“But we let infertile couples marry!”
CommentsPeriodically marriage defenders’ insistence on marriage matching the traditional family model is met with the objection that infertile couples and seniors past reproductive ages are allowed to marry. Michael Johns, a GDM reader, put it this way:
Procreation is not a valid argument for marriage, because it excludes other groups as well such as individuals with disabilities that won’t allow them to procreate (should they not be allowed to get married either).
But for me, at least, the ability to reproduce is not at the center of my (secular) argument against same-sex marriage. It’s that opposite-sex couples form the kind of family format that I believe is best-suited for the welfare of children. (In case you’re new, I’m not saying gays can’t be good parents; they can. I’m saying whenever possible a child should have both a mother and a father.)
Some infertile and post-reproductive age couples adopt; others plan to never have children but find that a relative dies and they are raising a child to their surprise. The point is that any opposite-sex couple is going to be a part of that ideal format. (Again, if you’re new, I’m not saying all opposite-sex couples are better than all same-sex couples; they’re not. We’re dealing with the ideal here.)
We need some context for discussion of this topic.
The centrality of procreation in marriage is not about any and all kinds of procreation; nor is it about forcing procreation. It is about the contingency for responsible procreation.
The first principle of responsible procreation — as expressed in our traditions, customs, and laws — is that each of us, as part of a procreative duo, is responsble for, and to, the children we create. This applies both before, during, and after procreation — barring dire circumstances or tragedy.
So now how does infertility color this?
Fertility varies but it is both-sexed, not one-sexed.
That’s significant because the lack of the other sex is NOT infertility. It is nonfertility. And it is constant. 100% nonfertile all the time — by the very nature of being short one sex.
Fertility (and infertility) are both-sexed. This is different from the nonfertility of a one-sexed scenario — in both kind and degree.
Yet SSMers will routinely voice the infertility strawman argument. And in so doing they propose new rules: If (fill-in the blank) is not mandatory, then, it is not essential to marriage. Further, if (fill-in the blank) can occur outside of marriage, then, it is not essential to marriage.
[As it happens, these rules undermine SSM argumentation's emphasis on gayness, but that's not the topic of David's blogpost.]
How does fertility vary?
Well, human beings begin life nonfertile but mature into fertility and eventually grow into diminished fertility (or subfertility) and, then, infertility.
No individual is fertile alone; it takes both a male and a female to combine together. Sure, we can talk of the fertile person — but what is left unsaid, because it is a given, is “with the other sex”. So while fertility varies — that is the nature of human generativity afterall — it remains both-sexed. As does infertility.
We have a rich and high-tech society. And the population of the USA is probably the most surveyed and monitored population in the world — we are statistics rich as well. So what do we know about the interesection of infertile people and marriage?
About a third of the time, the problem is determined to be with the husband’s reproductive powers. Another third, the wife’s health. And another third, the cause of the problem is undetermined. That’s another way that infertility varies even though it is always both-sexed. That is, the married couple share the disability *as a couple*.
And infertility is a disabilty. Usually, the diagnosis depends on the couple having lots of sex - coitus — and still not conceiving for at least a year. Infertility can also be diagnosed based on rerpeated miscarriages. Sometimes the disability is due to a problem with a person’s reproductive system due to a birth defect, an accident, or perhaps surgery such as for cancer of the ovaries. This is another way that infertility can vary.
The lack of the other sex is not a disability. It is in its very nature, well, nonfertile
How does infertility intersect with marriage?.
Most women marry (85% even after decades of nonmarital trends) and most marriages (upwards of 90%) will have children. So, yes, procreatioin varies within marriage in this way. But it remains constantly both-sexed.
About 10% oif married people experience infertility during their childbearing years. For women that generally means age 15 to 45. At least that the bracket used for gathering statistics on this topic.
Of those married couples, about half resolve their infertility through changes in behavior. The other half seek other kinds of assistance.
Of that half, most already have children — more than 50% seek help for *subfertility*. And most of them also resolve this without the more intrusive medical interventions.
Of those who do use such interventions like IVF and ARTs, about 93% do NOT go outside of their marriages to use “donors”.
There is no precise count, but generous estimates suggest that about one-half of one-percent of the child population in the USA was born via fertility treatments that used “donors”.
So, the vast majority of marriages will have children and even infertile married couples will almost all remain within their conjugal relationships to procreate. So, yes, this is another example of variability.
On the other hand, the lack of the other sex — whatever the motivation or the circumstance — is constanty nonfertile. It is not infertile even if both of the persons in an one-sexed arrangement are healthy and would be fertile *with the other sex*. If children are to be procreated in some association with such a one-sexed arrangement, the indivdiuals would go outside of their relationship to conceived, gestate, and bear children — 100% of the time. No exceptions.
That is the inverse of the conjugal relationship of husband and wife. Both in principle and in, virtually, in practice as well.
Another way that fertility is variable? Women generally experience infertility of a permanent kind around age 45 — of course, this is the nature of human aging and is not in itself a medical problem that needs to be fixed through medical interventions. Some individuals may seek such interventions, nonetheless, but even then fertility/infertility remains both-sexed.
Men generally stay potent well into old age. So, yes, fertility varies by sex as well.
* * *
Okay, so how would SSMers expect Government to have imposed a requirement that each and every marriage procreate? What totalitarian methods would be expected?
Procreation varies and not always by chronological age. So no age limit would suffice. How would government permit married couples who aged together to remain married if it did not permit elderly couples to marry? It would certainly undermine the integration of the sexes to treat post-menopausal women drastically different from men of the same age or women of younger years.
The requirement for demonstrated fertility would undermine the meaning and purpose of marriage: it would make premarital sexual relaitons compulsory; it would require that couples bear children before acquiring marital status. Unwed cohabitation and childbearing has proven to be a lot less stable than the marriage, anyway.
There is a host of problems with the pro-SSM’s infertility strawman. In fact, the two rules I noted earlier demonstrate how foolish the notion really is. It does not even pass the sniff test for plausability.
Couldn’t agree more David. I’ve never seen a situation where a child was left fatherless — or motherless — that wasn’t tragic. I honestly cannot even think of one. Certainly “because mom is a lesbian” or “daddy is gay” is not a reasonable excuse to intentionally deprive a child of a mother or father. It’s tragic.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter written after Prop 8 passed in California. “…we cannot visit each other in the hospital or make medical or legal decisions for one another because we are not “family.” It also means we have to carry adoption papers at all times for any children we may have because if they became ill, they would not be considered both of our children without legal documentation. Similarly, without documentation, we could not make legal decisions for our children outside of the State of California because under the eyes of the law, they are not both of our children. Things like putting your child in school or taking them out of school become major issues. Obtaining heath care can be impossible. Insane? Yes. It gets better. We cannot file our federal taxes together so we have to file joint taxes in California (where we are married) and then individual federal returns. We are not eligible to inherit each other’s property without a well-defined will and without being subjected to steep taxes, which married people are not subjected to. We will not be eligible to receive each other’s social security, which married people automatically receive. We are not eligible to decide whether the other will be cremated or buried. We are not eligible for federal child tax credits. We are not eligible to inherit each others’ IRAs. We are not eligible for federal first time home owners incentives. If either of us accepted a federal job, we could not put the other on our health insurance. We are not eligible for federally funded small business loans. We are not eligible for spousal exemptions for property tax increases when one of us dies. We are not eligible to file joint customs forms when traveling. We are not eligible for bereavement or sick leave under the Family Medical Leave Act. We can be forced to testify against each other at trial, when married people cannot.” And the list goes on. Oh and BTW, if anyone’s still reading by now, single people are rightfully allowed to adopt, so that argument about kids needing a dad and a mom holds no water legally.
Kind of makes you wonder why any same-sex couple would choose to bring a child into such a situation.
single people are rightfully allowed to adopt, so that argument about kids needing a dad and a mom holds no water legally.
Not in many places, and many throughful people disagree with the concept. I know I do.
“Procreation is not a valid argument for marriage, because it excludes other groups as well such as individuals with disabilities that won’t allow them to procreate (should they not be allowed to get married either).”
Most such arguments are invalid. David is correct; marriage is about family formation - connecting the natural mother and father together for the benefit of them & their children. When this breaks down adoption with a married mother & father is preferred.
But the invalidity of these arguments doesn’t prevent people from continually employing them. As an attorney it is often amusing to here people assert that because of X then “as a matter of law” Y or Z doesn’t follow and is invalid.
Usually such arguments are extreme. Because we allow infertile couples to Mary …therefore, marriage has nothing to do with procreation. This is not the way the law reasons. General rules are applied reasonably for the common good. Its like saying because we don’t jail unwed mothers we don’t care about illegitimacy. Or because we don’t execute dead beat dads we don’t care about fatherless-ness. The attempt is to portray a supposed logical fallacy in the adversaries’ position that makes his entire argument invalid. No such fallacies exist, in as much as the institution of marriage and the laws that have traditionally applied to it do seem strained, it is usually because some hard case or extenuating circumstance has been hypothesized that make for a straw man.
Fitz, I’ve heard there are even states who issue drivers licenses to people that don’t own cars. Amazing huh? Obviously drivers licenses are not about “driving”.
DB: “But for me, at least, the ability to reproduce is not at the center of my (secular) argument against same-sex marriage.”
Sure. Note however that it _is_ an argument that’s very commonly made. In particular it’s the centrepiece of the Catholic position, which is roughly that sex is evil unless it’s within marriage and “open to procreation”, i.e., performed with a credible intent to procreate. (The Catholics make other arguments, but as far as I can see, everything else is a rationalization of that essentially theological one.)
“It’s that opposite-sex couples form the kind of family format that I believe is best-suited for the welfare of children.”
Sure, and that seems like a non sequitur to me, for both practical and symbolic reasons. Practically, same-sex couples don’t end up raising kids by virtue of same-sex marriage, or even by virtue of being same-sex couples. They end up raising kids through divorce or breakup from opposite-sex relationships and from surrogacy arrangements. So you’re not actually putting any roadblocks in anybody’s way by banning same-sex marriage. And symbolically, you’re wasting your time as well, because it’s not in your power to make withholding same-sex marriage a statement about raising kids when, for at least 2000 years in Western culture, it’s been primarily a statement about the supposed evilness of same-sex sex.
Marty: “Fitz, I’ve heard there are even states who issue drivers licenses to people that don’t own cars. Amazing huh? Obviously drivers licenses are not about “driving”.”
Actually that’s a very good analogy - thank you - except you imply that someone denies that marriage is “about” procreation. I don’t deny that, and I don’t know anyone who does. What I deny is that it’s about procreation in any way that should exclude people who are not planning to procreate or are unable to for reasons analogous to not having a car (i.e., non-safety reasons).
Mark Barton (writes)
“Sure. Note however that it _is_ an argument that’s very commonly made. In particular it’s the centrepiece of the Catholic position, which is roughly that sex is evil unless it’s within marriage and “open to procreation”, i.e., performed with a credible intent to procreate. (The Catholics make other arguments, but as far as I can see, everything else is a rationalization of that essentially theological one.)”
Mark - you really, really need to brush up (heck - begin to study) your Catholic social and moral theology. This is not even remotely true.
If you want to get an idea of how scientifically literate and socially responsible the Christian ethic of marriage is then start here…
Quoting Professor Germain Grisez
“Though a male and a female are complete individuals with respect to other functions – for example nutrition, sensation, and locomotion- with respect to reproduction they are only potential parts of a mated pair, which is the complete organism capable of reproducing sexually. Even if the mated pair is sterile, intercourse, provided it is the reproductive behavior characteristic of the species, makes the copulating male and female one organism”
“it is a plain matter of biological fact that reproduction is a single function, yet it cannot be carried out by an individual male or female human being, but by a male and female as a mated pair….”
And note a though experiment by Grisez
“Imagine a type of bodily, rational being that reproduces, not by mating but by some individual performance. Imagine that for these beings, however, locomotion or digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by biologically complementary pairs that unite for this purpose. Would anybody have any difficulty understanding that in respect to reproduction the organism performing the function is the individual, while in respect of locomotion or digestion the organism performing the function is the united pair?”
Fitz: “If you want to get an idea of how scientifically literate and socially responsible the Christian ethic of marriage is then start here…”
I’m at a loss as to how you think the furnished quotes are relevant to my claim.
Well, your claim is just that…simply a claim…not an authentic understanding of the Christian (or Catholic) link between procreation & marriage. For that understanding read Grisez above.
The union of marriage must be procreative in type not necessarily in effect. That is why male/female sex is called variously “martial act” the “conjugal act” or the “reproductive act”. It is also why under law marriage must be “consummated” something same-sex couples are )literally incapable of.
Thanks Mark:
“What I deny is that it’s about procreation in any way that should exclude people who are not planning to procreate or are unable to for reasons analogous to not having a car (i.e., non-safety reasons).”
Ok, but the single-sexed couple is unable to procreate in a profoundly different way than the man and woman who chose or are unable to procreate due to medical problems or age.
Sure — we issue drivers licenses to people who have no intention of ever driving a car, so long as they can pass the test. But we don’t issue them to blind people, period. We have other ID cards for them.
Rusty, all that the letter writer in your above post refers to can and should be addressed by the Salt Lake City plan or something like it. But even if it cannot, it’s always easy to aim for the heartstrings. Do you really think it would be that hard to find similar stories of unfairness in regard to other pairings of two or more than two which are prohibited from marrying, situations which advocates of SSM in most cases still oppose marriage being extended to?
You don’t think so? Well, here’s one:
http://austriantimes.at/index.php?id=10826
I don’t advocate it myself, but please explain how this couple, who already have their own biological children, should have any LESS right to have their marriage recognized if SSM is legalized.
A special case exception might be seen as the answer by many. But keep in mind, we have seen how advocates of SSM use exceptions to the rule as arguments for the elimination of the rule. In this case, if we apply their argumentation, an exception for this poor couple would have to be used as an argument for breaking down another limit on marriage eligibility across the board.
No doubt it will be easy to find many similar heartstring cases regarding polygamous groups, or cases where one of a couple is underage.
I usually turn the question around - IF marriage is not fundamentally about promoting responsible procreation - what IS the purpose of marriage?! Whats the secular purpose? LOVE? There may not be any fertility tests for marriage, but there are no Love tests either. Social Stability? Government does not try to impose rights and responsibilities on any other non sexual “intimate” relationships - only sexual ones. Maybe to slow the spread of STD’s - but I can imagine the CDC running a $335 million Marriage campaign in place of their ‘Booty Call’ and ‘Great Sex’ programs.
Fitz: “The union of marriage must be procreative in type not necessarily in effect.”
Sure, but that just makes my broader point for me: it’s always about procreation except when it isn’t. It’s about procreation when it’s about denouncing same-sex sex. It’s about procreation when it’s about denouncing contraception. Suddenly when it’s about infertile couples it’s about procreativity in type, not effect, which is a really lame dodge.
Marty: ” But we don’t issue them to blind people, period.”
That’s why I was careful to specify “reasons analogous to not having a car (i.e., non-safety reasons).” I don’t think you’ve established that same-sex couples are like blind people rather than people without a car.
“I don’t think you’ve established that same-sex couples are like blind people rather than people without a car.”
Are you really asking for clarification? Or ducking the obvious point once again?
Marty: “Are you really asking for clarification? Or ducking the obvious point once again?”
I’m not sure what you think the obvious point is. I’m certainly asking you to establish that same-sex couples are more like blind people than people without a car.
Mark Barton,
“Sure, but that just makes my broader point for me: it’s always about procreation except when it isn’t. It’s about procreation when it’s about denouncing same-sex sex. It’s about procreation when it’s about denouncing contraception. Suddenly when it’s about infertile couples it’s about procreativity in type, not effect, which is a really lame dodge.”
It’s not about procreation when it comes to denouncing contraception. Once again you have misrepresented Catholic teaching. Its about artificially hindering the marital act. Catholics are free to use non artificial means to space or limit children. They are not allowed to frustrate artificially the act itself.
It is your misnomer as David Benkof points out to hinge it on the actual procreative attainment. The Christian sexual ethic is in agreement about marriage being about family formation and not simply reproduction.
Think about it: A system designed merely to procreate would look very different. It would not be interested in the mated pair living together for life or being sexually exclusive. It’s only concern would be to insure or perhaps maximize the number of times a fertile woman got pregnant.
It is your straw man that you keep returning to reproduction exclusivley. Not David’s, mine or the Christian sexual ethics. Under those understanding the pairing of the reproductive type is crucial so as to ensure intact natural families for their children. Sterile couples are still of the class of couples capable of reproduction. Same-sex couples are always and everywhere outside that class.
The better analogy would be “things capable of locomotion”
We license things capable of locomotion - cars, motorcycles, planes,..
Even if those “cars, motorcycles, planes,..” are broken down and cannot move or fly they still are part of the class of “things capable of locomotion”- And are therefore under the class that the state licenses.
Lampposts, telephones, & copy machines are not “”things capable of locomotion” and therefore don’t require motor or vehicle licenses by the state.
Here the “things capable of locomotion” are the reproductive couple, the infertile couple is the “cars, motorcycles, planes that are broken down and cannot move or fly” & same-sex couples are the Lampposts, telephones, & copy machines that are not capable of locomotion at any time nor are designed for locomotion.
Fitz: “It’s not about procreation when it comes to denouncing contraception. Once again you have misrepresented Catholic teaching. Its about artificially hindering the marital act.”
Another stock phrase for the same idea is sex that is not “open to procreation”. Which means it _is_ about procreation. The fact that it’s also about hatred of sex for pleasure doesn’t change that it’s about procreation, except when it isn’t.
“Another stock phrase for the same idea is sex that is not “open to procreation”. Which means it _is_ about procreation. The fact that it’s also about hatred of sex for pleasure doesn’t change that it’s about procreation, except when it isn’t.”
Ok - now I get it. clearly you are a troll with no understanding of Christian theology or willingness to accept opposition in good faith.
Fitz: “Ok - now I get it. clearly you are a troll with no understanding of Christian theology or willingness to accept opposition in good faith.”
Yes and no. No, I’m not a troll - I’m not saying any of this just to get a reaction. Yes, I do find it difficult to credit that Christian theology is entirely in good faith. There’s too much doubletalk plastering over gaps in the logic. But I don’t think I was misrepresenting Catholic theology when I mentioned hatred of sex for fun: “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church).
I’m not sure what you think the obvious point is. I’m certainly asking you to establish that same-sex couples are more like blind people than people without a car.
People without a car can change their minds and buy one. They can rent, they can borrow, or steal. But a blind person is simply incapable of driving a car — by definition.
Same sex couples aren’t “infertile”, they’re sterile — by design. Two keys cannot become a “security device”. Two left shoes is simply not a “pair of shoes”. And “husband and husband” is both lacking and redundant in the same ridiculous way: Two halves don’t always make a whole — it usually requires two opposite halves.
Marty: “People without a car can change their minds and buy one. They can rent, they can borrow, or steal. But a blind person is simply incapable of driving a car — by definition.”
Yes and no. They’re perfectly capable of driving a car, just not without creating a safety hazard. Preventing safety hazards is the goal, no? Since it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you to argue that same-sex couples don’t create negative outcome analogous to a traffic safety hazard, but you’re still adamant that same-sex couples have to be excluded, I have to conclude that your goal is sending derogatory messages about gay people for its own sake.
Only if you define “driving a car” as pushing a gas pedal and turning a wheel. Just as you only define “sex” as something pleasurable down there…
Safety isn’t the issue here. Purpose is the issue.
You go far out of your way to miss the point. I understand why you do it, I just dont understand how you can keep the straight face.
Chewing sugarless bubblegum is a whole lot like eating… it involves chewing, swallowing, and hey — it tastes great! But it doesn’t have a thing in the world to do with nutrition, which is the true purpose of eating.
Marty: “Purpose is the issue.”
Yes. I would have said that the purpose of marriage, insofar as it’s about procreation, is to prevent irresponsible procreation. Excluding same-sex couples helps that purpose how exactly?
Legal recognition of same-sex unions will result in more children, not fewer, being raised without both their mother and father.
Marty: “Legal recognition of same-sex unions will result in more children, not fewer, being raised without both their mother and father.”
Implausible. Same-sex couples don’t end up raising kids by virtue of either being same-sex couples or by being married same-sex couples. They end up raising kids by virtue of failed opposite-sex relationships, adoption, or surrogacy arrangements. You’ve argued that more same-sex couples would opt for surrogacy if there were more legal protections, but (i) that’s likely to be a small effect and (ii) it’s likely to be cancelled by a marginal decrease in the number of gay people being shunted into likely-to-fail opposite-sex relationships and emerging with kids.
There has been a large and consistent rise in same-sex couples using donor conception and surrogacy arrangements, to intentionally create motherless and fatherless children. This is happening despite the fact (as we are constantly reminded) that these children are disadvantaged because their parents are unable to legally marry.
I’m convinced that this serves as a deterrant to intentionally creating motherless and fatherless children. Legally recognizing same-sex unions will remove the deterrant, resulting in still more children being created in the laboratory to serve the wishes of their socially infertile “parents”.
A cruel and unusual thing to do to a child, imo. I’m not neccesarily for making the practice illegal (although there are strong arguments for doing so), but I’m certainly against putting a government “seal of approval” on it.
Marty: “This is happening despite the fact (as we are constantly reminded) that these children are disadvantaged because their parents are unable to legally marry. [//] I’m convinced that this serves as a deterrant to intentionally creating motherless and fatherless children.”
You’ve said so before, and I even mentioned it above, but I think it needs more contempt poured on it. You’re seriously suggesting that you want to throw obstacles in the path of same-sex couples caring for children to deter them from acquiring them through surrogacy?! How morally bankrupt, and at the same time how half-hearted. Why don’t you just ban the sale of baby car seats to gay people?
Contempt?
“Mommy, who is my daddy?
“Well, you don’t actually have a daddy — you have a Mommy and a Nana who love you very much”
“But WHY don’t I have a daddy? I know where babies come from and there’s ALWAYS a daddy…”
“Well, you don’t have a daddy because Mommy & Nana don’t really like boys much. Now run along and play.”
Contemptible.
Harsh isn’t it?
But that is the cruel and unusual message being sent to these children.
Gender bias is a poor excuse for such a tragedy.
Marty: “Contempt?”
Yes, contempt. No matter how bad you think the problem of children without mothers and fathers is, the idea of trying to increase the difficulties experienced by such children to try and influence their parents is morally monstrous. I will charitably pretend that you never mentioned it. Do you have another reason for wanting to ban same-sex marriage?
Marty, here is someplace for you to concentrate your intolerant and ineffective attitudes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZLjwhEp7nU
with more info here: http://www.ashleymadison.com/app/public/index.p
I have a number of reasons, but protecting the right of chidren to have a mother and a father is the biggest.
First, with the car analogy: a drivers license permits one to operate a car, nothing more. I know there are people in urban areas who keep licensed for those occasions when they are outside their home area. For that matter, people who do not have licenses can own cars, they just can’t drive them. It fails as an analogy to marriage, because a marriage license is not a sex license.
I think the opponents of same-sex marriage think about sex way too much. Get it out of your head folks, it’s not about sex and procreation.
Let’s look at the end of a marriage and what our laws talk about.
Property. Marriage is about property.
Sure, you can go wherever you like and have whatever clergy bless your marriage (or not). In the end, through death or divorce, you have to talk to the judge and the taxman.
If marriage were really religious, don’t you think we’d require the services of clergy to end one? But no. The judge and the taxman.
Married couples hold property in common and this sort of arrangement is otherwise difficult to obtain. A married couple who buy a house each own 100% of the house. It’s not a 50%/50% split. Property obtained during the marriage is generally considered “community property,” which doesn’t mean the neighbors get a say in it, but that each member has an claim to it.
And this is why we don’t tax surviving spouses on any but the largest inheritances. There has been no transfer of wealth; he or she already owned it completely.
It’s not about sex. It’s not about procreation. It’s not about children.
Marriage is about property.
Marty: “I have a number of reasons, but protecting the right of chidren to have a mother and a father is the biggest.”
Assuming you’re not bluffing, I’m genuinely interested in the small ones, because as we’ve established, the big one is beneath contempt. Not only is it a morally monstrous way of making progress towards your goal, it’s also a total fraud because you’re obviously not even serious about the goal. We know this because you can’t be bothered to try more direct and effective, less morally problematic methods like banning surrogacy first.
Wait a minute Mark. Is it morally monstrous to tell a child “your father is dead”, simply because you dont care to have a man around the house? Or is it morally monstrous to think that would be a morally monstrous thing to do to a kid?
Martry: “Is it morally monstrous to tell a child “your father is dead”, simply because you dont care to have a man around the house?”
It’s monstrous if the father is in fact not dead, but that’s mostly an issue of dishonesty. It’s monstrous if the father was killed to make it true, but that’s mostly an issue of murder. Let’s dispense with the red herrings and pretend you said, ‘Is it morally monstrous to deny a child access to their father, simply because you dont care to have a man around the house?’ Then I think monstrous is a bit over the top but I’d be quite happy to agree that it’s something I wouldn’t be party to and would be happy to see actively discouraged. So? That doesn’t mean that your suggestion for discouraging it isn’t monstrous, or that your claim to be concerned in the first place isn’t fraudulent.
but I’d be quite happy to agree that it’s something I wouldn’t be party to and would be happy to see actively discouraged.
I’m glad we agree on this.
So? That doesn’t mean that your suggestion for discouraging it isn’t monstrous,
What, “keeping same-sex marriage unrecognized” is morally monstrous all of a sudden? That’s ALL I suggested, so far as discouraging intentionally fatherless or motherless children.
As I stated on another thread:
“You know, the same-sex couples with children didn’t have them my accident — they chose to form these families, knowing full well that they would be disadvantaged by doing so. Still, they went ahead.
Society owes them nothing. They were adults who knew exactly what they were getting into. They could have chosen otherwise — they could have chosen to form families with equal status and equal participation by both sexes. That they didn’t choose to do so is a liberty excercised, not a right denied.”
Marty: “What, “keeping same-sex marriage unrecognized” is morally monstrous all of a sudden?”
Doing it for the reason you’ve given is. Doing it for one of your B-list reasons might not be, but you’ve ignored two invitations to tell us about any of them.
Mark Barton,
“Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church).
How did you get from that statement above to = “hatred”.
More importantly - exactly, No sex outside marriage. Rather than “doubletalk plastering over gaps in the logic” you have a entirely consistent understanding of human sexuality that has thrived for thousands of years and is in direct symmetry with other cultures, religious traditions and the secular law of the west and others.
“Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church).
How did you get from that statement above to = “hatred”.
More importantly - exactly, No sex outside marriage. Rather than “doubletalk plastering over gaps in the logic” you have a entirely consistent understanding of human sexuality that has thrived for thousands of years and is in direct symmetry with other cultures, religious traditions and the secular law of the west and others.
Marriage IS the proper procreative and unitive purpose of sex. What you have described is the desire of lust. We don’t hate sex, we dont even “hate” lust. We love marriage and understand the importance of sex and its power in shaping individuals and society.
Sorry Mark, I don’t have the time or inclination to debate all of my reasons for opposing SSM with you. I had a blog once, and we explored them all in excruciating detail — I’m sure you’ve heard them all before. I don’t have the time for that anymore.
But, I think the motherless/fatherless aspect is the argument that resonates best with ordinary people from all walks of life, religious and non-religious, right and left, rich and poor. Even many gay people understand. We all know that fatherlessness/motherlessness is always the result of a tragedy. Therefore, gays and lesbians (who are otherwise perfectly fertile in the medical sense) who use ART to intentionally deprive their children of a mother or father are engaging in some very cruel and unusual behavior. And I firmly believe that legal recognition of SSM will only encourage it.
Well put Marty… that is the most assessable aspect of the debate… And yes I know several gay people who agree.
Fitz: “How did you get from that statement above to = “hatred”.”
Via slightly cynical paraphrase. I don’t apologize for my cynicism because I have ample cause. After all, theistic religion, considered as a practice of most people everywhere throughout history is _normally_ wrong about gods/Gods. Theology is normally bunk. Gods and stories about gods and stories about actions and edicts of gods are normally made up. The moral/historical/scientific content of religion is just a bunch of stuff the ancients thought they knew put into stories, and in particular into the mouth of God characters. The scientific content is mostly bunk because the ancients knew very little about science. The moral content is hit and miss - the ancients were by no means uniformly barbaric and put their hopes and dreams and best impulses into their religions as well as their worst. When religion denounces something, it’s because actual people, rightly or wrongly, hated it. And despite the fact that all this is not sensibly deniable, people normally _are_ in denial about it when it comes to their own religion. In many circumstances I’d respect the taboo on talking about the emperor’s clothes to keep the peace, but my judgement is that this is too important.
Note that I also said “hatred of sex for pleasure”. The Catechism says, “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself”. That’s a very strange thing to say. The Catechism doesn’t say, “Walking pleasure [as from a walk on the beach at sunset] is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its transportive purposes.” That would be absurd. _Somebody_ had a deep puritanical hatred of sexual pleasure and injected that into the doctrine.
“The Catechism doesn’t say, “Walking pleasure [as from a walk on the beach at sunset] is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its Transportive purposes.”
But that analogy is flawed. The procreative and unitive functions are seen as inseparable. And for historically justifiable reasons.
If you insist on strictly secular analysis and you are truly interested, I would suggest the works of scholars like Robert Michael at the University of Chicago, or most prominently, Nobel-prize-winning economist George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley he uses an economic model to show how the introduction of the pill dramatically restructures our concept of human sexuality and its value.
Further, Consider the work of sociobiologist Lionel Tiger. Hardly a cat’s-paw of the pope—he describes religion as “a toxic issue”—Tiger has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of the sexual revolution to today’s unique problems. The Decline of Males, his 1999 book, was particularly controversial among feminists for its argument that female contraceptives had altered the balance between the sexes in disturbing new ways (especially by taking from men any say in whether they could have children).
Equally eyebrow-raising is his linking of contraception to the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood. Tiger has further argued for a causal link between contraception and abortion, stating outright that ‘with effective contraception controlled by women, there are still more abortions than ever. . . . Contraception causes abortion.’”
If you care to actually study the issue you will fiind a wealth of secualr forces who understand the importance of maintaining the link between sex’s procreative value and its recreational enjoyment.
What if it said “sugarless bubblegum is morally disordered”?
This procreational versus recreational dichotomy is the key to understanding these social problems. a stated: the works of Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof, and his economic analysis done around the effects that the “techno shock” of the Pill had on family formation.
This procreational versus recreational dichotomy is the key to understanding these social problems. The works of Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof, and his economic analysis done around the effects that the “techno shock” of the Pill had on family formation.
The link between birth control and single motherhood is the public understanding of sex as an essentially procreative act, and its movement (with the introduction of the Pill) toward a public understanding of sex as merely recreational.
This procreational versus recreational dichotomy is the key to understanding any number of social problems. From the dramatic rise in illegitimacy especially amoung the poor to demographic upheavals rocking Europe and destabilizing their culture and welfare programs.
Indeed no less a scientist than Carl Djerassi the Austrian chemist who helped invent the contraceptive pill now says that his co-creation has led to a “demographic catastrophe.”
Carl Djerassi outlined the “horror scenario” that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now “no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction.” He said: “This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete.”
He described families who had decided against reproduction as “wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it.”
The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an “epidemic” far worse, but given less attention, than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were “committing national suicide” if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an “intelligent immigration policy”.
Suffice to say, none of these prominent scientists or academics has ever been accused of hating sex or being puritanical. While it is a rather pedestrian charge against certain aspects of Catholic theology to claim the same: I am not aware of any prominent thinker who is willing to dismiss say the prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae as a simple bane toward either priggishness nor prudery.
Interesting stuff Fitz. Honestly, it had never occurred to be before — but that the shocking rise in single-motherhood/illegitimacy coincides with the easy availability of birth control is simply astounding! The irony is disturbing indeed…
John D. wrote:
“Marriage is about property.”
Interesting. You should read this item in which the LA times editorializes against that very idea — in the context of a “gay rights” bill:
“If the goal is to protect property relationships rather than personal ones — a notion worth studying — there is no good reason to limit it to two co-owners, rather than three or four.”
Where have I heard that before?
Marty: “Sorry Mark, I don’t have the time or inclination to debate all of my reasons for opposing SSM with you.”
Actually I realize we’re at cross-purposes (and I should have picked it up earlier). What I actually wanted to know, is whether you think there are any other mechanisms (besides punishing children doubly for the supposed sins of their parents) for thinking that banning same-sex marriage is likely to affect the incidence of children raised without access to their biological parents? The reason I’m interested is that, despite my best efforts at goading over at least five years, you’re the first person who’s ever had the chutzpah to spell out what I feared the answer must be. Everybody else has changed the subject. So I’m keen to know: are there more defensible B-list reasons, or is that it?
Marty: “But, I think the motherless/fatherless aspect is the argument that resonates best with ordinary people from all walks of life, religious and non-religious, right and left, rich and poor.”
I’m sure it _resonates_ - if you’re careful to leave things warm and fuzzy and vague, and not spell out that you’re attempting the equivalent of not allowing gay people to buy baby car seats. Did you accidentally tell the truth, or is there some better reason we haven’t gotten to yet?
Fitz: “But that analogy is flawed. The procreative and unitive functions are seen as inseparable.”
But (i) that is _also_ a very strange thing to say, and (ii) it’s a non-sequitur with respect to the claim that the analogy is flawed. Procreation and unitivity can be as valuable as you like and as inseparable as you like - it’s still a strange, obsessively puritanical thing to say that “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself [...]”
Fitz: “to show how the introduction of the pill dramatically restructures our concept of human sexuality and its value.”
I don’t doubt that the introduction of the pill dramatically restructured people’s concept of human sexuality. In fact it couldn’t be more obvious. Also important was modern technology in the home and in the food chain, which suddenly meant that it was no longer a full-time skilled job merely to keep house. And medical advances which meant that people didn’t need to try to breed like rabbits merely to break even. And some of these developments, while advances on the whole, have caused knock-on problem which we’ll need to solve in turn. So? How is that relevant to the claim that the Catholic church’s response (and to a lesser extent that of Christianity in general) is hopelessly distorted by the need to rationalize a doctrine overly influenced by simple hatred of sex for pleasure?
MB: “ (besides punishing children doubly for the supposed sins of their parents) for thinking that banning same-sex marriage is likely to affect the incidence of children raised without access to their biological parents? ”
No, I’m not punishing anyone. Same-sex marriages are not legally recognized now — never have been. So keeping the status quo doesnt double anything. Although I’m suprised to hear you admit that they were singly punished, by the parents who purposely put them in this predicament.
But as I said before, these decisions were made by adults who knew full well the consequences of their choices. Morally reprehensible as I find it, they broke no laws. Shall we punish them again? No, I say live and let live. But I refuse to reward them for punishing their children in this cruel and unusual manner.
Marty,
I read the link and I’m siding with the LA Times. No matter what the sponsor of AB 103 might have said, it wasn’t a gay rights bill.
If Bob and Tom share a house together solely as an investment, but aren’t a couple (let’s even assume that neither is gay), AB 103 would let the property pass to Tom without taxation when Bob’s jealous ex-girlfriend kills him.
How is that a gay rights bill? What Assembly member de Leon did was to cloak a “reciprocal benefits” bill in the mantle of gay rights. Obviously, if you want the rights, you need to get married.
Marty: “No, I’m not punishing anyone.”
Yes you are. You explained that since same-sex couples were asking for same-sex marriage in part to help provide a more secure environment for their kids (and it obviously would do so to some extent for most of the same reasons as with opposite sex couples) the idea was to withhold this as a disincentive to gay people to be bringing up kids. That’s punishing the kids.
Marty: “Although I’m suprised to hear you admit that they were singly punished, by the parents who purposely put them in this predicament.”
No, that’s why I said “supposed”. As I’ve said, I do disapprove of some surrogacy arrangements, but by no means all.
Maintaining the status quo isn’t punishing anyone. Doing nothing is simply doing nothing. Society owes these people nothing — they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into.
There is in fact NOTHING stopping these people from marrying just like everyone else does, in order to “provide a more secure environment for their kids”. Nothing except their own gender bias.
Marty: “Maintaining the status quo isn’t punishing anyone.”
It is when the status quo is making it difficult for same-sex couples to care for their kids.
Marty: “Society owes these people nothing — they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into.”
Even if that were true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that you are proposing to (continue to) punish their kids as leverage.
No leverage. They made this bed, I’m perfectly content to let them keep sleeping in it.
If anyone is excersising leverage here, it is same-sex couples who are using their children as leverage to try and change the definition of Marriage to better suit their gender bias. “oh the poor children will suffer!” Yet if these children suffer, it is because of their choices, not mine.
Marty: “No leverage.”
Rubbish. You explained to us yourself that the idea was to reduce the number of kids without access to their biological parents by putting difficulties in the path of same-sex couples raising kids and so disincentivizing them from having them. That’s using the kids as leverage.
Marty: “If anyone is excersising leverage here, it is same-sex couples who are using their children as leverage to try and change the definition of Marriage to better suit their gender bias.”
That’s also certainly leverage. However (i) it seems to me perfectly legitimate leverage because it’s purely about helping the kids and (ii) whatever you think of it, it doesn’t take away from the fact that your use of leverage is a moral monstrosity which involves exposing the kids to extra risk.
Marty: “Yet if these children suffer, it is because of their choices, not mine.”
I’ve often mused that the root difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives are completely oblivious to the concept of joint responsibility. Once conservatives have identified a villain, they don’t have to worry about whether their policies and doctrines actually help the situation, because everything that goes wrong is totally, 100%, the other guy’s fault.
Reduce the number? No — slow the growth of children who are deliberately denied a parent of a particular sex.
It’s perfectly legal for a single man or woman to use ART’s to create a fatherless or motherless child, but of course this comes with certain inherent difficulties or disadvantages. I see no reason we as a society should work to remove those disadvantages, thereby resulting in in even more motherless and fatherless children.
Let me ask you:
Marriage aside, do you think we should reward people who go out of their way to create motherless/fatherless children? Should we encourage such behavior? Or should we generally try to discourage it?
Marty: “Reduce the number? No — slow the growth of children who are deliberately denied a parent of a particular sex.”
Whatever. Pretend I had said “reduce the number from what it would otherwise have been”. With that correction, my point stands: you’re visiting extra hassles on the kids to try and influence their parents and that’s monstrous.
Marty: “IIt’s perfectly legal for a single man or woman to use ART’s to create a fatherless or motherless child, but of course this comes with certain inherent difficulties or disadvantages.”
Disadvantages for who? You’re trying to squirm off the hook with a bit of strategic vagueness. If you were suggesting visiting disadvantages purely on the parents then I wouldn’t be using words like monstrous, even if I disagreed with your goals or your approach. But you’re creating disadvantages for the kids, and that’s truly monstrous. Worse you’re doing this even though you don’t seriously care about the kids or their access to their biological parents. You can’t be bothered to address the problem by the simple, direct method of banning surrogacy arrangements, you only want to do this crazy bank shot off gay marriage. It’s getting to be a joke - you obviously don’t care about anything but banning gay marriage as an end in itself.
my point stands: you’re visiting extra hassles on the kids to try and influence their parents and that’s monstrous.
No, I’m not creating any extra hassles that were not already assumed by the parent initially.
But you’re creating disadvantages for the kids, and that’s truly monstrous.
Name one disadvantage that is “created” by maintaining the status quo? You’re not making sense anymore.
Intersting argument you make here:
You can’t be bothered to address the problem by the simple, direct method of banning surrogacy arrangements
I’d be happy to support banning ARTs (for non-medical reasons), if it were on the table. But it’s not. What IS on the table is gay-marriage, and we are constantly reminded that these children are disadvantaged.
It’s getting to be a joke - you obviously don’t care about anything but banning gay marriage as an end in itself.
Just as it’s become perfectly obvious that gay-marriage advocates don’t care about these children — and are simply using them to justify gay marriage as an end in itself.
Marty: “No, I’m not creating any extra hassles that were not already assumed by the parent initially.”
Rubbish. Whatever you think the situation of a kid being raised by a same-sex couple is, the situation of a kid raised by same-sex couple in a legally precarious relationship is somewhat worse. If that weren’t the case your plan would make even less sense than it already does.
Marty: “Name one disadvantage that is “created” by maintaining the status quo? You’re not making sense anymore.”
No, you’re the one not making sense. It doesn’t matter whether same-sex couples being unable to get married is the status quo or not. If it puts the kids in a more disadvantageous situation than the alternative under discussion and you’re arguing for it, you’re responsible for it.
Marty: “I’d be happy to support banning ARTs (for non-medical reasons), if it were on the table.”
What a lame copout. Being “for” something is totally free, and a good start to getting it on the table. Moreover to the extent that it’s _not_ on the table, that’s a sign that hardly anybody on your entire side is serious.
Whatever friend. Now, please answer the question asked at 13:04?
Mark Barton (again)
“The Catechism doesn’t say, “Walking pleasure [as from a walk on the beach at sunset] is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its transportive purposes.”
But Mark - sex is no walk on the beach. You can persist on painting this understanding of the seriousness of sex as “hatred” (a rather telling slur) Or like the scientist and scholars I point to – admit that a healthy respect for the power of human passion requires diligence and self control.
One could just as easily indict you as having exposed yourself as thinking of human sexual intercourse as no more important than watching TV or taking a stroll.
As it is said: You can’t indict Christianity for thinking to little of sex but for thinking to much. Likewise I can indict you Mark not for thinking to much of sex but for thinking to little of it.
Be it secular scientist I point out or Catholic Theology they both realize the importance of sex separated from its procreative understanding. That’s why your talk of other technological & social changes is off the mark. Yes those things affected social understandings of sexual relations. But the scholars & scientists I point out all have zeroed in on the exact problem that Catholic Theology already understood. That a recreational (rather than predominantly procreational) mindset about sex has devastating social consequences.
One thinks of the devastation of AIDS in the gay community. I remember a NYT story about how half the gay men’s choir was dead within 10 years of the discovery of AIDS. I lived through that period of history and tellingly enough, all through that period and up until today (even within the plea for same-sex marriage) the cultural left cannot even council restraint much less monogamy.
Now I think it’s a more devastating indictment of the sexual recreational mindset that it can’t council (even) restraint in the face of death itself, when it is members of that very community that are most suffering. Such however is the power of sexual revolutionary ideology to overcome even self preservation.
Marty: “Now, please answer the question asked at 13:04?”
I believe I already largely answered this one already. To recap, personally I’d discourage arrangements where a kid had no knowledge of or access to their biological parents at all. Many countries like the UK and Australia have banned anonymous sperm donations and the like, and that seems like a very good idea. But to be explicit, I’m OK with arrangements where the biological parent is not a custodial parent but is on call. I’m open to arguments for drawing the lines in a different place, but I think that allowing or disallowing same-sex marriage is a completely immoral and ineffective way of trying to implement the discouragement.
Mark Barton (writes)
“I don’t doubt that the introduction of the pill dramatically restructured people’s concept of human sexuality. In fact it couldn’t be more obvious.”
& then he asks ….Mark Barton (writes)
“So? How is that relevant to the claim that the Catholic church’s response (and to a lesser extent that of Christianity in general) is hopelessly distorted by the need to rationalize a doctrine overly influenced by simple hatred of sex for pleasure?”
Because the Church teaching on birth control was exactly to keep the separation of sex a its procreative potential to be reduced to a mere recreational activity (dire consequences see above)
This is exactly what Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof and his economic analysis points to when he talks about the “techno shock” of separating sex from its procreative end.
Except the Church warned against these consequences that you now report you find “In fact it couldn’t be more obvious.” They were obvious to the Church at the time. The same way same-sex “marriage” dire effects are obvious to the Church and other believers.
That is: its understanding of human sexuality is superior to the ideology of sexual liberation. As it was indeed superior to the multiple voices including the inventor of the birth control pill itself (above) who only in hindsight (like yourself) can see the consequences through a deficient lens.
Fitz: “Because the Church teaching on birth control was exactly to keep the separation of sex a its procreative potential to be reduced to a mere recreational activity (dire consequences see above)”
Err, that’s pretty garbled but as near as I can make out, it appears to be exactly what I was saying - the Church is first and foremost against recreational sex and that determines its doctrine on any number of other matters, not the other way around.
let’s see, an argument about birth control. recreational sex. and dire consequences.
what was the purpose of the creation of ED drugs. . .cialis, levitra, etc?
men seeking these drugs tend to be over 40, past their parenting prime, and are seeking the ED treatment for recreational sex.
thank you Fitz. I await your answer.
Mark said: ” I would have said that the purpose of marriage, insofar as it’s about procreation, is to prevent irresponsible procreation. Excluding same-sex couples helps that purpose how exactly?”
No, it is not about “preventing” procreation but about providing the contingency for responsible procreation. And Government’s involvement is not about making procreation compulsory, but about encouraging and showing preference for the core meaning of marriage.
So whether or not Government recognition prevents, say, the abuse of IVF by needy adults, is not the point.
Marriage is recognized by the Government. And marriage is a social institution. Its normative influence is seen even in the use of IVF/ARTs where virtually all married couples who use it do not go outside of their marriages for gametes.
Your effort to make Government the all-knowing and all-controling entity does not frame the discussion the way you imagine it might.
Mark said: “you’re visiting extra hassles on the kids to try and influence their parents and that’s monstrous.”
These adults were not parents of these kids when, as needy adults, they considered, chose, and acted on their adultcentric plan to create children to be fatherless or motherless, by design.
They aren’t time-travellers. They weren’t parents before they were parents. The kids were yet-to-be-conceived. Influencing the “parents” before the fact is perfectly legitimate.
The kids were created, or rather commissioned as products, as the result of a calculation that would segregate fatherhood from motherhood.
That this can be done is no justification for it to be done. And that there are consequences, some which are discouragements, does not change that lack of justification.
That it can be done — and is not prevented by marriage — neither adds nor subtracts from the calculation that led to it being done.
Nor does it detract from the core meaning of marriage.
The contingency for responsible procreation exists — as a social construct — because humankind is both a highy sexual being and a highly social being. And, as with the integration of man and woman sexually and communally, marriage is not indifferent to sex. It is intrinsically both-sexed.
passed this on to david b via email
something is stirring in the air:
9th Circuit Court Rules Against DOMA
This is MAJOR, people. Via Jen Nedeau at Change.org:
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just ordered Federal Health Insurance Benefits for same sex married couples. The case involves Deputy Federal Public Defender Brad Levenson, who married Tony Sears last July 12, and 9th Circuit staff lawyer Karen Golinski, who married Amy Cunninghis last year.
The LA Observer reported today that the ruling by Judge Stephen Reinhardt says the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies benefits to gay federal employees’ spouses. The ruling filed under the Order, Employment Dispute Resolution Plan for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says:
“The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or a desire to deprive same-sex spouses benefits available to other spouses in order to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state,” Reinhardt wrote in his Feb. 2 order….Both orders are internal employee grievance decisions.
Both found in favor of the gay employees, directing court administrators to give health insurance benefits to their spouses. The orders also represent direct challenges to DOMA, the 1996 act that forbids the federal government from treating same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose.
A lawyer for the staff attorney said this is believed to be the first time federal employees will get benefits covering a same-sex spouse. [skip] Reinhardt and Kozinski wrote the orders in their roles as hearing officers for some circuit employee disputes.”
and a little more cheerleading . . . rah rah sis boom bah
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/divorce
check out the video
Mark said: “I don’t think you’ve established that same-sex couples are like blind people rather than people without a car.”
The lack of the other sex is not infertility nor is it closely analogous with infertility. It stands apart from fertility and infertility, both of which are both-sexed.
That is the nature of the one-sexed scenario (i.e. the lone individual, a one-sexed twosome, a roomful of persons of the same sex). Nonfertility is due to its form. It is not a matter of degree. It is constant in both kind and degree.
The lack of eyes is not sightedness nor is it closely analogous with sightedness. It stands in contradiction to 20/20 vision, short-sightedness, and far-sightedness, both of which are dependant upon eyesight.
Non-sightedness is the nature of the no-eyed scenario. It is constant in both kind and degree.
A license to drive would not pluck out eyes. Plucking out the eyes of drivers would not restore sightedness and would not encourage safe driving. Treating all drivers as if they lacked eyes would not serve the purpose licensing people to drive cars.
Likewise, if licensing was blind to the lack of eyes, licesning would neither enable nor encourage safe sighted driving.
Rusty:
http://www.dawnstefanowicz.com/dawntest.htm
Anti-cheerleading? If you wish. Proof against your position? No. Just another side of the coin, for what it’s worth.
THANKS for the heads up on Dawn’s book and website. First time I have ever heard of her. Did the ‘google’ thing. Didn’t see the book on Oprah’s list though. Have put it out to some young folk with gay parents and having them take a look. Also, have put out some other feelers to other educators to see if they have ever read Out From Under.
Ciao
Mark Barton
“Err, that’s pretty garbled but as near as I can make out, it appears to be exactly what I was saying - the Church is first and foremost against recreational sex and that determines its doctrine on any number of other matters, not the other way around.”
Humanity determines its doctrine Mark. As 70% illegitimacy rates 50% divorce rates and 1.3 million abortions a year attest - nothing but a perverse drive for recreational sex determines yours.
This holds even when (see above) its their own lives at stake (AIDS) & the lives of 70% of the children of our most exploited and savaged underclass, African Americans.
Its telling that in the face of such inhumanity you can keep coming back to a defense of recreational sex as the sine qua non of your argument.
“what was the purpose of the creation of ED drugs. . .cialis, levitra, etc?”
Uhhh …to prevent erectile dysfunction….(????)
“men seeking these drugs tend to be over 40, past their parenting prime, and are seeking the ED treatment for recreational sex.”
Well… we don’t know what their seeking the treatment for rusty. I don’t really get your point, you may be in Marks spot of not understanding the Christian sexual ethic of putting sex within the institution of (traditional) marriage & maintaining its procreative understanding. A mere recreational standard, which is what the sexual revolution and it revolutionaries insist on – has lead to the entire human toll I mention above.
The Christian sexual ethic posits the unitve and procreative aspects as insepreable.
extending or reinitiating intimacy with their partner or future partner. that would be the intent of ED drugs.
you see Fitz. Sex isn’t intimacy. Sex is part of intimacy. there is sexual attraction, followed with hopes of bonding, and then hopefully, with the encouragement and support of those around us (but sometimes not) a long lasting union. with the advent of ED drugs, sexual intimacy can be restored and yes people have sex simply for the pleasure, and the bonding that occurs. Thus promoting the unitve (oops) Unitive.
now in my role as sexuality health educator my first position or urging to folk was: to
postpone sexual involvement until a mutually monogamous relationship had been extablished.
but we all know that sex happens. it has since we walked around with clubs in our hands and sat around open fires.
the problem is that as humans, our sexual drives kick in early. part of the early kick start was to extend the human species because of the risks of childbirth both to mother and child. and with the marvels of medical science extending our lives, folk are having sex in their senior years.
placing some ‘guidelines’ on sexual activity helps protect society. I do agree with you.
but times are a changing, and am afraid an attempt at another Great Awakening might not be the best approach.
but puhlease don’t tell me that you are trying to put the blame on gays and lesbians for the increases in illegitimacy, divorce rates, etc.
or are you one of those truly clever people that have figured out that GAY’Z agenda is to uproot and destroy the fabric of society. Lesbians no longer get toaster ovens. They just get week long passes on Rosie ODonnell’s Atlantis Cruises. Gays get the same option but tend to opt for a week at Provincetown. Bi folk have the option to choose from either.
That is for every successful recruit.
Fitz: “Humanity determines its doctrine Mark. As 70% illegitimacy rates 50% divorce rates and 1.3 million abortions a year attest - nothing but a perverse drive for recreational sex determines yours.”
But you argue my case for me. You mention abortion for example. As I’m sure you know, the decision in Roe v Wade is written in terms of trimesters, with no protections at all for the fetus in the first trimester. That’s because, at the time, no major church, not even the Catholics, could say with a straight face that it had ever consistently taught that life began at conception. On the contrary, the prevailing (although not exclusive) view in the Catholic Church had been Aristotle’s theory that a fetus was not ensouled until 40 days for a male and 80 days for a female. The abortion doctrine was _not_ driven by right-to-life arguments, because in the prevailing view there was nothing to kill. It was driven by the all-sex-must-be-open-to-procreation argument, which in turn was driven by the hatred of recreational sex.
Of course, nowadays the Catholic Church claims that it has adjusted its position in the light of new scientific evidence, but that’s nonsense - science has produced no new results about souls, which are almost certainly fictional in the first place, and the first trimester standard is a perfectly good and very conservative standard in view of the fact that at least through that point the fetus has no nervous system and therefore beyond reasonably doubt is not sentient.
souls, which are almost certainly fictional in the first place
Such a person has no problem putting yours, mine, and our children’s souls at eternal risk.
Mark you are mistaken to say that “nowadays the Catholic Church claims that it has adjusted its position in the light of new scientific evidence”.
The evidence lagged behind Catholic teachings on sexual morality. It is still catching up.
Science does not dictate morality even if it informs the discussion.
* * *
At his conception and at his birth and throughout the various stages of his maturation, the human being is present.
There is no threshold in-between at which the human being suddenly arrives.
You may deny the soul (whether or not sentience is your criterion) but not the human being, surely.
* * *
The trimester scheme is not conservative. It is not scientifically sound, either. And it is not the legal limitation on the practice of aborting pregnancies with the deliberate inducement of death of the unborn human being.
* * *
A pregnancy that is terminated with the birth of a child is not divided into three parts. Throughout the child is a human being and at no point in the pregnancy is the child a non-human being.
To say otherwise is to deny the scientific evidence.
CO: “Mark you are mistaken to say that “nowadays the Catholic Church claims that it has adjusted its position in the light of new scientific evidence”.”
No. Of course, it’s always taken a hard line on abortion, but then I didn’t mean to suggest differently. But it has changed its position on when the fetus becomes worthy of moral protection in its own right, from de facto endorsement of Aristotle’s view to a from conception view.
CO: “Science does not dictate morality even if it informs the discussion.”
Quite so.
CO: “At his conception and at his birth and throughout the various stages of his maturation, the human being is present.”
Certainly that’s the doctrine. I’ve never heard a good argument for it scriptural or scientific, and you’re not currently giving one. Scripturally there is exactly one reference in the Bible to the death of a fetus (in a fight between two men) and it treats it as a misdemeanor against the property of the husband rather than as second degree murder. Scientifically the various features associated with humanness come in at different times, so there has to be a value decision as to what’s important. The DNA of what will at some point be a person is there from the beginning, but I’ve never heard an argument that DNA is worthy of moral protection. What I value about being human is being sentient, and so I don’t apologize for setting at zero the worth of some DNA and cells that beyond reasonable doubt is not sentient.
Mark, I haven’t asked for an apology and don’t expect you to apologize for assessment of the scientific evidence.
Note, I did not confuse “person” with human being, as you just did. Nor did I say that DNA is a human being.
You’d make such distinctions, perhaps, but that would not answer the question, as asked.
At what point — between conception and birth — does the lbeing become a human being?
This is not a philosophical question.
Mark Barton,
Mark, your almost hopelessly confused about not just Catholicism’s life ethic but Christianity and Judaism & Aristotle as well. 1st century texts like the Didache make clear their continuum of respect for new life, not sacrificing your child to Molock, Non Christian sources like the Hippocratic Oath (all the way through to) the prescription about “spilling seed” as the earliest form of birth control. (and on and on)
But obviously you’re trying to divert attention away from my point regarding the epic destruction of sexual moral norms. Under your “pleasure principle” that can posit nothing more than “consent “ & “adults” everything sky-high divorce, abortion, venarial disease to illegitimacy is necessitated. That is: a necessary part of your debased lack of ethics. My point was just – you break it you buy it.
“extending or reinitiating intimacy with their partner or future partner. that would be the intent of ED drugs.”
No rusty - the point of E.D. drugs is to make a non-functioning organ perform as it was designed to perform. Any social effect of ‘pair - boding” is secondary and no necessarily of social benefit or importance depending on the relationship type.
CO: “Note, I did not confuse “person” with human being, as you just did.”
I didn’t confuse anything. I didn’t use “person” in the Catholic technical sense (which also includes the persons of the trinity and potentially other things) because it wasn’t relevant.
CO: “Nor did I say that DNA is a human being.”
I didn’t mean to suggest that you did. In fact I would have bet that you didn’t believe that, despite the fact that (a full set of) DNA is about the about only thing that science has identified that _is_ there from conception (and wasn’t before), and so the only view that science could possibly have confirmed.
CO: “At what point — between conception and birth — does the lbeing become a human being? [//] This is not a philosophical question.”
Of course it’s a philosophical question. The attributes of something that is unambiguously a human being (an adult one) appear gradually in something that’s quite different. Where you draw the line is a judgement call and more than one line might be defensible depending on your purposes. For the purposes of deciding when to start allocating moral protections, the first trimester standard seems to me to be conservative, for reasons I’ve explained. You haven’t advocated for an alternative position, you’ve just pounded the table.
Bzzzt. Mark failed bigtime. Granted, it was a bit of a trick question, wasnt it…
At what point … does the being [sic] become a human being?
From the moment it can be defined as a “being”, it cannot be anything other than a “human being”.
But Mark doesn’t beleive in the soul, so it should suprise no one that he doesn’t beleive in any sort of trancendent humanity either. Your life is worth living when HE determines it is.
Marty, the question was not intended as a trick, however, I anticipated that Mark’s viewpoint would be suggest that humanity is an acquired and not an inherited quality — a matter of becoming not being.
Apparently we become what we are (and who we are, i.e. a person). But this becoming has a beginning. If it is sentience, then, what was added to the thing that eventually hosted this sentience? When did the guest arrive in the vaccant dwelling?
Surely, if there is no soul, there is no such thing as a disembodied sentient person who’d unzip a bunch of just-so cells and climb inside to possess it “body and soul”.
If it develops it develops as embodied sentience from within that which it embodies. It is not an outside stranger but the being itself at a later stage of its maturation.
* * *
to Mark and anyone else interested:
Let’s stay with the scientific evidence.
There is a human being. Born. Now, trace back the maturation of that human being. When in that process of maturation did that human being become a human being?
Note, I did not ask about personhood which may be a philosophic question. I did not ask about your take on Catholicism. Nor did I ask about noncorporeal sentience.
I asked about the scientific evidence of a threshold where the human being is present on this side and not present on that side.
Mark, the closest you have come to a scientific based answer iss: “a full set of DNA is about the about only thing that science has identified that _is_ there from conception and wasn’t before.”
I removed your brackets. It appears you would bracket rather than acknowledge the human being.
* * *
It is undeniable that each and every post-natal human being has passed through the identical stages of embryonic and fetal development.
We were all blastocysts once. That clump of cells is us at that stage of our life. The embryo is not just potentially a member of the human kind. It is human. From conception (or to use more technical language, from the moment of syngamy), the human zygote has 46 chromosomes and can be distinguished from embryos of other species.
It is recognizably one of us- recognizable not to the naked eye, but to the scientifically trained eye.
Moreover, the embryo is not like other cells or tissues.
In the words again of Stanford biologist William Hurlbut, “it possesses an inherent organismal unity and potency that such other cells lack.”
Because of this “unified organismal principle of growth,” nothing external is added to its biological essence over time. Our unique being unfolds continuously from within.
Along the way we develop and manifest various capacities, sensory and cognitive, but there isn’t one of those capacities whose acquisition suddenly makes us human.
There are many phases and stages of a human life, but the being — the unique human being — is there from beginning to end, from conception to death.
Of course, certain externals need to be present for this human life-in-process to continue its self-directed growth, but that is true of every phase of human life. We are self-directed, but not self-sufficient.
Knowledge of our earliest beginnings, and of the dynamic developmental process of the human organism as it matures, can awaken a sense of awe and respect. Knowledge of our origins does not destroy wonder; it deepens it.
The last secton of previous comment was written by Diana Schaub, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, is Professor of Political Science at Loyola College in Maryland and a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on the Virtues of a Free Society.
Marty: “Mark failed bigtime. Granted, it was a bit of a trick question, wasnt it…”
Actually you’re right - I didn’t read the question particularly carefully and I just used it as a jumping off point to say what I thought needed saying. But since you make an issue of it, let’s revisit it.
Marty: “From the moment it can be defined as a “being”, it cannot be anything other than a “human being”.”
Yes and no - that’s the trick. According to the OED, the primary meaning of “human” is, “Of, belonging to, or characteristic of mankind, distinguished from animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright posture.” A fetus doesn’t actually possess _any_ of the definitional characteristics itself. For certain purposes one might regard it as human by continuity, but (a) one doesn’t _have_ to do that and (ii) to the extent one does, it’s really just a second concept that happens to have the same name.
Marty: “But Mark doesn’t beleive in the soul, [...]”
Well of course. All the inputs and outputs of the mind can be traced as nerve signals to the brain. Therefore there are two broad possibilities: either the brain implements the mind itself or a soul implements the mind and the brain acts as an antenna for the soul. And as much as religion would like it to be otherwise, this is a perfectly simply structural problem of the sort science solves every day and can be tackled with a standard technique: break the system (or let Nature break it) and see what happens. And Greek philosophers made the key observation over 2000 years ago: when you get a knock on the head, the world _doesn’t_ literally “go black”, as it might plausibly do if the inputs from the senses were interrupted, rather, consciousness ceases. This is powerful evidence against a soul theory. Sorry.
Marty: “[...] so it should suprise no one that he doesn’t beleive in any sort of trancendent humanity either.”
Transcending what exactly? I don’t see that I need apologize for thinking that humanity doesn’t quite transcend the fact that the first trimester fetus lacks a nervous system.
Marty: “Your life is worth living when HE determines it is.”
Well since first trimester fetuses aren’t speaking up, somebody’s got to determine it, and given that theology is normally wrong, I’m reluctant to cede the debate to the people who think they’re in possession of communications from God on the subject.
According to the OED, the primary meaning of “human” is, “Of, belonging to, or characteristic of mankind, distinguished from animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright posture.” A fetus doesn’t actually possess _any_ of the definitional characteristics itself.
Your convenient use of that definition to deny the humanity of a pre-viable baby is also entirely accurate when describing a 78 year old alzheimers patient. I’m quite sure you would judge their lives just as harshly, given the opportunity.
I’m reluctant to cede the debate to the people who think they’re in possession of communications from God on the subject.
And I’m not about to turn it over to people who have no trouble playing the god in matters of life and death.
“A man with no god thinks he IS one.”
Marty: “Your convenient use of that definition to deny the humanity of a pre-viable baby is also entirely accurate when describing a 78 year old alzheimers patient. I’m quite sure you would judge their lives just as harshly, given the opportunity.”
No actually, as to both the accurate and the judging. I could give my reasoning, but you’re not interested, and it’s not as if you’ve got any of your own.
One of the problems here (and elsewhere with discussions about same-sex marriage) is that the typical argument runs thusly:
Homosexuality is immoral, ergo same-sex marriage is immoral.
It’s consistent, but I disagree with the first premise.
What I never see is “homosexuality is morally neutral, and we construct marriage under the following constraints.”
The only constraint to marriage in most places (save those that permit same-sex marriage) is that it be heterosexual. To say that it must be maintained that way because it must, is an unconvincing tautology.
We do not restrict marriage to those who seek to have children. The opponents of same-sex marriage construct ideals of marriage which they cannot force upon the opposite-sex couples who marry.
I’m willing to listen to arguments that actually apply to opposite-sex couples.
JD: “One of the problems here (and elsewhere with discussions about same-sex marriage) is that the typical argument runs thusly: [//] Homosexuality is immoral, ergo same-sex marriage is immoral.”
Err no, to give credit where it’s due, on moderate-ish forums like this one and marriagedebate.com, that’s actually a vanishingly rare argument. I strongly suspect it’s lurking below the surface and accounting for much of the passion, but it’s certainly hardly ever articulated.
Mark said: ” fetus doesn’t actually possess _any_ of the definitional characteristics itself.”
Heh, so now you’d push aside the scientific evidence and reach for a definition in the OED. And you reached for an adjective, human, rather than the noun, human being.
Still that definition clearly says “Of, belonging to [...] mankind”.
Mankind, or humankind, consists of human beings. And, scientifically, humankind is the species homo sapiens.
The evidence is clear: the individual is a member of homo sapiens even prior to developing his own nervous system.
That mankind is “distinguished from animals” does not exclude that which belongs to mankind.
And these things matured features or characteristics you’ve listed come from within the nascent human being whose presence is the prerequisite for its own development of its own nervous system.
There is no evidence that an external supply of sentience is developed externally. It comes from within the homo sapien individual.
Now, the same is so of other species. But the human individual is distinguishable from the individual of an other species, even at its earliest stages of development. Those early stages are necessary before the individual develops its nervous system.
So scientific evidence can indeed distinguish the human being at fertilization from the being of another species at fertilization.
You said: “For certain purposes one might regard it as human by continuity”.
Well, of course, the human beings existence is not interupted by his acquiring sentience. That is so, Mark, even if your philosophy would severe that individual from his continuous existence.
You would rather talk about the continuity of the nervous system. But the nervous system did not start the life of the human being. That nervous system sprang from the wherewithal already definitive of a unique individual.
Each of us has a history, as a human being, that begins prior to walking upright. The infant quo infant is not subhuman for a lack of that ability. He has within himself the ability to develop and mature, just as he had all along in the earliest moments of his existence. And that does include prior to developing his nervous system and sentience. He exists, as a human being, prior to having a conscience thought and prior to having superior mental abilities.
The evidence is not dismissable based on philosophy. You conceded that readily when we first began to discuss the scientific evidence.
Where is the threshold at which what has become a human being was not a human being before?
You may wish to press a different and contradictory purpose onto the scientific evidence, of course, such as your philosophic notion of personhood, “but (a) one doesn’t _have_ to do that”.
As for continuity, this indeed is necessary since we are talking of the science of the maturation of the human being. You have instead tried to draw a line for the sake of discontinuity based on your philosophic viewpoint.
The scientific evidence that informs your viewpoint does exist, however, that evidence shows there is an individual human being present at fertilization.
Your philosphic conception of the human being does not match the conception of the human being as seen by the scientifically trained eye.
CO: “The evidence is clear: the individual is a member of homo sapiens even prior to developing his own nervous system.”
In the “by continuity” sense that I outlined, of course, and moreover, DNA is the mechanism of that continuity. So? What does that have to do with whether a fetus is entitled to the same moral protections as an adult (ii) how did modern science change that relative to Aristotle? After all, by the same standard a foreskin is human, and yet we cut those off and throw them away in the garbage.
Moreover, how does this represent a change that the Church was forced to adopt because of science? After all, Aristotle would also have agreed that a fetus was human by continuity. His objection was that he thought that an early fetus couldn’t have a human soul because it wasn’t yet human shaped and so not yet a fit dwelling place for one. For the first few months it had to make do with first a vegetable soul and then an animal soul, and that until it finally had human a soul it was not worthy of moral protection. Catholic thinkers at the level of Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm signed off on this. Aquinas taught point blank that abortion is an offence against marriage but not an offence against the fetus. Science has proven that the fetus has DNA that is distinguishable from that of animals from the beginning. How does that say anything about whether a human soul is present, or about whether moral protections are warranted? There’s no particular reason to think Aristotle was _right_ - he was basically talking out of his backside. But equally science hasn’t proved him _wrong_ - the Church’s doctrine on souls is pretty much unfalsifiable and they could have persisted with it no matter what science said. They changed their doctrine when and because their traditional only argument (the offence against marriage one) stopped convincing people and they needed something else to say to win politically.
Mark said: ” by the same standard a foreskin is human”
Not by the same standard. Severed skin is not a human being.
You outlined continuity in the sense of development. At what point did the individual human being become a member of humankind?
Regarding you take on Catholicism, as I said earlier, the science has lagged behind.
In your case, you are trying to brush the scientific evidence aside in the name of your philosophic contemplation of which human beings are entitled to human dignity.
The nervous system develops within the human being. If you credit that development with moral force, then, you cannot deny the existence of the human being prior to that philosophic threshold.
Even you think that human dignity is not intrinsic to the individual human being but is developed by the human being, your proposed criteria for the threshold is pushed farther back than the emergence of the nervous system and of the beginnings of sentience.
For the beginnings are within the human being in his earliest moments of existence. He has already emerged, even if he is still maturing.
Now, you have just gone on about souls, again.
Do you think that sentience is disembodied or is it developed within the individual? Is it something introduced from an external source? For that matter, is the nervous system external before it emerges within the individual?
CO: “Not by the same standard.”
Actually it depends on whether you trace it forwards or backwards. It’s not continuous with an adult human tracing backwards. But if we accept your proposition that a fetus is fully human then it _is_ continuous tracing forward.
“Severed skin is not a human being.”
So you say, but you don’t say why, and I doubt that you can in such a way that doesn’t make nonsense of your claims about the fetus.
CO: “Regarding you take on Catholicism, as I said earlier, the science has lagged behind.”
Behind what? As far as I can see, science has never entered the picture. Aristotle was pre-scientific armchair philosophy. The Church’s modern view is just more armchair philosophy which pays lip-service to science but ignores it.
CO: “At what point did the individual human being become a member of humankind?”
You assume there’s a well-defined fact of the matter, but this is not logically necessary, nor in evidence. Compare: if you blow up a balloon, when exactly does it become “big”. The fact that it would be nice for moral and legal purposes if there were a simple, bright-line fact of the matter doesn’t mean that there _is_ a fact of the matter. At the end of the day you have to draw your own line based on what you decide is important, perhaps with a bit of hedge room for good measure.
CO: “The nervous system develops within the human being. If you credit that development with moral force, then, you cannot deny the existence of the human being prior to that philosophic threshold.”
I would not deny that there was a human being in a certain sense (continuity) before the development of the nervous system, but whether or not the nervous system is morally significant has absolutely nothing to do with that.
CO: “Now, you have just gone on about souls, again.”
Well the prevailing doctrine _did_ use to be that the soul had to be present before there could be a moral offence against the fetus. If a soul is now thought to be present from conception, that’s a doctrinal change that has nothing to do with scientific developments. If a soul is now thought not to be required for the fetus to deserve moral protections, that’s a doctrinal change that has nothing to do with scientific developments.
CO: “Do you think that sentience is disembodied or is it developed within the individual?”
Within the individual, and more particularly, within the nervous system of the individual.
CO: “Is it something introduced from an external source?”
No.
CO: “For that matter, is the nervous system external before it emerges within the individual?”
No.
Mark, do you assert that severed skin is an individual human being?
No, I’d expect not.
But why is severed skin not an individual human being? Or better: why is a severed nervous system not an indivdiual human being?
I’ve not made claims about “the fetus”, on this score, but about “the embryo”, the embryonic human being, a fellow member of humankind.
You said: “if you blow up a balloon, when exactly does it become ‘big’”
In your analogy, the ballon exists as a ballon, small or big. A difference in itrs size is not what signifies its existence. And, unlike a balloon, the embryonic human being’s develoment is self-directed.
You said: “You assume there’s a well-defined fact of the matter, but this is not [...] in evidence.”
Well, indeed, if the individual exists, then, that counts as evidence.
If not for the fact of the individual, then, his moral value would be moot. Placing greater value on an individual based on the level of his maturation needs far more justification than you have offered.
You said: “whether or not the nervous system is morally significant has absolutely nothing to do with that.”
And then: “[Sentience is developed] within the individual, and more particularly, within the nervous system of the individual.”
Hence the moral significance of the individual whose existence and development incudes both nervous system and sentience and precedes and follows both. We agree that this is the continuity that matters.
We are talking about the life of the human being and not just some abbreviated continuity.
CO: “Mark, do you assert that severed skin is an individual human being?”
No. I assert that it would seem to follow from your criteria, as near as they can be reverse-engineered from your huffing and puffing. It’s an attempt at what’s called a reductio ad absurdum - the disproof of a proposition by showing that it leads to an absurd conclusion. It’s a basic technique in logic, but some people just don’t get it because it’s beyond their comprehension that someone could work with an argument in the abstract without believing all the premises.
CO: “But why is severed skin not an individual human being? Or better: why is a severed nervous system not an indivdiual human being?”
On _my_ accounting, it’s not a human being because it’s not the bit of the nervous system that implements the “superior mental development, power of articulate speech” part of the definition. Note that the nervous system test is an unapologetic hedge: there’s good reason to think a nervous system is a _necessary_ condition for being human for moral purposes but no particular reason to think that it’s _sufficient_. That’s why I described starting to give moral protection to the fetus when it develops a nervous as conservative: it almost certainly includes younger fetuses than need to be included on a sentience criterion, so as not to exclude any that do need to be included.
On the other hand, on _your_ accounting, I have no idea why it’s not included. I could continue to attempt reverse-engineering of your thinking, but I’d probably be wasting my time - there probably isn’t any thinking, just a mindless conviction.
CO: “Well, indeed, if the individual exists, then, that counts as evidence.”
Words fail me. There’s really not much point continuing a discussion with someone who can argue in such a tight circle.
Mark, your words have failed you.
You just said: “there’s good reason to think a nervous system is a _necessary_ condition for being human for moral purposes but no particular reason to think that it’s _sufficient_.”
We were discussing the scientific evidence and you have again circled back to your philosophic viewpoint.
If your standard is sentience and thus you’d hedge by looking for the stuff that “implements the ’superior mental development, power of articulate speech’”, then the scientific threshold is pushed farther back.
His development of his nervous system, and prior to the emergence of his nervous system, is scientific evidence that the individual human being already existed before your favored threshold. This is not a philosphic distinction but a scientific one.
You already agreed that there is no scientific evidence that this development is supplied by an external source. The stuff to implement sentience existed within the individual at fusion of sperm and ova.
It is not circular, but linear, to state that the existence of an individual is scientific evidence.
To reverse-engineer your thinking: you would describe this individual as human but not as a human being. Or more precisely, you’d do so for moral purposes. Correct?
What moral purpose is served by such denial of the scientific evidence of membership in the species homo sapien based on maturation?
If sentience is not supplied from outside, then, it is supplied from within. Or do you have another plausible scientific alternative to offer?
CO: “His development of his nervous system, and prior to the emergence of his nervous system, is scientific evidence that the individual human being already existed before your favored threshold. This is not a philosphic distinction but a scientific one.”
Not at all. There’s obviously _something_ there before the development of a nervous system, but whether it counts as an “individual human being” is something that science can’t tell you - you first have to do the philosophical work of deciding what you _mean_ by an individual human being. And the hard part is the “being”. Science can tell you that a fetus is individual - it’s objectively distinguishable from two fetuses (cf. one foreskin). Science can tell you that a (human) fetus is human - it’s objectively distinguishable (by DNA from non-human fetuses (cf. a human foreskin). But science can’t tell you that it’s a being until you decide what you mean by a being. Multiple definitions are in play: sometimes “being” is used to include anything that exists, sometimes it is used to include only things that are alive (plants, and, briefly, foreskins, but not rocks), sometimes it is used to include only things that are animate (animals but not plants or foreskins), and sometimes it is used to include only things that are conscious (humans and, probably, higher animals, but not lower ones).
Now if you have any of these definitions in mind, science can be of some help in deciding whether a fetus is an individual human being or not - less with the consciousness one than the others, but still some. But science can’t help you at all in deciding which if any particular definition implies “worthy of moral protections”. Whatever definition you’re working to (charitably assuming you _are_ working to a definition and not just blathering), you have apparently come to the conclusion that “individual human being” implies “worthy of moral protection”, and science didn’t help you or Catholicism with that bit - it came purely out of _your_ moral philosophy.
CO: “The stuff to implement sentience existed within the individual at fusion of sperm and ova.”
Yes, but so what? The _sentience_ didn’t exist. Moreover, the stuff to implement sentience existed well before the fusion of sperm and ova.
CO: “To reverse-engineer your thinking: you would describe this individual as human but not as a human being. Or more precisely, you’d do so for moral purposes.”
Yes, see above.
CO: “What moral purpose is served by such denial of the scientific evidence of membership in the species homo sapien based on maturation?”
I don’t deny that the fetus is a member of the species homo sapiens. I deny that mere membership in the species homo sapiens is a sufficient condition for being worthy of moral protection.
CO: “If sentience is not supplied from outside, then, it is supplied from within. Or do you have another plausible scientific alternative to offer?”
The best metaphor for early human development, both physical and mental, is a cake, with DNA as the recipe. (Note that it’s actually a lousy metaphor to describe DNA as a blueprint, because there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between the structure of the DNA and the structure of the final product.) A recipe is not a cake, and the ingredients called for in the recipe are not a cake. And when you bake a cake, there is a gradual progression from ingredients to cake and no well-defined fact of the matter as to exactly when warm ingredients become something that can sensibly be described as an under-cooked cake.
Mark, you said: “you have apparently come to the conclusion that “individual human being” implies “worthy of moral protection”, and science didn’t help you or Catholicism with that bit - it came purely out of _your_ moral philosophy.”
Nope.
In this discussion, the starting line is the current scientific evidence.
* * *
So to be clear:
You said: “the stuff to implement sentience existed well before the fusion of sperm and ova.”
The embryo does not change species during maturation. The embryo self-directs its own development. It is not a severed part of another indivdiual. It is neither sperm nor ova, nor is it sperm and ova coexisting side-by-side, for the essence of sperm and the essence of ova fuse together and become one.
The embryo is an individual member of its species. It became so at fusion.
In the case of the embryonic human being, the individual is a member of homo sapiens. The earliest that the scientifically trained eye can see this is at fertilization.
We agree on the scientific evidence. Good.
* * *
You said: “I deny that mere membership in the species homo sapiens is a sufficient condition for being worthy of moral protection.”
The metaphor you described assumes that some external force does the baking, or rather the developing, of the ingredients.
Sentience does not develop the human being in his earliest stages of maturation. So who is the baker if not the pre-sentient individual?
CO: “Nope.”
To what? That you didn’t come to that conclusion or that science didn’t help you with it?
CO: “In this discussion, the starting line is the current scientific evidence.”
Sure, and from that starting point you can get to some morally uninteresting intermediate conclusions, but then there’s a chasm that can only be filled by some moral philosophy: what if anything it means to say that there is an individual human being present before the development of a nervous system, and why whatever human attributes the fetus does have make it worthy of moral protection. You keep pounding the table insisting there’s no gap, but you don’t actually show how to bridge it.
CO: “The metaphor you described assumes that some external force does the baking, or rather the developing, of the ingredients.”
In the case of a real cake there are two external forces of interest, the baker and the oven. The baker brings the ingredients together according to the recipe and the heat from the fuel in the oven sustains the transformation into a cake. In the analogy of human development to a cake, the parents jointly correspond to the baker and the mother’s body corresponds to the oven. (The DNA is both the recipe and the main ingredient.)
CO: “Sentience does not develop the human being in his earliest stages of maturation. So who is the baker if not the pre-sentient individual?”
Why on earth would you be casting around for someone to play the role of baker during baking? Between mixing the ingredients and taking the cake out of the oven, the baker doesn’t _do_ anything. Nothing is directed - everything that happens is the unfolding of chemistry implicit in the recipe. Of course the oven continues to act but it doesn’t _direct_ anything - it’s the epitomy of a brute force. (With all due respect to the trials of mothers, they don’t actually provide much more than energy to the fetus as it develops. Moreover, considered as an oven, the mother’s body has an automatic shutoff leaving even less for the baker to do.)
In the philosophy of consciousness, “sentience” can refer to the human ability to have subjective perceptual experiences, or “qualia”. wiki
The word “qualia” refers to those impressions that are made from our own inner criteria. The color red has a wavelength in the light spectrum, but that quantifiable measurement does not describe how red feels. Sexual orientation, the aesthetics of beauty, the depths of sorrow and despair, the shining ecstasy of spiritual rapture, and the outrageous hilarity of having fun are best understood in qualia rather than measurable quantifiable data.
Qualia: A Festival of Gay Folklife is dedicated to folklore and performance in the GLBTQ community. We sponsor a weekend-long festival each April with an academic conference, documentaries, and fundraiser events.
http://www.qualiaweekend.com/about.htm
Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope you can spread a little love this weekend.
Ciao
Mark said: “Between mixing the ingredients and taking the cake out of the oven, the baker doesn’t _do_ anything. Nothing is directed - everything that happens is the unfolding of chemistry implicit in the recipe.”
That’s where your metaphor with fusion does not work.
Mark said: “Why on earth would you be casting around for someone to play the role of baker during baking? ”
I am not casting about. I asked you a simple question which you answered simplistically.
At fusion a new life begins. It is an individual. It is a member of human sapiens. And, sure, in your philosophic viewpoint the human being has no moral value that merits the protection of his life.
You said that sentience was the most significant factor in determing your threshold. Or rather the development of sentience. Or rather the stuff from which sentience develops.
You would cast this development as a mere chemical reaction. Yet fusion has created a living individual whose development or maturation continues henceforth and long past the emergence of the characteristic sentience you are staking his life on.
Okay, so what? Now we must balance our protection of the (embryonic) human being and other factors. His vulnerability does not diminish that individual but rather adds weight to the choice to protect his life. Maybe this is not decisive, but neither is your placing your thumb on the scale in favor of sentience over everything else.
a fusion must be followed with a successful implantation and the gestation. many a fertilized egg are passed without much notice. a miscarriage, yes, is noted.
wriggle some more room into that . . .
CO: “That’s where your metaphor with fusion does not work.
So you say, but you don’t say why.
CO: “At fusion a new life begins. It is an individual. It is a member of human sapiens. And, sure, in your philosophic viewpoint the human being has no moral value that merits the protection of his life.”
The very early, non-sentient human being, yes. And, as you get around to tacitly conceding, it’s a matter of moral philosophy, not science. Science can’t tell you that life without sentience is or is not worth protecting (or that _sentience_ is or is not worth protecting). As the saying goes, “You can’t get ‘ought’ from ‘is’.”
CO: “You said that sentience was the most significant factor in determing your threshold. Or rather the development of sentience. Or rather the stuff from which sentience develops.”
Not the third, the second (which includes the first).
CO: “You would cast this development as a mere chemical reaction.”
For the purposes of understanding who, if anybody, is directing, yes. In the early stages, a developing fetus _is_ merely a chemical reaction in that nobody is directing - it’s a totally bottom-up phenomenon with molecules bumping into other molecules and combining according to the laws of chemistry. Of course, the interesting thing is that eventually feedback mechanisms are produced from this bottom-up process and begin to exert top-down control. But this happens gradually, and the highest and characteristically human level of control doesn’t arise till quite late.
“Yet fusion has created a living individual whose development or maturation continues henceforth and long past the emergence of the characteristic sentience you are staking his life on.”
For a certain sense of individual (distinguishable from more than one fetus by counting and from other individual fetuses by DNA), yes. You seem to think that something follows from this, but you don’t say what, and why.
Mark I did explain the failure of your metaphor.
You earlier said it was just a chemical reaction. Yet we agree that a fusion a living individual human has appeared. ["The very early, non-sentient human being, yes."] Each of us were once such a human being.
He is not pre-human. He is not a puddle of inanimate chemicals. He is an individual and a full-fledged member of homo sapiens. The scientific evidence demonstrates this and I think in our exchagne we have established agreement on this.
At stake is the life of a fellow human being in his earliest stages of his development.
So the difference between the embryonic human being and the adult human being is, like the difference between an infant and a toddler, a matter of degree, not kind.
All are members of humankind.
That is the baseline, scientifically. Everything else follows from this.
* * *
Mark said: “eventually feedback mechanisms are produced from this bottom-up process and begin to exert top-down control. But this happens gradually, and the highest and characteristically human level of control doesn’t arise till quite late.”
Characteristicaly human control? Please explain your meaning.
CO: “You earlier said it was just a chemical reaction. Yet we agree that a fusion a living individual human has appeared. ["The very early, non-sentient human being, yes."] Each of us were once such a human being.”
Err, there’s no contradiction here. Humans go through a phase where they can be fairly described as merely a chemical reaction, without any characteristically human features except human DNA, which of course itself is a purely chemical property.
CO: “He is not pre-human.”
In the DNA sense, indeed no. In any more interesting or morally relevant sense, yes.
CO: “He is not a puddle of inanimate chemicals.”
I can’t make sense of the “inanimate” here. The fetus _is_ a puddle of chemicals. It’s also animate, but it’s not a puddle of special “animate” chemicals, it’s a bunch of perfectly ordinary chemicals interacting in a particularly interesting but still mechanistic and reductionist way.
CO: “He is an individual and a full-fledged member of homo sapiens.”
Even metaphorically, full-fledged (having developed the plumage of an _adult_) is precisely what the fetus isn’t.
CO: “So the difference between the embryonic human being and the adult human being is, like the difference between an infant and a toddler, a matter of degree, not kind.”
Again, it depends on what aspect or aspects you think are important. In terms of DNA there isn’t so much as a difference of degree from beginning to end. In terms of physical form, the beginning and end states bear not the slightest resemblance to one another whatsoever - I would think that counts as a difference in kind. In terms of capacity to feel or think, again the beginning and ending states bear no resemblance to one another - it’s exactly zero to begin with and much more than any other type of living thing at the end. Moreover, the capacity to feel or think doesn’t increase steadily from zero, but remains zero for quite a while before taking off.
CO: “Characteristicaly human control? Please explain your meaning.”
The human mind is the most sophisticated control system in the known universe, and that “superior mental development” and the “power of articulate speech” that it supports are two of the three things called out as characteristically human by the OED.
I think the fusion of a sperm and an egg is a chemical reaction, that continues to be a chemical reaction, in or on which life miraculously takes hold when a Will or Soul takes hold of the physical chemical body and starts the heart beating and the blood flowing. Life is the will to live, the desire to pump blood through the body. It starts just about three weeks after fertilization.
The embryo is not analogous with a skin cell. The skin cell might be used to create an embryo through cloning. That would make skin cells closely analogous with sperm and ova.
None of us was a skin cell nor a sperm nor an ova. But all of us have been embryos.
* * *
I referred to membership in humankind and did not say that an embryo is an adult. A whole member of homo sapiens.
* * *
Mark, you have referred to the fetus even when we are discussing the embryonic stage of development. That is non-standard useage.
The embryo develops itself toward the next stage of maturation — that of the fetus. We call these stages these names for various reasons, of course, but the organism at the fetal stage is the same organism that grew from the embryo’s earliest emergence, at fusion.
It is my understanding, according to standard biology textbooks used in medical schools, that the “epigenetic primordia” distinguishes a human embryo from the products of failures in conception — such as hydatidiform moles. This “epigenetic primordia” is necessary for a functioning nervous system and brain.
So the development of features that you have identified for locating your conservative threshold would depend on a defining feature of the human embryo even when that embryo is a single celled organism — the zygote.
The zygote is a living human organism whose capacity, at root, is activated immediately to develop all the human qualities that you’ve described as being most valuable to your viewpoint. This does not extrinsic to the zygote. It is not extrinsic to the human being throughout his embryonic, fetal, infant, and adolescent development and into adulthood.
No epigenetic primordia, no brain, no adult human being to activate the capacity for sentience (in its varying degrees).
* * *
Mark said: “In terms of physical form, the beginning and end states bear not the slightest resemblance to one another whatsoever - I would think that counts as a difference in kind.”
It is a difference in degree for when a human being is an adult, he will look like a member of homo sapiens in the adult stage of development; and when he is in his fetal stage he will resemble human beings at that stage of development. At each degree along the full range of development, the living organism is a human being. There is no point at which the entity stops being one thing and becomes a member of humankind.
An apt analogue is the degree of difference between infant and adult as compared with the degree of differnce between embryo and fetus. Constantly a living organism — a full member of homo sapiens — and, by definition, possessing the capacity to orientate itself toward maturation rather than toward a change in kind — a change in species.
CO: “Mark, you have referred to the fetus even when we are discussing the embryonic stage of development. That is non-standard useage.”
Fair enough - I’ll be more precise. It doesn’t actually matter to any point that’s been made however.
CO: “I referred to membership in humankind and did not say that an embryo is an adult.”
I realize that you didn’t mean to say that, but you did say “full-fledged” which is a very unfortunate choice of metaphor. Moreover it’s not unfair to make an issue of it, because when you’re tap-dancing around the fact that the zygote/embryo/fetus doesn’t have the full set of characteristically human features, you’re not being very honest in helping yourself to metaphors that presume it does.
CO: “The embryo develops itself toward the next stage of maturation — that of the fetus. We call these stages these names for various reasons, of course, but the organism at the fetal stage is the same organism that grew from the embryo’s earliest emergence, at fusion.”
I get it that you’re making a continuity argument. And I don’t dispute that any adult that exists is continuous back to a fertilized egg. But who cares? That’s not the situation at hand - if we’re discussing whether it’s appropriate to terminate a particular zygote/embryo/fetus, that zygote/embryo/fetus is _not_ continuous forward to an adult. It might retrospectively _come_ to be but at the time we’re actually making the decision it’s not. I don’t see, and you haven’t explained why the zygote/embryo/fetus deserves moral protection by virtue of a non-existent connection to a non-existent adult person.
CO: “There is no point at which the entity stops being one thing and becomes a member of humankind.”
Of course. There is no such point any more than there is a point in the middle of blowing up a balloon where it suddenly goes from “small” to “big”. So? It doesn’t follow from that that all that zygotes/embryos/fetus are the same as adults for moral purposes, any more than the parallel argument shows that all balloons must be “big” because they’re potentially continuous with balloons that are “big”.
CO: “It is a difference in degree for when a human being is an adult, he will look like a member of homo sapiens in the adult stage of development; and when he is in his fetal stage he will resemble human beings at that stage of development. ”
That’s the whole point: the nature of a human being at an early stage of development is to be pretty much indistinguishable from any other animal at an early stage of development, except by DNA.
Mark said: “the nature of a human being at an early stage of development is to be pretty much indistinguishable from any other animal at an early stage of development, except by DNA.”
Visually and, perhaps, in the mechanistic sense, the resemblance might be strong.
However, the nature of the epigenetic state of the human primordial cell is to orientate itself toward the development of a fetal human being. The embryo not only possesses a human genome, it uses it and self-integrates as a whole organism.
Of course, an animal embryo also possesses and uses DNA of its kind in its way. So its nature is different from that of the human organism despite mechanistic similarities.
You asked about a particular embryo. You said, this embryo is not an adult human being. So we shouldn’t speculate about his further development toward adulthood. But that is not an apt nor a necessary restriction here.
While each human embryo is a unique individual, all are whole members of humankind. You and I have travelled a path of development that is well-trod. It is not as if none came before us. And it is not as if none will follow us. This continuity of development is the connection between that particular embryo and all other human beings along the development path.
The adult is the matured embryo; the embryo is the immature adult.
CO: “However, the nature of the epigenetic state of the human primordial cell is to orientate itself toward the development of a fetal human being.”
I agree. So we’re back to the continuity argument. And I ask again, why do we owe something to the fetus on account of an as-yet nonexistent connection to an as-yet non-existent person?
To be clear: my meaning is that the human primordial cell is already a human being.
That is the context in which the bit you quoted from me is correctly read.
Now, I expect you’d disagree and so your agreement is with a clipped version of what I had said.
I’ve discussed the scientific evidence. From fusion onward, he already is a human being.
It seems to me that is the starting line for the moral considerations. But you would start someplace else.
Do you agree with that summary?
* * *
I have not made a continuity argument for owing something to someone. You have kept asking me to do so.
I haven’t isolated the fetal human being and I haven’t said we owed something on account of his being a non-existent person.
You would expect me to, given the question.
It seems to me, Mark, that it is you who has assessed the fetal human being on account of nonexistent sentience, the feature that you say makes an adult a human being.
You say the connection is some precursor to the fully developed human brain. Yet that is your forecasting of a future as-yet non-existent brain.
Yours is a continuity argument.
However, I have pointed out that the living human organism cannot develop his brain if not for the epigenetic primordia that is already present at fusion. This is the precursor, the necessary thing, that connects the embryonic stage of development to the adult stage of development.
So if your own continuity argument is to remain on the table, it is fair to challenge your proposed threshold on its own terms.
My own argument for the moral standing of the human being has nothing to do with the acquirement of features that are characterisic of various stages of development.
* * *
Who is “we” anyway?
I suppose you meant to ask, why do adult human beings owe something to non-adult human beings?
And you are asking for some special feature(s) of the non-adult that would merit him being treated as a human being?
This is not about us versus them. We are all of a kind, youngest to eldest. We might as well ask, why treat an adult human being as a human being?
Obviously, the pre-adult individual is a human being. A good default position is to treat him as one at all stages of his development.
* * *
On the other hand why would we treat a human being as less than a human being at any stage of his maturation?
Given that his life is at stake, it seems only fair that we owe him at least an answer that includes some very significant — even extraordinary — factor(s) that might tip the balance against treating any human being as a fellow member of humankind.
CO: “Do you agree with that summary?”
Yes.
CO: “I haven’t isolated the fetal human being and I haven’t said we owed something on account of his being a non-existent person”
That’s not what I said you said, and I’m not sure whether you misunderstood or whether you’re just a careless writer. I said your argument amounted to that we owed moral protections to the fetus because of continuity with an adult human being who I’m happy to agree _would_ deserve moral protections if he (or she) existed but who in fact _doesn’t_ exist at the time the decision is being made. Of course you didn’t make it in quite that form, but you made it implicitly by insisting on the potential to become an adult human as sufficient to qualify as human for moral purposes.
CO: “However, I have pointed out that the living human organism cannot develop his brain if not for the epigenetic primordia that is already present at fusion.”
I don’t disagree, I merely point out that while it is perfectly clear that “epigenetic primordia” may _lead_ to a human brain, they are _not_ a human brain, and you haven’t explained why they should be treated the same for moral purposes.
CO: “On the other hand why would we treat a human being as less than a human being at any stage of his maturation?”
You’re assuming the conclusion: that he (or she) _is_ a human being for the purposes at all stages of development.
CO: “Given that his life is at stake, it seems only fair that we owe him at least an answer that includes some very significant — even extraordinary — factor(s) that might tip the balance against treating any human being as a fellow member of humankind.”
Whose life? You assume that there’s a someone to do the owning of the life, but that’s precisely what’s not established. When I ask myself, “what am I?”, the obvious answer seems to be “my sentience”. _My_ life and _my_ body and _my_ brain are important to that _me_ because they appear to be necessary conditions for sentience. But they’re not sufficient conditions, and if they exist but my sentience doesn’t, then it’s misleading to say that they’re of no further value to me, rather, there is no “me” to value them. For precisely this reason, the “me” of now says, if the body/brain “I” have now is permanently damaged and, beyond reasonable doubt will no longer support sentience, then please do something useful with what’s salvageable. It won’t be a moral offence against the “me” of that time because there won’t be one, and (provided I have confidence you’ll respect my wishes) it’ll make the “me” of now happier. In the same way, I don’t think there a “him” (or “her”) associated with a early stage fetus or why we should pretend there is.
Mark said: “implicitly by insisting on the potential to become an adult human as sufficient to qualify as human for moral purposes”
Not quite right. My previous response was carefully written.
The embryo has standing — as a human being — on his own. Just as the infant, the adolescent, and the adult. I am not pointing at an individual and saying he will *become* an adult and thus that particular embryo is a *potential* person. He may be an adult human being in the future, but he already is a human being now.
The embryonic human being, the infant human being, and the adolescent human being — three different individuals — are three human beings even if they are not yewt adults. One, two, three human beings. Zero adults. This is not about *potential* human beings.
And it is not about persons — not yet since we’ve been discussing the scientific evidence.
I’ll add for emphasis: all three are human beings even if they do not reach adulthood — even if their lives were to end immediately after I typed my next fullstop.
* * *
You said: “You’re assuming the conclusion”
As I said earlier, I have discussed the scientific evidence which produced this conclusion. On the major points, you have agreed with my assessment of the evidence, even if you have clearly and repeatedly disagreed with the philosophic conclusion you would infer from my comments.
The best scientific answer to the question — When does the life of the human being begin? — is at fertilization. Objectively that is the bright line.
However, you may have mistaken this for an unstated philosophic conclusion.
Regardless of when a human being comes into existence, you have asserted: “I deny that mere membership in the species homo sapiens is a sufficient condition for being worthy of moral protection.”
You’ve also acknowledged that the embryo/fetus is a member of homo sapiens, that the embryo/fetus is a human being, and that human development — including sentience — is from within because sentience is embodied.
Right?
Now, I do not presume that your philosophic reasoning is based on a predrawn conclusion.
You accept the scientific evidence. You just place decisive significance on sentience because, for you, it is intrinsically valuable for moral purposes. So for the philosophic question you’d start with that choice of emphasis.
Right?
And then you worked backward and made a continuity argument. You gave additional weight to the scientific evidence which fits your valuation of sentience; and you have hedged your best guess for a threshold for “personhood” or person-ness. That hedge, in terms of sentience, is a very generous.
When the particular individual passes the threshold, sentient or not, fully-actualized or not, the individual becomes a person. This rule applies to all and is not conditional on a case-by-case basis.
Yes?
We both know that the philosophic basis for moral obligation is not something that can be proven with human reason alone.
We begin with propositions — with first principles — and reason our way forward to our best rational conclusion. There is no mathematical certainty.
For now, let’s put aside the scientific evidence.
Let’s put aside the philosophic reasoning that would produce our philosophic conclusions, for now.
Jumping into the middle part:
Assuming that we have identified the human-being-for-moral-purposes (let’s call that a “person”), can we agree on the following?
1. Every living person possesses equal dignity.
2. All persons possess an invioable right to be cared for, or, at minimum, not to be exploited. (Or, to be protected, as you’ve put it).
3. Human dignity is intrinsic to what the person is and not a function of how much the person resembles a theoretically fully-actualized person. (i.e. Human dignity is a given, based on kind rather than on degree of person-ness or personhood).
The principles on this list are not my original creations, obviously. They’ve been expressed by many others and probably with greater precision.
But the gist of the list is that whatever we recognize as “the person” we’d accord equal treatment. That’s the proposition even if persons are unequal in all kinds of other ways. We’d impose this proposition as the basis for consideration of our moral obligations of one to one another.
That is, past the threshold of “personhood”, anyway.
Yes?
* * *
Your assertion that sentience is decisive would make personhood contingent upon subjective criteria. It would weaken the proposition that we are created equal. I say that because equality would become conditional. Personhood and non-personhood would be come an arbitrary and moveable distinction.
That is the utlity, obviously, of your having transformed a matter of degree into a question of kind.
Like yourself, I value sentience as a human quality.
However, it is not decisive because very few, if any, human beings fully actualize their sentience. Sentience is a quality that varies in degree among human beings — adult and non-adult alike.
The moral obligation to protect cannot be scientifically determined by an extrinsic measure of sentience at a zero mark below which protection is withrdrawn. So the best that can be offered is some hedged threshold, as you have offered.
The idea of a hedge is “it is better to be safe than sorry”. Or “it is better to err on the side of moral obligation than indifference”.
If only in terms of your own philosophic valuation of sentience, and the acknowledged scientific fact that the epigenetic primordia is necessary for a functioning nervors system and brain, why not place the threshold closer to fertlizaton or at fertlization?
Adulthood — and the fully developed brain — is not guaranteed, as you’ve noted, during the embryonic stage of maturation. But adulthood is about 2 decades beyond your proposed threshold while fertilization is only 2 days prior.
Is there some use for the embryo that you have in mind, Mark, the precludes a moral obligation to protect the embryo?
CO: “I am not pointing at an individual and saying he will *become* an adult and thus that particular embryo is a *potential* person. He may be an adult human being in the future, but he already is a human being now.”
That’s what I meant when I said you were making the argument implicitly by insisting on the potential to become an adult human as sufficient to qualify as human for moral purposes. At least, I charitably assume that that’s what you’re saying. If that’s not your argument then you’re just pounding the table and saying the embryo _is_ a human person dammit, and by the way, it has the potential to become an adult.
CO: “Objectively that [fertilization] is the bright line.”
It’s certainly a bright line. So is birth. So are a bunch of other points such as quickening. None of them are necessarily in the right place.
CO: “Assuming that we have identified the human-being-for-moral-purposes (let’s call that a “person”), can we agree on the following?”
Yes.
CO: “Your assertion that sentience is decisive would make personhood contingent upon subjective criteria.”
Sure, to some extent, but I think I’ve already included ample hedge.
CO: “However, it is not decisive because very few, if any, human beings fully actualize their sentience.”
I have no idea what you mean by that. Certainly any threshold of sentience that includes very few adult humans is light years from what I had in mind.
CO: “Is there some use for the embryo that you have in mind, Mark, the precludes a moral obligation to protect the embryo?”
Not a use particularly. I was mostly coming at it from the point of view of whether a woman is obligated to go through with a pregnancy.
Mark said: “That’s what I meant when I said you were making the argument implicitly by insisting on the potential to become an adult human as sufficient to qualify as human for moral purposes.”
No, I referred to the scientific evidence re the human being.
You have been talking about the philosphic “person” and putting the scientific evidence aside, from the getgo.
My distinction remains.
You said: “It’s certainly a bright line. So is birth. So are a bunch of other points such as quickening. None of them are necessarily in the right place.”
Fertilization is the right line for establishing scientifically that the human being is already in existence.
You’ve offer a philosophic line, not a scientific one.
You said: “I think I’ve already included ample hedge”
You have conceded the hedge.
Whether or not it is ample enough is aquestion that follows.
Unlike, say fertlization or birth, sentience is never a bright line based on scientific evidence.
Not at either end of the spectrum of sentience — fully-actualized at the most mature end and newly-emerged at the most immature end. Hedging would be required, not optional.
The priority you have placed on sentience as a human quality, and the intrinsic necessity of hedging (ample enough of not), depends entirely on transforming a matter of degree into a philosophic matter of kind.
If your hedge is deemed ample, by you, due to some physical feature that emerges at some very early stage of development, then, there is no principled basis on offer — yet — to move it closer to adulthood than to fertilization.
At least, I haven’t picked up on such a basis in your remarks here.
Perhaps your emphasis on sentience is based on speculation about what the very young human being may be feeling or sensing or thinking?
CO: “Fertilization is the right line for establishing scientifically that the human being is already in existence.”
For some purposes, probably. For moral purposes, I don’t think so.
CO: “You’ve offer a philosophic line, not a scientific one.”
I don’t see any other way of doing it. The philosophy has to be informed by science of course, but the science can’t tell you what of the many typical characteristics of being human are morally important.
CO: “At least, I haven’t picked up on such a basis in your remarks here.”
I don’t think it’s been thrashed out, but it rests on the neurological development of the embryo/fetus.
CO: “Perhaps your emphasis on sentience is based on speculation about what the very young human being may be feeling or sensing or thinking?”
A bit stronger than speculation. I consider it beyond reasonable doubt that if there isn’t a functioning brain, there isn’t sentience.
For moral purposes, the existence of a living human being is not a bright line?
Howso?
Living is a typical human characteristic of the integral human organism. The scientific evidence for a bright line at fertilization is highly relevant for moral purposes.
You haven’t really said why it is not, according to your philosophic view.
If there is not epigenetic primordia, there can be no functioning nervous system or brain.
If a hedge is necessary, why not hedge toward that bright line *because* you’d emphasize sentience?
CO: “Howso?”
I believe I’ve explained in considerable detail, and I’m afraid I think it’s not an effective use of my time to start from the beginning for the benefit of someone who doesn’t seem to have been listening.
It is a bright line for moral purposes, Mark, but you’d choose a different line that is not bright and necessitates hedging.
CO: “It [conception] is a bright line for moral purposes, Mark, but you’d choose a different line that is not bright and necessitates hedging.”
Who cares how bright a line it is if it’s not in the right place? Three things have been mentioned that an early embryo/fetus has from conception: DNA, life, and the potential to become an adult. I don’t think any of these are morally salient criteria in their own right, for reasons I’ve explained. I think the only sensible starting point is sentience, again, for reasons I’ve explained. The fact that _some_ hedging may be prudent doesn’t mean (i) that you can sensibly start anywhere else but at sentience, (ii) that conception can sensibly be regarded as anything but a hedge around sentience, or (iii) that hedging all the way back to conception isn’t pointless overkill.
No, Mark, not the potential to become an adult.
The embryonic human being is already a member of the human family. Not a potential member nor a potential human being. But a whole human being. That is a bright scientific line.
Also, the distinguishing feature is not merely the possession of human DNA but the embry’s use of its own DNA to self-integrate as a living organism. The human DNA happens to be unique to that individual human being. So the embryo is of a kind — i.e. humankind — and an individual human being.
If he lacked human DNA, his use of his DNA, and his life, then, the moral line for the rest of us would be moot.
You have suggested that sentience is another line, but one not so bright, which you value. You’ve not really explained why anyone else should value it as highly as you do.
Even sentience requires embodiment, as we’ve discussed.
You said: The fact that _some_ hedging may be prudent …
However, both ends of the range of sentience — emergence and full-actualization — are not determined by the scientific evidence. You mischaracterize when you say “some hedging may be prudent”. Hedging is a necessity given your purpose is to transform a matter of degree into a line demarcating a kind.
You said: The fact that _some_ hedging may be prudent doesn’t mean (i) that you can sensibly start anywhere else but at sentience, (ii) that conception can sensibly be regarded as anything but a hedge around sentience, or (iii) that hedging all the way back to conception isn’t pointless overkill.
But you have conceded that you’d start with the mere potential for sentience, not at sentience.
You have been reasoning through faulty analogies.
Just now you repeated the notion of the “potential adult” when I was speaking of the existing human being. You referred to possession of DNA when I was speaking of that particular human being’s DNA and his use of his DNA.
Yet, here you’ve used sentience as a starting place without anchoring it to the scientific evidence for the emergence of sentience nor to the potential of full-actualization of sentience. You haven’t pegged sentience to the particular human being’s use of his sentience.
The analogy of potential adult and potential sentience is inapt. A closer analogy is required — the existing human being who possesses uses his DNA as compared with the existing human being who possesses and uses his sentience.
How would you start with the emergence of sentience without starting at the bright scientific line of fertilization?
No sentient human being was anything other than a human being prior to developing and using his sentience. Fertilization is more than a hedge. it is a prerequisite.
Within your own stated reasoning, Mark, I did observe that conception would better serve the purpose of a hedge. But perhaps I misunderstand your purpose.
You seem to think that hedging “may be prudent” rather than a necessity, given your reasoning about sentience.
If prudence is the operative word, does that the idea of a hedge is “it is better to be safe than sorry”. Or “it is better to err on the side of moral obligation than indifference”?
Would it not be imprudent, i.e. overkill, to delay moral obligation where the life of an existing human being is already at stake?
CO: “The embryonic human being is already a member of the human family. Not a potential member nor a potential human being. But a whole human being. ”
You keep pounding the table about this, but you don’t say according to what criteria it qualifies. Three have been mentioned, and they don’t seem particularly morally salient, for reasons I’ve outlined.
CO: “Also, the distinguishing feature is not merely the possession of human DNA but the embry’s use of its own DNA to self-integrate as a living organism. The human DNA happens to be unique to that individual human being. So the embryo is of a kind — i.e. humankind — and an individual human being.”
It’s clearly alive and it’s clearly human to the extent of having distinctive DNA, but that’s a pretty limited extent and again you evade saying why it’s an important or morally salient extent.
CO: “If he lacked human DNA, his use of his DNA, and his life, then, the moral line for the rest of us would be moot.”
You keep assuming the conclusion: that there’s a “he” there that is like us in a morally salient way, and in particular a “he” that can “possess” something in a morally salient way. After all, a severed (human) foreskin possesses human DNA too, and we don’t view that as morally salient.
CO: “But you have conceded that you’d start with the mere potential for sentience, not at sentience.”
I don’t believe I have, or at least not in any sense that helps your case. I would start with sentience, period. I would think it prudent to hedge about that to include anything that plausibly might _be_ sentient. For reasons I’ve explained, I would specifically not seek to extend the hedge to include things that merely might _become_ sentient.
Typically, Mark, sex is determined at the earliest stages of development. And I have merely pointed to the scientific evidence as producing a bright line that a human being exists — and not merely possesses DNA.
As already discussed, skin cells are analogous with sperm and ova, not with embryos.
If you would start “with sentience, period” then please point to that starting line rather than to a hedge.
CO: “Typically, Mark, sex is determined at the earliest stages of development. ”
Determined, yes - the DNA is sex-specific from the beginning. Meaningfully present, no.
CO: “And I have merely pointed to the scientific evidence as producing a bright line that a human being exists — and not merely possesses DNA.”
No, you’ve insisted that there’s a human being present, and you’ve insisted that the scientific evidence proves it, but you’ve never actually given an argument - I had to bring up the DNA for example.
CO: “As already discussed, skin cells are analogous with sperm and ova, not with embryos.”
By what criterion and why is it important? In particular, one usual objection to counting sperm and ova is that they don’t have a full complement of DNA (they’re haploid). But skin cells do.
CO: “If you would start “with sentience, period” then please point to that starting line rather than to a hedge.”
Why should I bother? If sentience is what matters and the hedge is adequate, that’s the end of it.
Early on, Mark, we discussed DNA. You lept to your philosophic view of personhood and skipped past the scientific evidence while I was still talking of the scientific evidence. You mistakeny have analogized skin cells with embryos. You mistakenly thought I was referring to a “potential adult” because that is the paradigm you have chosen for emphasizing sentience. I’ve touched on your own stated reasoning regarding the scientific evidence of sentience.
Severed skin has the same DNA as the individual from whom the skin was severed. An embryo is not part of his father nor of his mother but is a unique individual. That DNA is utilized by this living organism to self-integrate and direct his own development as a particular member of humankind. This is impossible for the severed skin — its DNA is not unique and skin cells remain skin cells — it is merely a part of a member of humankind. Skin cells (in cloning) might be closely analogous with sperm and ova — if you are trying to get from skin cells to the embryo to the “potential adult”, as it seems you are trying to do. But skin cells are not closely analogous with embryos just because of the fact of DNA.
I’ve discussed this only on the merits of the scientific evidence for a bright line. Not a moral line. A scientific line.
You depend on faulty analogies, Mark. The epigentic primordia is necessary for a nervous system and brain. That is also a line that is far more significant to sentience than your selection of a degree of development for transformation into a kind — that some point of maturation the human being transforms from something like a severed skin to something like a pre-adult person. In fact, you have now refused to selected a degree and have instead arbitrarily chosen a hedge that is about two decades prior to the emergence of an adult brain — and only about two weeks after the bright line at fertlization.
The hedge is arbitrary because sentience is not the bright scientific line even if it remains your vague moral line.
What purpose does the hedge serve if not to err on the side of moral obligation — to be safe rather than sorry?
CO: “Early on, Mark, we discussed DNA. You lept to your philosophic view of personhood and skipped past the scientific evidence while I was still talking of the scientific evidence.”
Exactly. I largely ignored your repeated presentations of the scientific evidence because we agree on the scientific evidence. What we disagree on is the implications of the scientific evidence, and in fact the scientific evidence has no implications without additional moral/philosophic assumptions. I’ve presented my moral philosophy on the subject and justified it in terms of things I value and that I fancy other people might value as well. You’ve blathered on completely oblivious to the fact that you’re making non-obvious moral/philosophical assumptions in addition to the scientific evidence. I’e tried drawing this to your attention but with no success whatsoever, and it’s not an effective use of my time to continue.
We agreed on the scientific evidence. There is a human being in existence at fertlization.
But you pose as if you can’t see the value of that scientific fact, that bright scientific line, when it comes to the philosophic question of moral obligation to protect.
You declared that you don’t value the human being as a human being. You value a subset of characteristics of the matured human being. Why, you haven’t bothered to say; you just pointed to a dictionary.
That was your starting line: an axiomatic belief which remains unsupported by your stated reasoning.
CO: “We agreed on the scientific evidence. There is a human being in existence at fertlization.”
No, we never got that far. “Human” - yes. “Being” - like I said, it depends on your definition. For morally uninteresting definitions (”anything that exists”), sure. For morally interesting ones, no.
We can go through your comments, Mark, and read where you did agree that a human being is in existence at fertilization.
I’ve not used a definition remotely like “anything that exists” even if you have tried to press that onto my remarks.
If the scientifically evidenced existence of a fellow human being is not morally interesting to you, when it comes to the question of protection, then, there can be no common philosophical ground between us.
There would be nothing to hedge and nothing to balance, based on what you’ve offered, only your arbitrary sayso.
But earlier you had hinted that there was common philosphical ground and I’ve sought to demarcate it by first establishing what scientific eyes can indeed discern.
Unfortunately, now you’d deny even that much.
CO: “We can go through your comments, Mark, and read where you did agree that a human being is in existence at fertilization.”
I didn’t agree to that, although I can see one place where I could be misread as doing so: “I would not deny that there was a human being in a certain sense (continuity) before the development of the nervous system, but whether or not the nervous system is morally significant has absolutely nothing to do with that.”
By that I meant to emphasize that it is _not_ substantively a human being - it does not have the characteristics that are normally taken as definitional of either human or being. Rather, _if_ it is allowed to develop, then _retrospectively_ there will be a connection with something that is a human being.