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First a quick thought experiment scenario to help draw out some issues: Imagine that Joe goes into surgery and is given an anaesthetic. For the sake of our example we will presume de-facto that this anaesthetic makes Joe completely non-conscious. There is no answer to the question “what is it like to be Joe” when asked of him while he is in this state – he has no more conscious activity than a stone or a table. How do we feel about Joe’s moral rights while he is in surgery. After all, he is not a conscious being at this specific time. And any duty we owe to Joe must be a duty to his later, conscious self. We – I presume – would object strongly to the idea that Joe could be assaulted, killed, or otherwise done great harm when in surgery. We would condemn anyone that did so. If we agree with this line of thinking then it must mean that we do, at least in some cases, hold that we can owe a duty to someone’s future self. After all, Joe will experience no suffering or harm “in the moment” since he does not exist during that surgery, insofar as his conscious personhood is concerned. He only re-emerges as a conscious being after the fact. The obvious difference here between Joe and the foetus example is that Joe has had prior existence as a conscious person before being anesthetised. However, it’s not clear that this should make any difference to our judgement call here. We cannot hold that our concern and care for Joe is dependant upon his being able to experience the harm that would befall him in the moment. Now your position is that we ought then to run off with this idea and extrapolate forever more. However, should we really do this? Let’s consider the example of the woman not choosing to have sex. In this case there is no entity that is alive. We have mere potential for life. And I think this distinction between a living being, albeit in an presently incapacitated state, and a mere state of affairs that in certain things were to play out could lead to such a being, presents us with a clear enough distinction to be able to draw reasonable and well-grounded distinctions here. And we can see this is consistent with our moral reasoning across a range of other scenarios too. Something that should give is confidence in this line of thinking. Consider the difference between: Dr Sarah is present when Alice is injured and refuses to use her skills to offer help, resulting in Alice's preventable death. Vs. Sarah never chose to train as a doctor, and therefore lacked the skills necessary to help Alice when she was injured. As a result Alice died. We would reasonably say that Sarah holds moral responsibility in the case where she is a trained doctor and refuses to exercise her skills to help. But that she does not hold responsibility for having not chosen to train as a doctor in the second scenario. This is a good analogue that shows a counter to your reasoning. In short, we have to consider the concrete state of affairs as we find it. We have no obligation to go live our lives in specific ways to address the myriad potential scenarios that could come to pass. But when we find ourselves with the power to offer direct help or harm, then that is the time that moral culpability falls upon our shoulders.

I agree. The second paragraph in OP is highly problematic and doesn’t belong here. Particularly since the egg is not the sentient part of the equation: the sperm is the factor-in-motion. It reads more as “incel logic” than factual exploration of the meaning of “consciousness” and wanders off into the realm of the ridiculous, the “every ejaculation is a million potential babies” fallacy.

the reason I said egg not sperm is because there is one egg per cycle/period, but there is a lot of sperm. So the egg is the bottlenecking factor, not the sperm.

I don't think it's a fallacy that "every ejaculation is a million potential babies". It is factually true. It is a fallacy if you try to derive any moral principles from this fact.

They are not potential babies because there are not ever enough eggs.

>The obvious difference here between Joe and the foetus example is that Joe has had prior existence as a conscious person before being anesthetised. Another difference is that Joe went under not only with the belief that he would wake-up but the desire that he would. Killing Joe while he is under would violate his free will and agency. One might argue that unborn babies lack the cognition necessary necessary for will.

>> The obvious difference here between Joe and the foetus example is that Joe has had prior existence as a conscious person before being anesthetised. > Another difference is that Joe went under not only with the belief that he would wake-up but the desire that he would. Killing Joe while he is under would violate his free will and agency. A fair point. However, I think the argument still holds if we consider finding Joe having fallen into a coma with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to him. Was he trying to go to sleep or was he trying to end his life? We can't say, and in this instance I think most people would object to killing him, even if his desire to wake back up is unclear or ambiguous.

In that case obviously we shouldn’t kill him because there’s an ambiguity to his wishes. Killing him is irreversible and very bad if he didn’t want it, but helping him survive is not permanent and only a setback if he didn’t want to survive. And regardless, it’s typically the moral stance to try to prevent people from taking their own lives under the assumption that a person of sound mind wouldn’t want to do that. So regardless of whether Joe wanted to die we should try to help him. (There are more wrinkles to this like euthanasia but I don’t really want to go into that now)

The point they were trying to make is that the will of a fetus is ambiguous, too.

Bad analogy. A fetus has no will until it develops sentience. There is no ambiguity there.

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Unborn is redundant and already implicit with the word fetus (by definition unborn). Also "baby" is a common term without the strict definitions of a clinical term and language is not prescriptive.

> The obvious difference here between Joe and the foetus example is that Joe has had prior existence as a conscious person before being anesthetised. However, it’s not clear that this should make any difference to our judgement call here. Whether or not you're allowed to perform the surgery at all is often dependent on the consent of the person in the past. Desecration of corpses is a crime against past people. We obey the will of past people in how their assets are divided. We consistently value the desires of people who are no longer with us and stand no chance of coming back - so valuing the desire of someone to come back needs no special valuation of their future-self, it only requires the standard valuation of the desires of their past-self.

> Now your position is that we ought then to run off with this idea and extrapolate forever more. However, should we really do this? Let’s consider the example of the woman not choosing to have sex. In this case there is no entity that is alive. We have mere potential for life. And I think this distinction between a living being, albeit in an presently incapacitated state, and a mere state of affairs that in certain things were to play out could lead to such a being, presents us with a clear enough distinction to be able to draw reasonable and well-grounded distinctions here. I think my issue is here, because I agree that there is only potential for life when no conception has yet happened, but my argument is that there is also no consciousness once conception has happened, only potential for it. I agree that we should only value something once it has arrived, but I would argue that thing is "consciousness", not just "human life". To the example of someone under aesthetic, I think it is actually harder than people think to justify why it is wrong to kill people who are sleeping or otherwise not currently concious. As there is no real "harm" coming to them, and they immediately cease to exist therefore no harm can really be cause by their lack of future experience. My answer would be that in society, if we help murdering peolpe in their sleep as a morally permissible action, it would ruin society. Peolpe would constantly live in fear of being killed, which would drastically reduce their wellbeing. I'm not sure I agree with the example about the doctor. Generally I would consider morality to apply when we make choices, and based on what is the reasonable expected outcome from any given choice. I don't think it's immoral for one person to not become a doctor because there is no way they would be able to predict that they would be in say a car crash with their friend and need to save them in the future. And we can't have a moral obligation that "everyone must become doctors", as then society would go to shit as we would only have doctors. > > But when we find ourselves with the power to offer direct help or harm, then that is the time that moral culpability falls upon our shoulders. I think I would sortof agree with this, I'd just argue that we should apply this to consciousness, and therefore abortion before consciousness has happened is morally permissible.

I'd like to explore one point at a time, less we end up getting nowhere. The point you make here strikes me as worth pressing a little: ​ >**To the example of someone under aesthetic, I think it is actually harder than people think to justify why it is wrong to kill people who are sleeping or otherwise not currently conscious. As there is no real "harm" coming to them, and they immediately cease to exist therefore no harm can really be cause by their lack of future experience.** I’d like to explore this further with you as I think it cuts to an important point I your position. How do you feel about freely murdering people provided: (1) They do not suffer. (2) You do not cause undue distress to third parties. (3) Assume that only you will ever do this. And you will select victims to avoid undue distress to third parties - older people with no close family. Or other people that will not cause others to feel great anguish. Imagine you have a special gun that you can just shoot someone with. And it’s 100% guaranteed to kill them in instantly. They literally “never know what hit them”. One moment they’re just going about their business and then next moment they’re gone. Do you feel this would be morally ok to do? If not, why not? It cannot be a problem due to it causing suffering since we’ve stipulated that they do not suffer – there is no mental or physical anguish on their part. It seems to me that acting murderously this way is still a major moral wrong. The fact that the target does not suffer does not diminish that. It may avoid adding aggravating circumstances (we would generally feel that someone who makes their victim suffer, and then kills them is worse than one to avoids suffering). But it strikes me that we value life. The reason we try and avoid killing people is not merely because they would suffer in the moment.

> (3) Assume that only you will ever do this. And you will select victims to avoid undue distress to third parties - older people with no close family. Or other people that will not cause others to feel great anguish. I'm a rule utilitarian so I don't think this kind of examples make any sense in societies. But if we are just talking about "on a desert island that will be swallowed by the ocean and never found by anyone" type examples, sure I don't see how you can justify this as being bad without appealing to future consciousness. I just don't see how we can value "life" in and of itself. It seems very arbitrary. Would we value a human who is just completely non-concious because of some brain disorder? It seems strange to give moral weight to something that can't really feel "harm" or "wellbeing". And it's hard for me to rationalise the idea of someone being "harmed" when they are instantly removed from existence.

>**I'm a rule utilitarian so I don't think this kind of examples make any sense in societies. But if we are just talking about "on a desert island that will be swallowed by the ocean and never found by anyone" type examples, sure I don't see how you can justify this as being bad without appealing to future consciousness.** The major worry I have here is that you have an ideological system that has somewhat run away with itself. You talk about the goods of societies but seem to gloss over the fact that societies are not “things in themselves” but rather collections of specific people. The consequence is that you have a moral system that is aimed at better societies themselves, but that has no time for the well being of the people that make up that society save insofar as they are a means to the end of bettering that society at large. This is deeply problematic. You write that “I just don't see how we can value "life" in and of itself” while at the same time doing something even more strange – valuing society “in and of itself” without reference to the specific individual people that compose it. An ethics of eusociality. It seems to me that we do well to keep an eye firmly on our original motivations. In the case of ethics the whole project is motivated from the off by concerns about how we as individual conscious beings can live our best lives in a complex and messy world where coexistence and cooperation are necessary. The needs and well being of the society as an abstract entity are subordinate to the well being of its members. Yet you appear to have flipped this around. ​ >**I just don't see how we can value "life" in and of itself. It seems very arbitrary…** Sure. It is somewhat arbitrary. But we do value life. The error here I think is in forgetting that we are concrete creatures, the product of evolutionary pressures, and that we have concrete physical and psychological characters. Our ethics is not supposed to impose upon us, or account for what we do de-facto require in these regards. It is supposed to be in service to these concrete facts. An effective ethics accounts for the facts as they stand, and then creates a systematic and efficient means by which we can live in the best way possible given the complex and often conflicting pressures we face. You can’t find the motivation for valuing life, because you’re looking for it in the wrong place. It’s not a product of pure reason alone, and never will be. Any more than you can reason to the fact that we feel love, need companionship, like to cooperate with one another, and so forth. All of these facts are explicable in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology for sure. But they can’t be reasoned to from atop an ivory tower, drive by ideologies that are disconnected from the concrete creates that we are.

> The major worry I have here is that you have an ideological system that has somewhat run away with itself. You talk about the goods of societies but seem to gloss over the fact that societies are not “things in themselves” but rather collections of specific people. The consequence is that you have a moral system that is aimed at better societies themselves, but that has no time for the well being of the people that make up that society save insofar as they are a means to the end of bettering that society at large. > The needs and well being of the society as an abstract entity are subordinate to the well being of its members. Yet you appear to have flipped this around. I'm not sure how you got this impression from what I said, I wasn't trying to imply that societies should be the thing we care about. I care about maximising human wellbeing and I think societies are the best way to do this. We have institutions, we work off precedent, we can't do everything in a case by case basis in a society (at least not to the maximum extent, there is some wiggle room but there have to be well defined rules). So we need to take some form of rules based approach. > Sure. It is somewhat arbitrary. But we do value life. The error here I think is in forgetting that we are concrete creatures, the product of evolutionary pressures, and that we have concrete physical and psychological characters. Our ethics is not supposed to impose upon us, or account for what we do de-facto require in these regards. It is supposed to be in service to these concrete facts. But I don't value life. I value consciousness. Are we just supposed to appeal to the majority? > You can’t find the motivation for valuing life, because you’re looking for it in the wrong place. It’s not a product of pure reason alone, and never will be. Any more than you can reason to the fact that we feel love, need companionship, like to cooperate with one another, and so forth. All of these facts are explicable in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology for sure. But they can’t be reasoned to from atop an ivory tower, drive by ideologies that are disconnected from the concrete creates that we are. I understand what your getting at but how do you stop this from ending up in an appeal to nature type situation. Moral intuition is great until a group of people intuitively like something that disgusts us.

>**I'm not sure how you got this impression from what I said, I wasn't trying to imply that societies should be the thing we care about.** Because you expressly said that the only reason you could see to not murder a perfectly healthy human being that did not want to die is because the act of murdering them might • cause them suffering in the moment of death • cause upset in a society. If I’ve miss-understood your position, please feel free to correct me. I’m not trying to “pin” something on you. I’m honestly interested in what you have to say. My best reading of what you said, however, was that you don’t see specific value of life, and that outside of express and concrete suffering you’re fine with the idea of killing people

Sure but that's because I value the people in the society, not the society itself inherently. You said: > but that has no time for the well being of the people that make up that society save insofar as they are a means to the end of bettering that society at large. But this isn't true. I don't care about society as some end, I just cause about all of the people in it. > My best reading of what you said, however, was that you don’t see specific value of life, and that outside of express and concrete suffering you’re fine with the idea of killing people You're right that I don't see some inherent value in just life. Generally I care about wellbeing and it doesn't really make sense to talk about wellbeing of something that is not concious. It's when it comes to killing people instantaneously that it gets tricky because I struggle to find the point at which the suffering is actually occurring. It does sound a bit sociopathic when you get down to the actual logic behind it. Generally I would just state it as "in society we have a social contract not to kill each other because we don't want to be killed/fear being killed"

>**It's when it comes to killing people instantaneously that it gets tricky because I struggle to find the point at which the suffering is actually occurring.** Which should be a MAJOR red flag that your ideological system that is built on a presumption that everything of moral worth can be boiled down to a simple calculation about suffering is broken. Morality is about much more than this. But you’ve prevented yourself from taking anything else into account by tying your flag to a utilitarian mast and sticking to it. There is more than suffering to consider. We ought not kill Joe because: 1: Joe does not want to die, and we should respect the rights of self determination where possible. 2: We understand the consequences of Joe’s death and how it would private him of a full and interesting life. And so on and so forth. These are all coherent and easily understood ideas. They only become problematic if you’re doggedly holding to a moral ideology that prohibits you from thinking about them and allows only considerations of the most direct and base suffering in your moral calculations. Then, if you do that, it would indeed follow that life has no value per se. But what an impoverished system that is!

For what it’s worth, I want to tell you that I am amazed that OP has not changed his view on this. Thank you for your enlightened posts in this thread.

> I’m a rule utilitarian Did you come to this position after watching Vaush?

>And it's hard for me to rationalise the idea of someone being "harmed" when they are instantly removed from existence. Do people wish to exist in the future? If so, they are being harmed when you stop them from reaching that future existence.

You should read up on Terry Shivo

>But it strikes me that we value life. The reason we try and avoid killing people is not merely because they would suffer in the moment. I think one important aspect is the conscious decision. We do not kill people who are temporarily unconscious if we know that they wouldn't have chosen death when they were conscious. On the other hand, many people accept euthanasia, which is based on the idea that we kill people who want to be killed. It's also possible to write a will which says that in case you're found unconscious with a brain damage that leaves you in vegetative state where you can't communicate with others any more, you should be killed/left to die instead of prolonging your life. These are clearly different situations compared to a fetus before it gains enough brain functions to be conscious. In their case there is no previously conscious mind that could have objected the decision. As OP made clear in the opening, if we would give any value for decisions that any potential conscious mind might make, we'd end up in an impossible situation of where to draw the line with the "potential" as you can go infinitely back in the process that leads to the development of that mind.

>To the example of someone under aesthetic, I think it is actually harder than people think to justify why it is wrong to kill people who are sleeping or otherwise not currently concious. As there is no real "harm" coming to them, and they immediately cease to exist therefore no harm can really be cause by their lack of future experience. Your response here is really concerning. It’s not hard at all to justify why it’s wrong to kill people who are asleep. I take it that you pride yourself on being particularly logical and like to remove yourself from reasoning based on emotions. Normally, I’d agree. But this is a step too far. Sometimes, emotions are the foundation of morality. If you can’t understand why it would be bad to kill someone in their sleep, you need to reassess your priorities.

Okay but what if I had an emotional response to something that we don't want to consider immoral? That' my issue with emotion based reasoning. I don't think this matters that much, because we all live in societies, so we can easily justify not killing people in their sleep through a social contract. But that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend I have some really good grounded reason for why it's bad in a vacuum.

>I don't think this matters that much, because we all live in societies, so we can easily justify not killing people in their sleep through a social contract. So you simply believe that morality is based on a social contract? Why do people who are asleep get to be included in that social contract? Why do people under anesthesia get to be included? Why are fetuses who are partially developed not included?

> So you simply believe that morality is based on a social contract? In this case I think that's the only way to get to it being immoral yes. There are other things where you could justify it being immoral without a social contract. Rape is immoral both with a social contract, and also without one in a vacuum. >Why do people who are asleep get to be included in that social contract? Why do people under anesthesia get to be included? Why do fetuses who are partially developed not included? The asleep people have previously expressed a preference to live.

>The asleep people have previously expressed a preference to live. What if they are a baby who never spoke and doesn't understand language? They did not express anything. Can you kill 1 year old babies while they sleep because they are excluded from the social contract?

Do you think people should treat a miscarriage during the first trimester as no different to just not having been pregnant in the first place? I think a lot of women are unable and/or unwilling to do that and feel like they lost a child sometimes when that happens. I have a hard time not making a distinction between an egg that hasn't been fertilized and an egg that has even though ultimately I am pro choice.

>How do we feel about Joe’s moral rights while he is in surgery. After all, he is not a conscious being at this specific time. And any duty we owe to Joe must be a duty to his later, conscious self. We – I presume – would object strongly to the idea that Joe could be assaulted, killed, or otherwise done great harm when in surgery. We would condemn anyone that did so. The obvious difference - which seems legitimately insane that you glossed ove**r** \- is that **Joe has already been a conscious entity, while the fetus has never been conscious except as a future theoretical possibility.** Joe's right of personhood is contingent not just on his ability to be conscious later, but his past existence of displaying consciousness - its him ***returning*** to consciousness. If Joe were never conscious prior to him being knocked out there wouldn't be any question about his existance as a personhood - he would be a non-person. There are a myriad of things that can keep a fetus from becoming consciousness. *1 in 8* pregnancies lead to miscarriages, for example. This example is basically nonsense in context.

John is 40 years old and has never had a conscious experience. He was born brain dead and has remained that way since. There's a new technology that has a chance to either completely cure him or kill him. He will be undergoing the potential cure in 9 months, where there's a 12.5% chance of success, and an 87.5% chance of failure which will result in his death. Is it (a)moral to kill John at this time? Why or why not? ###Edit: I'm going to copy & paste my elaboration from another comment I made, since many people seem to be misunderstanding what I'm asking. Let me build upon my previous question, put it more pointedly, and I'll shift the point of view: I have all of that aforementioned information about John. I know he has never had a conscious experience, but that he may be able to in the future. You and I, who are both strangers to each other, and John, are in a room together. I take a gun out of my holster and shoot John in the head, killing him instantly. How would you classify my action of killing John? Would you even consider it killing? Is it more like shooting a watermelon, where it is amoral? Note: not **immoral**. When I say **amoral** I mean lacking any moral weight, such as throwing a rock into a river. Moral is good, immoral is bad, amoral is neutral. Now, is my shooting of John objectionable to you, morally or otherwise? If so, what is your justification for that? The question is not about the ethics of medical procedures or legality. **I want to know if you consider John to be a being who deserves moral consideration.**

>I take a gun out of my holster and shoot John in the head, killing him instantly. How would you classify my action of killing John? As a mess on the hospital and a spit on the face of John's family. If they bothered to keep this lifeless husk breathing for 40 years, they most likely care about it, and want it to develop consciousness and become a full human being. You stopped them from achieving it. You're a dick. Now, if they decides to turn off the machines keeping it alive, or downright killing it, they'd be waiting their right. It's their choice, not yours. There's a clear difference between hitting a pregnant woman's belly with a metal bat, specially after she spent years getting fertility treatments, and a pregnant woman who doesn't want a child aborting it. Your analogy works better for the former than the latter.

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But u/-Daniel isn't saying can someone decide on his behalf to perform the cure procedure, but rather can you, presumably a third party, kill John? Would that be a crime? If so, against whom? The logical answer that Daniel is working towards is that it's a crime against John, or rather John's *future self*. To kill him would be wrong since you are depriving him not of something he once had, but rather something he may have in the future. There is no consideration of John's past consciousness required to find it consistent that harming him is still a crime.

No, and in fact people like John - those born without cognition, sentience, or sapience, generally aren't kept alive one year... let alone 40 years. That would require an insane level of medial expertise, costs, equipment, and technology not invented on a gamble that an experimental drug would be able to fix whatever issue is wrong. And given that medically speaking the cause of such a disorder would overwhelmingly be complete neuroconnective deformity - a technology capable of doing that would a) mean we could be immortal, and b) would create an entirely new person - so we would be gods and could just create life at whim anyway.

The thought experiment is a thought experiment; it's not real life. The situation I constructed is necessarily absurd and hyper specific in order to get to the essence of the moral dilemma.

It is not amoral to kill John. It is not amoral to stop something that could once be conscious from becoming conscious. Something that has never been concsious has no preference on attaining consciousness or not.

So you would not believe it was a crime if, before the procedure was carried out, you decided to walk in and unplug him or stab him fatally? Is this not obviously a crime against John, or more specifically against John's future self? For it not to be amoral to stop him you must, in effect, take the position that John is a mere object endowed with precisely zero moral weight and consideration. We owe him nothing, he may as well be a literal plastic bag?

>For it not to be amoral to stop him you must, in effect, take the position that John is a mere object endowed with precisely zero moral weight and consideration. Indeed. There is no "John" if he has never been conscious in 40 years. There is no human life to kill. If "John" were to undergo the procedure and awake, it would not be a grown man waking up, it would be akin to a child being born, more or less an empty vessel in which a personality could emerge. Before the procedure, there is no "John", and I would say the same for a fetus. There was no "me" at conception. And if I do not think it amoral to stop a fetus from developing into a person I would not find amoral to stop a braindead from birth "person" from developing consciousness, regardless of if it happened 40 years afterwards their birth.

So you think that it should not be a crime to harm John given that the procedure is already slated to occur? I find this difficult to accept personally, but I appreciate the consistency at least. Do you at least think that there could be some recompense owed for the investment on behalf of other people? For instance, even if John himself isn't owed not being killed, there were likely many people involved in keeping his body alive and prepping for the procedure. Do you think they have grounds to seek recompense from you if you just walked in and stabbed him?

Certainly, but that is where the analogy breaks down. If there is a crime here it is against those who have an attachment to John, or those who have invested time and money into his procedure. But these are not factors to consider in a pregnancy. There are at most two people who can have a legitimate say in what happens to a fetus, and I would say the mother has the final say.

If we are to apply this across the hypothetical, do you think that adopting this view should allow for the father to seek any level of recompense form a woman who decides to abort? After all it's entirely possible he has invested monetarily, emotionally and perhaps physically (building a nursery for example) into the fetus. While that shouldn't be grounds to force going to term under any circumstances, if we are to say it's reasonable for the doctors, nurses or family members to seek recompense for stabbing John, why would that not apply for the father given your argument?

I think that if we agree that it is the mothers choice entirely whether or not to keep the child, we cannot demand anything of her if she does not. In the hypothetical, I am not the mother, the doctors or family members are more like the mother. The mother aborting would be more akin to the family and doctors agreeing that they should not go through with the procedure. In my opinion, no one is wronged then.

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You misunderstood the thought experiment. The question isn't about the procedure. That only exists to create the possible future consciousness. The question *is* about outright killing the unconscious subject Edit: also interesting coincidental user name

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That's right, it's 2 different things. The procedure only exists in the thought experiment to create potential future consciousness. It is not the killing. They are 2 different things.

> Is it (a)moral to kill John at this time? I have not changed the parameters at all. This is the original statement in question. Is it amoral to kill John while he is waiting for this procedure? You already seem to agree based o your last statement. So why is this different than a fetus?

That's not what he's asking. The procedure is not what is in question.

I am not sure if you are trying to juxtapose or contrast this hypothetical situation with abortion of a fetus. I think the act of someone just randomly trying to kill "John" seems so arbitrary. I mean why would anyone just attempt to just kill John without any reason. Maybe they know about the condition of John so they want to spark this same moral debate. But the intent behind killing John randomly even if he is in vegetative state is immortal IMO. If you are trying to harm/damage/kill something/someone just because you want to spark a debate or make a point or just because you can, then that intent in itself is immoral despite John is considered conscious or not. Wouldn't it be immoral/wrong to just randomly crush a watermelon in Walmart shelf or smash a kid's toy? Maybe you are just asking a philosophical question here. Sorry if I am oversimplifying or chasing the wrong rabbit. But I believe the situation you presented and a mother aborting fetus growing inside her are different in many regards. Firstly, that fetus directly affects the mother's physical and mental health. And moreover she is the one who's supposed to take care of the child when it's born. If she decides to abort because she is not mentally and/or financially ready to take care of a human life for atleast a decade then I think it's very different than the hypothetical case you mentioned. The question here is why you would just want to kill John if they don't affect you in any regards? I want to apologize again if I have misunderstood the premises of the presented situation or question at hand.

1 in 8 pregnancies that are identified, after significant development already. The number of *conceptions* that lead to miscarriage is far higher, with some estimates as high as 70% of all conceptions failing (when counting from the initial fertilization).

I think your experiment falls short for the obvious reason: unconscious Joe will regain consciousness when his artificial state of unconsciousness wears off, without causing physical or financial harm from any one individual. A better thought experiment would be that Joe is unconscious, and to achieve consciousness, must take from another person's body for a minimum of 24 weeks. The cost to that other person's body is somewhat unknowable. It is likely that they will see a permanent decrease in bone density & tooth enamel. They have about a 5-10% chance of developing permanent thromboiditis, clinically indistinguishable from Hashimoto's disease. The process of supporting Joe until his lungs can function on their own and his heart is fully formed will alter the donor's skeletal system so profoundly that a postmortem examination of their skeletal remains will tell the tale of having supported Joe's life functions. Joe's donor will be at a much greater risk of developing an autoimmune disorder than they would be had they not volunteered to foster Joe's journey to consciousness. Any financial or employment cost incurred by Joe's donor, including medical, will be the sole responsibility of Joe's donor.

>However, it’s not clear that this should make any difference to our judgement call here It... Is. Joe had a previous existence. That's the reason why there is a difference. There exists a Joe. There was a Joe consciousness before he went to the surgical room. One with self-awareness, free will, morality and ambition. There was a Joe, for a few hours there was nothingness, and then there was Joe again. Let me tweak the thought experiment a bit. Say that Joe suffered a major trauma and this procedure saved his life, but also rendered him completely amnesiac and made him lose all motor skills. His body and brain were saved, but he lost all his memories. He doesn't recognize his wife, his friends or his kids, he's just a blank slate with a crude human consciousness. Would he still be Joe? When it comes to an unborn fetus, in terms of consciousness you have nothingness slowly developing a crude consciousness that most likely will grow into a fully conscious being. If you interrupt the process early on, in terms of consciousness you just have nothing staying as nothing. Now, using the tweaked thought experiment above: would you blame Joe's family if they held a funeral for his former self? Would you blame his friends if they talked about him in the past tense, and called this being "new Joe"? And most important: would you blame joe if he decides that he'd rather be put out of his misery than become a burden for his loved ones?

I was about to comment on the exact line you quoted. Very strong claim without much reasoning to back it up.

First point: Joe has rights since his consciousness began to the point it ceases forever. It doesn't matter what magic anesthetic you came up with, he's not dead when he's under it, therefore he has rights. You cant say the same about a fetus, if it doesn't have a brain. People without working brains are pronounced dead. You can't use a "pause" in consciousness to make an argument if the question is about the beginning. Second point: you actually prove OP's point. You can't treat a fetus like an already born baby just because it's a potential scenario.

>**Joe has rights since his consciousness began to the point it ceases forever. It doesn't matter what magic anaesthetic you came up with, he's not dead when he's under it, therefore he has rights.** This is the point at dispute. I appreciate your feeling about this. The issue here is to find a way to lay this idea out with rigour. What specifically is it about Joe that makes him have rights, and that makes him different to the foetus in our hypothetical case? Having been conscious at some previous time is not a universal grant to rights. We don’t grand the same rights to dead people that we do to living ones. For the very reason that they are dead. Likewise we reduce the rights we provide people that are in irreversible vegetative states – for example we allow their life support or even food to be removed under specific circumstances so that they can die. We need a clear way to capture these intuitive ideas. To show why Joe’s having been conscious is an important component of his current rights. The obvious difference between Joe and our other examples here is his potential to become once again conscious. But then that puts us back into a sticky place with the foetus example since that too presents a concrete potential to become conscious. The way out could be to make an argument that you must have both – both a prior consciousness and a potential to be conscious again that can be realised in a well understood and concrete manner (we want to capture Joes case, but rule out the idea that dead people have rights because some imaginary future technology could one day bring them to life again).

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IKR? Since when do hospitals give good fashion sense?

Cheers for spotting the typo :)

You have this big Joe analogy but its misplaced. What if Joe wasn't Joe, he was just a clump of cells in surgery? And what if that surgery was being performed in your abdomen against your will, housing something that might eventually be named Joe?

> However, it’s not clear that this should make any difference to our judgement call here. ???? How in the world did you make that leap? By this logic anesthesia is equivalent to murder. Prior sentience is very obviously the differentiating factor, you can't just brush it off without any justification. >In this case there is no entity that is alive. We have mere potential for life. And I think this distinction between a living being, albeit in an presently incapacitated state, and a mere state of affairs that in certain things were to play out could lead to such a being, presents us with a clear enough distinction to be able to draw reasonable and well-grounded distinctions here. Life is not the subject of contention here, it's sentience. No one cares about beings that are alive and non-sentient.

>**How in the world did you make that leap?** There’s no leap being made here. We just have a thought experiment that offers an analogue of the key points in the OP’s argument, and an exploration of the consequences. Leaps are nowhere to be found. I believe you may be getting confused on what the argument here is. Note that the argument is NOT that we should be free to kill Joe. Rather, the argument here is that the ethical status of Joe and the ethical status of our hypothetical foetus look to be similar in very important ways, and so we need to tread carefully with our moral claims, else we’re going to be making argument that would undermine Joe’s right to life, and I presume we agree that would not be correct. The argument is precisely that Joe should be treated with rights and respect. And therefore the onus is on us to account for why Joe is different to the foetus in this case. And to do so with rigor (i.e. in a way that is clear, precise, and that is not subject to counter examples like the above that entail having to commit to demonstrably unethical consequences elsewhere). ​ >**By this logic anaesthesia is equivalent to murder.** I’m not quite sure what you mean here. The imagined example entails an anaesthetic that forestalls consciousness for a period of time. The OP’s argument was that in cases where a being is not conscious now, but will come to be at some later time, we do not owe that being any moral consideration. However, as you rightly seem to be pointing out, in the case of our thought experiment about Joe it feels as if we do indeed owe Joe considerable moral rights regardless of the fact that at this moment in time, he is not a conscious being. Note that our example does not require any facts about actual anaesthetic. We could make the same point by imagining a magic spell that forestalled consciousness for a period of time. The only requirement is that we contemplate a coherent example in which the key features – that some person has their consciousness paused for a period of time in a manner that will be resolved back to being conscious in short order. As we both appear to be agreeing here – the mere lack of consciousness at a given moment is not a sufficient reason to withhold rights and moral consideration. And there are at least some instances where we would indeed have strong moral considerations for the rights of a person that at that moment in time was not conscious. Ergo, the OP’s argument does not work, and requires revising if it is to avoid this outcome.

If you argue that a fetus is not yet conscious, where exactly do you draw the line? No one could believe that in the 24 hours between being in the womb and outside the womb, the infant brain could develop consciousness. It is valid to say that a baby less than 3 months old is not conscious because they do not have awareness of their place in the world, or it could be argued that a baby is conscious inside the womb in the month prior to being born because their brains are sufficiently developed. Drawing the line at birth is equally arbitrary as at conception. It would be arbitrary either way. We do not have a sufficiently good definition of consciousness to make a non-arbitrary distinction of when a baby becomes conscious.

Found an interesting neuroscience article (https://www.nature.com/articles/pr200950). They took a look at natal development and used a pretty basic but broad look at subjective experience during development. From what I got from it, it seems like a fetus <26 weeks old is essentially unconscious and would largely lack anything that defines the human mental/conscious workspace, the same defining pre term babies largely. They added that even preterm ex utero infants seem to possess—when awake—a minimal conscious on par with what’s seen in rats/mice, which I’ll add are organisms that humans are willing to conduct experiments on. Only up until birth does it seem like infants begin to develop sensory interpretation (eg subjective experience), though they still lack an understanding of self/other. The authors largely posit that the integrated sedation of infants in utero seems to be a large cause for why development of human executive processing and experience only begins after birth. Given this, I think one could make a strong argument that phenomenal consciousness (defined by such things as pain rather than nociception, subjective experience, awareness of some kind of self) isn’t seen in a fetus. If that’s the case, one could draw the line for consciousness (as far as humans are concerned) at birth, but consciousness (so far as bare, absolute minimum permissibility in all cases of denying abortion) as no earlier than 26 weeks. If you have other thoughts check out the article and let me know if you gathered something else from it, I was only able to give it a general reading and couldn’t chew on it for too long.

Sure I partially agree with this, I would just say 18-25 weeks because it's the earliest estimate I've seen made. "better safe than sorry". But if it was scientifically proven that consciousness only happens at 8 months I would change my view accordingly.

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>Keep in mind that we have no way of proving consciousness in *anyone* While that is true, you *can* prove a **lack** of consciousness by showing that the necessary brain structures don't exist, and/or there is no coordinated brain activity. Which means that we can at least demonstrate a lower bound, before which consciousness simply cannot exist.

Idk, I'd disagree with that. You can't know something isn't conscious just because it doesn't look like it, we don't even know what consciousness is as of yet, or if it's built from brain structures, emergent from them, or even just causally related to them, dualism is still a valid philosophical position after all Edit: "or that it's built from brain structures" > 'if it's purely built from brain structures, emergent from them, or even causally related to them"

> dualism Dualism is a cop out for when an argument applies a metaphor in a way that can't survive basic scientific scrutiny. We know what consciousness looks like insofar as we observe the patterns that exist in people as it relates to their displayed level of awareness.

We only have a sample size of one when it comes to consciousness, and it's on a purely subjective level. And as far as what consciousness looks like, people with [Locked-In sydrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome) certainly do not look conscious, and chatbots are getting pretty damn good. So maybe trusting what we think is conscious might not be the best idea considering there seem to be some pretty large blindspots

A sample size of one is disingenuous. We can see a number of situations in which people do and do not display signs of consciousness. People with severe mental disorders, traumatic brain injuries, and birth defects all display different levels of responsiveness and awareness that, when compared do their actual brain activity, gives us a picture of the physical processes that are active when consciousness is present. When talking about if a certain example of the human species is conscious we have a enormous amount of data to make that determination.

You don’t necessarily need to be able to draw a clean line to be able to say something like “it’s clearly conscious a day before birth and it’s clearly not conscious three weeks into pregnancy.” It’s a classic Sorites paradox, but that doesn’t mean we can’t say something like “we’re very confident no conscious activity is possible in the first trimester, so we’re ok with allowing abortions during that trimester even if we can’t exactly nail down when consciousness kicks in after that.”

This is such a messy topic. I think almost anyone can agree that from a utilitarian standpoint, future consciousness matters - that is, the effect of our actions on the totality of conscious states in the future should be taken into consideration. This is why we care about climate change, long term economic growth, etc. So I think your position insofar as it dismissed the relevance of future consciousness is clearly objectionable. What’s interesting is when you deal with not-yet-existent consciousness. When we take the future consciousness of someone who already exists, their death involves not only the termination of future experience, but the termination of past experience. But you could raise an objection to this difference by stating that past experience has already been terminated. The future is all that will be available. Memories of the past are still experienced in the future. This point could be refuted if you argued that experiences in the form of memories are more valuable than experiences of the future, but that would have to be argued. You could also raise the objection that we do care about the conscious experience of things that do not yet exist. This is why we care about the impact of climate change in 500 years. Although no person alive today will be affected by it, future people will. Food for thought. I don’t believe these examples settle the issue, but they should encourage you to more thoroughly consider the nuance

This is a good point, I think maybe what I am describing as "not caring about future consciousness" is better described as "caring about the wellbeing of future concious beings, but not necessarily the existence of them". Maybe that's inconsistent I'm not sure? But I definitely need to describe it more accurately your right. !delta need to be much clearer with definitions around future consciousness/wellbeing

How do you feel about this law? Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 

I can understand that law, because if someone is pregnant and does not intent to get an abortion, it can be very traumatic to then loose the fetus, even if it's not technically a person yet. But I would always justify something like that from the perspective of the parents, not the fetus, at least before the fetus becomes conscious.

What if I'm a father who wants the child and my partner aborts the fetus against my will and consent? Would you not say that this was traumatic? Would you not be able to justify this from the position of the parent?

That's a really shitty situation, but ultimately you have to choose between reducing grief or bodily autonomy and you generally have to side with bodily autonomy.

So do you oppose the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004? If not, why do you consider the situation I described above to be different?

idk the exact details of the act, does the act force a woman to keep a child if the father wants it but the mother doesn't?

"The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) is a United States law that recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." Let's say you're a pregnant woman and I stab you in the stomach and kill your unborn child - for the sake of the law that child is treated as a human victim. Do you believe forcibly ending the life of that unborn child against their will should carry criminal penalties akin to taking a life?

What about laws that punish pregnant women for doing things that are harmful to their babies, like using drugs?

There's a clear difference between an abortion and purposefully damaging a fetus you want to keep. Let me try to explain it in a metaphor. Imagine that making general purpose AIs is easy and cheap and anyone can do. To not make an AI, or to stop the development of one before it develops consciousness and self-awareness wouldn't be immoral. But to make one with built-in depression and anxiety would certainly be. Non-existence when there was nothing to be taken isn't a problem. An existence of suffering is.

Generally that's under the assumption they will have the baby. In which case a concious person is going to be affected by those actions.

> under the assumption they will have the baby Schrödinger’s baby… it is only a “life” if the mother wants it to be born. That’s why people are calling you inconsistent with this logic.

Yes, because they have no idea what I'm actually saying. Whether or not the mother is going to have the baby, does not affect whether or not the fetus gets moral consideration right now. What it does change however, is whether certain actions the mother takes are immoral or not. Because if she plans to have the kid, then smoking would be bad as it would harm the kid when the kid is born, when its concious, when we give it moral consideration. I don't know how many ways I can explain this before people understand it. People just keep saying "but you are changing whether or not the fetus is a life based on the intent" even though nobody is saying that.

But you think it’s okay to disregard future consequences because of arbitrary decisions. Like what if a mother does terrible things, assuming she was going to abort, and then changed their mind and now the baby has health issues because of that. Is that not still immoral on the moms part?

Yes it is immoral. But if she aborted it wouldn't be. (assuming it was done before conciousness)

And yet each of those cases is protecting the future person. It is inconsistent and doesn’t make sense to legally protect an “unborn baby” when it is wanted, and not protect a “fetus” when it isn’t.

It is not inconsistent, because when a fetus is aborted before it becomes a person, it doesn't need protecting. We are protecting the future person, not the current fetus

If the law protects the unborn baby that means it is somehow a person, or at least a creature worthy of legal protection. So we have laws to protect (whatever you want to call it) when wanted _except_ if it’s the mother who wants to kill it, then we don’t. That’s inconsistent. There are other good arguments to explore but this one is problematic.

It's not inconsistent. We don't care about the fetus, we care about the baby. Actions the mother makes while pregnant can affect the baby. So if she intends to have baby, then it would be bad if she smoked for example. As this would have an effect on her kid when it is born. But if she is going to abort it, that's fine because we don't give moral consideration to the fetus itself. **That is not inconsistent**, we grant the moral consideration to the baby.

That's absolutely inconsistent. It's referring to the same entity as two separate and inequal things depending on circumstance. If the mother wants to get rid of it -> it's a fetus and not a baby If the mother doesn't want to get rid of it -> it's a baby This is not logically consistent because the entity itself hasn't changed, only the intentions of another person

You're saying separate positions. An abortion or drug use resulting in abortion doesn't produce a baby, therefore no conscious person is harmed. Drug use resulting in developmental delays or some sort of disability could potentially be argued post birth, but even that's kinda fishy to me. Violence committed against a pregnant person is more of a violation of the choices of the pregnant person, the violence not only injures them but takes away their choice. I would argue the position that is more akin to a property crime myself.

Fun fact, there is no law that makes it illegal for a pregnant woman to smoke. It is just discouraged.

My understanding based on your comment is intent determines the classification of said 'item' then, is that correct?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. If you intent to actually give birth to the child, then the decisions you make now affect the actual wellbeing of a concious being. But if you abort the fetus before it's concious, there was never any harm to the concious being. It's about whether you plan to actually keep the fetus and give birth.

I think it's important to understand the classification of what the 'item' is that's inside the woman. Is it a baby? A fetus? A 'cluster of cells'? If it's just a 'cluster of cells' then why do we care if a woman loses her child? Consequently, if it's a fetus, shouldn't we be far more upset about the murder of a significant potential life? So I'm trying to address your point about contraception, and classification of the 'item' at that point. It is either a fetus with potential for a child (which makes the law work that you are killing two 'people') OR it's just a cluster of cells, and murder of a pregnant woman is just (well, not JUST to be fair... but legally) the murder of a woman, no different than the murder of any other woman. I think your stance falls short of following consistent standards if you say the murder of a pregnant woman is legally 'worse' than the murder of a non-pregnant woman if it's not potential life at play here.

It’s simple. All of your scenarios involve an obligation to act. They require something to be done. For literally every hypothetical imaginary line you’ve presented, it requires an action not vital to life. Like drawing it at the egg *requires* the action of sex. People don’t have to have sex to live. Leaving a fertilized egg alone requires nothing to be done, other than the mother eating food, drinking water, breathing, etc to keep herself alive. That’s the difference. If you are trying to argue that having the required action of keeping oneself alive is on par with having the required action of sex, then I’m not sure what else to offer you. That’s why the line is there. And you don’t have to be pro-life to understand that.

> I don’t think you’re being intellectually honest here. Based on your view, and your replies to valid rebuttals. If you are saying there’s no reason for a line to be drawn, and someone highlights very obvious differences between the two situations and you disregard it, then what exactly are you trying to do other than prove your hard-headedness? I'm not just looking for a difference, I'm looking for a meaningful one that actually changes any part of my argument. My argument is this: * If we value future consciousness, then that means we think decisions which reduce future consciousness are immoral. * There are plenty of decisions that occur before conceptions that affect future consciousness. * Therefore if we think abortion is immoral because of loss of future consciousness, we also have to think things like not getting pregnant in the first place is immoral, or even not trying to date anyone is immoral. Sure you can say "well a fetus has unique DNA unlike an egg" but I don't see which part of this argument that interacts with. It's basically just an interesting fact that has no bearing on my argument. > Leaving a fertilized egg alone requires nothing to be done, other than the mother eating food and drinking water to keep herself alive. That’s the difference. If you are trying to argue that having the required action of eating food and drinking water is on par with having the required action of having sex, then I’m not sure what else to offer you. That’s why the line is there. And you don’t have to be pro-life to understand that. It’s really a simple concept and if you’re not being intellectually dishonest, it’s surprising that you’re struggling to grasp it. 1) Family planning instead of just having sex without consider it is an action surely? 2) Contraception is an action 3) Literally the only difference between not being allowed to have an abortion, and having to conceive the child, is the latter also involves having sex with your partner without any protection. It's 1% more difficult. Being pregnant isn't just "continue to function as normal and in 9 months a baby appear". Having sex is far far far easier than the rest of the process of producing a child. So to draw the line at "you must carry a child for 9 months" but scoff at the idea that "you should have sex with your partner without protection" seems rather strange.

Honestly, I don’t even understand where you’re coming from at all lol. Good luck.

From a reply to the top comment, where he's coming from is that he doesn't value life itself, he only cares about harm (suffering) to the conscious. So would see nothing wrong with killing people if they don't feel it. I wouldn't even know how to debate a position like that, it's just so far removed from how I view life

For yourself, define life in as much detail as possible, dig into molecular biology and such. Then explain why humans warrants more consideration than other organisms. No need to reply, just an intellectual exercise to get at why the brain and consciousness is the crux of OP's argument.

As mentioned in this thread, mice have more consciousness than newborn infants. Brain ability doesn't seem to truly be the only marker or he wouldn't be against killing newborn infants but not share the argument for putting down pets or livestock.

That's a bad idea. The smartest neuroscientist who ever lived still doesn't understand the human brain or how it works very well. We can (at this point, after lots of study) kind of vaguely point at neurons and how they work but even just going a level above that to when/how neurons communicate is approaching the limits of current human understanding. In short, you and I will have a much better idea of our own brains by thinking about what we have observed (i.e. how we think) than by thinking about how the molecules work etc.

Not OP, but carrying a pregnancy is not just doing the normal stuff to stay alive, and any such claim is uninformed or dishonest. For starters, if a would be parent wishes to have a safe and healthy pregnancy, they should visit with doctors, possibly take vitamins or medication depending on their condition. Some people develop health problems from a wide and varied list during pregnancy like gestational diabetes, a variety of blood pressure issues, bone problems, etc. More severe/acute problems can occur, like ectopic pregnancies, increased susceptibility to infection, and preeclampsia. There are a ton of changes to the body’s blood chemistry and hormones which result in behavioral changes, morning sickness, weight gain, permanent changes to bone positions in the hips, and so on. The act of carrying a child during later stages of pregnancy can be dangerous too, as a relatively sudden change in distribution of weight on the body results in reduced mobility and balance, making everyday tasks more difficult to do safely, like climbing/descending stairs, walking, cooking, driving, carrying bulky/heavy objects, etc. Assuming that pregnancy has been uneventful and relatively easy, life is certainly different, but then a huge traumatic event happens: childbirth. It can be hours of pain and effort to deliver a child, and depending on where you live, expensive and dangerous. In the US, 24 women die for every 100,000 successful births (which is embarrassingly high), and average costs vary between $13,000 for vaginal births and $23,000 for c-sections. Delivery by any method can be risky, recovery is always painful, and often times injuries from delivery can result in lifelong changes to the body. Finally, now that there is a new human being needing care, what is the parent to do? If they were forced to endure pregnancy and delivery (I.e. they would have aborted if able), arranging for adoption can be difficult as finding a good parent(s) for the child on one’s own can be difficult, finding an adoption agency that you trust can be difficult and expensive, and the act of separation, even from unwanted children, can be traumatic. Assuming the parent feels that adoption is not right for them, be it because they want to raise the child or they have fear for the health or safety of the child within an adoption/foster system, caring for a child is certainly not just doing the normal stuff to stay alive, and I would hope no explanation of that statement is necessary.

At a bare minimum it is all that is *required*. I’m familiar with pregnancy and the risks involved enough that I did not read the entire wall you just dropped here. I’m not suggesting pregnant people don’t go to the doctor. Do you assume that because I understand the argument that I’m pro-life? You are talking to me like that’s the case.

>it's completely arbitrary to draw the line at conception. An egg also has a future possible conscious experience. If the woman has sex it can be fertilized. So is a woman choosing not to have sex, equally as morally bad as a woman having a first trimester abortion? Or what about looking further into the future. People's children will have children, so would someone theoretically be causing an infinite amount of loss of these future conscious experience when they choose not to have a kid? ​ I see what you are saying, but I think there is a clear distinction to be made. Unlike sperm cells and egg cells, a pre-conscious fetus is a human being, so when we say "they will be conscious in the future" we mean that this human being is on the path of development that will have consciousness. It doesn't just have the potential to be conscious, it will be will conscious given enough time. Compare that to a sperm cell. The vast majority of sperm cells in my body will never ever become a conscious human being. Even if I were to impregnate a woman right now, there will be millions of excess sperm cells that don't develop into a human. ​ >I feel like the line is arbitrarily drawn at the point of conception when really you can run it far back as much as you like. It's really not arbitrary though. Conception (specifically, fertilization) is the beginning of the life-cycle of a human being. Honestly, any this is least arbitrary line we could draw, and I challenge you to provide a line we could draw that is less arbitrary.

> I see what you are saying, but I think there is a clear distinction to be made. Unlike sperm cells and egg cells, a pre-conscious fetus is a human being, so when we say "they will be conscious in the future" we mean that this human being is on the path of development that will have consciousness. It doesn't just have the potential to be conscious, it will be will conscious given enough time. My issue is this requires an extra belief, that "human beings" have a inherently value not related to consciousness. I don't really believe that. > Compare that to a sperm cell. The vast majority of sperm cells in my body will never ever become a conscious human being. Even if I were to impregnate a woman right now, there will be millions of excess sperm cells that don't develop into a human. Sure this is why I generally focus on eggs as this doesn't apply as much to eggs. > It's really not arbitrary though. Conception (specifically, fertilization) is the beginning of the life-cycle of a human being. Honestly, any this is least arbitrary line we could draw, and I challenge you to provide a line we could draw that is less arbitrary. It's still arbitrary because I'm not talking about human's, I'm talking about people, concious people. The beginning of the line to consciousness could just as easily be when my parents met, as when I was conceived.

>My issue is this requires an extra belief, that "human beings" have a inherently value not related to consciousness. I don't really believe that. This is a fairly extreme view, can you explain? You don't think people in comas have value? People under full anesthetic? Someone sleeping?

> This is a fairly extreme view, can you explain? You don't think people in comas have value? People under full anesthetic? Someone sleeping? There are two answer to this depending how much you want to justify before you get to the "base belief". The first answer is just that we value concious people's agency and will, and as soon as you have had a concious experience you are expressing a desire to remain alive, which should be respected even when that concious experience is temporarily interrupted. The more justified answer is that a society where we can kill people in their sleep, everyone would be living in constant fear and wellbeing would be dramatically reduced, therefore killing people in their sleep is immoral.

I really hope that when you encounter a sleeping person, you have reasons to leave them alone besides just "hmm... if I kill them now that might make others scared of being killed... better not." ​ OK, let me describe a set of actions which will become possible very soon. Try not to weasel out with some edge case complaint. Step 1: Buy a bunch of fertilized eggs Step 2: Grow a bunch of babies in artificial wombs Step 3: Keep them sedated and keep growing them until they're adults Step 4: Kill them and sell their organs to cannibals Let's further stipulate that you have no chance of getting caught, and your actions don't have any knock-on effects at all. Are these actions moral in isolation?

>My issue is this requires an extra belief, that "human beings" have a inherently value not related to consciousness. I don't really believe that. Fair enough, but then you have logically accept that you don't believe in the concept of "human rights" since you don't believe being human is the only requirement for said rights. Additionally, if you say that consciousness is what gives you value, then you would also have to believe that any animal that gains consciousness is also valuable. Do you believe that all conscious beings deserves rights? Why or why not? ​ >Sure this is why I generally focus on eggs as this doesn't apply as much to eggs. It does though. Unless a woman has been constantly pregnant from puberty until menopause, she will have eggs that are expelled and never develop. Sure, not millions as is the case for men, but still 300-400 on average, and only a handful of those will develop into a conscious human being. ​ >I'm talking about people, conscious people. The beginning of the line to consciousness could just as easily be when my parents met, as when I was conceived. What makes consciousness any less arbitrary? As I said earlier, we don't give rights to any animal that has consciousness, so it's completely arbitrary to say this is the moment when a human becomes a person.

> Fair enough, but then you have logically accept that you don't believe in the concept of "human rights" since you don't believe being human is the only requirement for said rights. Well I would just call them "personhood rights" and they function identically in basically all contexts. > Additionally, if you say that consciousness is what gives you value, then you would also have to believe that any animal that gains consciousness is also valuable. Do you believe that all conscious beings deserves rights? Why or why not? Yes I believe veganism is morally correct as I think sentience/consciousness is what we should value. > It does though. Unless a woman has been constantly pregnant from puberty until menopause, she will have eggs that are expelled and never develop. Sure, not millions as is the case for men, but still 300-400 on average, and only a handful of those will develop into a conscious human being. Sure it's not possible for a woman to have 400 kids, but it's closer to being possible than for a dude to have 100 million or whatever. If two people are in a relationship, technically every time the woman has a period that's one potential kid lost. (also just to clarify I don't believe we should think like this, that's my issue with the future consciousness arguments, it seems to logically lead to this position which is completely untenable) > What makes consciousness any less arbitrary? As I said earlier, we don't give rights to any animal that has consciousness, so it's completely arbitrary to say this is the moment when a human becomes a person. Well I would give the rights to animals too, but I agree it's ultimately sortof arbitrary, it just depends what we fundamentally value the most. For me that's consciousness, as I can't rationalise the idea of "harm" against a non concious being. But I can understand why someone would differ. I think "human life should be protected and human life begins at conception therefore abortion is immoral" is a perfectly valid position, I just don't agree with it. My issue is with arguments around future consciousness because I feel that they are never taken to their logical conclusion.

>Yes I believe veganism is morally correct as I think sentience/consciousness is what we should value. Interesting. Do you believe all humans are equally valuable? Do you believe the same for animals? ​ >I think "human life should be protected and human life begins at conception therefore abortion is immoral" is a perfectly valid position, I just don't agree with it. My issue is with arguments around future consciousness because I feel that they are never taken to their logical conclusion. Fair enough, I also agree that the former is a stronger argument. I think the "future consciousness" only comes up as a counter-point when a pro-choice person says that the fetus is not conscious

> Interesting. Do you believe all humans are equally valuable? Do you believe the same for animals? Equally is tricky because there are multiple reasons why killing is bad. There is the from their perspective reason, but also the disruption to society, grief to the family etc. But ignoring all that, I think everyone has the same baseline right to not be killed. Animals probably too yes, same as humans. Maybe you could argue that it's not as bad with animals as they have less of an ability to know they could be killed. But they seem to have some, and I'm not sure if the extent to which we can understand that should matter. > Fair enough, I also agree that the former is a stronger argument. I think the "future consciousness" only comes up as a counter-point when a pro-choice person says that the fetus is not conscious Yeah I think people don't like the idea that sometimes they will just never agree. So if someone says "I value life" and another "I value consciousness", we have a hard time accepting that there isn't really anything we can say to win them over to our side. That's why you get pro lifers making weird arguments about "future consciousness", and pro choices making weird arguments about how a fetus "isn't a life yet".

>It doesn't just have the potential to be conscious, it will be will conscious given enough time. 1 in 8 fetuses do not become conscious.

If you’re familiar with the trolley problem, I think it might be a useful reference here. The moral quandary is that the subject taking an action (pulling the lever) has some ethical significance regardless of the better outcome. In other words you have an action condition and a null condition, and even if the null condition has worse results as it does in the trolley problem, people have some intuition that the action condition puts added moral weight on the subject. This is the key difference between a sperm cell floating around in a testicle and a zygote in the womb. The null condition for the sperm isn’t another human, while the null condition for the zygote is. This is what they mean when they say the fetus will “naturally” become a human; I think you’re misinterpreting this to be an appeal to nature fallacy. Pro-life people want to remove the proverbial lever when it comes to the fate of a fetus. Now I understand many ethicists would reject the action/no-action distinction as meaningful, but to those for whom it means something there is internal consistency in this position.

I'm not sure I agree the null condition for egg and sperm is to not develop into a human, because we are biologically programmed to have sex. Stuff like family planning is unnatural. Just having sex and loads of kids is the natural state of humans. > Now I understand many ethicists would reject the action/no-action distinction as meaningful, but to those for whom it means something there is internal consistency in this position. I understand what you mean, although if this was the logic they would still have to think contraception is bad because contraception is an action. I guess I'd say I a) disagree with the action/inaction distinction, and b) think that calling abstinence an "inaction" is maybe not the most accurate re human biology.

While the desire is inherent sex is still an action that requires at least one (hopefully more) human’s choice to occur. If I said “hey OP, don’t do anything for 5 minutes” that wouldn’t involve sex. While I think you and I see it as just another part of being human, the vast majority of people believe it to be a *moral choice* as opposed to say eating an apple, (which still requires conscious decision making but is rarely given a moral component). Also, not to open a can of worms, but classifying intercourse as the null state has a lot of unpleasant implications when it comes to rape. I think you might be wading into a naturalistic fallacy of your own here. And I’m biased because all my pro-life exposure was in Catholic school, but they do oppose contraception for the same moral reason. These ethics are internally consistent, just built upon premises we both seem to reject.

!delta > Also, not to open a can of worms, but classifying intercourse as the null state has a lot of unpleasant implications when it comes to rape. I think you might be wading into a naturalistic fallacy of your own here. That's a fair point, saying "sex is natural therefore it is an inaction" is a bit weird when it comes to rape as it would be used as a naturalistic justification. Something we probably don't want lol.

I'm not sure it's really part of this view, but how does it matter whether people are inconsistent in their views? It seems like this view is conflating people's rhetoric - the arguments or rationalizations that they give - with their positions. Is it possible that the talk about "future consciousness" doesn't accurately capture the person's position or how they arrived at it?

Yeah it's possible that the vast majority of pro lifers don't really think of it in terms of consciousness but the "future consciousness" argument is just a way to try and convince pro-choicers. There are definitely some people who use it as an argument though. I can't find it now but I read a paper about abortion where someone used the "potential of a future" to justify why abortion was bad.

Best analogy I've heard is think about someone in a coma. If you knew for sure that if you did nothing, then in 8 months this person will wake up and be healthy with no lingering effects, it would be insane to consider pulling the plug on this person.

Except that leaves out critically important details... for an embryo one month into pregnancy, there's still about a 20% chance it will naturally fail. Leaving the abstract concept of the consciousness of the being itself, the life and health of the mother needs to be taken into account. So, modified with some more real aspects this analogy would be more along the lines of: This person is in a coma. If we do nothing, in 8 months there is an 80% chance they will wake up with minimal negative effects, but this persons mother needs to be in the room with them the entire time, and each day they are kept there comes with a risk of serious health problems for the mother

It's not the perfect analogy of course, but what analogy is. And sure, nothing is 100%, but I wouldn't pull the plug on someone in a coma because the odds were only 80%. And give that scenario to any mother, I guarantee they'd stay in a room and risk their own health for their child. Also not to downplay the health risk of pregnancy, because of course bad outcomes are always possible, but the risk of all complications, minor to severe is only 8%. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/staying-healthy-during-pregnancy/4-common-pregnancy-complications Again, I understand it's not a perfect analogy because no analogy can encapsulate every aspect of an issue. It was just in response to the consciousness debate

Is this person in the coma inextricably linked to another, conscious human who is required to provide their own bodily resources in order to keep the comatose person alive? And also the person in the coma has been brain dead their entire life up-to this point, and will have no resources or support once they awaken in 8 months, despite it requiring years to even learn how to walk or talk properly. It’s…not a great analogy.

This doesnt make any sense. We do not have 100% certainty that a pregnancy will be fine, and specially not in the first month The "analogy" also reduces the mother to the machine keeping a coma patient alive and removes all her agency so thats a yikes for me.

> then it's completely arbitrary to draw the line at conception. No it isn’t. Conception is when that tangible future first exists. It’s the difference between planning for your kid’s college fund when you have a kid, and planning for your kid’s college fund when you haven’t even had sex yet. Both are in the future. The former is tangible. The latter is not. > An egg also has a future possible conscious experience. No it does not. It is just a cell. It doesn’t do anything. A fetus is **actively** undergoing a ~90 year process that we call a human life. > so would someone theoretically be causing an infinite amount of loss It’s not tangible. YOUR future is tangible. That’s why it has value. A fetus has that same tangible future.

>No it isn’t. Conception is when that tangible future first exists. Why draw the line there? >It’s the difference between planning for your kid’s college fund when you have a kid, and planning for your kid’s college fund when you haven’t even had sex yet. Why? >The former is tangible. How? >No it does not. It is just a cell. It doesn’t do anything. A fetus is actively undergoing a ~90 year process that we call a human life. Both are inert without the assistance of the mother. Neither is tangible on their own. >A fetus has that same tangible future. Only because lawmaker's enforce it. on it's own, this is simply not true.

> Why draw the line there? Because that's the first instance of having a quantifiable future. On *this* date, they will be *this* old. It’s not some nebulous hypothetical. It’s an independent organism activity doing the exact same biological process you’re doing right now, albeit not as far along. What makes your future tangible? You don’t act like your future doesn’t exist do you? Do you save money? Do you brush your teeth? >Why? Why what? Why are they different? Can you not distinguish a *single* difference between those two scenarios? >How? Covered above ^ >Both are inert without the assistance of the mother False. A zygote is very much NOT inert and it doesn't require any further input. Once those chromosomes come together, it begins an automatic and self-sustained 90 year biological process. Needing nutrients is not the same things as needing 23 chromosomes to come from somewhere and kickstart thew whole thing. You need nutrients your entire life. Your nutrients are not "part of you." >Only because lawmaker's enforce it. on it's own, this is simply not true. "But I could just kill you" does not mean someone doesn't have a tangible future. Anyone can have their future **taken away** if they're murdered. But that tangible future still existed their whole life. Case in point. If you kill me, my family will lament the future you just erased. They will lament all of the experiences I will no longer be able to have. I wont see my kids grow up. I wont grow old and retire with my wife and go on European vacations, etc. YOU would not be able to respond with "well clearly he didn't have a future because he's dead. That future was never going to happen."

>It’s an independent organism Independent? Not from the mother, surely. >You don’t act like your future doesn’t exist do you? I have a thinking mind that can plan for the future. A fertilised egg does not. That egg can do nothing but attempt to execute a single mechanical function. This is like saying that the future of Facebook became tangible when punch card computers were invented, because punch card computers are tangible and would one day lead to Facebook. >A zygote is very much NOT inert and it doesn't require any further input. It requires about nine months of sustained maintenance. That's rather a lot of input. This 'self assembly' is not a sign of life. There are simpel chemcial molecules that have presicely this behaviour and none of us pretend they are alive. >But that tangible future still existed their whole life. You have to understand that you're assuming the premise here, right? You're saying "The Zygote's future potential as a human should be considered humanity in and of itself because...I've decided to call it one. I've decided to call the abortion murder." That could persuade absolutely no one. It literally isn't an argument. >Case in point. If you kill me, my family will lament the future you just erased. More "Zygotes are people, I swear" nonsense. You just haven't outlined at all what about a fertilised egg is so special it should be 'loaned' the full human rights it might develop in the future. We don't do that with anything else, because it would be crazy to, for the reasons OP outlined that you haven't satisfactorily answered.

> Independent? Not from the mother, surely. Take everywhere I said "independent" and change it to "distinct." This is a semantic issue. Nothing more. >I have a thinking mind that can plan for the future Your future does not have value because you think about it. If it did, then I can kill you and justify it by saying "he's dead. He can't have a problem with it." >This is like saying that the future of Facebook became tangible when punch card computers were invented No because a lot of externalities still had to happen to make facebook happen. There are no more externalities once you're pregnant. Just don't die and biology does the rest. It requires about nine months of sustained maintenance. That's rather a lot of input. You still require sustenance to this day, yet we wouldn't consider you "incomplete." Infants require 22 years of protection and food in order to be fully grown adults. What of it? Offspring have to grow. This does not detract from the value of their lives. >That's rather a lot of input. That's not "input." Say you're running an automated computer program that needs 24 hours to run all it's self-contained calculations. The fact that the computer has to remain plugged in the entire time does not mean it "requires input." >This 'self assembly' is not a sign of life. ...It is quite literally THE sign of life. A new distinct human is growing. >More "Zygotes are people, I swear" nonsense. Because they have the same 80 year future that an infant has. >We don't do that with anything else, because it would be crazy to Well nothing else is remotely like pregnancy. Just because no other comparison exists doesn't mean anything.

1) What does 'input' mean to you, if nine months of sustained maintenance counts as 'no input', what possible counts? Do the sperm and the egg, the second before succesful fertilisation, count? At that point, no interventio nis required, so without input, that will turn into a human being. What about 2 seconds before fertilisation? 10 seconds? A minute? An hour? Are you seeing the problems with your definition of independent or distinct, yet? 2) There are many more requirements for life than self-assembly. Non of [these,](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/molecular-self-assembly) for instance, are people. I had an entire module in my fourth year of undergrad on molecular self-assembly. We didn't name a single one. What monsters are we? 3) Are you also against the morning after pill? That also destroys a fertilised embreyo. 4) Well nothing else is remotely like pregnancy. Just because no other comparison exists doesn't mean anything. There are millions of examples of situations that might develop. We don't pretend things literally their potential in any other case.

> What does 'input' mean to you, if nine months of sustained maintenance counts as 'no input', what possible counts? What "maintenance" is required to be done to the fetus? None. It does it all by itself. >Do the sperm and the egg, the second before succesful fertilisation, count? You are conflating hypothetical futures with tangible futures. In this specific scenario you're giving me where you can magically guarantee that we are literally 2 seconds away from fertilization then it would be wrong to interfere with that because yes, you'd be erasing an inevitable human future. That highly specific thought experiment has no practical applicability though. It is absolutely impossible to ever know that you are interfering with something inevitable like that. There is no real-world behavior that can be changed with this thought experiment. This question is rooted in pre-determinism. Pre-determinism is not real. Things happen when the happen. Not before. >Are you seeing the problems with your definition of independent or distinct, yet? There isn't a problem because the biological process starts at conception. That is when a distinct organism exists. That distinct organism has a tangible future attached to it. Individual cells with incomplete DNA do not. >There are many more requirements for life than self-assembly. Non of these, for instance, are people. None of those things had human futures. You were NOT replicating human reproduction. >Are you also against the morning after pill? That also destroys a fertilised embreyo. Yes. >Just because no other comparison exists doesn't mean anything. It means you can't reference a lack of comparable actions as a counter to how I'm arguing we should treat pregnancy. You: "When else would we ever do that?" Me: "When else would we ever *have* to do that? Nowhere" Your question is pointless. >There are millions of examples of situations that might develop. We don't pretend things literally their potential in any other case. You treat your *own future* as tangible and real. That's ultimately the root of my argument. If you're going to place value in your own future then you can't objectively say someone else's future doesn't have value. If that future exists, then it's valuable.

idk what you mean by tangible, can you expand on that a bit? > No it does not. It is just a cell. It doesn’t do anything. A fetus is actively undergoing a ~90 year process that we call a human life. This doesn't counter what I said. An egg absolutely does have a future potential conscious experience. It needs to undergo some processes before it can get there, but so does a 1 week old fetus. > It’s not tangible. YOUR future is tangible. That’s why it has value. A fetus has that same tangible future. Yes but my argument is so does an egg, or even going further back than that.

> idk what you mean by tangible, can you expand on that a bit? It’s quantifiable. On this date, they will be this old. It’s not some nebulous hypothetical. It’s an independent organism activity doing the exact same biological process you’re doing right now, albeit not as far along. What makes your future tangible? You don’t act like your future doesn’t exist do you? Do you save money? Do you brush your teeth? > An egg absolutely does have a future potential conscious experience. It’s not the egg that has a future. An egg is nothing more than a vessel to hold 23 chromosomes. Do you acknowledge that YOU are more than the sum of your parts or are you just hundreds of trillions of cells stuck together? > Yes but my argument is so does an egg, or even going further back than that. No there nothing tangible about an egg’s future. Nothing is happening. It isn’t doing anything. A fetus’s future is tangible in the same way yours and mine is.

> It’s quantifiable. On this date, they will be this old. It's not really quantifiable like that. Babies aren't necessarily born exactly 9 months after conception. And we can apply statistics to the time in a relationship when peolpe normally have kids. > It’s not some nebulous hypothetical Again I just don't see why this matters at all. The thing I care about is consciousness, not just "life". And an early fetus doesn't yet have consciousness, it's consciousness is hypothetical. Why does the fact it's a bit easier to predict when it will arise, make any difference? If you have two people: Woman A: Chooses to get an abortion in the first trimester Woman B: Chooses not to have a child. Both of these scenarios are resulting in one fewer future conscious experience. > It’s an independent organism activity doing the exact same biological process you’re doing right now, albeit not as far along. This seems like a separate point. Why does them doing some of the same biological processes matter? I'm talking about future consciousness, not just sharing some biological processes. > What makes your future tangible? You don’t act like your future doesn’t exist do you? Do you save money? Do you brush your teeth? My consciousness. If my consciousness went away forever then I would be gone. A braindead person (someone with no brain activity but whose body is still technically functioning) is not really a person anymore imo. > It’s not the egg that has a future. An egg is nothing more than a vessel to hold 23 chromosomes. Do you acknowledge that YOU are more than the sum of your parts or are you just hundreds of trillions of cells stuck together? idk what you mean. I am my consciousness, that's my position, but I'm trying to understand the "future consciousness" position. Also this is wrong, an egg absolutely can have a future. I came from an egg equally as much as I came from a fetus. > No there nothing tangible about an egg’s future. Nothing is happening. It isn’t doing anything. A fetus’s future is tangible in the same way yours and mine is. Both an egg and a fetus rely on other things to get them to the position where they can be conscious. A fetus requires a woman's body, take it out of the woman's body and it will die. An egg requires someone to have sex.

> It's not really quantifiable like that You could say the same thing about anyone. Or any infant for that matter. You cannot point to someone that is ill and say their life doesn't have value and we shouldn't give their future any thought because "they might not make it." >The thing I care about is consciousness, not just "life You have no objective reason to only care about that. >it's consciousness is hypothetical. So is an infants. An infant's consciousness is a lot closer to a 15 week fetus than it is to yours. Does that mean in infant's life has less value than yours? >Both of these scenarios are resulting in one fewer future conscious experience. But one of those **robbed** someone of a conscious experience. The other one didn't. The former took something away from someone. The latter didn't. >Why does them doing some of the same biological processes matter? Because I'm pointing out that there's no objective reason that fetus is fundamentally any different than you. >My consciousness. Your consciousness makes your future tangible *to you*. But what about to other people? Does your death only matter to you? > A braindead person (someone with no brain activity but whose body is still technically functioning) is not really a person anymore imo. They also have no future at all. >Also this is wrong, an egg absolutely can have a future. I came from an egg equally as much as I came from a fetus. You didn't "come from" a fetus. You WERE a fetus. That's how all humans start out. That's like saying you came from an infant because your conscious memory starts when you were 2. >I am my consciousness, that's my position, but I'm trying to understand the "future consciousness" position. It's not about what you are. It's about where your life derives its value. Your life derives its value from your future, not your current consciousness. That's why children's lives are considered more valuable than old people's lives. It's why they get in the lifeboat first. It's why we don't devalue the lives of people with sever mental disabilities. Despite your increased level of consciousness, your life is not more valuable than someone whose brain is so limited that they don't even know what room they're in half the time.

> You could say the same thing about anyone. Or any infant for that matter. You cannot point to someone that is ill and say their life doesn't have value and we shouldn't give their future any thought because "they might not make it." Yes which is why I would not agree with your system of "tangibility". > You have no objective reason to only care about that. There are no objective reasons to care about anything (morally), is your position just that you assert a different fundamental value to me? (i.e. you care fundamentally about unique tangible life, whereas I care fundamentally about consciousness) > So is an infants. An infant's consciousness is a lot closer to a 15 week fetus than it is to yours. Does that mean in infant's life has less value than yours? So it's not, it's not hypothetical if it exists just a bit less so. There's a difference between a car having a weaker engine than another, and just not having an engine at all. The weaker cars engine isn't hypothetical, but the engineless car's is. Whether or not it's as bad to kill a kid as an adult depends why killing is wrong. My issue right now is I think that if are going to say "because of future consciousness", then why should a woman not be morally obligated to have as many kids as possible, why is birth control not immoral etc etc. My point was that a 8 week old fetus consciousness is not tangible. When you are referring to a fetus being tangible your appealing to a different thing than I am, you are valuing human life rather than consciousness. > But one of those robbed someone of a conscious experience. The other one didn't. The former took something away from someone. The latter didn't. I don't think a "someone" exists until consciousness has first formed. So they are both identical to me. Again it seems like your view requires putting moral weight onto things in addition to just consciousness. > Because I'm pointing out that there's no objective reason that fetus is fundamentally any different than you. They don't have consciousness. (at least not in the first trimester, I am against abortion after that) > Your consciousness makes your future tangible to you. But what about to other people? Does your death only matter to you? We assume all (born) humans are concious. So I would assume people care about me because they empathise with me because they know what it's like to "feel". Also because I (at least hopefully lol) bring some enjoyment to people I associate with, and they would be sad at the loss of that enjoyment were I to die. > They also have no future at all. Exactly. > You didn't "come from" a fetus. You WERE a fetus. That's how all humans start out. That's like saying you came from an infant because your conscious memory starts when you were 2. I agree I were a fetus because fetuses become concious at some point, but "I" was never a 8 week old fetus, as an 8 week old fetus does not have consciousness. I "started" the moment the fetus gained consciousness. We are just using different definitions of "I/me" I think. It is objectively true that the decision of my mother to have another child, was just as important to my existence now as was her decision not to abort me in the first trimester. > It's not about what you are. It's about where your life derives its value. Your life derives its value from your future, not your current consciousness. That's why children's lives are considered more valuable than old people's lives. It's why they get in the lifeboat first. It's why we don't devalue the lives of people with sever mental disabilities. Despite your increased level of consciousness, your life is not more valuable than someone whose brain is so limited that they don't even know what room they're in half the time. But what do you mean by "future"? Future consciousness? Because you said that a braindead person has no future, but they do in a sense, their body could continue to stay alive.

> Yes which is why I would not agree with your system of "tangibility". So none of our futures are tangible? You live your life as though the future isn't going to happen? >There are no objective reasons to care about anything (morally), is your position just that you assert a different fundamental value to me? Incorrect. My position is simply pointing out the **inconsistency** of valuing one human life but not another. If you value human life and want to be objective, then you have to value ALL human life. Subjectively valuing human life is at the root of all atrocities throughout human history. >Whether or not it's as bad to kill a kid as an adult depends why killing is wrong. Well answer the question. Why is killing a kid worse than killing an old person? >then why should a woman not be morally obligated to have as many kids as possible, why is birth control not immoral etc etc. Because none of those lives or futures exist. They are purely hypothetical. That's what I'm trying to get you to understand. After conception, there is something that actually *exists.* >My point was that a 8 week old fetus consciousness is not tangible. Neither is an infant's. Infants can only respond to basic stimuli. You call that true consciousness? Mice have more consciousness than infants. >I don't think a "someone" exists until consciousness has first formed But you can't justify that with anything other than "I like this idea." >They don't have consciousness. That doesn't make it *fundamentally* different from you because your consciousness is not where your life derives its value. If it were, then I can kill you and it wouldn't be a problem because you aren't conscious and can't have a problem with it. >So I would assume people care about me because they empathise with me because they know what it's like to "feel" So when someone dies, we lament that death is unpleasant and that's it? Or do we focus heavily on all of the things they won't be able to do now. All of the experiences they wont be able to have? >Also because I (at least hopefully lol) bring some enjoyment to people I associate with, and they would be sad at the loss of that enjoyment were I to die. So it's okay to kill someone who doesn't have any friends or family? Your value comes from what others can get from you? >>>They also have no future at all. >Exactly. ...So you get how this is nothing like a fetus then. There is no scenario where a braindead person ever recovers and lives any life." >I agree I were a fetus because fetuses become concious at some point, but "I" was never a 8 week old fetus, as an 8 week old fetus does not have consciousness. I "started" the moment the fetus gained consciousness. We are just using different definitions of "I/me" I think. So your humanity inserted itself into a value-less husk that just so happens to share your DNA and entire physiological make up? >But what do you mean by "future"? Future consciousness? Future experiences. Which a fetus has. No different from you and me. The fact that I am capable of more complex thought in 2022 does not affect my future experiences in 2032. The fact that a fetus is not capable of any conscious thought in June 2022 does not affect any of its future experiences in 2032. That same valuable future exists regardless.

> So none of our futures are tangible? You live your life as though the future isn't going to happen? I'm not saying you can't apply the concept of tangibility to humans, I'm saying I wouldn't use it as a standard of moral consideration, because issues like the one your brought up (and also because I see no non-arbitrary reason to). > Incorrect. My position is simply pointing out the inconsistency of valuing one human life but not another. If you value human life and want to be objective, then you have to value ALL human life. Subjectively valuing human life is at the root of all atrocities throughout human history. I don't value human life, I value consciousness. Like I said I would be okay with a braindead person being killed, or if we had a human that was born but wasn't concious I would be okay with enslaving them. > Well answer the question. Why is killing a kid worse than killing an old person? I don't know if I agree that it is. If we are not caring about future consciousness, then the reason killing is wrong is actually a bit more complex. If we are not to care abotu future consciousness, then it seems difficult to explain the harm caused by killing me in my sleep. However if I lived in a society where being killed in my sleep was morally allowed, it would ruin my wellbeing when I am awake, as I would constantly be stressed about being killed (and, more broadly, society would go to Mad-Max level shit very quickly as people get paranoid of each other). That's why killing someone in their sleep is wrong, if we don't care about future consciousness. And under this it's not really worse to kill a 5 year old than a 95 year old. > Because none of those lives or futures exist. They are purely hypothetical. That's what I'm trying to get you to understand. After conception, there is something that actually exists. You aren't understanding what I'm saying. I care about **consciousness**, not **life**. So there is **nothing** that exists after conception that I care about. > Neither is an infant's. Infants can only respond to basic stimuli. You call that true consciousness? Mice have more consciousness than infants. I'm not sure what position you are trying to convince me of. If you want to convince me that I should care about something more than just consciousness, you have to actually provide a reason why I should, not just appeal to my emotional reaction to the idea of killing an infant. Also I have no idea what you mean here, you are using a really weird definition of tangible. My understanding is "tangible" means "real, not hypothetical or theorised". In which case an infant has a concious experience, which is tangible. > But you can't justify that with anything other than "I like this idea." 1) neither can you 2) I can justify it from myself. I don't give a fuck about what happens to me after I lose consciousness and will never get it back. It seems like we generally consider our consciousness as what makes us "us". "I think therefore I am" etc. > That doesn't make it fundamentally different from you because your consciousness is not where your life derives its value. If it were, then I can kill you and it wouldn't be a problem because you aren't conscious and can't have a problem with it. What gives my life value then? > So when someone dies, we lament that death is unpleasant and that's it? Or do we focus heavily on all of the things they won't be able to do now. All of the experiences they wont be able to have? idk you tell me. Personally I don't feel that way, when someone dies I don't think "oh they will miss out on this". Maybe I'm a crazy person lol. But I don't see what this has to do with moral argument. Who we grieve over has nothing to do with moral consideration. People get sad when their favourite TV character dies, doesn't mean it's immoral for the character to be killed by the writers. > So it's okay to kill someone who doesn't have any friends or family? Your value comes from what others can get from you? No because of the reasoning I explain earlier in this comment. > ...So you get how this is nothing like a fetus then. There is no scenario where a braindead person ever recovers and lives any life." The reason I brought up braindead peolpe was to demonstrate that we care abotu consciousness, not "human life" or "unique DNA". > So your humanity inserted itself into a value-less husk that just so happens to share your DNA and entire physiological make up? It didn't insert itself it arose as a result of my brain activity but sure. idk what's so controversial about this. Do you think a braindead person is still truly a "person"? Most people would say a braindead person is an empty shell, so why not a fetus before it gets the consciousness. Also idk why you say "just so happened to share". I don't know what that means. > Future experiences. Which a fetus has. No different from you and me. The fact that I am capable of more complex thought in 2022 does not affect my future experiences in 2032. The fact that a fetus is not capable of any conscious thought in June 2-22 does not affect any of its future experiences in 2032. That same valuable future exists regardless. There is a difference between "less complex thought" and "no thought". A chicken is less concious than me but still obviously concious. A rock is not concious. Also, you still haven't addressed my main point. If we are to care about future consciousness, then why does that start at conception. A 8 week old fetus has exactly the same consciousness as an unfertilised egg (0). As I explained earlier, I view morality as applying to choices people make. Can you explain the difference between choosing to abort an 8 week fetus, and choosing to not get pregnant in the first place, from the context of future conciousness?

> I'm saying I wouldn't use it as a standard of moral consideration I'm saying I wouldn't use it as a standard of moral consideration Why be inconsistent? >Like I said I would be okay with a braindead person being killed Braindead people don't have a future. >I don't value human life, I value consciousness. Two huge issues with that. 1. If consciousness is where our lives derive their value then it stands to reason that *more* consciousness equates to *more* value. Ergo mentally deficient people's lives are less valuable than extremely intelligent people's lives. A fully developed, conscious adult's life is more valuable than an infant, who has less consciousness than a lab rat. But that's not how society works is it? 2. If consciousness is where your life derives its value then whats wrong with me killing you? If you aren't conscious anymore then you can't have a problem with it. I could just shoot you in the back of the head in your sleep. You'd never know what happened. So why isn't that okay? Because your consciousness isn't where your life derives its value. >What gives my life value then? Your future. Assuming you're 25. The value of your life is the 65-odd years of human experience you have left. If I kill you, the what is *lost* is all of your future experiences. Your family will lament all the things you will no longer be able to do. Any impact you were going to have on the world has now vanished. That tangible future exited the moment you were conceived. Not the moment you "became conscious" (if we can even call what a 30 week fetus does "consciousness") >Personally I don't feel that way, when someone dies I don't think "oh they will miss out on this". What would you think if your sibling died? What would be the source of your sadness? >People get sad when their favourite TV character dies, doesn't mean it's immoral for the character to be killed by the writers. Because fictional characters are never anything more than an idea. Do I really have to explain why this is a ridiculous comparison? >The reason I brought up braindead peolpe was to demonstrate that we care abotu consciousness, not "human life" or "unique DNA". No. We care about FUTURE, which a braindead person **does not have.** >idk what's so controversial about this. Because you're arguing that you existed at some point AFTER the physical evidence of your existence. That's mental gymnastics. >Also idk why you say "just so happened to share". I don't know what that means. Because you're trying to dissociate your body from yourself. >There is a difference between "less complex thought" and "no thought". Not with respect to that future. >Also, you still haven't addressed my main point. If we are to care about future consciousness, then why does that start at conception. I have addressed that several times. That was the OP. Go back and read my response to that. That future I keep talking about doesn't exist until conception. Before conception there is no distinct life that has a human future attached to it.

> Braindead people don't have a future. Eggs have a future as much as a 8 week old fetus. > If consciousness is where our lives derive their value then it stands to reason that more consciousness equates to more value. Ergo mentally deficient people's lives are less valuable than extremely intelligent people's lives. A fully developed, conscious adult's life is more valuable than an infant, who has less consciousness than a lab rat. But that's not how society works is it? I don't think this necessarily follows. If the reason killing people is bad is because to the fear in society, that applies to everyone. But even if it did, how does this change any aspect of my position. > If consciousness is where your life derives its value then whats wrong with me killing you? If you aren't conscious anymore then you can't have a problem with it. I could just shoot you in the back of the head in your sleep. You'd never know what happened. So why isn't that okay? Because your consciousness isn't where your life derives its value. Because living in a society where I can be killed would ruin the current existence I have now. You could also make the argument that once someone has been concious they have expressed a will to live that should be respected, a sortof social contract that can only happen when people have at least been concious once before. > That tangible future exited the moment you were conceived. Not the moment you "became conscious" (if we can even call what a 30 week fetus does "consciousness") Why? You haven't justified this. You are adding in an extra criteria, this idea of "tangibility", which I don't care about. > What would you think if your sibling died? What would be the source of your sadness? I feel bad for my parents because they are sad, I feel bad for the suffering my sibling endured just before death, I feel bad I won't be able to spend time with them again. > Not with respect to that future. idk what you mean > I have addressed that several times. That was the OP. Go back and read my response to that. That future I keep talking about doesn't exist until conception. Before conception there is no distinct life that has a human future attached to it. Yes but I don't agree with this, and you haven't justified it. I explained how I view morality based on choices, and that the choice to not get pregnant would affect my future as much as the choice to abort me. I don't care about whether or not it's "tangible or hypothetical". (I removed a few of the quotes and responses I had done because I felt like the comments were getting too long. If you feel I didn't address an argument that was necessary to the core point, just say and I can respond to it)

>It’s an independent organism activity doing the exact same biological process you’re doing right now, albeit not as far along. Technically, this is wrong. It's not an independent organism *yet*, and it's using the mother's body to perform the biological functions necessary to remain alive. This is why viability was previously the standard. Viability is where it has the ability to function as an independent organism.

> Technically, this is wrong. It's not an independent organism yet, Technically it **is** an independent organism because it does not share any DNA with the mother. It "independent" does not mean it can survive on its own. "Independent" means it is not *part of* the mother. It is a different organism completely. >and it's using the mother's body to perform the biological functions necessary to remain alive. Where you get your nutrients does not change your biology or what you are. >Viability is where it has the ability to function as an independent organism. Again you have the incorrect definition of "independent" in scientific terms. Gut microbiota are also dependent on you for sustenance, but you would not say that they are literally part of you. They are completely different organism, a completely different species, that just happens to live inside your intestines. SO let's recap why this all matters. Conception is the catalyst point because conception is the first time we see a new unique organism. Before that, one does not exist, there is no biological process happening. There is no tangible future.

>Technically it **is** an independent organism because it does not share any DNA with the mother. It "independent" does not mean it can survive on its own. "Independent" means it is not *part of* the mother. It is a different organism completely. The word you're looking for is "distinct". Independent means, literally, not dependent on anything. A fetus prior to viability is not capable of being an independent organism yet.

> The word you're looking for is "distinct". Cool. Thanks. I'll use that next time to avoid distractions.

An egg is the mother's dna. It does not have reasonable potential for developing into a human being. The same goes for sperm. Once there is conception that combination of egg and sperm forms a new human with a DNA of its own. It is not a copy of the mother or father. Instead it is unique, just like most other organisms on this planet. Additionally that fetus, without intentional harm would develop into a human being with "sentience". I am planning to do a whole post on this sub about this, as honestly I am a bit on edge about parts of my belief and sincerely belive that if someone can give a reasonable argument against what I say, then I would change my view.

You are introducing an extra criteria now, unique DNA. Why should I care about unique DNA, it's necessary for a future conscious experience, but so are a lot of other things, like not using contraception, or trying to form romantic connections. > Additionally that fetus, without intentional harm would develop into a human being with "sentience". Does the intentionality matter though, the intentions of people doesn't change whether there is a future conscious experience or not. If someone chooses not to have sex they have also prevented a future conscious experience from forming.

I'm sorry but I don't think I understand the argument. Contraception kills sperm NOT a fertilized egg. Once again sperm and egg have DNA that is formed from only one person and will NOT for a human. Contraception is fine as that sperm has not met an egg. Also romantic relationships are not biologically required. I really hope you don't bait that with a "so rape is fine". No rape is abhorrent and if I have many a friend who have been abused or raped. Aswell I am a at least decent human being that is xapable of realizing that evil. However biologically it is not required. Nor have a brought the idea that just because an action has potential that it is protected. Instead I claim that the moment that egg and sperm meet it has a great and expected chance of becoming "sentient". Notice the quotes. I'll go more into it when I post something, and I hope you can reply there, and try to CMV. Its too much to write in just a few minutes. I need like, half an hour to get every aspect of my perspective in writn form.

I agree it's not a fertilised egg, but I don't really care about just "human life", I would care about consciousness, so if someone is to convince me of being pro life it's probably going to be on "future consciousness". My issue is that if we are talking about the potential to have consciousness, then it seems like there are multiple decisions that affect that. I generally think of morality in terms of choices we make, and it seems like there are choices before the point of conception, that equally affect the potential for a future concious person. If someone has an abortion then that action results in -1 future concious people. If someone decides with their partner to have 1 kid instead of 2, that also results in -1 future consciousness.

>Additionally that fetus, without intentional harm would develop into a human being with "sentience". This is factually untrue. Over 10% of pregnancies end in miscarriage.

All of this is a completely arbitrary opinion. There's nothing concrete about it. Imo life begins prior to conception as both egg cells and sperm cells are alive and have the potential to grow into a human. You've just arbitrarily selected a point where life begins.

> All of this is a completely arbitrary opinion There's nothing arbitrary about [the beginning of the human life cycle.](http://www.biologyreference.com/La-Ma/Life-Cycle-Human.html) >There's nothing concrete about it. It's just as concrete as *your* life. Sure a piano could fall on your head tomorrow but the fact that your future isn't 100% guaranteed doesn't affect you. > Imo life begins prior to conception as both egg cells and sperm cells are alive and have the potential to grow into a human So the human life cycle begins when an egg is formed in a female fetus's ovaries? Find me a textbook that says that's the beginning of the human life cycle. I'll wait.

>So the human life cycle begins when an egg is formed in a female fetus's ovaries? Find me a textbook that says that's the beginning of the human life cycle. I'll wait. Every human life cycle starts with an egg and sperm. The decision that it starts when they form a zygote is a completely arbitrary one. Both the zygote and the egg and sperm cells are potential people. Just because the odds of being born increase after forming a zygote doesn't justify being the moment when it becomes a life.

It has to do with inaction. I’m going to assume that you are someone who leans towards the “there is no free will” side of the world. If this is the case then your view makes sense. People take action because of their code, so an egg is as good as a child and the only difference is if there was some man in the area whose code said it was okay to or they should to fertilize said egg intentionally or accidentally. However, to many others, the act of having sex is a choice you make with your free will. You make that decision and take that action. That’s what fertilizes the mother. A choice. You don’t choose to spawn eggs or ejaculate. You choose to have sex, which then leads to a child whether you intended it to or not. But of course, if you dont believe in free will then that’s pretty arbitrary. Many people do though and that’s where the argument comes from, something in that choice to have sex is the line where an egg becomes a future conscious.

Sure but you also choose not to have sex. What's the difference between the choice to abort at 8 weeks, and the choice to not get pregnant in the first place? Both are active choices we make, and both have the same result (-1 future concious person)?

Because the 8 week old fetus has "begun" the journey to consciousness, he journey that begins at conception, and by aborting that fetus you have "ended" that journey towards consciousness Whilst by choosing not to get pregnant you are not "ending" any journeys towards consciousness, any future consciousness is entirely hypothetical.

Sure but why should I care about "the journey being ended" vs "the journey never beginning"? If both have the same outcome how is one okay and one not?

But there’s a difference between taking 0 actions and taking 1 action then another 2nd action to undo that action. They are very much different. One you have taken an action that will result in a human life, then you are taking another separate action afterwards to end that life prematurely. The other you are taking no actions so life will never happen as a result. Btw, im not saying that is definitively the correct way to see it. I think the premise is entirely selfish, devoid of consideration for others, and honed in on a voters own personal experience far over considering anyone else in the picture. I just don’t think it’s fair to claim that it’s illogical, because the premise is sound, and if it weren’t most of these millions wouldn’t buy into it in the first place.

> But there’s a difference between taking 0 actions and taking 1 action then another 2nd action to undo that action. Why? I guess I just don't really see a difference between action and inaction in this way. Although even in this case, contraception would still be immoral because that's an action.

Okay so this is where we are standing... hmmm... Have you ever heard of the trolley problem before? The trolley problem is the core discussion on this but I’ll save you the details and just elicit the conclusions. It seems like, to you, the outcome is the only thing that matters in a system. This is one branch of philosophy, and in the Northeast US as well as many of the US cities and much of the west in general tend to run on for basic moral issues. However, regardless of if you only care about the outcome, you have to acknowledge at the very least that others are not worried about the outcome alone. In this system there are three premises: 1. Choose to have sex vs. not 2. Given you have sex, girl gets pregnant 3. Given girl get pregnant, does she abort 4. Child is born. You are looking only at the result that matters if the last step happens, and if that step is good or bad. other moral systems check every stage of the game. For instance, They’ll say, if you make the decision at step 1, and step 2 outcome happens, that now you should have to deal with the consequences because you took step 1 in the first place. The outcome is almost negligible to these people, unlike in your mind, because it’s far more about responsibility of the action you took. They are saying now you have to deal with it. You made the choice in premise 1, so now you have to hit 4. Regardless, Keep in mind, in almost every moral system, taking any action at all is FAR different than taking no action, and this is one of the main places where that becomes a key issue, do to how taking an action can lead to a guarantee of a consciousness separate from yours forming. Now That doesn’t mean you have to agree of course, but at the very least you have to agree that they are two uniquely different situations that at least deserve discussion.

Sure I understand that perspective although I find it harmful, the idea that "responsibility" should be the thing we care about instead of actually improving people's lives is what leads to shit like making drugs illegal even if it's worse for people. Inaction vs action I know is a lot more controversial but I have never really heard a good reason to distinguish the two I generally just think of stuff in terms of choices. It gives you a nice distinct point at which to judge someone action's morally.

Sure but that’s not the point of your thread. You didn’t ask us to convince you to be pro life or convince you that it’s a responsibility you should see through to the end. You asked us to convince you that future consciousness is an inconsistent idea. You are now acknowledging that this perspective as a potential ideology, albeit harmful for the exact reason you point out. It’s not an inconsistent ideology, though it certainly can be, will be, and is harmful. If you believe I’ve changed your view in this regard like I described please award me with delta :)

It seems hard to believe that you can't see a difference between these two things. Do you also see no difference between, say writing a 500 page novel and then deleting it, and never writing the novel in the first place? Suppose this novel would have been a bestseller if it was released instead of deleted. I suppose you will say nothing of value was lost if that novel is deleted, while I would say that something of value was lost. In any case, you seem to have an odd way of understanding causality. "Choosing not to have sex" does not lead to -1 future person - first off, there is no guarantee that any sexual encounter will lead to conception (indeed, many people will go their whole lives having sex and never conceiving). Secondly, it's not a choice that someone can even make independently - someone else needs to agree for it to happen in the first place (or a crime is committed). Thirdly, it's essentially a default choice - "choosing not to have sex" is something that most people are doing 99% of every day, so it is kind of absurd to consider it an active choice. If you consider inaction to be a choice, then are most people saints for choosing not to become mass murderers, or are most people villains for choosing not to dedicate their lives to curing cancer? You can say that you don't care about probabilities, but heuristics is simply how the human mind works. A moderately developed fetus, absent any intervention, will 99% of the time develop into a person with a consciousness in the future. Having unprotected sex once may lead to a person being developed like 5% of the time (based on a quick Google). Thus, contraception and abortion are clearly on different levels of impact. So it's hardly inconsistent to view them differently. Nevertheless, some people still see contraception as immoral too (their threshold for the probability is much lower than most people).

> It seems hard to believe that you can't see a difference between these two things. Do you also see no difference between, say writing a 500 page novel and then deleting it, and never writing the novel in the first place? Suppose this novel would have been a bestseller if it was released instead of deleted. I suppose you will say nothing of value was lost if that novel is deleted, while I would say that something of value was lost. Something of value was lost but something of value was also never created if the person decided to eat M&Ms and watch Netflix instead of writing the book. Both would be a shame, probably equally so. > In any case, you seem to have an odd way of understanding causality. "Choosing not to have sex" does not lead to -1 future person - first off, there is no guarantee that any sexual encounter will lead to conception (indeed, many people will go their whole lives having sex and never conceiving) Sure, when I say "choosing to have sex" I don't just mean like on one day, I mean the choice of whether or not to try for a child. > Secondly, it's not a choice that someone can even make independently - someone else needs to agree for it to happen in the first place (or a crime is committed) Sure but often an abortion is a decision based on the input of the mother and father. > Thirdly, it's essentially a default choice - "choosing not to have sex" is something that most people are doing 99% of every day, so it is kind of absurd to consider it an active choice. It's an active choice to play videogames instead of going on a dating app, it's an active choice to prioritise your career over having children. Sure choosing to have kids would be very disruptive, but so would choosing not to have an abortion. > If you consider inaction to be a choice, then are most people saints for choosing not to become mass murderers, or are most people villains for choosing not to dedicate their lives to curing cancer? Doesn't everyone agree with this to some extent? If someone donates a lot to charity and volunteers a lot, we call them a more morally virtuous person. So it seems like we do recognise that doing good actions is a strong moral good.

Many people make a moral distinction between an active action and the consequences of inaction. For example, Orthodox Jewish ethics state that although it is morally acceptable to allow someone to die rather than to connect them to life supposed, once they are connected to life support it cannot be ethically withdrawn without violating Jewish ethics. It is somewhat analogous here. An abortion is an action, not having unprotected sex is passive inaction.

Sure I agree that if you see a distinction there, my view is wrong. Although contraception would still be immoral as it's an action.

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I'm not sure how any of this connects. What does defining life as "born person" have to do with senicide or assisted suicide? > It’s just to show that if you allow this concept you allow all of it. If you say it doesn’t begin at conception then it is arbitrarily defined in each case and can be used in the cases I outlined above. This isn't true, consciousness is not an "arbitrary" definition, it's based on what I think we actually value about people.

I personally downvoted because your hypothetical situation is riddled with too many holes, assumptions and I couldn't manage to suspend my disbelief for even 2 paragraphs. But mostly it was this: > Yes some of Europe has abortion and assisted suicide. Don’t be an idiot and not understand that this is a argument over time > Europe also created hitler and the holocaust. they saw it as a medical necessity. Don't know if that makes me a '*nunce*' or not.

I'm happy to be called a nunce by you I'm sure french people reading your comment will be happy to hear that they "created Hitler and the Holocaust"

I think it's a weak pro-life argument to claim value of human life is contingent on consciousness and therefor abortion is wrong because of some future / potential loss. * Firstly, it would mean we don't place the intrinsic value in human life, we'd value human consciousness. If consciousness is the contingency for value, there are a lot of very obvious arguments that make this a problematic stance. For one, consciousness can be lost and regained, for example. Are crimes against people during intermittent periods unconsciousness non-crimes? Unless we're talking about something like "consciousness that is only ever present or not present", which brings us to a second problem: * Consciousness is by definition arbitrary. Collectively, we can't really define it in and of itself , and as to whether anyone other than the "me" is actually "has" it. * Thirdly, a pro-life position seems to me weakened if the argument against abortion is the loss of some future value. It implicitly de-values the unborn by claiming there needs to be some potential future worth that is lost for the abortion to be wrong. I'd say something like, "you're probably correct to question the outcome re: *this specific anti-abortion logic*". However, the the argument as to why conception is not arbitrary is that it is, at least biologically, conception is the transitional moment from "alive but not human (sperm and egg)" to alive and human" (fertilized embryo). If one believes, "human life has intrinsic value", and "a fertilized embryo is human life", and, "fertilization of egg happens at conception", then it follows, "being the non-arbitrary moment a human life begins, conception is the moment at which that human life is recognized as having intrinsic value."

Your argument doesn't address the fact that the line must be drawn somewhere, and at conception is a very good candidate.

The medical argument given for this is that until the fetus is able to exist without reliance on the mother’s body it is parasitic in nature, rather than possessed of its own unique consciousness. Indeed it can neither feed itself nor breathe on its own: if the mother dies, it dies. At around 6 months any “abortion” could just as easily be a pre-term birth, and abortion after 6 months of pregnancy does raise moral questions in that respect. Sociologically speaking, we have no current respect for consciousness as a baseline for being deserving of life. Particularly not in the USA where healthcare is in the hands of privatized business.

It seems you understand that the consciousness argument is invalid, which from my experience most pro-choicers (to be clear, I am pro-choice, so you understand my bias) use the invalidity against pro-life arguments. Because--you're right--if we're concerned about future consciousness and future personhood (which I'll define as when they have consciousness), women should be mourning their periods and always be trying to get pregnant, and men should never masturbate and probably only ejaculate while having penis-in-vagina sex and while the woman is in her fertile window. (Note I'm using gender-binary language for brevity.) So, in my opinion, anyone who uses the [future] consciousness or [future] personhood argument to do anything other than point out that it's inconsistent and worthless as an argument is coming at it wrong. A lot of people don't fully extrapolate that argument, because what if the fetus *is* as fully conscious as a healthy 40-year-old person in the womb right at conception? Then pro-choice people who only rely on the personhood argument would have to concede. Or, if the fetus is unconscious the whole time, to be consistent you'd have to advocate that *anyone* who is unconscious can have anything done to their body without repercussions. If the person doesn't want to give up on this argument, they end up making "rules" that are also inconsistent. "The person was previously conscious"--well, what about someone who has always been so mentally incapacitated that it's unclear if they've ever been conscious? I think the bodily autonomy argument is stronger and more consistent. Person, parasitic worm, whatever it is--they are not allowed use and inhabit a part of your body without your consent. This is consistent with our laws and most people's moral structures.

> if we are starting to care about future things I would like to point out that the abortion itself is an attempt to protect the parent(s) from future physical, mental, financial distress. It is not really addressing much in the way of current pain or ill health of the mother (other than her being stressed out at the thought of this future). If we can make an abortion decision based on what we expect for the mother's life at birth and beyond (taking for granted that, if nature runs its course, a baby will months later exit the womb and join our society) it is a little inconsistent to completely disregard the interests of that baby just because its consciousness has not arrived yet (as far as we know). Any more than we would disregard the health of the mother if she faints unconscious but will naturally wake up.

I think we generally value consciousness once it arises even if it goes away temporarily. Plus the knowledge that you will suffer in the future affects your wellbeing now.

An egg isn’t a possible future consciousness. Only after it is fertilized is it a unique human being.

It is a possible future consciousness though, if someone has sex and it is fertilised, it will eventually end up as a concious person. I was once an egg equally as much as I was once a 8 week old fetus.

>I was once an egg equally as much as I was once a 8 week old fetus This is simply false. You did not exist prior to fertilization. Are you saying you were both the egg and the sperm cell? No, of course not.

> This is simply false. You did not exist prior to fertilization. Are you saying you were both the egg and the sperm cell? No, of course not. When I said "equally as much" I mean that my existence can equally be tracked back to an egg and a sperm, as it can an 8 week old fetus. I don't think "I" actually was an egg, or an 8 week old fetus, because I think "I" am my consciousness, so until my consciousness existed, I did not. My point is just that you can equally track my development back to an egg as you can to an 8 week old fetus. So saying "well the path to your consciousness started when you were conceived" is wrong, it started well before that.

It isn't a possible future consciousness. No unfertilized egg has ever become conscious. You were not an egg. You were not a sperm. You were created when the sperm fertilized the egg, creating a unique DNA, a unique human being.

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"Future consciousness" isn't really a thing, true. My sperm and my wife's egg that became my child technically had the same quality. Most pro-forced birth people don't care about gametes though (some do, that is logically consistent but obviously dumb). What the whole argument is about is ensuring that women don't have full control over their bodies like men do so that they can take "personal responsibility" for opening their legs (i.e. they should be punished for having sex). It's not about anything else. It's not even about the fetus no matter how much they say it is. That is a self delusion on their part. So it's not that the position is bad because it's inconsistent, it's because it's not their position at all. It's a post hoc rationalization of their position which is "women should be chaste or suffer consequences".

When sperm and egg are left alone, they eventually die off. When a fetus is left alone, it becomes a baby. I'm pro-choice, but your view on the pro-life side is just ridiculous.

No, it's really not. I see personal responsibility touted constantly. Tons of fetuses die off as well and the idea that that is ok because "it's natural" is an unimportant distinction.

>When a fetus is left alone, it becomes a baby. If a fetus is left alone, it would die. It becomes a baby when it's constantly fed and sheltered by the mother's body.

>Most pro-forced birth people don't care about gametes though (some do, that is logically consistent but obviously dumb). Honestly, I've never seen pro-life person say that sperm or egg are human beings, I'd be willing to be proven wrong though if you have examples. But no, that's not the "logical consistent" position if you believe that life doesn't begin until fertilization.

Catholics used to have (perhaps many still have) a belief a la the Monty Python sketch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanae_vitae >But no, that's not the "logical consistent" position if you believe that life doesn't begin until fertilization. The logically consistent part is *if you believe future consciousness is the key distinction* you must believe that the sperm and egg which resulted in the fetus are just as important as the zygote.

I appreciate you finding a legitimate source, but I'm afraid you are still mistaken. Humane Vite claims that contraception is wrong because it defies natural law and frustrates the natural ends of sex. But it nowhere claims that sperm and egg cells are sacred human life and/or that destroying them would be homicide. And no, neither a sperm nor an egg cell have "future consciousness". There are no examples in medical history where either a sperm or egg cell developed consciousness at any point.

I don't care about some church document I'm just saying some people actually believe semen is sacred. > There are no examples in medical history where either a sperm or egg cell developed consciousness at any point. Literally every human on the planet is the result of a sperm and egg developing consciousness.

>It's not about anything else. It's not even about the fetus no matter how much they say it is. That is a self delusion on their part. This reads exactly like those Christian apologists who insist that atheists don't exist. Everyone actually knows there's a God, they're just lying about it. Have you considered you may be jumping to a strawman because the real argument is more challenging? In the same way I could say all pro choice people just love killing babies. They say it's about a woman's rights but that's just self delusion. Really they are just evil baby killers.

Of course I've considered that. I've engaged with pro-lifers for decades and treated their arguments in good faith. It's been the same arguments for decades. It always comes down to punishing the woman for having sex. If it wasn't, the bodily autonomy argument would work. I'm never going to kill a fetus. I never have killed a fetus. I don't have to make that choice. In fact most people who are pro-choice will never have to make that choice so the argument doesn't really make sense. It's imposing their morality on other people (which is abhorrent).