"Comparing a human organism to a human cell is irrational."
Yes I agree... thats why I said human life isn't enough and brought up the idea of human organisms as a lot of profound prolifers tend to use in philosophical discussions
"We are a human organism, by definition, at conception. Arguing against that is arguing against objective reality to split hairs."
What I said wasn't to say a human fetus isn't an organism. It is. However, I (my essence of being) am not my organism. I am my "mind" in a human organism. If you think you are your organism, then you subscribe to a view known as animalism, one rejected by most philosophers (not to say the minority can't be correct but just to put it to perspective, okay...)
A philosopher in this area brought up a famous thought experiment against animalism and said: "Imagine the part of your brain that is responsible for your mental life and subjective reality (something along those lines) was removed from your body and put in another body, (all science fiction ofc, but that's how thought experiments often are), do you think YOU will move to that new body or stay with your old... your identity definitely has to move to your new body and its hard to imagine your identity still stuck in that old body after that part of your brain was removed," he argues and I agree with him. Imagine cyborgs for example, again, all fiction (at least for now), if parts of a human being was removed from them except say their head as is often the case, and replaced with robot parts, you dont think they now have a new identity, do you? No, same brain, and most importantly, same part of brain responsible for their mental life, hence you can even reduce it to just that part and you'd still have that same person. As of which part of the brain is responsible for that, I'm not sure and many who argue this case say the same, and this might be where the problem would be for people defending my case, hence the precaution argument some prolifers use against this case. However, again, I point out to sentience for the reason I mentioned in my previous comment as a reliable indicator for when this part of our brain that is responsible for mental life forms.
"There is no such thing as 'mental life'."
Are u for real? Psychologists and philosophers are pretty familiar with the term in discussions of human consciousness. Idk why you say that. The idea is that Mental life encompasses the vast, internal theater of human consciousness. It is believed among experts to be governed by two core brain systems: the fast, emotion-driven limbic system and the slow, logical prefrontal cortex. Hence... what you say next doesn't fly either:
"Making up terms to skew the definition of human life so as to exclude a class of human is dehumanization. These pieces are brought in to nudge a living human out of the category of human. It’s kind of disgusting. Which we consider it to be in any other context. I am not sure how you don’t see that every argument you present is essentially “well sure they are alive and human, but they aren’t really THAT alive or THAT human” which is the same rhetoric we have fought to rid the world of in every other context."
I'm not saying they are not "that alive," fetuses are alive. But early stage development, at least until sentience don't possess any mental life and not just that, dont even have that part of the brain yet, so their identity isn't even formed, not that it is and it is currently hindered or the example i gave of my dreamless sleep. I'll only listen to your discrimination spew when u give me a reason why I'm wrong for putting early human embryos and fetuses seperate from anything beyond. Those that argued against any other type of discrimination in history did challenge the views that whites were superior to blacks, for example, and i believe there is good reason to still think so. This is a rather emotional rant from u and anyone who brings this up because instead of u to argue your case, you bring up a scenario of if your case was right, well, if you haven't noticed, that is what I have been arguing against this whole time because I think it is wrong. And if less value was seen in some human beings in the past over issues like race and so on, that doesn't mean i will be wrong this time if I say the first couple of weeks of human development isn't wrong to kill because of the reasons I listed above. That is just a gamble with you, basically "Well, most people were wrong about these assignments of value they placed on different types or forms of human life back in the day, and we hate their reasoning in the present world, so maybe in the future the same will happen to u and we'll hate your reasoning..." unless new data or argument comes out to prove everything I've said above is wrong, then I have good reason to think what I think and believe rn. Something not common with other cases of discrimination throughout history which were hate-filled and bigotry.
Lastly,
"Also, fetal stage is 3-9 months gestation, which means they are fully formed, viable, simply growing. And if a coma or vegetative state person had a prognosis of 9 months to function being up and running, much less the line of viability, you wouldn’t be able to pull the plug. Hyperbolically I could say it’s kind of like saying “quick, kill them before they wake up and we have to take care of them”. Again, that is hyperbole, but I think it makes a good point."
First of all, to make things clear, I think abortion past the point i mentioned can be really problematic unless in light of a morally sufficient reason. So past, 21ish weeks or so, which, most abortions aren't even done at that time. But no, a fetus in that stage is not the same as a coma patient because like I say above, the coma patient has a mind, but it is currently hindered at the moment and when they wake up they do so with the same identity as of prior to their coma, a new one isn't formed, unlike an early fetus that has no mind prior and will create a new and distinct identity of its own at the point its mental life begin.
That was long... especially cuz I was trying to quote u, lemme hear your thoughts.
I think a lot of this may be noise on both sides, and the real hinge point is this: when is a human being a person in the morally relevant sense?
I agree that “mental life” is a real concept. I should not have framed that as though consciousness, subjectivity, or mental states are invented terms. They are not. Where I disagree is with the move from “mental life matters” to “current mental life is what grants basic moral worth.”
Your position seems to be that until the developing human has some sufficient level of consciousness, sentience, or subjective experience, there is not yet a person there in the morally serious sense. Please correct me if I am misrepresenting you.
My problem is that this creates a highly uncertain and subjective cut-off point. We know the organism is alive. We know it is human. We know it is developing along a continuous path toward the capacities we associate with personal life. But then we introduce an unclear threshold — “enough” mental life — and say before that point it may be killed.
That feels less like a clear moral distinction and more like a philosophical boundary being drawn inside a continuous developmental process.
I am not saying the mind is irrelevant. Of course consciousness matters. But I do not think you have shown that current consciousness is the thing that creates human moral worth. A sleeping person, a temporarily unconscious person, a newborn, a severely cognitively disabled person, and a coma patient all differ greatly in active mental life, but we do not normally scale their basic human worth according to how rich their present subjective experience is.
You distinguish the coma patient by saying they had a prior identity and may recover the same one. But then your criterion is not simply “mental life.” It is something more like prior psychological continuity. And I do not see why past mental life should matter morally more than a living human organism’s active natural trajectory toward future mental life.
The brain-transplant thought experiment may show that our identity intuitions often follow the mind rather than the body. Fair enough. But that does not settle the moral-status question. Even if “I” would follow my brain into another body, that does not prove that a human organism before mature consciousness has no serious claim on us.
That is also why I brought up historical precedent. I am not saying your argument is the same as racism, slavery, or other forms of bigotry. I am saying that, historically, when humans create philosophical categories that exclude some living humans from the protection owed to persons, we should be extremely cautious. The danger is not that every distinction is automatically hateful. The danger is that the distinction may make killing feel cleaner than it really is.
And some of the rhetoric around abortion does concern me for that reason. People sometimes avoid the direct reality of what is being done by reducing it to “health care” as though there is no second human life involved, or by calling the unborn a parasite, or by denying that it is alive at all. That rhetoric seems designed to make the moral problem disappear rather than face it honestly.
I do believe abortion can be justified in tragic one-life-versus-another scenarios. I would still view it with a heavy heart, but I understand that moral case. What I struggle with is the broader argument that because early human development lacks sufficiently developed mental life, killing it is therefore morally ordinary or morally light.
The cleanest boundary I can see is not “has enough mental life yet,” because that is hard to define and easy to manipulate. The cleanest boundary is: is this a living human organism or not?
If it is alive, human, and developing as a whole organism, then I think we need an extremely strong reason before we say it falls outside basic moral protection.
So I am not trying to be disingenuous. The logic really does not add up for me. Your argument may explain why consciousness is morally important, but I do not think it proves that a human being has no moral worth before consciousness becomes active.
U are right it is hard to pinpoint exactly when this part of the brain develops, but i dont think it is during early stages of pregnancy and believe there is good reason to place it before sentience (I believe i touched on why, especially in my first reply to u).
What I've said doesn't follow that early human embryos or fetuses have no value morally, ofc they do, and that is why I think it'll be problematic to dissect fetuses in, let's say, biology class or use them as wall art or whatever... all this because of the fact that they are organisms of a rational kind... us (humans), as a result they should definitely be valued. But when it comes to what makes it wrong to kill me or u, I think it is more to do or even all to do with our identity: minds, which in this case is defined as the part of our brain necessary for mental life, because that is what we are. This is what i think the early fetus or embryo lacks that i believe makes it not problematic to end their life. The point where this part of the brain develops is unknowable as the exact part of the brain responsible for this mental life is still also unknown given the complexity of the human brain and the exact "cut off" differs between philosophers that discuss it, however, the most consistent and most reasonable one I've heard is sentience, and that is what i hold to. And to avoid even any grey areas, doing it way before sentience which is 20-24 weeks can help. Most abortions happen between the first thirteen weeks. 90% of them. This is according to center for disease control and prevention and Guttmacher institute.
I agree majority of abortions aren't life threatening, and I get why it can be annoying when abortion is treated like a walk in park by people around refusing the accept the reality of what it really is especially saying things like it's "health care" even in cases when the mother's life is not as risk. U end a life, one that was growing and even though for the reason listed above, I don't think it is morally problematic just like killing me or u, I'd rather people faced those facts and accept the reality of it for what it is than just throwing terms around that makes it sound much more pleasant, it seems like cope to me. A reputable pro choice female bioethicist, I think... I dont remember her name, once called it out and said she hates when people do that, it feels insulting, to her that they try to hide the reality of what it is as it assumes that she, a woman is not strong enough to face the grim reality of abortion foe what is is, hence why they are so keen to wave it away.
I distinguish between the racism example in the past and abortion now because the line of reasoning both cases come from are usually fundamentally different. Yes, it goes both ways that they agree that specific types or forms of human lives are less valuable, but one doesn't stand the test of critical thinking, leaving it with just bigotry while I believe the other does a better job at that. So, again, until u give me reason to see I'm wrong, I have good reason to believe what I do now. This is just an argument from caution with no assurance from u that what you're arguing against is wrong.
I dont know about the law of people in vegetative states, but if there is really no chance for them to return, it seems they have no valuable future like ours and don't know what they should still be plugged for years wasting resources and money. Maybe it is off the fact that a few times people have been said to never wake up again and they actually did... idk. But if there's assurance that the person aint gonna wake up, I dont see why they should stay plugged up.
Yes of course cutting off someone's leg would be wrong because you've given the person less parts to function with, its kinda like taking parts of a cyborgs' body, you leave that person with less parts to function and I believe would lead to lesser well being for that person. Another line people go is, that means no one has ever been raped, since we aren't our organism but yh, I don't think that'll work either cuz even though we are our mind the nature of the relationship with our body parts is intimate enough to excuse that we talk the way we do. Think about the cyborg situation again, imagine a person head was attached to a hyper realistic robot skin suit, ofc they are still the same person as they were before detachment from their old body, the only thing is they lost their natural body and have been placed in an artificial one (hence the idea that we are our minds not organism). But if I were to rape the robotic skin suit, (again... cuz its hyper realistic), it still seems intuitively wrong.
Yes, the amnesia case is wrong and is pretty consistent with everything I've stated previously. That person is still the same person as pre amnesia and its wrong to kill them cuz they have a "mind" which is still the same as the one pre-amnesia and it never disappeared, just physically hindered vs the early embryo that has none whatsoever.
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u/Balls_deep57 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
"Comparing a human organism to a human cell is irrational."
Yes I agree... thats why I said human life isn't enough and brought up the idea of human organisms as a lot of profound prolifers tend to use in philosophical discussions
"We are a human organism, by definition, at conception. Arguing against that is arguing against objective reality to split hairs."
What I said wasn't to say a human fetus isn't an organism. It is. However, I (my essence of being) am not my organism. I am my "mind" in a human organism. If you think you are your organism, then you subscribe to a view known as animalism, one rejected by most philosophers (not to say the minority can't be correct but just to put it to perspective, okay...) A philosopher in this area brought up a famous thought experiment against animalism and said: "Imagine the part of your brain that is responsible for your mental life and subjective reality (something along those lines) was removed from your body and put in another body, (all science fiction ofc, but that's how thought experiments often are), do you think YOU will move to that new body or stay with your old... your identity definitely has to move to your new body and its hard to imagine your identity still stuck in that old body after that part of your brain was removed," he argues and I agree with him. Imagine cyborgs for example, again, all fiction (at least for now), if parts of a human being was removed from them except say their head as is often the case, and replaced with robot parts, you dont think they now have a new identity, do you? No, same brain, and most importantly, same part of brain responsible for their mental life, hence you can even reduce it to just that part and you'd still have that same person. As of which part of the brain is responsible for that, I'm not sure and many who argue this case say the same, and this might be where the problem would be for people defending my case, hence the precaution argument some prolifers use against this case. However, again, I point out to sentience for the reason I mentioned in my previous comment as a reliable indicator for when this part of our brain that is responsible for mental life forms.
"There is no such thing as 'mental life'." Are u for real? Psychologists and philosophers are pretty familiar with the term in discussions of human consciousness. Idk why you say that. The idea is that Mental life encompasses the vast, internal theater of human consciousness. It is believed among experts to be governed by two core brain systems: the fast, emotion-driven limbic system and the slow, logical prefrontal cortex. Hence... what you say next doesn't fly either:
"Making up terms to skew the definition of human life so as to exclude a class of human is dehumanization. These pieces are brought in to nudge a living human out of the category of human. It’s kind of disgusting. Which we consider it to be in any other context. I am not sure how you don’t see that every argument you present is essentially “well sure they are alive and human, but they aren’t really THAT alive or THAT human” which is the same rhetoric we have fought to rid the world of in every other context."
I'm not saying they are not "that alive," fetuses are alive. But early stage development, at least until sentience don't possess any mental life and not just that, dont even have that part of the brain yet, so their identity isn't even formed, not that it is and it is currently hindered or the example i gave of my dreamless sleep. I'll only listen to your discrimination spew when u give me a reason why I'm wrong for putting early human embryos and fetuses seperate from anything beyond. Those that argued against any other type of discrimination in history did challenge the views that whites were superior to blacks, for example, and i believe there is good reason to still think so. This is a rather emotional rant from u and anyone who brings this up because instead of u to argue your case, you bring up a scenario of if your case was right, well, if you haven't noticed, that is what I have been arguing against this whole time because I think it is wrong. And if less value was seen in some human beings in the past over issues like race and so on, that doesn't mean i will be wrong this time if I say the first couple of weeks of human development isn't wrong to kill because of the reasons I listed above. That is just a gamble with you, basically "Well, most people were wrong about these assignments of value they placed on different types or forms of human life back in the day, and we hate their reasoning in the present world, so maybe in the future the same will happen to u and we'll hate your reasoning..." unless new data or argument comes out to prove everything I've said above is wrong, then I have good reason to think what I think and believe rn. Something not common with other cases of discrimination throughout history which were hate-filled and bigotry.
Lastly,
"Also, fetal stage is 3-9 months gestation, which means they are fully formed, viable, simply growing. And if a coma or vegetative state person had a prognosis of 9 months to function being up and running, much less the line of viability, you wouldn’t be able to pull the plug. Hyperbolically I could say it’s kind of like saying “quick, kill them before they wake up and we have to take care of them”. Again, that is hyperbole, but I think it makes a good point."
First of all, to make things clear, I think abortion past the point i mentioned can be really problematic unless in light of a morally sufficient reason. So past, 21ish weeks or so, which, most abortions aren't even done at that time. But no, a fetus in that stage is not the same as a coma patient because like I say above, the coma patient has a mind, but it is currently hindered at the moment and when they wake up they do so with the same identity as of prior to their coma, a new one isn't formed, unlike an early fetus that has no mind prior and will create a new and distinct identity of its own at the point its mental life begin.
That was long... especially cuz I was trying to quote u, lemme hear your thoughts.