Texas Senate Filibuster Regarding Abortion

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Daily birth control pills (the standard) are a fucking joke, you miss 1 dose you're fucked for a month. Also you get to fuck around with your hormones. That feels good.

http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-contr...-control-pills
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/mar...sers-28812.htm

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Anyways, you completely missed the point that since most people STILL eat animals despite knowing their sentient, we discredit the idea that sentience is where we draw the line to not kill something.

No, I understood your point. It's just not relevant because we're talking about humans, here, and not animals that we're all generally OK with eating/killing humanely. You're taking the "cutoff of sentience" from the human/abortion debate, and then applying it in other domains where the context is different.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

It's that a fetus is going to be HUMAN that makes aborting a sentient fetus wrong. Which implies that human life, irregardless of sentience, holds some sort of value to people.

Of course... this entire debate is about humans. We're not talking about animals.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

It's not stupid to consider conception as the moment at which a fetus has it's own life and therefore it's own rights. I think it's more stupid to consider birth as the moment a person gets rights, seeing as a baby definitely has developed senses long before then.

It's not "stupid," no, but we have to ask ourselves "why" we grant human rights and whether or not it makes sense in all contexts past conception, and whether or not utility is maximized. My argument is simple: If you haven't even developed the ability to be a utility-interpreting agent (especially where emotion is involved), then any amount of moral posturing or application of rights won't make any sense, because all of those constructs boil down to utility/disutility on some level.

And yeah, it is stupid to declare birth the starting moment, but thankfully nobody here is making that argument.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

http://birthpsychology.com/free-arti...classical-view

Sense of touch, 8 weeks. Via response to touch.

Requirement of ANY sort of functional cortex for sentience is wrong. Cortex helps understand senses, which obviously is tied into experiencing them, but is hardly necessary for feeling them. Experience of pain isn't what I would deem the important criteria for when to not kill a fetus anyways.

Also, this incongruity in points of brain development and versus a response is simply furthering my point that we don't know when sentience develops.

Stop using argument-from-ignorance. Just because you may not know something doesn't mean others don't. If you do it again, I'm not going to respond.

Fetuses begin developing a brain stem at ~7 weeks, but the components required for consciousness don't really form until much, much later. Just because there is an "incongruence" between these two doesn't mean we don't have the evidence/understanding to make sense of what the different implications are. If you want to look into something interesting, Google whether or not insects feel pain.

The ability to respond to stimuli is not the same as sentience or "feeling" them in the way we typically think. It's an unconscious, automatic reaction.

For example:

This is a child born with anencephaly, which means they lack a brain -- they only have the stem. In this case, it's one of those rare occurrences when the child actually lives for a while. However, it's not even aware it exists. It can't feel, taste, smell, hear, or even think. And yet it moves and writhes around and responds to external stimuli all the same.

[Cavernio]

Telling me that you or others 'know better' is retarded. The only criteria that you have provided to me about sentience is the requirement of a cortex, which is plain wrong. The cortex organizes information, allows for interpretation, separates us from animals. It most certainly is not required for emotions or sensations. Don't pretend like I don't know shit about the brain...I have a science degree in psychology. Your midbrain is where emotions are ultimately processed. And also, if a kid is 'responding to stimuli', then it has a sense of touch. The ability to feel and the ability to realize that you are a being that is feeling are 2 different things. A brain stem is strong cephalization, is highly organized, and it complex. It's not like it's individual, single cells acting independently of each other in response to stimuli.

You are showing ignorance of any sort of semi-complex neuropsychology, and you're pretending that we aren't ignorant about many things. An argument based on us being ignorant is 100% valid if we're ignorant. In order to make me stop arguing based on that, you need to give some sort of proof that we know when a being first experiences. So far, you seem to think that's months later in gestation than I do. You've given me an example of a baby that can't see, hear, taste or smell, and then say 'hey look, it doesn't experience', while saying that responding to touch without a cortex erroneously means that the baby doesn't experience touch. You have shown or proved nothing, but it seems like you are still presuming that cortex is required for sensation and you're trying to show me 'look, science knows that this kid isn't experiencing anything'. For what it's worth, I wouldn't want to raise that kid as my own, I'd seriously consider abortion if I knew about it. I also think that I would be being selfish for it, because I do consider that baby as having the ability to experience...it just can't experience much.

Counter-example to cortical involvement being necessary for experience:
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~knutson/ans/ansch11.pdf
Stuff known decades ago about fear detailing how it doesn't require cortical involvement, including the ability for completely non-cortical brain to learn. And IIRC my studies, all basic emotions require midbrain only.

There is a reason why religion and thinking that souls or a spirit and such exist, because to say that there's something magical with the beginning of life that we don't quite get almost makes more sense than saying the ability to experience is derived, somehow, from parts that don't seem to experience by themselves. We've gone down discussions before where you had to conclude that everything in the world possesses some sort of rudimentary consciousness.

I also don't know what you were getting at with your WebMD link, because it looked like you were pointing it out to show that I was wrong, when in fact it agrees with me.
"Any time you forget to take a pill, you must use another form of birth control until you finish the pill pack. When you forget to take a birth control pill, you increase the chance of releasing an egg from your ovary."

[popsicle_3000]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

"Any time you forget to take a pill, you must use another form of birth control until you finish the pill pack. When you forget to take a birth control pill, you increase the chance of releasing an egg from your ovary."

of course that's true. But what isn't true is your bit about them being completely screwed if they miss one pill.
Taken religiously, the pill has success rate of >99%. Taken more sporadically, it drops the success rate, but is still effective

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Telling me that you or others 'know better' is retarded. The only criteria that you have provided to me about sentience is the requirement of a cortex, which is plain wrong. The cortex organizes information, allows for interpretation, separates us from animals. It most certainly is not required for emotions or sensations. Don't pretend like I don't know shit about the brain...I have a science degree in psychology. Your midbrain is where emotions are ultimately processed. And also, if a kid is 'responding to stimuli', then it has a sense of touch. The ability to feel and the ability to realize that you are a being that is feeling are 2 different things. A brain stem is strong cephalization, is highly organized, and it complex. It's not like it's individual, single cells acting independently of each other in response to stimuli.

You are showing ignorance of any sort of semi-complex neuropsychology, and you're pretending that we aren't ignorant about many things. An argument based on us being ignorant is 100% valid if we're ignorant. In order to make me stop arguing based on that, you need to give some sort of proof that we know when a being first experiences. So far, you seem to think that's months later in gestation than I do. You've given me an example of a baby that can't see, hear, taste or smell, and then say 'hey look, it doesn't experience', while saying that responding to touch without a cortex erroneously means that the baby doesn't experience touch. You have shown or proved nothing, but it seems like you are still presuming that cortex is required for sensation and you're trying to show me 'look, science knows that this kid isn't experiencing anything'. For what it's worth, I wouldn't want to raise that kid as my own, I'd seriously consider abortion if I knew about it. I also think that I would be being selfish for it, because I do consider that baby as having the ability to experience...it just can't experience much.

All evidence points to fetuses not being sentient/able to feel pain/process any sort of conscious experience well into the process. A vast majority of abortions happen way before such points even become concerns anyway.

An argument based on us being ignorant is only valid as far as the ignorance. Just because we are ignorant about one piece doesn't make us ignorant about everything else we know. You don't seem to understand the difference between physical reaction to stimuli and the processing of that stimuli into something we would call "conscious pain" as we typically experience it.

And you can't "consider that baby as having the ability to experience" because it doesn't have the components necessary to experience anything. Again, look into insects (which I assume you haven't done based on the nature of your response). Do you think a plastic/electronic doll manufactured by Mattel feels pain when you hit it just because it may move around when you press its buttons and react to voice commands? Do you believe it has the ability to interpret utility?

Originally Posted by Cavernio

There is a reason why religion and thinking that souls or a spirit and such exist, because to say that there's something magical with the beginning of life that we don't quite get almost makes more sense than saying the ability to experience is derived, somehow, from parts that don't seem to experience by themselves. We've gone down discussions before where you had to conclude that everything in the world possesses some sort of rudimentary consciousness.

No. Again, it's called argument-from-ignorance.

Anyway, you are conflating the "hard problem of consciousness" with the concept of sentience, utility, pain, and emotion. We don't need the concept of a soul to explain anything.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

I also don't know what you were getting at with your WebMD link, because it looked like you were pointing it out to show that I was wrong, when in fact it agrees with me.
"Any time you forget to take a pill, you must use another form of birth control until you finish the pill pack. When you forget to take a birth control pill, you increase the chance of releasing an egg from your ovary."

You said you miss one day and it fucks up your whole month, which isn't true. Again, read the links. Chances fluctuate, but it's by no means some dire strait and there are ways to get back on track depending on the nature of the irregularity.

[DontBanMeYet]

this is my honest belief. i believe that the more abortions, the better. there are way too many people on this planet. at this point, more babies does a lot more damage to our future than less babies. easier access to abortions and birth control= less babies = good.


more babies=bad

less babies= good


it's that simple.



Hell, I would even condone infanticide.. why not? The future state of humanity would likely benefit from a significant reduction in the earth's population(as opposed to an increase). I'm not saying we should kill all of our children, but killing a good chunk of them wouldn't hurt. we are going to reach a breaking point if we don't slow down our growth.

[DontBanMeYet]

BKFP

Baby Killers For Peace

trademark 2013. you read it here first

[adlp]

shouldve made your alt name Dr. Breen then

[Aldentron]

Originally Posted by dontbanmeyet

more babies=bad

less babies= good


it's that simple.

it's that simple.