I recently had an extended argument with someone who is pro-life/anti-abortion. The argument was not satisfactory, in part because of possibly irreconcilable starting assumptions about what constitutes a person1.) I was not able to convince this person to see the position in a new way, nor was I informed of any new arguments that could lead me to re-evaluate my own position, so I consider the discussion a failure. This does not, however, mean it was a waste of time - I will now use this material to state my case for why abortion is a morally acceptable choice for unwanted pregnancy. It involves a line of reasoning that is, to the best of my knowledge, relatively novel (certainly not one that exists in the popular debate about the subject.)
Let us start with the evidence. First, it is absolutely certain that a fetus is a human being. At the moment of conception, it is genetically a human organism, a member of our species. But does this mean that a fetus is automatically a person? Should we afford a fetus the same rights as we do an adult human (in particular, the mother)?
As far as personhood is concerned, I agree with Derek Parfit's modernization of Lock's definition of what it means to be a person: a thinking, rational being, capable of considering itself as such. In humans, this being appears to be a subset of the human animal, the functioning of the upper brain. This is the part of the brain that, as far as we know, has conscious experience, feels pain, and has all the characteristics we consider important in other people. This is also the part of the brain that is undeveloped in the first part of human development in the womb.
Does a fetus feel pain? A brief2 survey of the evidence suggests not. Those who are against abortion will often argue that this is the case, and point to evidence that a fetus will actively struggle for life during an abortion. However, this appears to me only to be evidence that a fetus can detect "noxious stimuli". It does not mean that a fetus feels pain - an emotional, subjective experience - the same way that an adult or even child human does. A fetus has this behavior in common with almost all life - humans, yes, but also insects, bacteria, trees, fish, etc. I want stress I am not saying that a fetus is no better than an ant, only that the fact that struggling for life is not unique to a fetus, and if it were grounds for moral consideration, we would have to apply the same to almost all living things or be grossly inconsistent.
One objection to this type of argument is that it resembles arguments made to perpetuate the idea of racial inferiority. After all, southern slave owners would probably have said that their slaves are not persons in the same way white persons are. If we find this reasoning unconvincing - nay, even abhorrent - why should we entertain a similar argument from pro-choice/pro-abortion groups?
First, this objection does not counter the central problem the argument raises. If all living things deserve life and protection, regardless of their capacity to feel emotional pain or be persons, we are grossly inconsistent in our treatment of other life. More importantly, the objection fails to account for the real problem with arguments for racial inferiority - such arguments rely on false evidence. We know that there is no significant difference in a human being's capacity to be a person based only on their skin color. Furthermore, even if that were the case, and slaves were not fully people, their position as slaves and their treatment would still be cruel - we would today consider treating certain species like that (such as dogs, cats, etc) as animal cruelty.
We very clearly treat individuals (humans and animals alike) differently according to their capacity to be a person. Children are not afforded the full rights of adults, for their own protection. The same is true for the elderly who have lost major brain functioning and those with developmental challenges. We treat them with compassion, we treat them kindly (or should anyway) but we do treat them differently.
One last objection, which I will not spend too much time on, is that the science we use to determine how capable an individual is of being a person is biased and unreliable. The Nazi's had their scientists, after all. I am going to guess that such claims do not usually come from those genuinely concerned about scientific methodology but are instead seeking a reason to discount evidence they disagree with. This is based on my informal observation that these objections are almost never followed with alternative scientific explanations. I do not believe that there is some conspiracy by scientists to encourage mothers to "murder their babies", as I do not see what anyone could gain by this (whereas, for example, Nazis and slave owners had much to gain). However, if you have any evidence regarding this I would entertain it.
In the next part I will address a much stronger objection to these arguments - that it is not life in general but human life specifically that ought to be protected, and thus the slippery slope to protecting all life does not follow.
1: And in part because I believe the other party did not wish to participate in a rational debate. I hate to sound so conceited, but in my defense I do not use the word "rational" when I merely mean "agrees with me."
2: Very brief: please feel free to point me to more, supporting either position.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Physical 03: The Co-opting of Disgust
For a while now I have been plotting a blog post about my thoughts on the emotion of offense (that is, taking offense to something someone else says or does.) However, I realized that before I could do that, I would first need to lay some groundwork down about another, related emotion, disgust, and its psychological and cultural origins.
From psychology.wikia.com: "Disgust is an emotion that is typically associated with things that are unclean, inedible, or infectious." It is thought to be a uniquely human emotion - we are not aware of any other animals that feel revulsion in the same way we do.
Why might we develop such an unpleasant-feeling emotion? It seems common-sense enough: many of the things we find disgusting are quite harmful to us. Feces, mucus, blood, urine, vomit, raw and decomposing meats - all of these things can potentially carry infectious diseases or could otherwise make us ill. The feeling of disgust is akin to the feeling of nausea, and the facial expressions we make when we are extremely disgusted mimic those expressions we have if we are about to vomit. No coincidence there - getting sick by these things often leads us to feel sick and throw up!
Disgust is not just a genetic phenomenon, however. In one of my classes in which we talked about Freud, the teacher remarked that in infant's and toddler's "anal stage" they frequently play with their own feces. It is the parents that express their disgust at the child's action. The parent's disgust for the early child's natural body functions translates into a sense of shame on the part of the child, which as they grow older helps reinforces specific rituals for that body function. The child is potty trained.
You might be starting to see where I'm going here. So far, we've only talked about issues for which there is a clear health hazard. However, the fact that feelings of disgust are intertwined with some of our social norms leads us to ask what effect disgust plays with moral judgments. Psychological studies have shown there to be a strong connection between these - in "Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment," Schnall shows that inducing the feeling of disgust in participants lead them to make harsher moral judgments. People who claim that, for instance, sodomy or especially homosexuality is sinful frequently express themselves in terms of disgust towards the act, even though it has been scientifically established that these acts are not more intrinsically harmful than procreative heterosexual sex1.
The point I want to make here, and that I will make in my post about offense, is that while it is clear why disgust was a useful emotion in the development of our species, the fact is we have much better methods of determining what is and is not healthy. You might still rely on standard potty training techniques when the child is little, but you don't need to teach them that their bodies are inherently shameful when they come to the age of reason - simply explain that feces can carry infectious diseases, and that unprotected sex can lead to sexually transmitted diseases.
1: Actually, procreative sex can be a more risky proposition than sodomy. What if the parents do not have the resources to support a child at that point in their lives?
From psychology.wikia.com: "Disgust is an emotion that is typically associated with things that are unclean, inedible, or infectious." It is thought to be a uniquely human emotion - we are not aware of any other animals that feel revulsion in the same way we do.
Why might we develop such an unpleasant-feeling emotion? It seems common-sense enough: many of the things we find disgusting are quite harmful to us. Feces, mucus, blood, urine, vomit, raw and decomposing meats - all of these things can potentially carry infectious diseases or could otherwise make us ill. The feeling of disgust is akin to the feeling of nausea, and the facial expressions we make when we are extremely disgusted mimic those expressions we have if we are about to vomit. No coincidence there - getting sick by these things often leads us to feel sick and throw up!
Disgust is not just a genetic phenomenon, however. In one of my classes in which we talked about Freud, the teacher remarked that in infant's and toddler's "anal stage" they frequently play with their own feces. It is the parents that express their disgust at the child's action. The parent's disgust for the early child's natural body functions translates into a sense of shame on the part of the child, which as they grow older helps reinforces specific rituals for that body function. The child is potty trained.
You might be starting to see where I'm going here. So far, we've only talked about issues for which there is a clear health hazard. However, the fact that feelings of disgust are intertwined with some of our social norms leads us to ask what effect disgust plays with moral judgments. Psychological studies have shown there to be a strong connection between these - in "Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment," Schnall shows that inducing the feeling of disgust in participants lead them to make harsher moral judgments. People who claim that, for instance, sodomy or especially homosexuality is sinful frequently express themselves in terms of disgust towards the act, even though it has been scientifically established that these acts are not more intrinsically harmful than procreative heterosexual sex1.
The point I want to make here, and that I will make in my post about offense, is that while it is clear why disgust was a useful emotion in the development of our species, the fact is we have much better methods of determining what is and is not healthy. You might still rely on standard potty training techniques when the child is little, but you don't need to teach them that their bodies are inherently shameful when they come to the age of reason - simply explain that feces can carry infectious diseases, and that unprotected sex can lead to sexually transmitted diseases.
1: Actually, procreative sex can be a more risky proposition than sodomy. What if the parents do not have the resources to support a child at that point in their lives?
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Mental 05: What We Know about God through Evolution
I've had a number of conversations with a friend of mine (let's call him V) about the possible existence of a creator or god, and the evidence/lack thereof. I will frequently say, for instance, that vestigial body parts, harmful errors in duplicating the genetic code, natural disasters, and the like, would not be something we would expect from a beneficent or omniscient god. Similarly, since I am a computer programmer, I am used to working with artifacts created by intelligences (other programmers) and these artifacts tend to have certain properties in common (especially the ones by the most intelligent creators): clean interfaces and parts with readily distinguishable purposes, logically independent functions implemented independently of each other, etc. Biological life is not like this, and so I'm lead to conclude it was not created by an intelligent designer.
V's counter-argument is almost always a variant of "God works in mysterious ways." God, if it existed, would be so great and so intelligent that we would have no hope of being able to discern the thought patterns (if we could even say such existed) that went behind making the Universe, so I cannot, he claims, conjecture on what creating might be like by comparing it to artifacts of human intelligence. I find this rather line of reasoning rather irritating, since my friend only seems to apply this level of radical skepticism on claims others make.
One such of these claims is the possibility that the Universe is a simulation that god is running "for funzies", since it presumably knows what would happen anyway. I was going to ask him why he felt comfortable attributing a human psychological trait (doing something for fun), but I realized that was easily countered. No matter - a much more interesting line of approach opened for me.
As a programmer, I know a few things about evolutionary algorithms. Specifically, we most often use evolutionary algorithms for situations where we have only a vague idea of what the solution could be. For many problems, the evolutionary algorithm is inefficient and can be sub-optimal - we almost always prefer a direct calculation of the solution, if one is available (or tractable).
If the Universe is a simulation that some god programmed, the fact that this creator god is using an evolutionary algorithm tells us (if it tells us anything at all) that while god would have to be incredibly intelligent, such a god would not be omniscient, since otherwise it would not rely on an imperfect algorithm. The syllogism runs as follows.
1) God exists and the Universe is a computer simulation that it is running for some purpose, hyp
2) The processes governing the development of life are significant to the simulation in some way, hyp
3) The development of life is almost entirely governed by evolutionary algorithms, obs
4) When we solve a problem in computer science using an evolutionary algorithm, it usually means we don't know how to directly calculate the solution, obs
C) There is a significant possibility that god does not know the direct way to calculate whatever it has in mind by running this simulation, and is therefore not omniscient
Of course, if god were omniscient, it's possible it wouldn't need to run a simulation or calculation either way, so there'd be no reason to prefer one method of calculation over another. Or any reason to run the simulation at all (that we could discern). Sigh
V's counter-argument is almost always a variant of "God works in mysterious ways." God, if it existed, would be so great and so intelligent that we would have no hope of being able to discern the thought patterns (if we could even say such existed) that went behind making the Universe, so I cannot, he claims, conjecture on what creating might be like by comparing it to artifacts of human intelligence. I find this rather line of reasoning rather irritating, since my friend only seems to apply this level of radical skepticism on claims others make.
One such of these claims is the possibility that the Universe is a simulation that god is running "for funzies", since it presumably knows what would happen anyway. I was going to ask him why he felt comfortable attributing a human psychological trait (doing something for fun), but I realized that was easily countered. No matter - a much more interesting line of approach opened for me.
As a programmer, I know a few things about evolutionary algorithms. Specifically, we most often use evolutionary algorithms for situations where we have only a vague idea of what the solution could be. For many problems, the evolutionary algorithm is inefficient and can be sub-optimal - we almost always prefer a direct calculation of the solution, if one is available (or tractable).
If the Universe is a simulation that some god programmed, the fact that this creator god is using an evolutionary algorithm tells us (if it tells us anything at all) that while god would have to be incredibly intelligent, such a god would not be omniscient, since otherwise it would not rely on an imperfect algorithm. The syllogism runs as follows.
1) God exists and the Universe is a computer simulation that it is running for some purpose, hyp
2) The processes governing the development of life are significant to the simulation in some way, hyp
3) The development of life is almost entirely governed by evolutionary algorithms, obs
4) When we solve a problem in computer science using an evolutionary algorithm, it usually means we don't know how to directly calculate the solution, obs
C) There is a significant possibility that god does not know the direct way to calculate whatever it has in mind by running this simulation, and is therefore not omniscient
Of course, if god were omniscient, it's possible it wouldn't need to run a simulation or calculation either way, so there'd be no reason to prefer one method of calculation over another. Or any reason to run the simulation at all (that we could discern). Sigh
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Meta 04: Introducing "Ego"; Where We've Been & Where We're Going
When I started this blog, I hadn't intended for it to be publicly viewable. Instead, I had planned on using it as alternative to journal writing to collect broad trends in my thinking and philosophy. When I journal, I tend to focus on sequences of events and my feelings in the moment, and I realized at some point that I would like to have another form of expression which had a broader and more synthetic focus.
There were however a few people whom I wanted to read this blog. When I showed it to one of them, they asked me why I had made it private. After some internal debate, I decided what I had to say might possibly be of benefit to others, so I made it publicly viewable.
My initial schema, and my early posts, don't really reflect this change of focus from the private to the more public, and so I've decided to rewrite some of the earlier posts and introduce a new tag, "Ego", to denote things that are just about myself, such as the posts about my resolutions. While I think these kinds of posts might still be useful for others to read, I am acutely aware that topics like the effects of sugar on the liver, or the problem of identity through time, are much more general than why I've decided to practice meditation three times a day. I'd like for people who don't really care about the later to be able to easily skip past it, if they so desire1.
So, what's next for this blog? There are a few topics that have been sitting on the back-burner for me for a while. For "Physical," I plan on writing about confirmation bias, and the effects that religion has on cognitive capacity (and vice-versa, what effect rational thought has on religious feeling). For "Mental" there is still the big one I haven't touched yet - the pre-suppositional "un-argument" - as well as summaries of a philosopher's critique of the New Atheist movement. For "Symbol", you can expect me to gush about "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" as being one of the greatest pieces of interactive fiction of all time, as well as post some of my essay over Romantic literature that I wrote in University (when I'm not feeling lazy, I'll even try to address some issues the professor cited when she returned the work to me!). I will also want to write a review of the first "Neon Genesis: Evangelion" rebuild movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Hope I've given you something to look forward too!
1: Of course, it doesn't really matter, since as of this moment I could only say I have about 5 other people reading this blog, at maximum. In fact, humorously enough, one of my friends has even implied that he is more interested in a blog another of my friends has not written, and does not plan to, than he is in this blog. If I'm competing against all the non-existent blogs out there, then no wonder I have such a small readership!
There were however a few people whom I wanted to read this blog. When I showed it to one of them, they asked me why I had made it private. After some internal debate, I decided what I had to say might possibly be of benefit to others, so I made it publicly viewable.
My initial schema, and my early posts, don't really reflect this change of focus from the private to the more public, and so I've decided to rewrite some of the earlier posts and introduce a new tag, "Ego", to denote things that are just about myself, such as the posts about my resolutions. While I think these kinds of posts might still be useful for others to read, I am acutely aware that topics like the effects of sugar on the liver, or the problem of identity through time, are much more general than why I've decided to practice meditation three times a day. I'd like for people who don't really care about the later to be able to easily skip past it, if they so desire1.
So, what's next for this blog? There are a few topics that have been sitting on the back-burner for me for a while. For "Physical," I plan on writing about confirmation bias, and the effects that religion has on cognitive capacity (and vice-versa, what effect rational thought has on religious feeling). For "Mental" there is still the big one I haven't touched yet - the pre-suppositional "un-argument" - as well as summaries of a philosopher's critique of the New Atheist movement. For "Symbol", you can expect me to gush about "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" as being one of the greatest pieces of interactive fiction of all time, as well as post some of my essay over Romantic literature that I wrote in University (when I'm not feeling lazy, I'll even try to address some issues the professor cited when she returned the work to me!). I will also want to write a review of the first "Neon Genesis: Evangelion" rebuild movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Hope I've given you something to look forward too!
1: Of course, it doesn't really matter, since as of this moment I could only say I have about 5 other people reading this blog, at maximum. In fact, humorously enough, one of my friends has even implied that he is more interested in a blog another of my friends has not written, and does not plan to, than he is in this blog. If I'm competing against all the non-existent blogs out there, then no wonder I have such a small readership!
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