Fetal Psychology

Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat. The abortion debate may never be the same.

The scene never fails to give goose bumps: the baby, just seconds old and still dewy from the womb, is lifted into the arms of its exhausted but blissful parents. They gaze adoringly as their new child stretches and squirms, scrunches its mouth and opens its eyes. To anyone watching this tender vignette, the message is unmistakable. Birth is the beginning of it all, ground zero, the moment from which the clock starts ticking.

Not so, declares Janet DiPietro. Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist, but "it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens."

Armed with highly sensitive and sophisticated monitoring gear, DiPietro and other researchers today are discovering that the real action starts weeks earlier. At 32 weeks of gestation--two months before a baby is considered fully prepared for the world, or "at term" --a fetus is behaving almost exactly as a newborn. And it continues to do so for the next 12 weeks.

As if overturning the common conception of infancy weren't enough, scientists are creating a startling new picture of intelligent life in the womb. Among the revelations:

o By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the second trimester it can hear.

o Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.

o The fetus savors its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.

o Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger, and respond to a familiar story read to it.

o Even a premature baby is aware, feels, responds, and adapts to its environment.

o Just because the fetus is responsive to certain stimuli doesn't mean that it should be the target of efforts to enhance development. Sensory stimulation of the fetus can in fact lead to bizarre patterns of adaptation later on.

The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early--just weeks after conception, in fact. Well before a woman typically knows she is pregnant, her embryo's brain has already begun to bulge. By five weeks, the organ that looks like a lumpy inchworm has already embarked on the most spectacular feat of human development: the creation of the deeply creased and convoluted cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that will eventually allow the growing person to move, think, speak, plan, and create in a human way.

At nine weeks, the embryo's ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, "breathes" amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches. Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear; toward the end of pregnancy, it can see.

Scientists who follow the fetus's daily life find that it spends most of its time not exercising these new abilities but sleeping. At 32 weeks, it drowses 90 to 95% of the day. Some of these hours are spent in deep sleep, some in REM sleep, and some in an indeterminate state, a product of the fetus's immature brain that is different from sleep in a baby, child, or adult. During REM sleep, the fetus's eyes move back and forth just as an adult's eyes do, and many researchers believe that it is dreaming. DiPietro speculates that fetuses dream about what they know--the sensations they feel in the womb.

Closer to birth, the fetus sleeps 85 or 90% of the time the same as a newborn. Between its frequent naps, the fetus seems to have "something like an awake alert period," according to developmental psychologist William Filer, who with his Columbia University colleagues is monitoring these sleep and wakefulness cycles in order to identify patterns of normal and abnormal brain development, including potential predictors of sudden infant death syndrome. Says Filer, "We are, in effect, asking the fetus: 'Are you paying attention? Is your nervous system behaving in the appropriate way?'"

Awake or asleep, the human fetus moves 50 times or more each hour, flexing and extending its body, moving its head, face, and limbs and exploring its warm wet compartment by touch. Heidelise Als, a developmental psychologist at Harvard Medical School, is fascinated by the amount of tactile stimulation a fetus gives itself. "It touches a hand to the face, one hand to the other hand, clasps its feet, touches its foot to its leg, its hand to its umbilical cord," she reports.

Als believes there is a mismatch between the environment given to preemies in hospitals and the environment they would have had in the womb. She has been working for years to change the care given to preemies so that they can curl up, bring their knees together, and touch things with their hands as they would have for weeks in the womb.

Along with such common movements, DiPietro has also noted some odder fetal activities, including "licking the uterine wall and literally walking around the womb by pushing off with its feet." Laterborns may have more room in the womb for such maneuvers than first babies. After the initial pregnancy, a woman's uterus is bigger and the umbilical cord longer, allowing more freedom of movement. "Second and subsequent children may develop more motor experience in utero and so may become more active infants," DiPietro speculates.

Fetuses react sharply to their mother's actions. "When we're watching the fetus on ultrasound and the mother starts to laugh, we can see the fetus, floating upside down in the womb, bounce up and down on its head, bum-bum-bum, like it's bouncing on a trampoline," says DiPietro. "When mothers watch this on the screen, they laugh harder, and the fetus goes up and down even faster. We've wondered whether this is why people grow up liking roller coasters."

Why people grow up liking hot chilies or spicy curries may also have something to do with the fetal environment. By 13 to 15 weeks a fetus' taste buds already look like a mature adult's, and doctors know that the amniotic fluid that surrounds it can smell strongly of curry, cumin, garlic, onion and other essences from a mother's diet. Whether fetuses can taste these flavors isn't yet known, but scientists have found that a 33-week-old preemie will suck harder on a sweetened nipple than on a plain rubber one.

"During the last trimester, the fetus is swallowing up to a liter a day" of amniotic fluid, notes Julie Mennella, a biopsychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. She thinks the fluid may act as a "flavor bridge" to breast milk, which also carries food flavors from the mother's diet.

Whether or not a fetus can taste, there's little question that it can hear. A very premature baby entering the world at 24 or 25 weeks responds to the sounds around it, observes Als, so its auditory apparatus must already have been functioning in the womb. Many pregnant women report a fetal jerk or sudden kick just after a door slams or a car backfires.

Even without such intrusions, the womb is not a silent place. Researchers who have inserted a hydrophone into the uterus of a pregnant woman have picked up a noise level "akin to the background noise in an apartment," according to DiPietro. Sounds include the whooshing of blood in the mother's vessels, the gurgling and rumbling of her stomach and intestines, as well as the tones of her voice filtered through tissues, bones, and fluid, and the voices of other people coming through the amniotic wall. Fifer has found that fetal heart rate slows when the mother is speaking, suggesting that the fetus not only hears and recognizes the sound, but is calmed by it.

Vision is the last sense to develop. A very premature infant can see light and shape; researchers presume that a fetus has the same ability. Just as the womb isn't completely quiet, it isn't utterly dark, either. Says Filer: "There may be just enough visual stimulation filtered through the mother's tissues that a fetus can respond when the mother is in bright light," such as when she is sunbathing.

Japanese scientists have even reported a distinct fetal reaction to flashes of light shined on the mother's belly. However, other researchers warn that exposing fetuses (or premature infants) to bright light before they are ready can be dangerous. In fact, Harvard's Als believes that retinal damage in premature infants, which has long been ascribed to high concentrations of oxygen, may actually be due to overexposure to light at the wrong time in development.

A six-month fetus, born about 14 weeks too early, has a brain that is neither prepared for nor expecting signals from the eyes to be transmitted into the brain's visual cortex, and from there into the executive-branch frontal lobes, where information is integrated. When the fetus is forced to see too much too soon, says Als, the accelerated stimulation may lead to aberrations of brain development.

Along with the ability to feel, see, and hear comes the capacity to learn and remember. These activities can be rudimentary, automatic, even biochemical. For example, a fetus, after an initial reaction of alarm, eventually stops responding to a repeated loud noise. The fetus displays the same kind of primitive learning, known as habituation, in response to its mother's voice, Fifer has found.

But the fetus has shown itself capable of far more. In the 1980s, psychology professor Anthony James DeCasper and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro devised a feeding contraption that allows a baby to suck faster to hear one set of sounds through headphones and to suck slower to hear a different set. With this technique, DeCasper discovered that within hours of birth, a baby already prefers its mother's voice to a stranger's, suggesting it must have learned and remembered the voice, albeit not necessarily consciously, from its last months in the womb. More recently, he's found that a newborn prefers a story read to it repeatedly in the womb--in this case, The Cat in the Hat--over a new story introduced soon after birth.

DeCasper and others have uncovered more mental feats. Newborns can not only distinguish their mother from a stranger speaking, but would rather hear Mom's voice, especially the way it sounds filtered through amniotic fluid rather than through air. They're xenophobes, too: they prefer to hear Mom speaking in her native language than to hear her or someone else speaking in a foreign tongue.

By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist JeanPierre Lecanuet and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers' voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as "La Poulette" ("The Chick") or "Le Petit Crapaud" ("The Little Toad") is read near the mother's belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady

The fetus is likely responding to the cadence of voices and stories, not their actual words, observes Fifer, but the conclusion is the same: the fetus can listen, learn, and remember at some level, and, as with most babies and children, it likes the comfort and reassurance of the familiar.

It's no secret that babies are born with distinct differences and patterns of activity that suggest individual temperament. Just when and how the behavioral traits originate in the womb is now the subject of intense scrutiny.

In the first formal study of fetal temperament in 1996, DiPietro and her colleagues recorded the heart rate and movements of 31 fetuses six times before birth and compared them to readings taken twice after birth. (They've since extended their study to include 100 more fetuses.) Their findings: fetuses that are very active in the womb tend to be more irritable infants. Those with irregular sleep/wake patterns in the womb sleep more poorly as young infants. And fetuses with high heart rates become unpredictable, inactive babies.

"Behavior doesn't begin at birth," declares DiPietro. "It begins before and develops in predictable ways." One of the most important influences on development is the fetal environment. As Harvard's Als observes, "The fetus gets an enormous amount of 'hormonal bathing' through the mother, so its chronobiological rhythms are influenced by the mother's sleep/wake cycles, her eating patterns, her movements."

The hormones a mother puts out in response to stress also appear critical. DiPietro finds that highly pressured mothers-to-be tend to have more active fetuses--and more irritable infants. "The most stressed are working pregnant women," says DiPietro. "These days, women tend to work up to the day they deliver, even though the implications for pregnancy aren't entirely clear yet. That's our cultural norm, but I think it's insane."

Als agrees that working can be an enormous stress, but emphasizes that pregnancy hormones help to buffer both mother and fetus. Individual reactions to stress also matter. "The pregnant woman who chooses to work is a different woman already from the one who chooses not to work," she explains.

She's also different from the woman who has no choice but to work. DiPietro's studies show that the fetuses of poor women are distinct neurobehaviorally-less active, with a less variable heart rate--from the fetuses of middle-class women. Yet "poor women rate themselves as less stressed than do working middle-class women," she notes. DiPietro suspects that inadequate nutrition and exposure to pollutants may significantly affect the fetuses of poor women.

Stress, diet, and toxins may combine to have a harmful effect on intelligence. A recent study by biostatistician Bernie Devlin, of the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that genes may have less impact on IQ than previously thought and that the environment of the womb may account for much more. "Our old notion of nature influencing the fetus before birth and nurture after birth needs an update," DiPietro insists. "There is an antenatal environment, too, that is provided by the mother."

Parents-to-be who want to further their unborn child's mental development should start by assuring that the antenatal environment is wellnourished, low-stress, drug-free. Various authors and "experts" also have suggested poking the fetus at regular intervals, speaking to it through a paper tube or "pregaphone," piping in classical music, even flashing lights at the mother's abdomen.

Does such stimulation work? More importantly: Is it safe? Some who use these methods swear their children are smarter, more verbally and musically inclined, more physically coordinated and socially adept than average. Scientists, however, are skeptical.

"There has been no defended research anywhere that shows any enduring effect from these stimulations," asserts Filer. "Since no one can even say for certain when a fetus is awake, poking them or sticking speakers on the mother's abdomen may be changing their natural sleep patterns. No one would consider poking or prodding a newborn baby in her bassinet or putting a speaker next to her ear, so why would you do such a thing with a fetus?"

Als is more emphatic. "My bet is that poking, shaking, or otherwise deliberately stimulating the fetus might alter its developmental sequence, and anything that affects the development of the brain comes at a cost."

Gently talking to the fetus, however, seems to pose little risk. Fifer suggests that this kind of activity may help parents as much as the fetus. "Thinking about your fetus, talking to it, having your spouse talk to it, will all help prepare you for this new creature that's going to jump into your life and turn it upside down," he says--once it finally makes its anti-climactic entrance.

Though research in fetal psychology focuses on the last trimester, when most abortions are illegal, the thought of a fetus dreaming, listening and responding to its mother's voice is sure to add new complexity to the debate. The new findings undoubtedly will strengthen the convictions of right-to-lifers--and they may shake the certainty of pro-choice proponents who believe that mental life begins at birth.

Many of the scientists engaged in studying the fetus, however, remain detached from the abortion controversy, insisting that their work is completely irrelevant to the debate.

"I don't think that fetal research informs the issue at all," contends psychologist Janet DiPietro of Johns Hopkins University. "The essence of the abortion debate is: When does life begin? Some people believe it begins at conception, the other extreme believes that it begins after the baby is born, and there's a group in the middle that believes it begins at around 24 or 25 weeks, when a fetus can live outside of the womb, though it needs a lot of help to do so.

"Up to about 25 weeks, whether or not it's sucking its thumb or has personality or all that, the fetus cannot survive outside of its mother. So is that life, or not? That is a moral, ethical, and religious question, not one for science. Things can behave and not be alive. Right-to-lifers may say that this research proves that a fetus is alive, but it does not. It cannot."

"Fetal research only changes the abortion debate for people who think that life starts at some magical point," maintains Heidelise AIs, a psychologist at Harvard University. "If you believe that life begins at conception, then you don't need the proof of fetal behavior." For others, however, abortion is a very complex issue and involves far more than whether research shows that a fetus is alive. "Your circumstances and personal beliefs have much more impact on the decision," she observes.

Like DiPietro, AIs realizes that "people may use this research as an emotional way to draw people to the pro-life side, but it should not be used by belligerent activists." Instead, she believes, it should be applied to helping mothers have the healthiest pregnancy possible and preparing them to best parent their child. Columbia University psychologist William Fifer agrees. "The research is much more relevant for issues regarding viable fetuses--preemies."

Simply put, say the three, their work is intended to help the babies that live--not to decide whether fetuses should.

I wrote: "I have pointed out that a human being is an organism, not a concept." You replied: "At least you admit you have no concept of a human being." I wrote: "That is a non sequitur. Just because a human being is not a concept does not mean that I have no concept of a human being." You replied: "No, the problem is that you are pathetically dense." That is an ad hominem.

No, it's a joke, son. A play on words. It pokes fun at your contextual confusion. You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense.

I wrote: "A human being is not a string of English letters," You replied: "Yes it is. The first letter is "A", the second is "h", the third is "u", ... A word is not the same thing as its referent. I am not a word or set of words. I am a human being. The English words "human being" refer to members of the species homo sapiens. Those members of the species are human beings.

Now that you've finally learned those basics, how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently.

I wrote: "When I say that a human being is an organism, I am talking about the referent. When you deny that, and claim that a human being is a string of letters, you are talking about the words "human being". This kind of equivocation is basic sophistry." You replied: "No, it is mockery. I was doing to you what you were doing to me. And you still don't get it." Mockery is a form of sophistry.

No it isn't. But it is a form of communication, and you are definitely not getting the message.

You seem to be interested in playing games, in mocking, and throwing insults around.

Well, since you just "ignore" any reasoned approach, I'm left with little else to keep my interest.

I'm simply interested in getting to the bottom of the issue

LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid, Mr. "I ignored it"! I nearly soaked my keyboard! That line alone has made all this repetitious typing worthwhile.

You wrote: "It does not follow. Who taught you logic, a third-grader?" Another ad hominem.

It's hilarious how you insist you are a philosophy professor and don't even know what sophistry or ad hominems are! You're not fooling anyone.

You wrote: "Also, "conception" labels a set of observations during which there is no "at"." Conception is not a set of observations. We observe conception; but conception is in the real world.

Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations (another point you once conceded, now disavow). Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events.

You wrote: "you even agreed that the observations fell along a continuum." To which post are you referring?

Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."

You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!! Prove it.

I'll bet you have a nice collection of broken records at home. The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF. However, it is DEMONSTRATED every time it is OBSERVED. I know I've said it all zillion times before, but you go on and on anyway as though I never did.

You wrote: "AT CONCEPTION" DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Perhaps it does not make sense to you, but it does to me.

Therein lies your malfunction.

You wrote: "I point out the specific errors in your logic--and you ignore them everytime." Show me one error in my logic.

What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you.

BTW, since you choose to put a blind spot over my refutations, I would urge you to take your syllogism to one of your philosophy professors (assuming you are even a philosophy student) and ask him if the argument is valid. He will in very short order tell you why it is not. Maybe the one-on-one interaction will break the spell.

You wrote: "You blind yourself to the obvious both in observation and logic." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "Look. It is patently clear that you are deliberately blinding yourself." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "This has now become a psychological issue, not a logical one." Another ad hominem.

You might want to do yourself a favor and look up the meaning of "ad hominem" so that you can begin to stop embarrassing yourself.

I wrote: "Nothing that Curtis says in the quotation you provide shows that human beings don't come into existence at conception." You replied: "Maybe you are not serious about these replies. Maybe you are just some kid at a computer laughing about how frustrating you can be. I hope so." Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.

Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua. In your case it is so bad that you even claim to have proven they don't exist at all.

The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you.

You wrote: "I Wait, I can make one last gasp--"at conception" doesn't make sense, since biology shows us that the process of conception is continuous. Biology shows us no such thing, because biology is not metaphysics. From the biological point of view there is no instant when an organism comes into existence. But biology does not deal with existence per se. Existence belongs to metaphysics. And from the metaphysical point of view, there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence.

Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so.

You wrote: "Think before you post next time." Another ad hominem.

Another embarrassing reply.

You wrote: "No, it's a joke, son."

Son? Another ad hominem. An insult is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is simply any comment (of any sort) that is about the person, rather than about the position or argument.

You wrote: "A play on words."

Telling jokes and playing games is not conducive to any philosophical discussion aimed at discovering truth.

You wrote: "You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense."

Another ad hominem.

You wrote: "Now that you've finally learned those basics"

Another ad hominem.

You wrote: "how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently."

Another ad hominem.

I wrote: "Mockery is a form of sophistry"

You replied: "No it isn't."

Yes it is. All use of ad hominems in a philosophical discussions are forms of sophistry. (See for example, the discussions between Socrates and the sophists in the Sophist, the Gorgias.) Mockery is an ad hominem. Therefore mockery is a form of sophistry.

You wrote: "and you are definitely not getting the message."

Another ad hominem.

You wrote: "LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid,"

Another ad hominem.

You wrote: "Mr. "I ignored it"!

As far as I can tell, I only ignored fallacies (e.g. heaps of ad hominems) and red herrings. But, you are welcome to point to something that I should not have ignored, and which shows your position to be correct and my position to be false.

You wrote: "Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations"

I agree.

You wrote: "(another point you once conceded, now disavow)."

I do not disavow that conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observation. On the contrary, I fully agree with that claim.

You wrote: "Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events."

On this point we disagree. That is because you are taking "observation" to mean merely "biological" observation. But observation is broader than that. Hume, in his Treatise has a section where he talks about a murder, and says that if one analyzes the murder (say, a stabbing) into all its component events: the knife moving toward the chest, the knife penetrating the skin, the knife severing the intercostal muscles, the knife penetrating the heart, etc. one will never find any moral facts. He is right. If one views the stabbing in that merely biological way, one will never see the immorality of the action. But that does not mean that morality is an illusion. It shows that this biological way of observing the event is not exhaustive. Likewise, the biological way of observing conception is not exhaustive.

Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."

Of course, from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*, just as from a biological point of view there is no immorality to the act of murder.

You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!!

I replied: "Prove it."

You replied: The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF."

If you can show that observation shows that there is no specific point of conception, I will abandon my position. But you can only show that *biological* observation does not detect any specific point in conception. *Biological* observation, however, is not exhaustive. *Philosophical* observation shows that there is a specific point of conception. You have not refuted that, (although you have repeatedly *asserted* its falsity).

I wrote: Show me one error in my logic.

You replied: "What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you."

I have read all your posts in this thread. If I have made one logical error, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, your accusation is empty.

I wrote: "Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant."

You replied: "Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua."

If that is the case, then Curtis was constructing an ad hominem. His ad hominem does not show that human beings do not come into existence at an instant. No ad hominem (no matter what its content) shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.

You wrote: "The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you."

Another ad hominem.

You wrote: "Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so."

Merely asserting that metaphysics does not show that there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence does not make it so. If a biologist insists that philosophy does not show that human actions have any moral quality, that does not make it so. You are trying to use biological observations to refute philosophical observations. But biological observations do not refute philosophical observations. If you want to know why that is the case, read Maritain's An Introduction to Philosophy.

-A8

You wrote: "No, it's a joke, son." Son? Another ad hominem. An insult is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is simply any comment (of any sort) that is about the person, rather than about the position or argument.

No, an ad hominem is an ARGUMENT from insult. It plays no part in my argument which I've repeated often enough.

Telling jokes and playing games is not conducive to any philosophical discussion aimed at discovering truth.

Oooooo. But ignoring arguments, being absurdly presumptuous, and putting outrageous words in my mouth is. I see.

Another ad hominem.

Another misnomer.

I wrote: "Mockery is a form of sophistry" You replied: "No it isn't." Yes it is. All use of ad hominems in a philosophical discussions are forms of sophistry. (See for example, the discussions between Socrates and the sophists in the Sophist, the Gorgias.) Mockery is an ad hominem. Therefore mockery is a form of sophistry.

Mockery is not an ad hominem and it is not sophistry, unless you think Rich Little was a professional sophist. Both ad hominems and sophistry are arguments. My mockery and insults are very amusing, allude to the truth, but have nothing to do with my argument.

As far as I can tell, I only ignored fallacies

Riiiiiiight. I don't know what you think you are protecting with those blinders.

On this point we disagree. That is because you are taking "observation" to mean merely "biological" observation. But observation is broader than that.

Which observation have you made that contradicts the observation of the continuity of the process of conception?

Hume, in his Treatise has a section where he talks about a murder, and says that if one analyzes the murder (say, a stabbing) into all its component events: the knife moving toward the chest, the knife penetrating the skin, the knife severing the intercostal muscles, the knife penetrating the heart, etc. one will never find any moral facts. He is right. If one views the stabbing in that merely biological way, one will never see the immorality of the action. But that does not mean that morality is an illusion. It shows that this biological way of observing the event is not exhaustive. Likewise, the biological way of observing conception is not exhaustive.

(1) That is not observation. (2) I have made no statement regarding morality. Your point could not be more irrelevent.

Of course, from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*, just as from a biological point of view there is no immorality to the act of murder.

Biology, like my point of fact, is about observation, not values. You are, of course, free to continue valuing nonsense.

If you can show that observation shows that there is no specific point of conception, I will abandon my position.

I doubt it. Why should reason or evidence start affecting you now?

But you can only show that *biological* observation does not detect any specific point in conception.

Empirical observation--the way you know things outside your own consciousness.

*Biological* observation, however, is not exhaustive.

Do you have a magic eye, or are you including cognition as a type of observation?

*Philosophical* observation shows that there is a specific point of conception.

No philosophy doesn't.

You have not refuted that

(1) I have refuted your syllogism. (2) No one has ever proved your notion poofism. Your tenacity to that fallacy is also quite bewildering, since there is no moral or religious reason for it.

(although you have repeatedly *asserted* its falsity).

You are shocked that I follow your repetition with repetition? If you READ my posts. You WILL read my refutations. But, we both know your blind spot will not let you do that.

I have read all your posts in this thread. If I have made one logical error, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, your accusation is empty.

You are so funny. Read my responses to your syllogisms. You have only ignored them--something I am about to return in kind.

I wrote: "Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant." You replied: "Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua." If that is the case, then Curtis was constructing an ad hominem. His ad hominem does not show that human beings do not come into existence at an instant. No ad hominem (no matter what its content) shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.

That's it. I am convinced that you are a mentally disabled. I have explained the purpose of Curtis. It does go to the heart of your fallacious thinking. He addressed the fallacy of your method of reasoning, and as such, applies to far more than just human beings.

You have no interest in discussion, reason, or even understanding. I have gladly used insults in response to your blind thoughtlessness but have always responded to your points regarding the issue at hand (without ever using a single ad hominem, BTW). You on the other hand, simply make up elaborate notions about me, pretend you don't understand points even after my elaborations of them, and simply ignore any substantive post I make to you. Communication stopped long ago. The comedy has also stopped. It's now nothing more than a risk of carpel tunnel syndrome.

You don't need reason to be happy. And so, I wish you a happy life.

Beavus and I are concluding our discussion regarding the beginning of human life. I'm pinging those of you who participated earlier in this thread, in case you are interested. Here is where things stand.

Beavus claimed on this thread that a human being does not come into existence at some point in time. Beavus's evidence for this claim is that when we look at biological events at the molecular level, we do not see any unique moment.

Beavus is right that when we look at biological events at the molecular level, we do not see any unique moment. But this way of looking at reality is very limited, only showing us a part of reality. The fact that we are unable to see any unique moment during conception when we watch the process at the molecular level does not show that there is no such moment, just as our inability to see any moral facts when analyzing a murder at the molecular level does not show that there are no moral facts about the murder. So, in order to determine whether human beings come into existence at an instant, we need to consider the evidence at other levels of observation.

Here is my argument. We know that any particular organism is not eternal. At some point in time, it did not exist. I did not exist 100 years ago. But I exist now. And from philosophy we also know that for any X at any time t, X either exists at t or X does not exist at t. So it follows that any organism either exists or it does not exist. There is no stretch of time during which an organism both exists and does not exist. Hence it follows that an organism must begin at an instant, even if we cannot detect that instant through molecular or biological observations. Biology narrows down the time window during which an organism comes into existence. Biology provides the information that allows us to determine that before the gametes meet, there is no organism, but by the first cell division of the zygote, there is a new organism. But biology does not narrow the window to an instant. That requires understanding the binary nature of existence. That is a matter of philosophy, based on the nature of being itself, i.e. that something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same sense. When we include that fact, with the fact that organisms come into existence, these facts entail that for each organism, human beings included, there is an instant at which it comes into existence. That is my argument.

Beavus has responded to my argument by claiming that when we look at the process of conception at the molecular level, we do not see any unique event. This is correct, but it does not refute my argument, because seeing no unique event at the molecular level is fully compatible with my argument. The only ways to refute my argument are to show that: (1) there are no organisms, (2) all organisms are eternal (i.e. never come into existence), (3) existence is not binary, or (4) an organism can come into existence over time even though existence is binary. Beavus has not shown any of (1)-(4) to be the case. So, Beavus has not refuted my argument. Moreover, my argument refutes Beavus's original claim that human beings do not come into existence at some point in time. Beavus is free to have the last word if he wishes.

-A8

Beavus has responded to my argument by claiming that when we look at the process of conception at the molecular level, we do not see any unique event.

Actually, I'd argue that's not entirely true. At fertilization (not conception -- they are two significantly different events), when a sperm enters the egg's membrane, the membrane undergoes a change that prohibits any other sperm from entering the egg and the sperm's genetic material combines with the egg's genetic material to produce a complete set. I'd argue that either at the moment where the sperm penetrates the egg's membrane and that membrane changes to exclude other sperm or the point at which the sperm's membrane opens and allows its genetic material to mix with the egg's, you've got two unique events to choose from as the transition point from the sperm and egg being, respectively, parts of the father and mother to both of tehm being a combined organism and new individual.

As for twinning and chimeras, the unique even there involves the biochemical seperation or combination of two bodies of cells so that they either form two individuals or combine into one. With sufficiently good scientific equipment, it should be possible to identify a point in time when the cells either start acting independent of one another or start acting as a single unit which marks the point at which either twinning or combination becomes a foregone conclusion.

The key here is to recognize that the starting or ending of an individual does not necessarily involve the creation or destruction of a body. It may simply involve a change in identity or status for the component cells of the body. Fertilization isn't the start of a new life in the sense that a new life is created. It's the point where the life of a new individual becomes distinct from the life of their parents.

Allow me to share with you something said by a very renowned geneticists while testifying in a courtroom (in Blountville Tennessee, my area) regarding embryos stored in a fertility clinic, re, conception and actuality as differentiated from potentiality (Beavus intentionally juxtaposes these fundamental perspectives, for the obfuscatory value in his derision of fellow freepers):

Doctor Jérôme Lejeune, R.I.P.: "I have to come back to this concept of conception, because it is a very remarkable fact that in all the languages coming from Latin, we use the same word either to express an idea which comes into our mind, or to a new being coming into life. We conceive an idea. We conceive a baby. A baby is conceived. Conception applies just as well for defining what will animate matter in a human nature or what will animate your mind within your idea.

And that is, so to speak, an extraordinary description of reality which is at the very beginning the information and the matter, so to speak: the spirit and the body are so intimately interwoven that we use the same word to say spirit animated by your ideas, or life of a new human being animated by genetic property-conception.

Now this moment a new human being is conceived is, really, as for the conception of a new constitution, when the whole thing has been spelled out.

Now we know, and I think there's no disagreement among biologists everywhere in this world, that after fecundation no new information goes in. Everything is there, just at the moment after the entry of the sperm, or it is not enough and it will fail. Either the whole information for the human being is there and the human being can develop and organize, or it is not there and no human being will develop at all.

Now nature has invented an extraordinary device to tell us that nature does protect the privacy of the very first stage of the human being. The right of privacy is written in that way in biology.

The egg is a little sphere of one millimeter and a half in diameter. But it is not naked. It has some plastic bag around it that we call from Latin zona pellucida, because you can see through it. And this very curious plastic bag is, in fact, the perfect control of the privacy of the new being because as soon as the head of the sperm who got there first was able to burrow inside the zona pellucida, as soon as the head comes inside, suddenly in a micro-second, this lucida, this transparent membrane becomes suddenly changed physically, and it becomes entirely impermeable to any other sperm.

It's a mechanism of an extraordinary precision which prevents many sperm from going inside the one egg."

The state of being alive is an actuality, whereas the action of growth and development is seen as actualization of potentialities. When mitosis with the zygote occurs, we know scientifically that there is actually a new individual life expressing itself. Some would argue that there isn't an individual life since twinning can still occur. But that ignores the actuality of a life expressing itself, regardless of whether a second or even third life may begin within a few cell divisions. If such a second and or third life expresses, that doesn't negate the actuality of the initial life expressing his or her actual self.

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