THBT: Personhood begins at conception [for @FishChaser]
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
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- Rated
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Two days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
- Minimal rating
- 1,600
RESOLUTION:
THBT: Personhood begins at conception.
BURDEN OF PROOF:
BoP is shared equally. Pro argues that in human development, personhood begins at conception in the majority of cases. Con argues that personhood begins at some other point in the majority of cases.
DEFINITIONS:
Conception is “the fusion of gametes to give rise to a human zygote”
Moral consideration is “consideration with regards to actions that may affect an individual.”
Personhood is “the point at which a human being should be given moral consideration.”
RULES:
1. All specifications presented in the description are binding to both participants.
2. Only FishChaser may accept.
- An infant born in a coma with no past conscious experiences is a person, and killing them is wrong.
- Pigs are smarter than newborns, but killing a newborn is more evil than killing a pig. Eating the flesh of babies is significantly more problematic than eating bacon.
- Newborns are dependent on their parents and on society, but killing them is wrong.
- Killing a child is as bad as killing an adult, if not worse. Thus, it is clear that the potential to live a long life is morally significant, while a human’s level of biological development is not.
- Missed opportunities: The comatose individual could have lived a long life
- Lack of choice: No choice was given to the comatose individual
- Total harm/gain from said action
- How said action is performed
- Context surrounding said action
Per the description, a person is a human individual who deserves moral consideration. Hence, if human beings deserve any level of moral consideration from the point of conception, the resolution is affirmed.
For the sake of argument, suppose we are uncertain about the moral status of an unborn child. In this case, their status would be similar to someone who has been injured and appears unresponsive. If we are not sure whether said individual is alive or dead, we should still give them some moral consideration
I hold that any human being who can be harmed is a person
An unborn child will develop the capacity for consciousness unless directly harmed (if their bodily functions are impeded). But sperm will not develop into a person unless combined with an egg (if bodily functions are added).
- An infant born in a coma with no past conscious experiences is a person, and killing them is wrong.
Pigs are smarter than newborns, but killing a newborn is more evil than killing a pig.
Suppose there is someone in a deep coma who will awaken in nine months without their memories. Killing them is still murder.
Since unborn children can be wronged by having their potential conscious experiences removed, they deserve moral consideration.
- P1: Removing an unborn child’s potential conscious experiences is wrong.
- P2: If wrongs can be committed against someone, they deserve moral consideration.
- C1: Therefore, unborn children deserve moral consideration.
This is an example of “sentience” being confusing, as the test is more similar to concepts of sapience or intelligence than sentience. The Sentience Quotient is not considered a valuable measure of a creature’s ability to suffer or feel pain and should be thought of more as a thought experiment.
Harm in a moral sense is causing someone to experience something they wouldn't like, or preventing them from experiencing something they would enjoy.
Pro has never actually stated why conception is the point where some future sentient being's potential experiences start to matter. If an unconscious sentient being and a zygote are morally equivalent, then why not every sperm cell and every egg cell? Clearly Pro thinks there is a difference between something that may be sentient in the future and a zygote, which Pro claims is morally equivalent to a sentient person and more valuable than a sentient animal because it is a person.
I postulate that this difference is a soul, Pro is simply tip-toeing around the fact that his position is secretly based on a combination of baseless religious beliefs and speciesism ( i.e "humans are the most important because humans")
- Operation thought experiment
- Moral equivalence to infanticide
- An infant born in a coma with no past conscious experiences lacks neurons necessary to create consciousness and thus has neither sentience nor capacity for sentience until the brain repairs itself through a slow process. Yet they are still a person.
- Harm (which Con seems to agree is bad) specifically focuses on the effects of our actions, not things that have already happened. Attributing this harm to someone’s past conscious experiences would be the sunk cost fallacy.
Even if sperm did deserve moral consideration, they would still not be persons. Since gametes only have half the genetic information necessary to create a human, they cannot be classified as individual humans, and personhood is defined as “the point at which a human being should be given moral consideration.”
Con criticizes the sentience quotient as an insufficient measure of sentience. Note that Con has not defined sentience or said how it should be measured, despite using it as their criterion for personhood. As noted in said article, many scientists do use “sentience” to refer to depth of intelligence. Con seems to dispute my claim that pigs are more sentient than newborns, citing self-awareness, without giving evidence for newborns being more sentient than pigs.
Very young newborns lack self-awareness,
Yet Con does not dispute that valuing pigs over newborns would lead to absurd conclusions, such as the idea that eating children is preferable to eating bacon. Hence, sentience alone cannot be a sufficient criterion for personhood. We must give weight to a social contract between humans and future experiences that humans would have.
Con has explicitly stated multiple times that sentience is their proposed criterion for personhood. They have not argued that mere capacity for sentience is sufficient for personhood, aside from incorrectly claiming that unconscious individuals have sentience. Sentience requires consciousness, and unconscious individuals are therefore not sentient.
Except that would be ridiculous, because unconscious people are still conscious on a lower level and have a continuity of experience from the past that will extend into the future unlike something that was never sentient. And if a baby is born into a coma, then it is ethical to kill it if it will never wake up but terminating a zygote is different because it hasn't yet even developed a basic framework of sentience and an unconscious infant still has a tiny semblance of sentience at the very least since people can still react to pain while unconscious.
Thanks for the vote!
Plz vote if you get the chance!
Yes, everything seems fine.
Lmk if this works for you.