss the value of the pre-merged adult humans.

I say a zygote has value because it's a young human. It's growing into an adult human.

A sperm isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human. An egg isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human. A sperm and an egg that are nearby each other aren't a young human. Those 2 things aren't growing into an adult human. They might join or might not join. Or maybe some other sperm might zoom in real fast and fertilize the egg instead.

If the 3 independent beings were sitting in a room, would we call them 1 merged being? No. They're still 3 independent beings. Same with the sperm and the egg. Just because they're nearby each other doesn't make them a human life.

96% of biologists say human life beings at fertilization. Not when the sperm and egg are nearby each other.

> It's continuation of consciousness instead of consciousness.

It has to be. We need some interval of time to experience anything. Continuity also relates a lot to agency. Most people want to keep experiencing over dying.

> Consciousness throughout life takes many forms. A newborn, an adult, someone with dementia, people with various other types of mental illnesses. It makes it hard to define consciousness.

Consciousness is a very low bar honestly. Every one of the people mentioned would possess it in some form or another. You could use a different term if this one is too fuzzy.

> The fact that continuation of consciousness cannot stand by itself, it needs the other factor: humanity.

I think this is more a reflection of our current world than some perfectly ethical one. Since we’re humans, we’re always going to value our own offspring more than a dog. That’s deeply instinctual stuff. That doesn’t mean dogs aren’t richly conscious animals deserving of significant ethical consideration, but we’re not unbiased neutral observers in the matter. I’m just trying to come up with a consistent ethical approach to a narrow issue; for situations where two conscious things are being compared, you might be able to denote specific capacities, like recognition of self, by which you prioritize e.g. a person over a dog, but this is all very hypothetical and I don’t think we need it for the abortion debate.

> A sperm isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human. An egg isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human.

But they are? The only reason they try to fuse together at all is in service of the growth of a human.

> 96% of biologists say human life beings at fertilization. Not when the sperm and egg are nearby each other.

They’re not talking about personhood or something. They’re talking about something fundamentally classificatory, like asking “what makes a species separate from other species.” The usual answer is that they can’t breed with each other, but there are lots of kinda fuzzy exceptions and gray areas with that. To word it better, if I said “Presume the goal is to determine when, in the study of individual organisms, such organisms can be thought to come about. Tell me what stage in the development of a human comes first,” the answer would need to be around the time of fertilization because the question presumes the frame of biological study, the existence of an initial stage, etc.

> If the 3 independent beings were sitting in a room, would we call them 1 merged being? No. They're still 3 independent beings. Same with the sperm and the egg. Just because they're nearby each other doesn't make them a human life.

Right. By the same token, I don’t think a single cell constitutes a “human life”, with all the connotations that phrase carries. If it’s most appropriate to call that single cell a human life, then clearly human life isn’t the thing that determines ethical consideration. My fixation on the sperm + egg -> zygote transformation is a consequence of your belief that the left term isn’t morally significant but the right term is. I think everything that we care about is the same for both terms. Non-conscious, relatively simple mechanically compared to an adult, no nerves or brain, no awareness of the world, no hopes or dreams. The zygote lacks everything essential to personhood at this stage other than its human origin, which it shares with the sperm and egg.

>You could use a different term if this one is too fuzzy.

What would we use? Existence of brain waves? Existence of neurons? Those both would include most animals.

>like recognition of self, by which you prioritize e.g. a person over a dog

Babies cannot recognize themselves in the mirror until around 1.5 years old. Several types of animals can recognize themselves in the mirror: elephants, dolphins, primates, mice, some birds, some fish.

If we justify the value of babies by saying that they'll have certain abilities in the future, that same thing could be said about a zygote.

>> A sperm isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human. An egg isn't a young human; it isn't growing into an adult human.

>But they are? The only reason they try to fuse together at all is in service of the growth of a human.

Sure the only reason they fuse is in service of the growth of a human. However, before fusing, a sperm only has half the DNA of a human. A sperm's DNA doesn't define a human, and isn't sufficient to grow into a human, and thus cannot be called a young human. Same for an egg. A zygote has the full DNA of a human, which defines a human, and thus the zygote can grow into a human, and thus the zygote can be called a young human.

>>Just because they're nearby each other doesn't make them a human life.

>Right. By the same token, I don’t think a single cell constitutes a “human life”

That's not the same token. I was saying that 2 (or 3) things being nearby each other doesn't make them 1 entity. You're talking about whether a single entity has certain abilities or not. Those are 2 different discussions.

>What would we use? Existence of brain waves? Existence of neurons? Those both would include most animals.

Relating this back to abortion, existence of brain waves is a higher bar than existence of neurons is a higher bar than fertilization. If I could convince you to care about either of those instead, then sure let’s run with that.

The question with abortion is “at what point are we concerned that killing something could be unethical.” For the criteria to include some or even most animals isn’t a terrible thing; we probably shouldn’t kill animals willy nilly.

>>like recognition of self, by which you prioritize e.g. a person over a dog

>Babies cannot recognize themselves in the mirror until around 1.5 years old. Several types of animals can recognize themselves in the mirror: elephants, dolphins, primates, mice, some birds, some fish.

>If we justify the value of babies by saying that they'll have certain abilities in the future, that same thing could be said about a zygote.

If I recall correctly, I was explicitly talking about how we might go about evaluating and comparing ethical worth beyond the developmental scale relevant to abortion, and I said this was just hypothetical. I wasn’t arguing recognition of self is relevant to abortion.

>However, before fusing, a sperm only has half the DNA of a human. A sperm's DNA doesn't define a human, and isn't sufficient to grow into a human, and thus cannot be called a young human.

I don’t consider the “completeness of DNA” philosophically relevant. The sperm-egg system, both considered together, does have a complete set of DNA. Why does the physical separation change the fundamental ethical nature of interfering with the process? If I have a sperm and egg very close to each other, about to merge, and place a barrier between them, why wouldn’t this be as ethically horrifying as immediately destroying the product of their merging?

>I was saying that 2 (or 3) things being nearby each other doesn't make them 1 entity.

Let’s agree my argument and analogy were poor. Why does entity-ness matter to ethics? When you say entity, are you referring to a physical body, or to a unified consciousness? Is a rock an entity? What about an amoeba?

>For the criteria to include some or even most animals isn’t a terrible thing; we probably shouldn’t kill animals willy nilly.

Do you believe that killing a baby is morally worse than killing an innocent dog or elephant? And what is the reasoning for that belief?

Do you believe that killing an innocent adult is morally worse than killing a baby? And what is the reasoning for that belief?

I believe that killing a baby is worse than killing an innocent dog or elephant, because human life has intrinsic value significantly greater than non-human animal life.

I believe that killing an innocent adult and a baby are equally bad, because all people have equal value.

>I don’t consider the “completeness of DNA” philosophically relevant. The sperm-egg system, both considered together, does have a complete set of DNA. Why does the physical separation change the fundamental ethical nature of interfering with the process?

If they're physically separated, we don't have an entity that could be called a young human. We don't have an entity that contains a plan for how to grow into an adult.

After they've joined, we do have an entity that could be called a young human.

>If I have a sperm and egg very close to each other, about to merge, and place a barrier between them, why wouldn’t this be as ethically horrifying as immediately destroying the product of their merging?

No. In the same way that it's not horrifying if some other sperm zoomed in real fast and fertilized the egg and blocks off the first sperm. Before fertilization, there is no entity that could be called a young human.

>Why does entity-ness matter to ethics?

There's no known way a single person can be composed of 2 physical entities. So I say that when there are 2 physical entities, there isn't a single person composed of the 2 of them.

Another line of reasoning is why should there be a moral difference between a sperm and egg very close to each other and a sperm and egg miles apart? I don't see any reason. We would have to consider every possible pair of sperm and egg in the world as a person, which doesn't make sense.

>When you say entity, are you referring to a physical body, or to a unified consciousness?

Physical body. There's no known way a person can be split across 2 bodies. So a sperm and an egg can't be a person.

>Is a rock an entity? What about an amoeba?

Yes and yes.

“Never again” has been said in a completely different context: fully developed humans killing other developed humans systematically on a huge scale across years. Don’t confuse ethnic cleanings and genocide with fully voluntary abortions, as sad as they may be.

"Never again" has been said in other contexts as well. E.g. slavery in the US. US slavery didn't exactly meet the definition of ethnic cleansing or genocide. The primary goal was economic.

Just because something isn't ethnic cleansing or genocide doesn't mean "never again" doesn't apply.

>fully developed humans

What's the definition of fully developed? Are physically and mentally disabled people fully developed? There have been large scale killings targeting them in particular. Are babies fully developed? There have been large scale killings that kill them.

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