Views on Abortion

Dassault Papillon: "You" being a single cell is almost assuming "you" are already alive at that point. It's true that not every cell is an embryo, but that doesn't indicate that life begins when you have an embryo. Such cells are supposed to come together to create a much bigger living creature that we call humans, so until that bigger creature is formed, do you really have a human life?

admin: Single-celled organism is the first phase of human life. It exists as a single part. Later it develops into a multicellular organism, which is the sun of many parts. But both are the same organism, and each of the billions of cells which exist in the multicellular stage cannot be equated with the original single cell.
The single-celled organism does not have consciousness yet, that much is obvious.

Dassault Papillon: If you divide life into phases, the point where you are starting the first so-called phase is just as arbitrary. You might as well say falling in love is the first phase of life and thus construct a biological argument against divorce. I think you'd have a hard time defending that the formation of a complete cell means life has started, doubly so when a single person can have multiple unique sets of DNA. Rather it is the macro-organism, the set of biological processes that is performed by the collective of cells, that typically defines human life.

admin: There is no distinct organism until fertilisation. Regardless of the human status of the zygote, it's pretty reasonable to draw the line of "life" there. It's unreasonable to say that an organism existed prior to this point whenever none did.
But anyhow, why is number of cells or "micro/macro" the important factor? If a person's brain was uploaded to cyberspace (and thus had no working parts but instead just data), would he still be a person?

Wouldn't a more important factor be consciousness?

Dassault Papillon: In a biological sense, no, they wouldn't. Rather they'd be the data that was once stored inside a person's mind. There's this misconception that such data can think on it's own in some virtual world - in fact, what we know as thinking is based not on data, but on forming physical connections between brain cells in our heads.

It's an important factor because although an individual cell might be living, the human that cell is a part of might not. The same is true both ways - a random rouge human cell may be alive even after a person has died. Likewise a cell might start living, even be recycled, before a person even begins to live. The life of a cell is the micro-level, and the life of the human is the macro-level, so you have to be careful not to equate them.

Consciousness is a much stronger contender than "having a living cell that might eventually turn out to be a person". Life is not just one process, however. Plenty of animals have far more limited forms of consciousness yet are alive. Many humans have permanently lost consciousness yet are still alive. I think consciousness is generally a poor standard - I'd prefer more traditional descriptors like MRSGREN.

admin: Will respond tomorrow.

Famousdebater: Yes

At conception

Only for the woman's life being in danger

Crow: You are destroying the potential for the most beautiful thing in existence.

That's very subjective.

In the case of abortion, the consciousness exists short into pregnancy, and therefore the human soul does as well

The human soul is not a proven concept and I'm curious as to why you believe in one due to the huge lack of evidence supporting its existence.

Famousdebater: Thank you for your answers everyone. It seems as though the majority of the active community are against abortion. Would anybody be willing to debate me on the subject late September?

admin: Going back to the earlier acorn example, the acorn and the tree which develops later are simply different stages of the same organism, and any acorns which later grow on the tree do not count as that tree even though the original acorn did. They are simply part of the tree. Going back to zygotes now, we must note that the zygote is distinct from all types of cells in the human body, including the sperm or the egg. The zygote, as a combination of the genetic code of the mother and the father, is a distinct entity from the mother though it depends on the mother at a base level for survival.
In the end, whether a human being is a single cell or billions is not really what matters. Consciousness matters, and I'll admit that a single-celled organism doesn't have that. This would suggest that the later organism should have rights and not the organism at the initial stage of development. However, as you said, consciousness is not a good standard either.
The "potential" argument is used in our everyday life. You go to sleep, where you are technically still alive and with a functional brain but not conscious. We assume that it is immoral to kill someone in their sleep because potentially they'll wake up the next day and resume conscious activities. If we reject potential for securing the rights of fetuses, then we must also reject it as an argument against killing people in their sleep. In fact, even when you're awake it's considered wrong to kill someone because from the moment in which they're living now they'll potentially continue to live in the future if they aren't killed.
Being alive as an argument doesn't extend to the typical human cell, to single-celled organisms, or even to animals such as chickens.
If we reject consciousness, living status, and the question of how many cells, what is there left?
I would answer that living human status should determine the inherent right to life, and zygotes are biologically human.

admin: I'd prefer more traditional descriptors like MRSGREN.

Definitely agree with you here. Whenever I have debates on the subject I almost always bring up the MRSGREN biological definition of life at some point during the debate.

Dassault Papillon: Not really sure about that acorn example. If an acorn is still connected to a tree, I'd consider it part of the tree. Ultimately it's a semantic difference.

As I said, and @famousdebater would back me up on this, that there is left is whether the human is normally fulfilling the basic functions of life - breathing, eating, excreting etc independently. Even when asleep, humans do that. The only time they don't is when we are seriously injured and close to death, which is why we have life support systems, and even then it's covered under being alive since, notwithstanding the injury, one would still normally be fulfilling those basic functions. So the whole "potential consciousness" thing is doubly flawed - flawed in using potential, and flawed in using consciousness, as standards.

admin: Like I said, even when you're alive that you'll live further is only potential, not fact. You could be "cut off" from further life after a certain point by dying. When you think about it this way, "the potential of life" matters.
When referencing acorns, I was saying that the first stage of development is an acorn. The acorn in question will become a tree, but that tree is the same life form as that acorn. Later acorns are different life forms, even if they are still connected to the original tree.

Dassault Papillon: I think that only proves that the potential of life is irrelevant, since we are alive in spite of being able to die at any moment. Hypothetically if we were immortal, we would still be alive.

Yeah, still have the same problem with development stages. It's so arbitrary that it just becomes a semantic game.

admin: It proves that living status all by itself is irrelevant; people live in the present, and there is the past which is guaranteed since it already happened. The future is never guaranteed to anyone. A person only has the potential to live in the future, and we assume that because this potential will generally come to pass if they aren't murdered, murder is wrong, because they are robbed of their future. Likewise, a zygote is robbed of the future that it would usually experience if it wasn't aborted.
Your definition of life is something that performs biological processes; a zygote does not do these yet except on the level of a cell (which a zygote is). People generally do consider cells to be life forms.

Honestly, this conversation is getting kind of tiresome. Can we stop?

Dassault Papillon: Well it's up to you, I can see certain themes are certainly becoming repetitive ie micro vs macro level (you bringing up cells again), or starting point of potentiality being arbitrarily defined among others. But I certainly won't press the point - science doesn't answer morals, after all, so ultimately it's all rather subjective.

Famousdebater: Do you believe that abortion should be banned?
No.
At what point in the pregnancy is the fetus living in your opinion?
There is no point where life begins, it is a continuous process. As soon as the human is born, the process is over and is now left to grow.

Famousdebater: I know these were directed towards Crow, but I will answer some.
Based on that logic do you also believe that murder should be allowed since you "do not believe in the law"?
Not believing in laws doesn't mean you believe murder should be "allowed".
Allow definition- admit (an event or activity) as legal or acceptable.
In the case of a lawless society, murder wouldn't necessarily be acceptable(unless there was some "murder culture"). It wouldn't be legal either since you need laws for something to be legal.
How about morally? Do you personally believe tha having an abortion is right or wrong?
Being morally acceptable is different from believing something should be legally acceptable.
I don't really know how you can believe a society in which murder, infanticide, torture, etc. is better than the status quo - but we're getting off topic here so I'll leave this part of the discussion for now.
Sorry, my post was poorly phrased. What I meant was that I don't see how you can prefer a society in which these acts go unpunished (and will probably rise in quantity as a result) to the status quo.
Well, anarchists and advocates for a lawless society believe it is a superior society. Punishment never made anything better than it could be. Statists premise of "punishment/retribution is necessary to reduce murder, infanticide, and torture" isn't even true.
At the moment I'm on my phone so I'll try to go into detail as to why the fetus is not biologically living until the 24th week into the pregnancy when I get onto my laptop.
Honestly, I am surprised that biological living is so controversial. I honestly believe that it doesn't have to be, but is largely because of different moral views(biased).
No, I want facts to suggest that not punishing criminals will stop them comitting crimes in a more effective way than prison does.
It doesn't. There is many factors in the crimes(immoral acts) of a society, and guess what? There is less crime rates and more in certain areas. Many drugs are illegal in the U.S. and drug problems are still huge, and in other countries where drugs are illegal as well, there is little drug issues. Punishment isn't what stops these issues, it is the health(moral and structural) of the society.