Posted on 01/11/2005 12:29:05 PM PST by beavus
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.
FETAL ALERTNESS
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?'"
FETAL MOVEMENT
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."
FETAL TASTE
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.
FETAL HEARING
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.
FETAL VISION
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.
FETAL LEARNING
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.
FETAL PERSONALITY
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.
WHAT'S THE IMPACT ON ABORTION?
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.
An avalance is another good example of a continuum. If you were to consider all of the different rocks of various sizes, all of the motions, all of the molecules in the rocks, the wind and the air interaction with the rocks, etc, you again see that nature functions quite smoothly. You might find a second, or a half second interval within which the avalanche becomes a foregone conclusion, but one can always then consider the billions of individual events taking place within that half-second and see that it is quite smooth.
That is why physical models are typically (though not always) continuous (to an infinitely greater degree even than we can observe).
"after fecundation no new information goes in"
But, that certainly doesn't contradict my point (although it can be argued as a separate issue). On a continuum, one can identify a time region, and describe what is true sometime after that region. But there are no nonarbitrary precise dividing points between any regions. That's just the nature of continua.
At least YOU know the difference between mockery, insults, sophistry, and condescension (all of which I freely admit) and ad hominems. That makes you smarter than some self-proclaimed philosophy professors I know.
Morality exists within time as God is creator of both. Assigning of values becomes important as evil attempts to pervert all creation. There is an attraction to remain neutral as an observer, but by nature alone, the creation of the observer is "good" as God the creator is all good and does only good. Evil tries to corrupt even a nuetral observer and natural science. This is because God allows free will and has allowed evil to become unto its own nature.
Thus, simple observation is no longer simple, but becomes a burdern for decision. Even the smallest detail is held in contention between forces of good and evil.
That's not dew. I love babies, but I'm not gonna touch one until they wash off the blood, bodily fluids, and vaginal mucus.
That's not all he's touching. It's like permanent bathtime in there.
I say, when a fetus is old enough for masturbation, abortion should be off-limits.
Onanicide is Murder!
If "abortion" means removing a blob of tissue from the mother, then you can't "abort" a self-aware fetus. But you can euthanize it, so liberals will demand that right next.
Because they are tied to the idea of ensoulment. Ensoulment requires a discrete beginning and end of life.
It's just another example of religion conflicting with reality. They choose to believe the stuff in the book, instead of the stuff in front of their faces.
When you mentally defy reality, isn't that the definition of mental illness? Or maybe mental illness exists on a continuum, too?
Let's say I use the term Y to mean "some wood."
Then wouldn't every Y either be one molecule in size or contain multiple other Ys?
And let's say Z means "some human tissue"... wouldn't every Z either be one molecule in size or contain multiple other Zs?
So that rule (by tautology) applies only to entities and collections incapable of containing like entities/collections
For instance, if A refers to "a collection of tools," an A can contain other As. And if B refers to "a single hammer," then a B cannot contain other Bs. And if C refers to "a collection of tools that is exactly one hammer, one saw, and one screwdriver," then a C cannot contain other Cs, even though it is a collection. I mention this only to point out that collections can meet the definition you give above; collections are important later.
Of course, living human tissue is not the same as a human life, even though living human tissue is alive and exhibits behavior directed by human Chromosomes. A purely mechanical definition of "a human life" would be rejected by most people. Obviously, "a human life" is not "a collection of human body parts that work together to stay alive," because there are amputees (missing parts of the collection), people with artificial organs, and collections of organs that can survive together (with the help of machinery) but are not what we would consider "a human life" (for instance, if you rigged a stomach and intestines together in nutrient fluid, they could probably survive, especially if you send the right nerve signals electrically)
So what is a "human life?" Is it a single, discrete element? Or is it a collection of elements? I suggest that a "human life" is the same as a "human mind"--wouldn't a human mind removed from its human body still be a "human?" Wouldn't the "lifeless" body no longer be connected to a human life? It would certainly not consist of one.
Even Christians generally consider the soul to be tied to the mind. For instance, the soul is considered responsible for crimes committed by the mind or at its direction. When a Christian claims that during surgery his/her soul was drifting away "towards the light," but then came back into the body, their minds were able to observe the activity of and/or sensory input from their souls, suggesting a connection between the two. Most Christians probably believe their minds will be with them in Heaven, and are inseparable from their souls... others might see Heaven as a general closeness to God that is uncognizable, and believe their minds will die and be left behind on Earth... and still others believe other things. But for the main group, a human life "ends" when the mind leaves the body to travel with the soul to Heaven.
So we agree that the mind either dies or leaves, and that is when there is "death" (the end of a human life).
So now that we have established the importance of a human mind, what the heck is it? From WikiPedia:
Other philosophers contend that some nouns are not names of entities but are a kind of shorthand way of referring to a collection (of either objects or events). In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, instead refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a personIf a "human mind" is a collection of mental elements, what happens if some of those elements are missing? For instance, some people suffer brain damage and miss the use of some structures up there (losing short-term memory, for instance, or having their consciences ripped out, as was the case with Phineas Gage). Or if they don't lose completely the use of such structures, they lose partial capability... further supporting the idea that human life is in fact not something that can be pronounced "on" or "off."
And if a "human life" is just "a brain that can keep a body alive," then a brain stem could be part of what qualifies as a human life. Even reptiles have brain stems.
As for your contention that a human life cannot be a part of another human life, I would have to disagree. If in the future technology enables us to combine minds or mix-and-match brain structures between people, our conception of "human lives" as distinct from one another would crumble.
And once we allow that "human lives" might not be discrete, the notion of ensoulment crumbles. After all, ensoulment requires persons to be responsible for their actions (which then reflect on the quality of the soul). But how would you judge the crimes committed by a "person" whose brain was made up of parts from three distinct people? Which soul(s) would go to hell for crimes committed by it?
Even if you could point to a single brain structure to which the soul was bound, that wouldn't help. What if scientists could cut that structure in half and splice in half of someone else's? Whose soul would be where? It's foolish to talk of souls.
You replied:
"Let's say I use the term Y to mean "some wood."
Then wouldn't every Y either be one molecule in size or contain multiple other Ys?
And let's say Z means "some human tissue"... wouldn't every Z either be one molecule in size or contain multiple other Zs?
So that rule (by tautology) applies only to entities and collections incapable of containing like entities/collections
The rule applies to *wholes*. If you look at post #133, you will say the more proper wording of the rule. "No part can be a whole of the same sort as the whole of which it is a part." "Some wood" or "some human tissue" are not necessarily wholes.
As for the rest of your post, I don't follow your argument. But, maybe we can discuss one thing at a time. So I'm simply responding here to your 'parts/wholes' comment.
-A8
Actually, I think that if you had an omniscient perspective of an avalanche and could understand the effect that each particle or event has on the process, that you could identify the one single event that makes the avalanche a foregone conclusion, perhaps the breaking of a single chemical bond or the addition of a minute amount of kinetic energy to a single particle. Similarly, I think that if you had an omniscient perspective of the fertilization process, you could identify the single chemical reaction that makes the rest a foregone conclusion. A chain reaction always starts somewhere. Identify the start and you've identified where the entire chain became a foregone conclusion. That we don't have either the perspective or knowledge to identify that event does not mean that it doesn't exist.
I still don't know what this has to do with my point. Are you disputing my qualifier "simple" in "simple observation"? I'd gladly remove it if you like. The important point is that it is observation, regardless of the subjective qualifier "simple".
The person I was arguing with presumes that if X (e.g., life) has no discrete beginning, then X doesn't exist. He was expressing ignorance of what a continuum is and committing the fallacy of the beard--a fallacy which appears to be one of the essential metaphysical elements of many on this thread. Ultimately they choose to just blind themselves to contrary evidence. You'll see as you continue to read through the thread the rigity of this fixed false belief. It is only its conventionality that keeps it from being a delusion. But, it is mentally crippling nontheless.
RINGO: Because they are tied to the idea of ensoulment. Ensoulment requires a discrete beginning and end of life.
I know that you are right, but what makes you or them think ensoulment requires a discrete beginning? There is nothing about the concept of continua that precludes any kind of magical thinking. Also, magical thinking itself removes the any sort of restrictions within the realm of imagination. The only way they are unable to conceive of ensoulment as a continuous process is that they are unable to imagine continua at all.
And THAT really is the crux of this entire thread--misunderstanding of continua, typically in the form of the fallacy of the beard.
When you mentally defy reality, isn't that the definition of mental illness?
No. It might simply be being wrong. Or, there may be an imposed defense mechanism. For instance, a person may be so emotionally tied to the belief in poofism, that he just blocks all evidence that could shake that belief. I had hoped, by showing that their religion really doesn't require the nonsense of poofism, that they would be able to remove this block and step closer to reality. I have met with little success.
Or maybe mental illness exists on a continuum, too?
It would seem so. :->
That isn't an unreasonable thought. However, if you actually consider all the chemical events involved in the process of fertilization, and pick (or the sake of argument) any one of them, you will see that there is nothing about it that distinguishes itself from neighboring events in any meaningful way. There are very similar events occuring not only before and after, but also concurrently or nearly concurrently.
And then of course, it doesn't stop with a single chemical reaction, even if one could be selected. One reaction involves molecular movements, atomic vibrations, continuous forces, electron cloud configuration changes. Some of these shaky states proceed, and then reverse again.
Finally, not only can any point not be found, but when considering all this detail you can't help but ask yourself, "Wait a minute. Do I really think that human rights comes down to some particular atomic vibration?"
There really is no dilemma here when you realize that the properties that you value most--those pertaining e.g. to human rights or religion--are not reducible as such, but are derived from less valuable processes, typically developed along continua.
Remember, A may develop continuously to B, but that doesn't mean B isn't completely different and infinitely more valuable to you than A. That is the nature of a continuum. People hold a discrete concept of A, and of B, and perhaps that is why they insist on imagining a precise dividing line. However, to that I would ask you to consider just what a continuum is, if not as I've described?
Out of curiosity, have you actually looked at each and every chemical event involved in the process of fertilization?
At a single point in the fertilization process, the cell wall permits one, and only one, sperm to enter and then changes so that no other sperm can enter. There is a single trigger point in that process, whether it's a single electrical or chemical process or a series of them, where it becomes a foregone conclusion that a particular sperm is going to enter the egg and no others will. In the rare case where a second sperm might enter the egg, too, because the process isn't instantaneous at a molecular level, the resulting set of chromosomes with not produce a viable fertilized egg, thus it's a non-issue. For all intents and purposes, the process is a single logical XOR gate.
Again, I think you are engaging in postmodernist sleight-of-hand, claiming that one chemical reaction is the same as another one. I could use the same sophistry to demonstrate that there is no difference between a living person and a dead body. After all, it's all just chemical processes, right? Or that a person never really dies. Or that a forest can't exist.
And then of course, it doesn't stop with a single chemical reaction, even if one could be selected. One reaction involves molecular movements, atomic vibrations, continuous forces, electron cloud configuration changes. Some of these shaky states proceed, and then reverse again.
Consider the concepts of "trigger" and "cascade". At some point, things will not reverse. Yes, in theory all chemical and physical reactions are reversible but there is a reason why avalanches don't fall back into place, corpses don't normally spring back to life, and particles in an explosion don't reassemble back into a bomb by themselves. Look into the Second Law of Thermodynamics and organic chemistry. Chemical reactions, particularly those that happen within cells, are not so random and arbitrary as you seem to be claiming they are.
You said that my avalance was a good one. I look at an avalance and can see that there is a single trigger point in the processes that makes the rest of the avalanche a foregone conclusion. If it were important to identify the single sub-atomic process at the very beginning of an avalanche, I have no doubt that we could find one if we could look at the even omnisciently. I honestly don't see why you can't.
Finally, not only can any point not be found, but when considering all this detail you can't help but ask yourself, "Wait a minute. Do I really think that human rights comes down to some particular atomic vibration?"
You keep making the assertion that one point cannot be found and I keep not believing you. Yes, I do think that all human rights can all come down to starting with a single atomic vibration or chemical process just as I think the start of an avalance could and honestly can't understand why that bothers you. It's the same line whether I talk about it as a large-scale process or a single subatomic event. No, it's not the event, itself, that matters, but what the event signifies or defines.
There really is no dilemma here when you realize that the properties that you value most--those pertaining e.g. to human rights or religion--are not reducible as such, but are derived from less valuable processes, typically developed along continua.
I don't see a dilemma either way. The properties are the product of the process. You'll get the same answer whether you look at the properties or the process because one is tied to the other. I can figure out whether you are alive or not by taking your pulse or by taking an omniscient look at the chemical processes going on at a subatomic level in your body. The answer will be the same either way.
As I've said earlier, I totally agree that life is a continuum. But that doesn't mean that I can't draw lines along that continuum based on stages of the process or broader characteristics tied to those stages of the process. You are trying to detach the properties from the process by claiming that you can't draw distinctions along the process. Since the process creates the distinctions in properties, you can most certainly trace those distinctions back down to the processes that produce those properties.
Remember, A may develop continuously to B, but that doesn't mean B isn't completely different and infinitely more valuable to you than A.
It also doesn't mean that there isn't a line between A and B. But that's also now what we are doing here. We aren't drawing a line between A or B. We are deciding whether an organism is B or not.
That is the nature of a continuum. People hold a discrete concept of A, and of B, and perhaps that is why they insist on imagining a precise dividing line. However, to that I would ask you to consider just what a continuum is, if not as I've described?
I agree that life is a continuum. The absence or presence of human rights is a boolean characteristic. You either do or do not have human rights. The continuum of life crosses that line at one end and crosses back over it at the other end. But the line is there.
You can try to cloud that all you want by talking about developing properties that generate human rights, because that's where I suspect you are going with this. But, to cut to the chase, I'll point out that there are really only two rational places to draw that line for human rights--at fertilization and at around two years of age when a child brain develops sufficiently that the light of distinctly human though turns on. Any other line is arbitrary. Several pro-abortion philosphers like Michael Tooley and Peter Singer realize this, which is why they both support infanticide to at least some degree.
What line, exactly, are you trying to draw and why?
Obviously a sarcastic question. But if you didn't know, much of the structures and chemical compositions are well known and have been repeatedly studied. At the resolution of our current understanding, there is no meaningful discontinuity anywhere during the process. That is, we understand a great deal through observation and with all we do understand, there is no reason to think there is a magical poof.
At a single point in the fertilization process, the cell wall permits one, and only one, sperm to enter
False. You still don't understand. To understand, just use your knowledge of chemistry and your general observations of the continuity of nature, then repeatedly slow time and magnify your view upon what you think is a "point". When you zoom in enough, you realize that that "point" is really a continuous region of chemical reactions over a short interval of time with no recongnizable nonarbitrary division.
In the rare case where a second sperm might enter the egg, too, because the process isn't instantaneous at a molecular level, the resulting set of chromosomes with not produce a viable fertilized egg, thus it's a non-issue.
This does not pertain to my arguement. I am merely saying that time flows smoothly, and there is no nonarbitrary point of division at the highest resolution of our understanding.
Consider the concepts of "trigger" and "cascade". At some point, things will not reverse. Yes, in theory all chemical and physical reactions are reversible but there is a reason why avalanches don't fall back into place, corpses don't normally spring back to life, and particles in an explosion don't reassemble back into a bomb by themselves. Look into the Second Law of Thermodynamics and organic chemistry. Chemical reactions, particularly those that happen within cells, are not so random and arbitrary as you seem to be claiming they are.
I am not claiming that! Nor am I denying cause and effect. Again, just perform the thought experiment I described above and you will realize, that in almost any observable causal chain, with the resolution of our current understanding (which falls below even the atomic level) no nonarbitrary point can be drawn.
That is what a continuum IS. That is why others refer to the "space-time continuum". Physicists who speak of the space-time continuum don't deny the existence of cause and effect, or in a significant difference between observations in remote parts of the continuum. However, to believe as YOU do, that there IS some precise point, MAY be a disruption of that continuum, unless you are arguing the discontinuity of quantum events. But then you still have to explain how you would distingish neighboring events (to show your time point is nonarbitrary).
Again, I think you are engaging in postmodernist sleight-of-hand, claiming that one chemical reaction is the same as another one.
It is not that the reactions are identical. I am not denying the law of identity. The reactions occur at different times and in different parts of space. But, there is no difference that you can identify to nonarbitrarily say "This must be the point."
I could use the same sophistry to demonstrate that there is no difference between a living person and a dead body.
No you couldn't. If you did that, then you would be contradicting my argument of continuum. You would be saying that things stay the same. WORSE than that, you would be saying that either YOU are right and there is a precise point, or else there is no difference between far ends of the causal chain. That is precisely the fallacy of the beard or continuum fallacy.
After all, it's all just chemical processes, right? Or that a person never really dies. Or that a forest can't exist.
Careful. You are committing the fallacy. You are not recognizing the existence of continua. I would say to you that (1) a living person is not the same as a dead person; and (2) there is no nonarbitrary precise dividing point between when the person is living and when the person is dead. I.e., it falls along a continuum.
I have no doubt that we could find one if we could look at the even omnisciently.
You SHOULD have doubts, since our current understanding of the process permits no such precise identification.
It also doesn't mean that there isn't a line between A and B. But that's also now what we are doing here. We aren't drawing a line between A or B. We are deciding whether an organism is B or not.
But in fact you are drawing such a line when making a temporal statement like "life begins at conception". Because there is a time A when the gametes are separated, and there is a time B when the person is playing golf. You are saying that somewhere along the continuus time line from A to B there has been identified a precise time point. But as I have explained, that assertion is factually incorrect.
single atomic vibration or chemical process just as I think the start of an avalance could and honestly can't understand why that bothers you.
Not that it bothers me. It is just that you simply making it up wholecloth. We have observations and theories to explain those observations. But nowhere (except in your imagination) is there such a precise nonarbitrary point.
I also question whether you can really imagine such a thing. If you truly do imagine it, then tell me what what you imagine the neighboring before and after "chemical vibrations" look like that permits a nonarbitrary designation.
I agree that life is a continuum. The absence or presence of human rights is a boolean characteristic. You either do or do not have human rights. The continuum of life crosses that line at one end and crosses back over it at the other end. But the line is there.
You are making contradictory statements. A precisely defined region (e.g. your notion of "human rights") cannot be applied without arbitrariness to a continuum (e.g. your notion of "life").
But, to cut to the chase, I'll point out that there are really only two rational places to draw that line for human rights--at fertilization and at around two years of age when a child brain develops sufficiently that the light of distinctly human though turns on. Any other line is arbitrary.
Those are two suggestions, but you have a severely limitted imagination if you think those exhaust all possible explanations.
What line, exactly, are you trying to draw and why?
I frustrates me that you ask this. This is about the hundreth's post on this topic where I have stated my rather uncomplicated view and elaborated upon it ad nauseum. If you really understood my argument, you couldn't have asked the above question, because you would realize that I am instead saying that no such nonarbitrary line is even possible.
I am not drawing lines. You are drawing lines and further insisting that it is impossible that no line exists.
Somewhere in that process, a change in the egg is triggered and a fertilized egg becomes the inevitable result of the process. It's not a matter of discontinuity. It's a matter of a change in the direction of that continuity.
False. You still don't understand. To understand, just use your knowledge of chemistry and your general observations of the continuity of nature, then repeatedly slow time and magnify your view upon what you think is a "point". When you zoom in enough, you realize that that "point" is really a continuous region of chemical reactions over a short interval of time with no recongnizable nonarbitrary division. thus it's a non-issue.
I keep doing this silly thought experiment and I keep not seeing what you expect me to see. Bear in mind that I used to make up the equations in high school physics because I could visualize the curve produced by the movement of the particles and could just make up equations to fit the curve, so I'm no stranger to visualizing physics. Yes, chemical reactions are happening throughout but there is a single straw that breaks the camel's back--a single reaction that represents either a trigger for the rest or a point of no return. You claim it isn't there. I claim it is, just as there is a single point where an avalanche starts.
This does not pertain to my arguement. I am merely saying that time flows smoothly, and there is no nonarbitrary point of division at the highest resolution of our understanding.
You keep claiming that. I don't agree.
I am not claiming that! Nor am I denying cause and effect. Again, just perform the thought experiment I described above and you will realize, that in almost any observable causal chain, with the resolution of our current understanding (which falls below even the atomic level) no nonarbitrary point can be drawn.
You keep claiming that. I don't agree. I keep performing the thought experiment and I keep seeing a point. Frankly, I can't understand how you don't, especially if you understand the idea of one process triggering another, thresholds, and cascading processes.
That is what a continuum IS. That is why others refer to the "space-time continuum". Physicists who speak of the space-time continuum don't deny the existence of cause and effect, or in a significant difference between observations in remote parts of the continuum.
Do you understand what the space-time continuum is? Physicists also don't have any trouble differentiating time and space, nor the fact that space has three distinct dimensions, nor the fact that they can define specific points and vectors within that space. It's not a "continuum" in the sense that one can't draw any distinctions or define any points, lines, or areas.
However, to believe as YOU do, that there IS some precise point, MAY be a disruption of that continuum, unless you are arguing the discontinuity of quantum events. But then you still have to explain how you would distingish neighboring events (to show your time point is nonarbitrary).
I have no idea what you are talking about. If an automobline is travelling to Detroit, it's journey may involve a continuum of motion. If the car gets destroyed in an accident or carjacked in Newark, it may never reach Detroit. But, at some point, it's bumper either crosses the two dimensional border of Detroit or it doesn't. At some point, the car is either "In Detroit" or "Not In Detroit". There is no "process of becomming in Detroit".
It is not that the reactions are identical. I am not denying the law of identity. The reactions occur at different times and in different parts of space. But, there is no difference that you can identify to nonarbitrarily say "This must be the point."
You seem to be assuming that those reactions have no effect on each other or the processes around them and that's simply not true. There are triggers, thresholds, and cascades involved where one reaction or a threshold of reactions triggers a cascade.
No you couldn't. If you did that, then you would be contradicting my argument of continuum. You would be saying that things stay the same. WORSE than that, you would be saying that either YOU are right and there is a precise point, or else there is no difference between far ends of the causal chain. That is precisely the fallacy of the beard or continuum fallacy.
Frankly, the continuum fallacy seems to be precisely the argument you seem to be making.
Careful. You are committing the fallacy. You are not recognizing the existence of continua. I would say to you that (1) a living person is not the same as a dead person; and (2) there is no nonarbitrary precise dividing point between when the person is living and when the person is dead. I.e., it falls along a continuum.
Actually, I disagree with point (2). In fact, the law also disagrees with point (2). Unless, of course, you want to define "arbitrary" so broadly that we wind up with your "continuum fallacy".
You SHOULD have doubts, since our current understanding of the process permits no such precise identification.
I disagree. I think the problem may be that you are looking for the wrong thing. And I think you are letting yourself be overwhelmed by complexity. So let's look instead at a very simple physics problem.
I put a marble on a flat surface at the top of a cone that slopes downward in all directions. The marble is at rest on the flat surface.
Now, I start submitting the marble to forces. Perhaps I blow on it. Perhaps I tap it. In some cases, the marble may not overcome the rolling friction and may not move at all. In others, it may move a little but never reach the edge and roll down the cone. But if I push hard enough or breathe hard enough on the marble, it will reach the edge of the flat surface and start to roll down the cone.
Within that process are various triggers, thresholds, and cascades. Any force on the marble is a potential trigger. If the trigger crosses two thresholds, overcoming the rolling friction of the marble and moving it to the point where it crosses from the flat surface to the downward slope, then it will produce a cascade of events that will become inevitable.
When does the marble fall down the cone? I could define that based on the trigger (the force that sets it into motion), the threshold (the point at which rolling friction is overcome or when it reaches the edge of the flat surface), or when it reaches the bottom of the cone. None of those points are arbitrary and all are significant and, if we were omniscient, events that take place at a single moment in time.
What happens between sperm and egg is only different in terms of complexity.
But in fact you are drawing such a line when making a temporal statement like "life begins at conception". Because there is a time A when the gametes are separated, and there is a time B when the person is playing golf.
Let's not get into straw men. I never said that "life begins at conception". First, I've agreed that life is a continuum and the material involved is never not alive. Second, "conception" is a bogus point because it means "implantation", not fertilization. My claim is that a distinct human individual begins at fertilization.
You are saying that somewhere along the continuus time line from A to B there has been identified a precise time point.
I am saying is that somewhere between a sperm and an egg and a zygote, it's theoretically possible to identify a single point, if we were omniscient, where the egg "picks" the sperm that's going to fertilize it and the joining of the two becomes inevitable.
But as I have explained, that assertion is factually incorrect.
You haven't explained. You've forcefully asserted. There is a big difference.
Not that it bothers me. It is just that you simply making it up wholecloth. We have observations and theories to explain those observations. But nowhere (except in your imagination) is there such a precise nonarbitrary point.
You claim there isn't. I claim there is. Would you care to offer proof or will we both just go around and around with claims and counter-claims? In fact, you are making claims about the point I'm drawing being arbitrary without really seeming to understand the distinction I'm making. I'm not drawing a distinction between alive or dead but between two individual parents and one individual child. I can draw one of two possible non-arbitrary points in the fertilization process. Either I can draw a line at the beginning or at the end. Either way, the process is complete by the time we've got a fertilized egg.
I also question whether you can really imagine such a thing. If you truly do imagine it, then tell me what what you imagine the neighboring before and after "chemical vibrations" look like that permits a nonarbitrary designation.
Again with the straw men? I said, "single atomic vibration or chemical process". Do you dispute the fact that one chemical process or a series of chemical processes can trigger a cascade of other chemical processes or do you really think that all chemical reactions take place in isolation and have no impact on the material around them?
You are making contradictory statements. A precisely defined region (e.g. your notion of "human rights") cannot be applied without arbitrariness to a continuum (e.g. your notion of "life").
Sure it can! A number line represents a continuum of real numbers from negative infinity to positive infinity, right? Are you telling me that I can't precisely define the set of real numbers that are >= 0 simply because real numbers represent a continuum? Are you telling me that the distinction between positive and negative numbers is arbitrary?
Those are two suggestions, but you have a severely limitted imagination if you think those exhaust all possible explanations.
No. I've simply exhausted all of the possible explanations and realize that those are the only two non-arbitrary points. I've argued everything from ensoulment and brain activity to the myleanation of cells and chimeras. If you've got an argument that I haven't seen, I'd be happy to entertain it.
I frustrates me that you ask this. This is about the hundreth's post on this topic where I have stated my rather uncomplicated view and elaborated upon it ad nauseum. If you really understood my argument, you couldn't have asked the above question, because you would realize that I am instead saying that no such nonarbitrary line is even possible.
The Japanese don't confuse "I understand" with "I agree". Many Americans do, which causes then all sorts of problems doing business in Japan (when a Japanese businessman says, "I understand your position", they are not saying that, "I agree with your position," though that's how many Americans misinterpret it. I'm pretty sure that I understand your argument. I simply don't agree with it. And you aren't so much explaining it as you are asserting it.
I agree with you that life is a continuum. I don't agree that it's impossible to draw a line along that continuum to define the beginning and ending of distinct individuals.
I am not drawing lines. You are drawing lines and further insisting that it is impossible that no line exists.
I am claiming that it's possible for non-arbitrary lines to exist. Whether or not you can draw a non-arbitrary line or not depends on your criteria. It's certainly possible to create criteria within a continuum that creates a line, with the presence or absence of a trait. It's further possible to define a criteria based on a complex series of traits either by drawing your line at the beginning of the series, the completion of series, or at some threshold in between. While thresholds are often arbitrary, the beginning or completion often is not. And if you understand that, which you should, you'll understand why I say that fertilization or the development of distinctly human intelligence at about two years of age are the only non-arbitrary points where human rights can be granted. In your terms, one is the beginning of the process and the other is the end of the process that makes humans distinct from animals.
For a variety of reasons, it makes more sense to draw the line at the beginning of the process, fertilization, than at the end of the process. But if you'd rather side with Peter Singer and Michael Tooley (if you haven't read his [in]famous essay, "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide", you should) and draw your line at or near the end and support infanticide, then be my guest. If you try to draw a line anywhere in between, you are going to be drawing an arbitrary line with a lot of undesirable implications. And if you want me to explain why drawing the criteria at the beginning is superior to drawing it at the end, I'd be more than happy to discuss why.
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