478 replies to this topic

[Emily]

It's reasonably apt, but I don't like that analogy as much because an acorn doesn't need any outside assistance to grow into a tree. It contains it's own germination food, and then it harvests its own light, water and minerals.

The same is not true of a human foetus.

 

Ah, I took it from "A Defense of Abortion" by Judith Jarvis Thompson which I'll add to my post so people don't think I completely made it up

[redlion]

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he means artificially, chemically altered by a non-maternal source

How generous of you. Sometimes I wonder if you don't bring it on yourself.

Plants are alive and don't have sentience.

Are we talking about plants?

I thought we were talking about human beings and the point at which they are alive. Medical science has come up with the term viability, which is the point at which the potential human could exist without a womb, usually with heavy assistance from machines and medicine. Modern technology continues to push the time table backward in terms of what is possible, but even with artificial assistance there is still a limit to when a group of cells can be considered alive, can be considered viable on it's own.

That time limit is determined by science, not by when you say it starts.

[redlion]

Undeveloped humans will be humans, so why not treat them like humans. Your analogy of the cake mix would be more relevant if you equated an embryo to the baking of the cake mix. Being in the oven starts it's transformation into something entirely different. Also, if 3) and 4) are embryonic cells, then why would you equate the artificially chemically altered cells to non-chemically cells when you say that I "mass murder" humans when I skin a knee?

Nah we're not talking about plants. I just misunderstood your post and took it out of context To your argument though, the moment an egg cell is fertilized, it suddenly has potential to become a sentient human being. It's not viable on its own, but that potential makes the value of the embryo equal to a human.

Undeveloped humans might be humans. They have the potential to be humans. But they're not humans. Else we wouldn't have ten different words for "undeveloped humans" eg, embryo, fetus, zygote etc. If they were all simply living beings, we wouldn't need a word for this stage of their development, see what I mean?

You don't call all potatoes french fries, even though almost every potato has the potential to be french fries. Same thing with an embryo. The fact that it isn't a life yet is self-evident. It's either a living, breathing person or it's not.

The moment a cell is fertilized is no different from the moment before it was fertilized. No magic happened. If you understand causality, it's nothing special that makes one event lead to the next.

As to you assigning value to what might be, well, I've got some oil property I'm looking to invest in. Thing is, it's in Nigeria and this prince is going to help me out with it, handle the pesky money side of things. Do you think you could assign some value there for me and spot me a few grand? The prince is assigning value there, why shouldn't we do the same?

[Frizzle]

I think abortions should be readily available and encouraged. Up until the 60th trimester is ok as well.

[Sweeney]

"Direct implication" = taking my argument out of context and judging it accordingly.
I meant whichever treatment that reverts cells so that they can grow as an individual, in their embryonic stage.
Undeveloped humans will be humans, so why not treat them like humans. Your analogy of the cake mix would be more relevant if you equated an embryo to the baking of the cake mix. Being in the oven starts it's transformation into something entirely different. Also, if 3) and 4) are embryonic cells, then why would you equate the artificially chemically altered cells to non-chemically cells when you say that I "mass murder" humans when I skin a knee?

Ok, I'm out.

[Waser Lave]

If potential has no part in determining value, then what does?

Consider a company with stocks in the market. The company's value is determined by its potential to make a profit and how likely it will reach this potential. If a company has little potential for profit, it will make up to a little profit. If a company has a large potential for profit (like having a low cost product that is able to drive profits), then the company could make a large profit. Now we have to consider how likely the company is to reach that potential. If say an anti-radiation pill company has a large potential for profit (because the pills are cheap to make) but no one needs to buy it, the company wouldn't have that much worth. If however a natural disaster occurs and the sales go up, since the pills incur a large profit, the company gets huge earnings and fulfills their potential to make a large profit. If you would like the exact mathematics to determine the worth of a company like that Nigerian oil company you mentioned, take a look at the book Buffetology. The prince you mentioned probably just pulled numbers out of thin air.

Now let's connect to embryos. If companies have potential to make a profit, which makes them worth more, then embryos that have a potential to make a human life (which is infinitely precious) have a large worth. Almost equivalent to a human.

 

How much can I sell my sperm for given that they have the potential to create billions of people? If you're going for the potential argument you need to also consider the earlier components involved, you can't just start half-way down the path.

[Waser Lave]

You can actually sell your sperm. The buyers are interested in how much potential your genes can make the ideal child. However, sperm has little potential to fertilize an egg and make a baby, which reduces it's value. When an egg is fertilized, it's potential for making a baby is much higher than the sperm by itself.

 

So you're suggesting that some foetuses are of more value than others?

[redlion]

The prince you mentioned probably just pulled numbers out of thin air.

You're a moron.

Either that, or you haven't used email in the last 20 years. The Nigerian prince is a well known internet scam, which makes use of the very argument you're using. I was making fun of your indiscriminate assignation of value, seemingly without you realizing it.

Honestly, your company example is totally off point. Corporations aren't people. They are valued entirely differently than people. Corporations have one purpose - to increase shareholder value. That's nothing like the potential of a human being.

You're typing yourself in circles, which I'm more than happy to read. However, I am not at all inclined to lend any weight to your argument, vapid and shallow as it is. Perhaps next time you can look up how to make an analogy, or how to refute opponents' arguments. The potato argument still stands, as does the ear argument, and the cake argument.

Just as an aside, the point of the cake mix example was to draw attention to the causality of the situation. Any number of events can influence the outcome. Potential does not guarantee a final state.

Try predicting where an electron is in any given atom. Go on, I'll wait.

[Pompeii]

Pro-choice. It's your body and your life you are changing with the decision of keeping or aborting a baby. Some people are in no way ready to support new life and therefore was it really fair to the new life? 

We are overpopulated like deer. But unlike deer, we cannot be legally hunted. 

The argument that we must always bring new life into the world doesn't stand now that there is too much of our life in the world, and enough medicine that almost every baby born, and birthing mother, survives.

[luvsmyncis]

Since you value life so very much, may I ask how many unwanted babies you have adopted into your home? They are infinitely precious, you know.

[GhostMommy]

Strawman

 

PRBM I find your argument more akin to the rhetoric technique of a strawman.  I might say that I don't think puppies should be skinned for fur coats to which you replied well how many cartoon puppies have YOU personally adopted. 

 

More akin to the argument oft heard in the 1850's which bemoaned that without slavery what could anyone possibly do with all of them black people. 

 

I have generally noticed a fine wit about your arguments and was rather disappointed in your cheap and unworthy rhetorical device.   I will not hold this against my fine opinion of you as even the sharpest mind has the occasional blurper-flubberal.

Edited by Tritium, 02 February 2014 - 02:34 PM.

[Sweeney]

Strawman

Whose argument is a strawman?

[redlion]

Maybe I didn't use email for 20 years because I'm not even 20? Well I did research on the Nigerian scam, and it seems they just lie about the potential to make money.
 
1) Embryos on the other hand have the potential to become a human and nothing else (besides dead).

2) The earlobe has no chance of achieving sentience ever until that special circumstance happens (which is the chemical treatment Sweeney mentioned).

3) For the cake analogy, there is two cases (revised by me to be more relevant to abortion)... The original analogy didn't really apply to abortion, so
 
4) And the electron is in a probability cloud based on its energy level around the atom 90% of the time.

I wasn't saying that you should have used email for the entirety of your lifespan (or 20 years), I was saying that if you had used email at all during that time, you would in all likelihood have gotten an email from a Nigerian prince.

The case is relevant because the email creates the perception of value. Most commodities trade on a perception value market. No one really believes that price reflects value 100% of the time, right? Otherwise there would be no crazy swings up and down on the stock market. Value is subjective, illusory, and never fully captured in figures.

An embryo is likewise a perception of value, the illusion of a future human. Until it is real and true, it is a lie and false.

1) Embryos are nothing but cells. As Sweeney has brought up, cells can be re-purposed. Stem cells were only the beginning. You're trying to dismiss the potato argument out of hand. But the possibility of other outcomes is there, whether you're willing to admit it or not.

2) That "until" kills your argument. The "ever" is made irrelevant by even one counter example, which Sweeney has given. Illicit affirmative or negative.

Logic hurts.

3) If you change my argument, it ceases to be my argument. You understand I'm not responding to that butchery of my poor cake mix example, right? Please don't try to give me an argument that I didn't come up with.

Cake mixes are potential cakes. Embryos are potential humans. The fact that added effort is still necessary in both cases is, I think, rather self evident. The point being that until you expend that potential energy, you don't have a cake or a human.

4) Congratulations on googling my query, but that's not exactly what I asked.

[KaibaSama]

I have a little something to add. How does what I do with my own body affect you in anyway? If I choose to have an abortion, it does not affect you. If my choice doesn't have any affect on you, why should you be allowed to tell me what choices I can make? Why are you allowed to tell me what I can do with my own reproductive organs? Why can you tell me what to do with my uterus, but I can't tell you what to do with your penis?
Tldr: GET OUT OF MY UTERUS.
Thank you. (If it was supposed to be "effect" and not "affect", my apologies.)

Edited by Satsuki, 02 February 2014 - 06:07 PM.

[Nymh]

When I get a wife and if we have an accidental pregnancy, then we have to choose. This topic actually affects a lot of people because there might be an accidental pregnancy.

And you have the right to choose. Thus, the "choice" in "pro-choice."

I haven't said anything, but the first post in this topic has bothered me since its creation. Pro-choice does not mean advocating abortions. It means advocation of the right to choose abortion. You do not have to agree with abortion to support a person's right to choose whether or not to have one.

[GhostMommy]

To add, do you wish to advocate a society (nee Government) can take over such a fundamental aspect of your life. 

[Sweeney]

To add, do you wish to advocate a society (nee Government) can take over such a fundamental aspect of your life.

Who are you talking to!?

[redlion]

The case isn't relevant since there is no actual value in the scam. We know for certain that embryos have a potential to become a human, hence it has intrinsic value.

Before I begin, you should know that saying someone's thoughts aren't relevant is dismissive and rude. Saying their examples don't apply is like saying "nyah-nyah, I win by default." You should learn how to refute people's arguments, instead of trying to dismiss them out of hand. I mean I can keep going over the arguments, but until you realize that they won't go away for "relevancy" reasons, it's a futile exercise. Onward.

We don't know for certain that embryos become humans, but they have the potential to do so. You can't know something is certain if it's only a probability. This is why I brought up the electron. I asked you to pinpoint a single electron. That's an entirely different proposition from asking where electrons generally reside, or where they will be in all probability. Schrodinger and Heisenberg.

The case is relevant. I'm comparing the perception of value in the scam to the perception of value that you're placing on an embryo. Just like in the scam, the value is all in your head. Intrinsic means inseparable. Plenty of people seem willing and able to set aside such intrinsic value in their embryo encounters. I would submit that if the value is so intrinsic, why is it that you're having to convince a few hard scientists that it is indeed real?
 

I meant unless. Earlobes will never be sentient unless it goes through the chemical treatment. Before that chemical treatment, there is 0% of that happening.

Unless or until, either way, you're committing a logical fallacy.
 

Your analogy didn't really apply to abortion.

But it did. Just not in the way you want it to. This is what I'm getting at. You continue to argue in a dismissive way.

When you take my example and reword it to the point that the original idea is obscured, you are misrepresenting to me the contents of my own argument. That's called intellectual dishonesty.
 

And I knew the answer to your rhetorical answer off the top of my head. I'm taking chemistry this year

Not even going to mess with this one.

[rlvb]

Pro-choice. I really think it all boils down to the person who ultimately has to live with an unplanned pregnancy.  It's not the world's opinion that changes the problems they have to encounter.

[best]

No. That's what other people believe.

 

From http://www.examiner....ands-of-dollars

 

"Women are donating eggs that are used right away or frozen for later use and getting paid varying rates depending upon their health, intelligence, education, race, and attractiveness. For Asians who are 100% Chinese, Japanese, or East Indian, the money paid to them is high, anywhere from $8,000 to $25,000 and up."

 

interesting, I just read the article from your link and i never knew you can sell eggs for that amount of money

[best]

Yeah those eggs are really valuable. According to my biology teacher, some girls can literally pay their way through college by selling their eggs. 

Actually... how do they sell eggs? Do they go to the hospital and ... 

[GhostMommy]

You forgot the hormonal injections and the fact that women have a finite supply of ova while men have the parent cells for sperm all through their lives.  Women have to take harsh and dangerous injections.  From what I've heard it is like the worst of the worst of all the unpleasantness of ovulation magnified many times over.  Women also sacrifice a number of their finite eggs, and go through a violation of their most personal space.

 

Men get to watch porn and collect it in a little cup.

 

My question, is why are men not having to pay for the use of the porn?

[best]

Worstest we have sort of matching username

 

It would be so embarrassing to buy porn in a store. Much more embarrassing than buying condoms

[GhostMommy]

I was stealing that joke from Aunt C when she was getting in vitro to try to have children.  Mom and I went with her during her injections.   Strange thing is after spending 80k on in vitro,  my little cousins apparently were conceived in the normal way.  

 

I was born to very old parents.