"For any number of weeks after conception that’s used as a cut-off, one can ask, “Why that number of weeks?” And responding, “my subjective judgment tells me this particular point in development happens to be the right one”, is not convincing." You could just as easily make this argument for age of consent and voting laws. The fact that the specific cut-off is morally arbitrary doesn't mean it isn't good to arbitrarily pick a point within the grey area to legally enforce. Because though we don't know precisely what age people can consent to sex, we know 11 is too young and 21 is too old. We can make a reasonable estimate, and it's vital that we try to. Same applies to abortion. In the first trimester the fetus has no brain activity. At some point in the third trimester, it's cognitive function is v similar to a newborn. Thus, a first trimester ban is unjustified cos no brain capacity means no personhood yet. And third trimester is too late. So setting the limit at 14 weeks would be a reasonable non-morally abitary limit even if if the specific week is arbitary.
Thanks for the comment. My point is that there's no non-arbitrary cut-off until several weeks after birth. Arguing that the cognitive function of a third trimester foetus "is v similar to a newborn" is begging the question. Why is the cognitive function of a newborn morally relevant?
You claim that there is "no non-arbitrary cut-off until several weeks after birth", but you have offered little evidence for this, either in this article or the previous one. Part of the problem is that neuroscience currently can't tell us with much confidence what kind of cognition is going on inside the mind of a fetus during the various stages of development. However, we can see that neural complexity, e.g. as measured by neuron count, increases throughout fetal development gradually spanning worm-like to ape-like complexity, so it would not be surprising if these increases are associated with morally relevant changes in cognition. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable and coherent to give (for example) greater moral weight to a new born than a 1st trimester fetus, while recognizing that improvements in our scientific understanding of brain development and functioning may lead us to adjust this intuitive assessment over time.
That's a fair point. Evidence suggests that newborns don't have any real sense of self-awareness. They start mimicking facial expressions and displaying basic emotions from about 2 months. And they don't pass the mirror test until about 15 months. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810003000813
These kinds of behavioral and skill-based proxies are a a pretty weak source of evidence regarding internal cognitive or emotional status. Whether a baby can understand its mirror image is a very different question from whether it has some intuitive sense of self, or likewise for displaying/communicating emotions versus experiencing them. In general, this just doesn't seem close to supporting the strong claims you've made about the supposed lack of any coherent intermediate viewpoints, e.g. regarding the timing of morally relevant developmental changes.
What would you consider a "strong source of evidence regarding internal cognitive or emotional status"? As some philosophers argue, none of us can strictly rule out the possibility that everyone else is a zombie.
Reasonably strong evidence would likely involve an understanding of the underlying neural processes and how they compare across developmental stages. So some initial understanding could come from fMRI scans, and longer-term perhaps from more detailed connectome mappings or higher res scans, etc.
Verbal reports can provide a stronger behavioral measure than the kinds of nonverbal behavioral proxies that you mentioned, but of course that is not possible at fetal or neonatal stages. Also, earlier I mentioned increasing neuron counts during development as a (somewhat weak, but useful) source of evidence that points in the opposite direction to some of your claims. But overall, our current scientific understanding is simply too incomplete to make strong claims about when or to what degree personhood emerges, and there is plenty of room for reasonable people to have widely varying intuitions.
Regarding the philosophical issues surrounding consciousness that you raise, this is further reason for modesty about what we can claim about this issue, until cognitive scientists and/or philosophers develop a more solid theoretical understanding of consciousness.
Fair enough. I thought you were invoking the sorites paradox, as many pro-life people do, to deter people who *do* believe cognitive function is relevant from settling on a reasonable time-limit to allow abortion.
Drawing a cutoff pint in a continuum is obviously difficult and requires subjective judgement. The current "pro choice" point of just prior to a full term birth is to my mind waaay too late. Perhaps the only way to set the line in a democracy is to adopt the median time favored by the electorate. My "vote" would be to have a hard cutoff at 20 weeks, when the fetus is possibly viable.
Ashton writes: It seems to me as a general principle that it is wrong fdeliberately to kill a human being who is both sentient and viable unless he/she is deliberately and unavoidably causing or likely to cause the death of harmless others. This would not be affected by disability. It would therefore apply to humans before, during and after their birth. It would not rule out painless "eugenic" abortions before the stage of viability. I am in favour of eugenic family planning positive and negative; cf. jnetics.org, the Roman Catholic theological recommendations along these lines in the 1920s, and the work of the Afro-American activist W E B DuBois. I am against the woke assumptions that (1) eugenics is war against weak people, and (2) that a future population of increasingly inherited disability, stupidity and criminality is desirable.
When a woman has a miscarriage, no normal person says "it was a just a fetus move on" and, equally, no normal person has a funeral. That tells us we believe the baby is not a full human being, but also not fully non human. The logical takeaway from that is that purposely killing this semi human being should come with penalties, but not the same penalty as killing a full human being. It's not clear to me what it so mysterious or illogical about this.
Why is no one here thinking about the moral relevance of potentiality? One can say a fetus is not a person and does not have the moral status of a person but does have some, perhaps diminished, moral status as a potential person. If an embryo has a genetic defect that makes it impossible for it to develop full term, it might still be at the same developmental stage as one that is potentially a person, but since this embryo or fetus has no potential to ever be a person its present location on the spectrum of personhood is irrelevant.
"For any number of weeks after conception that’s used as a cut-off, one can ask, “Why that number of weeks?” And responding, “my subjective judgment tells me this particular point in development happens to be the right one”, is not convincing." You could just as easily make this argument for age of consent and voting laws. The fact that the specific cut-off is morally arbitrary doesn't mean it isn't good to arbitrarily pick a point within the grey area to legally enforce. Because though we don't know precisely what age people can consent to sex, we know 11 is too young and 21 is too old. We can make a reasonable estimate, and it's vital that we try to. Same applies to abortion. In the first trimester the fetus has no brain activity. At some point in the third trimester, it's cognitive function is v similar to a newborn. Thus, a first trimester ban is unjustified cos no brain capacity means no personhood yet. And third trimester is too late. So setting the limit at 14 weeks would be a reasonable non-morally abitary limit even if if the specific week is arbitary.
Thanks for the comment. My point is that there's no non-arbitrary cut-off until several weeks after birth. Arguing that the cognitive function of a third trimester foetus "is v similar to a newborn" is begging the question. Why is the cognitive function of a newborn morally relevant?
You claim that there is "no non-arbitrary cut-off until several weeks after birth", but you have offered little evidence for this, either in this article or the previous one. Part of the problem is that neuroscience currently can't tell us with much confidence what kind of cognition is going on inside the mind of a fetus during the various stages of development. However, we can see that neural complexity, e.g. as measured by neuron count, increases throughout fetal development gradually spanning worm-like to ape-like complexity, so it would not be surprising if these increases are associated with morally relevant changes in cognition. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable and coherent to give (for example) greater moral weight to a new born than a 1st trimester fetus, while recognizing that improvements in our scientific understanding of brain development and functioning may lead us to adjust this intuitive assessment over time.
That's a fair point. Evidence suggests that newborns don't have any real sense of self-awareness. They start mimicking facial expressions and displaying basic emotions from about 2 months. And they don't pass the mirror test until about 15 months. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810003000813
These kinds of behavioral and skill-based proxies are a a pretty weak source of evidence regarding internal cognitive or emotional status. Whether a baby can understand its mirror image is a very different question from whether it has some intuitive sense of self, or likewise for displaying/communicating emotions versus experiencing them. In general, this just doesn't seem close to supporting the strong claims you've made about the supposed lack of any coherent intermediate viewpoints, e.g. regarding the timing of morally relevant developmental changes.
What would you consider a "strong source of evidence regarding internal cognitive or emotional status"? As some philosophers argue, none of us can strictly rule out the possibility that everyone else is a zombie.
Reasonably strong evidence would likely involve an understanding of the underlying neural processes and how they compare across developmental stages. So some initial understanding could come from fMRI scans, and longer-term perhaps from more detailed connectome mappings or higher res scans, etc.
Verbal reports can provide a stronger behavioral measure than the kinds of nonverbal behavioral proxies that you mentioned, but of course that is not possible at fetal or neonatal stages. Also, earlier I mentioned increasing neuron counts during development as a (somewhat weak, but useful) source of evidence that points in the opposite direction to some of your claims. But overall, our current scientific understanding is simply too incomplete to make strong claims about when or to what degree personhood emerges, and there is plenty of room for reasonable people to have widely varying intuitions.
Regarding the philosophical issues surrounding consciousness that you raise, this is further reason for modesty about what we can claim about this issue, until cognitive scientists and/or philosophers develop a more solid theoretical understanding of consciousness.
Fair enough. I thought you were invoking the sorites paradox, as many pro-life people do, to deter people who *do* believe cognitive function is relevant from settling on a reasonable time-limit to allow abortion.
Drawing a cutoff pint in a continuum is obviously difficult and requires subjective judgement. The current "pro choice" point of just prior to a full term birth is to my mind waaay too late. Perhaps the only way to set the line in a democracy is to adopt the median time favored by the electorate. My "vote" would be to have a hard cutoff at 20 weeks, when the fetus is possibly viable.
Ashton writes: It seems to me as a general principle that it is wrong fdeliberately to kill a human being who is both sentient and viable unless he/she is deliberately and unavoidably causing or likely to cause the death of harmless others. This would not be affected by disability. It would therefore apply to humans before, during and after their birth. It would not rule out painless "eugenic" abortions before the stage of viability. I am in favour of eugenic family planning positive and negative; cf. jnetics.org, the Roman Catholic theological recommendations along these lines in the 1920s, and the work of the Afro-American activist W E B DuBois. I am against the woke assumptions that (1) eugenics is war against weak people, and (2) that a future population of increasingly inherited disability, stupidity and criminality is desirable.
When a woman has a miscarriage, no normal person says "it was a just a fetus move on" and, equally, no normal person has a funeral. That tells us we believe the baby is not a full human being, but also not fully non human. The logical takeaway from that is that purposely killing this semi human being should come with penalties, but not the same penalty as killing a full human being. It's not clear to me what it so mysterious or illogical about this.
Why is no one here thinking about the moral relevance of potentiality? One can say a fetus is not a person and does not have the moral status of a person but does have some, perhaps diminished, moral status as a potential person. If an embryo has a genetic defect that makes it impossible for it to develop full term, it might still be at the same developmental stage as one that is potentially a person, but since this embryo or fetus has no potential to ever be a person its present location on the spectrum of personhood is irrelevant.