AS199: Debating Abortion, with Tyler Vela Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking, this is episode 199, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith, almost 200, there you go, 200 is going to be celebrated by doing some commentary on this debate, because it was very interesting, we're going to have part two here with Tyler Vela, debate on abortion, debate slash discussion, and, well, let's just see what happens here in part two.

0:01:03 Tyler: Right, the, the talking about sperm and abstract of potential humans is a completely different category than than talking about a human, right? So, uh, you know, I could, I could, you know, a woman could smoke and drink and do all that kind of stuff and never become pregnant, there's... there's, you know, she's setting up a potential where a potential human, uh, you know, might be harmed if they come into that situation, but that's different than causing harm to an actual human, right? So it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't rely on the personhood aspect of it. Um, but really we're talking about direct harm to a human with a future like mine, as opposed to causing future harm to a person. Um, so that, that's going to be the salient difference.

0:01:45 Thomas: Yeah, and it is an interesting conundrum, but I think the real real issue is that you're not, when you kill something that we're, so I wanted, I thought you were still relying on the personhood and I thought you were trying to avoid that. So if we're both agreed that it's not a person, you're Not doing any harm when you Kill the fetus. You're just not, I mean, you are not doing any Harm to a person.

0:01:58 Tyler: Nope.

0:02:10 Thomas: But when you smoke, because you're doing, in that case, you Are doing harm to a Person because you are changing the future of what what they're going to become. They're going to live in a different way. When you kill the fetus, when you abort, it doesn't end up becoming a person. I mean, it really, it's, that's just what it is. I mean, I don't, I think it's a little trick to try to get, you're trying to say, how is it that one thing you do that affects a person later is bad, another thing you do which seems worse is actually not as bad? Well, it's because the person doesn't end up happening in the other thing. In

0:02:08 Tyler: So, right. So then, then why, Then why is it morally repugnant to smoke?

0:02:46 Tyler: Right.

0:02:46 Thomas: The other example, you abort it.

0:02:46 Tyler: Because you've directly acted to kill it.

0:02:48 Thomas: Yeah, so So, it never reaches personhood.

0:02:49 Tyler: Right. But what you've done is you've taken away a future like mine, which is one of the major reasons why murder is wrong.

0:03:02 Tyler: The act of murder, one of the reasons why murder is wrong is because it takes away a feature like mine because it ends my life. It terminates my life, that's one of the reasons why it causes me to cease to exist. This, so I don't have future experiences, right? That act itself of taking away a future like mine, I mean, unless you want to back down and say, well, you know, causing future harm isn't always, you know worse than ending a life and taking away future like mind. It just seems to me in that case what you're doing is you're ending a human life, which is going to be worse than causing future future harm to a human life.

0:03:41 Thomas: I don't think it is because it never materializes into anything. It's just, yeah, isn't that convenient?

0:03:45 Tyler: But it only doesn't materialize because you've terminated it. So I could say, well, it's not wrong for me to murder my best friend because I'm not harming, I'm taking away, he doesn't have a future. I'm Not taking away any future experiences because he never lived those future experiences.

0:04:01 Thomas: How, huh? Are you all of a sudden taking that and applying it to a person? Because we were talking about not a person, and now you're talking about a person.

0:04:07 Tyler: Because you're saying that the ethics of it is because it no longer has those, I'm saying the whole point of it not having a future like mine is the the problem. So I can't justify and say, it's okay for me to kill my friend. Well, what's wrong with killing? What's wrong with murdering someone? The unethical aspect of murdering someone is you take away a future like theirs.

0:04:29 Tyler: But the reason why they don't have a future like theirs is because I've ended it.

0:04:28 Thomas: No, it's that they are a person and they have human... Yeah, before it began. Can.

0:04:35 Tyler: But it didn't not begin. It's already a human from conception.

0:04:37 Thomas: It's, but it's not a person. We haven't granted it personhood. Yeah.

0:04:40 Tyler: You've stopped its development. So, okay. So then this, I was kind of hoping you'd say that this actually is my one gotcha. You're definitively going to say it's not a human person. You know it's not a human person.

0:04:52 Thomas: Well, if I thought we granted that, I said that earlier. I said, you're not relying on this being a person in the womb when we're talking about, you know, that kind of thing.

0:04:59 Tyler: Well, I was granting it for the sake of argument. Now, I'm going to switch into a different argument. I'm saying, because you just said it's a human, you know it is not a person.

0:05:01 Thomas: Okay. Well I only knew because you granted it for the sake of argument. I thought that's what we were talking about. What do you mean? So, so then if we're, if we'RE stepping out of what you've granted, then provide me a new context. What are we talking about?

0:05:11 Tyler: Right. So, while I'm asking you, do you think, because your position is going to stand on the basis that it's not a Human Person. Right? Because it doesn't have these web of attributes. Even though we never require those web of attribute in other areas, here for you it's not a human person.

0:05:28 Thomas: Again, not human, person. We're saying person. Again, step away from human. I'm going to say person. Once it's a person, then once we grant personhood, then you can't kill it. I think it's pretty... How is this different than what I've already said, I guess, is what I'm missing.

0:05:47 Tyler: Right. So who grants personhood?

0:05:50 Thomas: We do as a society once it reaches a certain set of criteria. Criteria?

0:05:55 Tyler: So it's a societally subjective thing. So society can change their idea of what a person is.

0:06:01 Thomas: They could. Yeah, that's possible. I doubt it would happen. I'm sorry.

0:06:05 Tyler: No, it's happened numerous times in

0:06:07 Thomas: I doubt it will happen to our society from here. I mean, I doubt it'll happen in a way that drastically affects what we're doing, but yeah, it can happen.

0:06:07 Tyler: History. Right? So for example, and I know this comes up often, but this is why we have numerous society. Anytime a society wants to do harm to another class, they demote them from human persons. So you have things like slave trade. Why do we have rulings like Dred Scott? Because the court said, well, Africans aren't persons. They're property, and property can't have rights. The society said they're not persons.

0:06:29 Thomas: Right.

0:06:44 Thomas: Well, but my criteria for personhood isn't something that you could take away from one race of people. You can say, well, no, they're not conscious. It's like, well...

0:06:50 Tyler: But that's your criteria of personhood. So why should we listen to your criteria personhood and not someone else's criteria? Why is your criteria criteria better than, say, slave trading in the 1900s.

0:06:53 Thomas: Yeah, no. That's the... Well, now you're getting into... this is an entirely different debate. I will say that this is an interesting problem. I'm fully granting that that is an interesting problem. It is 100% not an abortion problem. This has to do with grounding morality. This is a totally different discussion. We can talk about it if you want.

0:07:16 Tyler: Well, no, it does because you're relying on this assumption to affirm that they're not persons. And

0:07:22 Thomas: Yeah, I'm relying on, but it's easy. I can say, no matter, we can set aside the, for the argument we're talking about, we Can set aside the grounding of morality. You and I can agree agree that what, for the definition of personhood we're using, if you're granting my definition that I said earlier, and you said you did, that it's conscious, it's a number of things, excuse me, consciousness, sentience, ability to feel pain, all that. If you're granted that, we can say, okay, once it's person, you can't kill it. That's a whole different debate from saying, well, now what if someone changes that? Well, now we'd have to re-examine everything. I mean, and if you want to talk about philosophical grounding, it is a difficult thing. And one thing that cracks me up, And this is probably going to, this is going to become a bit of a digression, but it's something that cracks me up with religious people because we get this, this all the time.

0:08:13 Thomas: We, well, if God doesn't tell you, or if you don't have a grounded in some, some being elsewhere, some external thing, who's to say it's where, and it's, and the answer is so simple. You're right. I mean, it is a, humans have to grant it. And sometimes humans totally mess up. Sometimes, throughout most of history, actually, humans have gotten that completely wrong. And I'll tell you what it's wrong relative to. This is a difficult topic, not the topic really that matters for tonight. It's difficult. It's wrong, rather, their morality of the past, of slavery and all that stuff. It's not relative to some other human construction. It's it's it wrong relative human suffering. It's wrong relative to well-being, to building the best world and society we can that involves the least suffering.

0:09:00 Thomas: That is the criteria that is the most important. It's difficult. It's not an easy problem, but that's where I ground morality, and I think it's the only way you can ground morality.

0:09:10 Tyler: That would be a different show. We could completely disagree with that. But actually, I think you missed the point. My point was is that in showing that other societies, you're saying that it's not a human person, right? At one level, you're trying to make an objective statement. That fetus in the womb is not a person, person, right? When what you actually mean is, I don't want to call that human a person, right? By my standard, I do not want to consider them a human by what we want to achieve. We are not going to consider the human.

0:09:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:28 Thomas: Under the conditions that... Can you stop saying human?

0:09:39 Tyler: It is not an objective statement.

0:09:40 Thomas: I'm not... Can you stopped saying human and personhood? We're talking about personhood, right? Or are you trying to backtrack on that? We are talking about personhood.

0:09:49 Tyler: Right. That is why I said, you are saying they are not a human person.

0:09:52 Thomas: You keep throwing human into it. I'm just saying the important question is personhood, I thought we had agreed early on when we talked about the example of an alien race or whatever, the criteria were, okay, sure, but the important thing, I mean, that's not the question we're debating, I'm not worried about it being a different, like a cow or something, we're trying to decide whether the fetus is a person, I'm saying under the criteria that I believe is the best and that society I think we've operated under, difficult. This is something that actually kind of accidentally gotten right eventually. Maybe not accidentally, maybe we have. I mean, I don't believe that the forefathers, I do not believe that they set aside and said, you know what, we need to figure out what is the criteria for personhood. They had a belief that we were just going to grant it right at birth, you know, or right at, you Know, we're born with certain rights. They had A belief. It happened to be A belief that works pretty well.

0:10:01 Tyler: Right, and that would be an alien person as opposed to a humanperson.

0:10:51 Thomas: It gets pretty close. However, it doesn't, with the advance of technology and all that, things change. It becomes a more difficult problem. And if you want to say, well, that your idea of personhood, that wasn't, you Know, how it was grounded originally, or it's problematic because it could have been different? Yeah, it could have been, but that's where we are legally, and we need to work from there. I mean, we have to work to form an idea of personhood, and what I believe is the best idea is some combination of sentience, of ability to feel pain, etc. It's not sperm and ova or something. Right when they join, that's not a good definition of personhood to me.

0:11:35 Tyler: Yeah. So, again, you are missing the entire point of the objection. The entire point is that you are trying to make a statement that sperm and ova are not a person, right? You're trying to make an objective statement about that thing, right, when what you're actually saying, what you actually mean to say is a subjective. We don't consider that thing a person. We don't want to call it a person or do you see the difference between those two?

0:11:57 Thomas: No, I think I did catch that. I don't think I missed that at all. We're calling it a person because that's what we've determined.

0:12:08 Thomas: Was that not in what I was saying in that it's changed over time? How could something absolutely objective change over time I think that was clear in what I Was saying. We're Calling, throughout history, that definition has changed, but we have to try to arrive at the best one we can. And implicit in that, I think, is that it is subjective. It's definitely subjective. It is something that it's, well, no, actually subjective might not be the right way to characterize it. It's not some greater truth. It's something anyone's handing to us. No one can just tell us this is for sure a person right here, 100%. It's Something We Have to Arrive At.

0:12:49 Tyler: Yeah, I disagree. I think we can. It's a human. But the point is, is that you see you're trying to smuggle in backdoor ideas.

0:12:57 Thomas: Okay, hold on.

0:12:58 Tyler: So if, no,

0:12:58 Thomas: I need to attack that, actually. Because so now what would you do? You? Under that logic, what would you do in the case of an alien race? You've just decided the way we decide it's a person is that it's human. What do you do when an alien race comes?

0:13:10 Tyler: No. No, no no. No, human is a subcategory person. Like I said, person is a larger category than human.

0:13:15 Thomas: Oh, so how do you define person? Where do you get that definition from?

0:13:19 Tyler: I don't have to define what a person at large is to say that a human is a person.

0:13:21 Thomas: Why not? Yeah, but you would have to define that. Let's say hypothetical now. We're dealing with hypotheticals. It's something we have to do. Alien race comes along. How do you then decide whether or not they are are people, whether or not they have those rights.

0:13:37 Tyler: Sure. Anything in its fully mature state that has consciousness. In its fully matured state. I do not think animals have consciousness.

0:13:42 Thomas: Anything that has consciousness, any animal that so you then you can't. Are you total vegan or how does that work? You don't think animals have consciousness.

0:13:57 Tyler: No.

0:13:57 Thomas: Well, we should have just started with that because that's absurd. Of course, animals have consciousness.

0:14:01 Tyler: Well, there is actually quite a bit of disagreement about that, but that's besides the point, the the point that I was driving at is is going back to, so no, no, so you're going back, right

0:14:08 Thomas: I really don't think it is because that is not beside the point because because I think I've kind of maybe caught you on this. Like you have an idea, even if we went with that insane idea that animals don't have consciousness, which they do. Even if we went with that, that's still your criterion. So you've said that's my criterion for personhood that I apply when we're not talking about humans, or rather it's a bigger category that we can say humans have that. We can say some alien race has that. So that's your criterion and that's when it would be a person. Not when it was a fetus, fetuses aren't conscious.

0:14:47 Tyler: So I said anyone in the species that when it's fully matured has consciousness, right? So, so anyone that's in the development towards maturity, anyone that in, in the embryonic stage in development leading towards maturity, right? I'm not an ageist, I'm not going to say that, you know, it's just the adults, right? I don't say anything that's in that species that when it reached maturity has consciousness on a normal progression, right?

0:15:13 Thomas: Wow.

0:15:14 Tyler: Which is actually, I mean, which I find bizarre that you're objecting because you've said that your standard of person is consciousness. You're just not going to give it to an individual until they, that specific organism has reached consciousness, right? Where I'm going to say anyone in the species that has consciousness when that species is matured, right, any organism organism within that species that develops to consciousness, right?

0:15:37 Tyler: So really it's not that far of a different, which is, so it's weird that you're objecting.

0:15:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I just think there's no reason. No, it is quite different because there's just not any reason to do that. I mean, if we're laying out criteria, and again, you were on board with me in the beginning. That's not one thing. It's not consciousness. That'S not the one thing, so I guess you're probably using shorthand, which is fine, as long as you weren't trying to switch it up on me or anything.

0:16:00 Tyler: No. And I, and I, and by consciousness, I basically mean consciousness, self-awareness, ability to feel pain, all those, all that whole web of think concepts we put under consciousness.

0:16:04 Thomas: Okay, sure, sure. Right. Okay. So I think there's no reason that we need to grant it just because they share a species, part of a species that becomes that. I think there's what if then if we're talking about, I got an idea, how would you then deal with a fetus that was perpetually in that state? So it's a baby that they are are able to, let's say there's some accident, there's something that causes vastly premature birth, something like that. This child, this whatever, I don't know what to call it, terminology is getting a little muddy right now, apologies for that, but this baby, we'll call it is not able to develop these things that we've agreed are criterias for, well, I think are criterias per person.

0:16:56 Thomas: They're not able To develop consciousness, they're not able to develop the ability to feel, maybe they can feel certain sensations, but it's very minimal. They don't have any self-awareness. Now, under your criteria, that has to just exist forever. Like that entity, you would have to just care for it in that stage for as long as it could possibly live. You would be required, right? I mean, just because it shares a species, what length do you have to go to to keep it alive, I wonder, under Your View? You. I mean, that, that might be getting into a bit of a different issue, but so perpetually you would, nothing.

0:17:22 Tyler: Correct. I don't think we should actively kill it.

0:17:31 Tyler: And yeah, whatever, whatever length we would use to, to care for any other human, which, which has why, by the way, one of the reasons why, I think it's appalling that such a huge majority of Down syndrome babies are aborted, right? Because I don't think, well, I mean, that also gets into other issues of what does that say to the value of Down syndrome children who are born? You know, we could, you know, your disability is so bad, we could have justified we killed you.

0:17:59 Thomas: This is a, this is a red herring. I think it's something, that's actually something I want to talk about because that is an interesting issue. I, I think the only way I can make it clear, the only way I can talk about this issue in a way that isn't bound to hurt people's feelings is to try to use myself as an example, because there is just a difference between saying, saying between preventing a certain being with certain traits from happening and going and killing that being. It's just different. It is different from preventing them coming into personhood than it is to take that being as a person.

After they are a person, you have interacted with them, but they have downs. Killing them then, that is just different than preventing them from becoming that. It's just different. I mean, from that view, do you think you can't select, like if we were able to one day select the best, I don't know, sperm and egg, somehow medically, I'm really not an expert on this kind of thing, but select for the best kind of sperm and egg pair or something like that, that's going to yield the child with the fewest problems. Like, is that something we can't do if

0:18:27 Tyler: Well, notice you switch from person to being. The being already exists. The human being exists.

0:19:14 Tyler: Once,

0:19:15 Thomas: You, if, yeah.

0:19:15 Tyler: Once, no, because once, well I mean if If it's always beforehand, you can try to select, you know, I mean, this is just what mating is. This is what breeding is. I mean but once the human is in existence, then the human isn't in existence.

0:19:27 Thomas: So once it's fertilized, you're done though. You can't, if you fertilize, if two eggs are fertilized it's, it's like the day after somehow medically we're able to say that one will be a lot better than this one. You only want to keep one. You can'T do it under your view. Okay.

0:19:41 Tyler: Don't kill it. Yep. Yep.

0:19:44 Thomas: So here's the thing about, so in my mind, obviously under what I'm saying, because this this is something Richard Dawkins got into trouble with recently. I don't know. Did you catch that? Maybe like a year ago. I know.

0:19:58 Tyler: I did. It actually came up. So I have a medical condition that will cause me lifelong pain. And so I've had people say, well, you Know, my mother should have – she should have had the right if they could have tested for it, which they could've. She could've aborted. So, I mean, it is something that does – it irritated me when he said it.

0:20:14 Thomas: Yeah. And, and that's why I want to use myself as an example too, because we could get to a day where it's possible that if my parents had known that I have a couple medical things, they're not horrible, but it's, it's a, it could be a, it's impossible. We could get, to the point someday where you would want to abort or choose choose a fertilized, maybe you fertilized a couple, five different eggs. Maybe that becomes pregnancy someday where you fertilize a bunch of different eggs and then you choose the best one. I just want to say personally, I am okay with that. And it's a difficult thing to say, well, I would have never existed. Maybe I should have never existed if there was a better one that wasn't going to have the congenital ear problem I have where I can't hear in one ear. If there's a better one, that wasn't gonna have the scoliosis I have.

0:21:01 Thomas: I understand that's hurtful and people sometimes take it as like, well, should you just, you know, murder people with scoliosis? Is it the same? No, but it may get to the day where we prevent that and someone else will probably live in my place. So if we had that ability, which it's amazing, you are required to object to because anytime, once it's fertilized, it's done for you. It's a person, it'S a human person for you. If we get to point where we can fertilize several eggs and choose the best one, I think that would be great because, yes, I may not have been born, but someone else will have been born. And I will not have had any experience or consciousness or feeling or anything that will have been taken away from me. I'm projecting that on to that. People are projecting what they have, like people like you and I.

0:21:47 Thomas: When we look at that problem, we're projecting, well, that I would have been gotten rid of. I wouldn't have existed. We're projecting everything that's happened to us onto that. That. In truth, what would have happened in that scenario where a different fertilized egg is chosen and the rest are discarded for those reasons, someone else would have existed and they would have maybe been pretty similar to me, but maybe been a bit different. Someone It will have existed. And that's what people are missing when they're focusing in on, oh, you want to kill me? You want want to get rid of me in the womb or whatever? I think it's an emotional issue, but I don't think it's right to say that we can't abort people with certain disabilities at an early stage.

0:22:28 Tyler: Yeah, I don't think it's an emotional issue. I think it goes back to the traceback where fetal Tyler did actually have a future like me.

0:22:33 Thomas: Well, but let me stop you right there. If it is just the traceback for you, then it has nothing to do with downs or anything else, right? I mean, that's an irrelevant issue then.

0:22:44 Tyler: Well, no, it does because if – let's say Down syndrome Tyler had Down syndrome fetus with a future like it, right?

0:22:50 Thomas: No, but I'm saying you already, under your view, we kind of have to keep track of what we're granting for argument and stuff. Under your view, it doesn't matter who had what, you just can't abort no matter what. So I'm saying there's no additional thing, you know, like there's no, because you have downs or not, like that's not an additional motivator for you. You're already against all of it.

0:23:10 Tyler: Right, because it's already – for me, it's already a human person, right, because because it belongs to a species in which all members of that species have the right to life.

0:23:11 Thomas: Yeah. So it doesn'T matter. Right. So all I'm saying is that issue almost doesn't matter. Like it's, if you view it as a human person, it's easy. You just can't abort. If you don't, it's it's easy. You can't abort. Like, does it really complicate things?

0:23:35 Tyler: I think it does, because I think what it does is it drives a lot of kind of abortion arguments, anti-abortion arguments, are meant to, this might sound pejorative, but they're meant to prick the conscience and say, look, you might be permissive of it, but there are these little red flags that should be going off in your head when you see these little analogous situations, right? And I think this is one of them where we say, you know, earlier you said, well, we shouldn't be able to, or we shouldn'T live in a culture where it's an acceptable reason, right, they still might be allowed to, but it shouldn't be an acceptable reason where they can abort because a child's gay, or potentially gay, because a test came back and said they're gay. But suddenly when they're down syndrome, right.

0:24:20 Thomas: Again, to recap, I said they should, to recapp, I should be allowed to abort because they're gay.

0:24:26 Tyler: That's why I said they shouldn't allow, they shouldn't, sorry, I meant they shouldn't be denied the right to abort, but you're going to say you have some ethical questions about using that as a criteria to select.

0:24:31 Thomas: Right. Okay. Yeah. There's some societal issues. There are some other issues. It's a different issue to me.

0:24:43 Tyler: Yeah, whereas when I look at it, it's just, well, you're choosing based on the attributes of a future being.

0:24:49 Thomas: Yeah, that's fine. Sounds good to me!

0:24:53 Tyler: Both are the same. You're choosing base on the, so why can you choose the attributes or future being on one and not on the future attributes of future person on another?

0:25:01 Thomas: I don't understand what you just said. How am I choosing? I think you can on both. What do you mean? I said for gay and for downs, or are you talking about, what are you talking about?

0:25:10 Tyler: Gay, down, gender, ethnicity, hair hair color.

0:25:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You can choose based on whatever. And it's not a murder problem. It's a societal problem. If eventually there's some reason people are choosing one thing over the other when they really shouldn't, that's a separate issue. But yeah, you can do that. I guess I missed what point you're trying to make with that.

0:25:31 Tyler: Okay. I think the last argument that I would give, and there's a bunch. We mentioned the past show. Jen Roth was on Point of Inquiry. I recommend people listen to her. I'm trying to give secular atheistic pro-lifers so people don't think that I'm just... And I haven't really given any religious reasons whatsoever. The last one, I'm not sure if you're aware, Peter Kreeft gives gives his arguments from ignorance. I'm not sure if you're aware of it at all.

0:25:44 Thomas: Sure.

0:25:58 Thomas: Not by name. I don't know. I'm not sure, maybe. I've heard it, what

0:26:00 Tyler: So he gives this argument and he says, which is why I found it interesting because you're strong to affirm it's not a person, right? You seem convinced that it's not aperson.

0:26:11 Thomas: Is not a person. Are you giving me a hypothetical time in the pregnancy Yeah.

0:26:12 Tyler: The fetus. Fetus is not a person.

0:26:16 Thomas: At what point? Just And

0:26:17 Tyler: At what point would you grant? Well, you said you're a singer. You wouldn't even grant personhood until it's older.

0:26:22 Thomas: Likely Not likely.

0:26:24 Tyler: Okay. So, six months.

0:26:25 Thomas: Not Okay, sure. Sure, okay.

0:26:27 Tyler: Sure. You know, somewhere second, third trimester. Okay? So, you know it's not a person.

0:26:32 Thomas: Yeah. Sure, not not personhood Under my criteria, it's It's not falling under person. If you want to, do you want me, some facts, do you wanna give me some, what am I dealing with here, just in general, like, yeah, it's

0:26:48 Tyler: Well, no, I mean, I'm asking because it's your burden of proof. You're the one making the claim that it's non-person.

0:26:54 Thomas: Does it? Okay, let me ask you here. Simple, simple thing, maybe I need to frame this in a way that'll work, but, uh, are they conscious? Do they have self-awareness? Do they feel pain?

0:27:02 Tyler: Do you know that's a requirement for a person? You know it to be true for a fact that That is what a a person is, right?

0:27:05 Thomas: Under my definition, yeah, know What, to be true that It's what, that's, this is the definition we have to work With, as a, yeah.

0:27:16 Tyler: So But But no, no, that's not the definition we have to work with, right? Because, because there's other definitions of personhood. There's there's the 18th century, 19th century pro-slavery predestination of person hood There's Nazi Germany's definition of person hood There, there's, you know, the 20th century Japanese internment definition of personhood. They're, there's all different types, right? So

0:27:34 Thomas: There Are Many different Ones, I'm I, and others in the, in our community, are trying to pick what we think is the best one. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as God that can tell us. If there's some place in the Bible and we could prove the Bible is true where they demonstrate like, oh, from on high, here's when a person happens, that would be one thing. But since that doesn't exist, we have to do our best as a society to determine what we think personhood should be.

0:27:36 Tyler: Right. Right.

0:28:06 Tyler: So, I'm asking, do you know that a fetus is not objectively a human with human rights, and that it is just an, it's just an entity that we as a society say what a person is? You know that for a fact?

0:28:17 Thomas: We do our best to define what personhood is, and we have to use that. I mean, I really genuinely don't know how to answer what you're asking.

0:28:25 Tyler: It's a yes or no. Do you know it for a fact? It's yes or a no. I'm actually struggling to say it in a clearer way,

0:28:32 Thomas: Do I know for a fact that a fetus is not a person? Well,

0:28:39 Tyler: Because you keep justifying it with then falling back on atheism, falling back on, you know, there is no God, right, so you'd have to know those are facts to know for a facts, right. So in order to know it's a fact that it's not a human with human rights, for example, which you then fell back on, well, there's no such thing as a God, right.

0:28:55 Thomas: Almost nothing in law is known for a factor that I can think of. I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty that we have to deal with as a society when we're dealing with these things.

0:29:05 Tyler: I'm not asking about law. Law. I'm actually about the objective reality of the human in the womb. Does that human have human rights? You know that it doesn't have human rights.

0:29:13 Thomas: It's, that just is, this is just the weirdest thing. I don't know what you mean. It's my opinion that our definition of personhood should exclude fetuses that don't have self-awareness, don't have consciousness, don't, ability to feel pain to some level. I mean that's, it's my belief that that's the best definition for our society. Society. I don't know what to say.

0:29:39 Thomas: What would prove me wrong? Okay, I will tell you what would prove me right. For one, if there was a philosophical argument that I thought gave a better argument for what a person should be and what the criteria for a person would be, I would accept it. I mean, yeah,

0:29:36 Tyler: Okay. Then what would ever prove you wrong? Yeah.

0:29:55 Tyler: Traceback argument, future like mine, a consistent view of human rights, so you'd rather an inconsistent view of humans rights?

0:29:58 Thomas: I don't think those are good arguments. If there was one that I thought was a good argument. Or if we found out what a

0:30:09 Tyler: So you'd rather an inconsistent view of Human Rights than a consistent view of human rights.

0:30:13 Thomas: Consistent, this is, it's not human rights though. It's personhood. That's what's, you're thinking in a very human centric thing. And I think your view of personhood really does fail when you talk about hypotheticals about an alien race or even animals or even chimpanzees. I think the smartest ape creatures that we have in this world are probably pretty close to persons in a lot of ways, and it's dangerous to talk about them as though they don't have those capacities. I think that's someplace...

0:30:42 Tyler: Right. And I don't think we should go be able to kill the great apes. I think we have an ethical obligation to not go shoot apes,

0:30:50 Thomas: Okay, fair enough. Again, the part where it breaks down is that you think being a member of a species that has the ability to gain consciousness and whatever we're deciding is the criteria of personhood, that's what the difference is.

0:31:04 Tyler: Because human rights aren't arbitrary. Your view is arbitrary, right, which is why I said it's inconsistent. Because on your view, remember, you said that we finally got it right. Well, no, we didn't get it right, it changed, right. Because, on your view, human rights are granted to persons by the supermajority, and it's a subjective thing. So, for example, slave traders, and I'm not trying to divert, I'm attacking your underlying presuppositions that defend your premise. Slave traders weren't wrong. They just had a different view of personhood than you do. They weren't long, though. They were just different, right? Because in order to say they're wrong, you have to say that the Africans objectively had human rights, not just that you disagree with what a person is because then that's just a disagreement. They're just different than you.

0:31:51 Thomas: Yeah, but this is why I said earlier, I mean, this is a whole whole different debate on grounding morality. They're wrong in regards to...

0:31:56 Tyler: Right. But this assumption underlines your entire

0:31:59 Thomas: Yeah, it does. It

0:31:59 Tyler: Argument, right? Because you're going to say, because you're backing up, you're saying a person, right, right.

0:32:01 Thomas: Absolutely does. It absolutely Does. My assumption of morality being something humans have to come up with and do our best on absolutely undergrounds my entire morality. That's just going to be true. Your morality, for the most part, maybe some of it comes from the Bible, some of it comes From other things, some Of it may come from philosophy. All that is grounded in us doing our best. Unless, short of God actually telling you something personally, there's nothing that'll ground your morality short of us doing our best to minimize the suffering of conscious creatures. I just don't, how could it be any other way?

0:32:39 Tyler: Well, I mean, again, I'm not trying to get onto the grounding of morality. I'm not trying to say, well, you need God to have morality. No, no, no. I'm saying, no—no, it's not.

0:32:42 Thomas: But you are. You're trying to get on the grounding of how you measure different versions of morality. It's literally what you said. Is it a difference

0:32:51 Tyler: It's not. So stop for a second. That's not what I said. So what I sad was your view of personhood, right? A person is someone, once they've reached a certain place, and we then say they're a person, and therefore we grant them human rights, right. We say a person has rights, we can grant when they're person. Is that correct?

0:32:51 Thomas: Or isn't it a, yeah, yeah.

0:33:08 Tyler: So I'm not trying to say what's the foundation of morality? Is it God? I'm saying, your view of what rights are, that ground personhood is arbitrary, which

0:33:18 Thomas: It is not arbitrary relative to the suffering of conscious creatures is the point I keep trying to make. It's not arbitrary. It is not given to us from anyone else. True. It could change. If humans changed as a species, it could totally change. If our ability to feel and think and all that, if that changed, it could change, it's dependent on reality, it's depending on what we are as a species. Yes, it is dependent on all those things, and some versions will be better than than others in terms, only in terms of suffering of conscious creatures, of well-being. That's the only way you can measure.

0:33:53 Tyler: Begs the question that they have a right to not suffer, right? Where does that come from? Well, that comes from the view of what suffering is.

0:33:58 Thomas: No one, no one has a right. No One

0:34:00 Tyler: Remember, all

0:34:00 Thomas: Has a Right to Not Suffer. No one has it. It's, it's, a, it, it is not a right, it s something we can build as a society. It, it in, just cast it back, cast humans back to the, to the worst times when, when we were pre, we were very prehistoric, well, I don't know if prehistory is the right word, but at the earliest stages where we were just killing each other. We had no language, very little language, no culture, killing each... What sense would it make to say, well, they're humans. They have a right to not suffer. What sense Would that make? You haven't created a society.

0:34:31 Tyler: The sins in the world, they're humans. They had a right not to suffer. They're humans, and

0:34:33 Thomas: A right relative to... Who's going to grant them that right? They're just killing Each other. There's no society. We need society to ground those things.

0:34:39 Tyler: No, we need society to enforce those things. That's different. That's different. But my point is that the view underpinning your view of personhood is inconsistent because you can't look at slave traders. You can't Look at Nazi Germany. You can look at internment camps of the 20th century. You cannot look at all those types of things and say they were wrong. Those people actually were persons. What you can say is we just disagree on what a person is.

0:35:03 Thomas: Yeah, I can. Yeah. We do. Both of those things are true. We disagree.

0:35:09 Tyler: But they weren't wrong.

0:35:11 Thomas: We disagree on what a person is. And they were wrong because they said those weren't persons. How are those mutually exclusive?

0:35:16 Tyler: Right. But they just had a different standard of – you and I have a different. And standard of person.

0:35:19 Thomas: Yeah, they had a standard of personhood that was worse. They had a Standard of Personhood that led to the suffering of more people. That's why it's wrong.

0:35:27 Tyler: But no, no, he was suffering of more people. They didn't say they were people. On their view, they weren't people, right? Remember, it's okay to cause harm and to end a life of a human that isn't a person on

0:35:35 Thomas: Suffering, the capacity to suffer is one of the criteria for personhood. If something, yes. So under my view, it's consistent to say they were worse at it relative to the ability to suffer, which is the ultimate thing that grounds morality in my view. You can disagree with that view of things, but it's not inconsistent. It is consistent. It's just not what you agree with.

0:35:45 Tyler: Your view, not on their view.

0:36:03 Tyler: Again, it is not because they are going to say, well, that is the majority view then. That was was what society had deemed as a person, which

0:36:08 Thomas: My view is not it's the majority rules. That's not my view。 If the okay, we go with the majority. My view is humans have to do the best we can. And if you look, if you consider the suffering of all the conscious creatures involved in the decision of whether to declare black people people or not, it's pretty easy. When you declare them not persons, you can look at their capability of suffering. You can look at the suffering inflicted on them under slavery and say, well, under that criteria of suffering, that was a terrible morality. It is consistent because

0:36:46 Tyler: I can say because I think all humans are human persons, right? I'm not sure you can. I still don't think you see the inconsistency, but there is, but that's okay. So the Kreeft's argument basically comes back and says, because most of what you've said is pretty assumptive and largely question-begging, you don't know those things are facts. So since you can't know these things are facts, you can know for a fact that a fetus is is not a person. You believe those things. You might think you have rational reasons, but you can't know they're a fact.

0:36:54 Thomas: There isn't an inconsistency. That's why.

0:37:21 Tyler: Kreef's argument then comes along and says, well, if you don't know something, actually, the argument for ignorance is one of the stronger ones. He gives an example. He says, if you're a hunter and you go out into the woods and you're shooting into the bush, you hear something in the bush and you shoot it into the brush. It could be your fellow hunter or it could be a bear. You don't know.

0:37:40 Tyler: You have a couple different options. It's It's either your fellow hunter and you know it and you shoot, in which case you're guilty of murder, right? It's your fellow Hunter and you don't know that, but you shoot you're guilty of manslaughter. If it's not your fellow Hunter and you know that it's not your fellow Hunter and you shoot, you're fine. If it is not your fellow Hunter, but you don't know that but you shoot anyways, you are lucky, but you are criminally negligent, right. In each one of those cases, there is a legal code there. He says, in each one of those cases, what is abortion? In abortion, if a fetus is a human person and you know it and you kill it anyways, you're guilty of murder.

0:38:25 Tyler: You know it's a human and you've killed it anyways. If it's not a human or if it is a human person and you don't know it and you kill it, you're guilty of manslaughter, right? Which is why I said I think largely abortion should be cataloged as manslaughter because I think most people in society, I think there's been a cultural education that has happened that abortion is something less than killing a human person, right. I think, largely, people have imbibed that so I think that's the case. Sometimes I think it's murder. Usually I think it's manslaughter.

0:38:56 Thomas: So this is where I think maybe probably why people accuse you and others with this view of sexism, because you're looking at one side of the equation. We know the mother is a person and we know the consequences if they don't want to have a child, if they accidentally become pregnant, if whatever the reason is, we know the consequences on that life. It could be poverty. It could Be suffering. It could be they're left without the father, they're raped, whatever. We know those consequences. That's the known portion of it. So it's not as though it's zero. It's not as though it is, well, there's some risk it's a person and then there's nothing else. There's lots of other things that you have to look at. And that's why consequentialism...

0:39:36 Tyler: But in all of those cases, if it's a human person, it's relevant.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah, but now we're talking about the uncertainty involved. So now you're saying... I'm saying I have good reason to believe it's not a human person. And I would go so far as to say, under my definition that I believe we ought to use and that a lot of people use for personhood, that we have to develop as a society, I know it's not a person under that definition. So if you're just looking at one side of it, it's one thing to say well there's some risk you're wrong, so therefore don't ever abort. But there's two sides to it. I mean there's also all the rights of the mother and her ability to determine these things. It's not just one side of the equation that you're looking at.

0:40:20 Tyler: If it is a human human person none of those rights, you don't have any of those rights because it's human person.

0:40:25 Thomas: Okay, how do you avoid that with just the regression ad absurdum? I'm curious, because how does that not counter your argument with sperm and ovum and stuff? How is that? How do we know all that stuff? Anything that goes into the potential of a human, how Do we know? Do you know that's not a person?

0:40:43 Tyler: Yes, it's the scientific fact that a human organism starts at conception.

0:40:47 Thomas: That's not a scientific fact.

0:40:49 Tyler: Do you want me to quote? I can quote you genetics books and human development books. A human organism begins at conception. That is when a distinct human organism begins.

0:40:59 Thomas: I would like to go ahead and I'll let my listeners find the the counterexamples to that. It begins at some point in the process of, there

0:41:07 Tyler: No, a human organism, a distinct human organism begins at consent.

0:41:12 Thomas: Is no moment of conception. That doesn't actually happen that way. It's a series of processes. There's no, it's just biology. I mean, we can, we'll have to say we disagree on the facts here, but there is no moment of conception. There is a series of processes that happen. You can try to to pick some arbitrary point and say, well, now that's when it's a human, but it really isn't. We'll have to do some, I guess, some research on that, but sounds like we have a disagreement on facts there.

0:41:40 Tyler: This actually isn't a debatable point in science. So you have from books like the HarperCollins Illustrated Medical Dictionary, it says, says, embryo, an organism in the earliest stage of development in a man from the time of conception to the end of the second month of the uterus. You have other ones like Langman in the Medical Embryology, third edition, which says the development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote. I mean, I have dozens of these from different medical embryology books.

0:42:10 Thomas: Yeah. That sounds like a process that... It's a process. That begins with... What did it say? A process that begins with what?

0:42:19 Tyler: No, the development begins When does the new organism begin? Right. The development of a human being begins.

0:42:21 Thomas: Yeah. It's putting a fine line on something that's not... it doesn't have an inherent fine line. It's a bunch of processes that happen. I mean, it's a biological things that are happening. There's no easy like, bam, that's it.

0:42:38 Tyler: It's absolutely at the point. I mean, I can give you a dozen different. This is this is actually kind of bizarre that you're just denying this is this is just basic human biology. Embryology, uh, we don't, you know, humans aren't flowers, we don't, we don't reproduce by budding, uh, we reproduce, we have a new organism at the point of fertilization when you have all of your chromosomes together to create a new genetically distinct individual, uh, Carlson, Bruce Carlsen, in Foundations of Embryology, says almost all higher mammals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum, the zygote. The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the history or ontology of the individual. That's when the human organism begins. This is just basic biology.

0:43:23 Tyler: This isn't a disagreement about some abstract facts. This is just basic human embryology 101. And I'm sorry to be that blunt with you, but you're just factually incorrect on that. And, and I have, I have textbook after textbook to prove it because

0:43:39 Thomas: But the part I asked was why they're a person at that point. But you're

0:43:44 Tyler: Because they're a human at that point. Remember, I don't

0:43:47 Thomas: Trying to do this reductio of, I can't be absolutely sure about X, Y, and Z. How are you absolutely sure that that they're a person once they're a human. Even if I grant, okay, there's some moment you can say it wasn't a human there, and a nanosecond later, now it is a human, depending on what's going on. Even if we say that's true, how do you know with an absolute certainty that that's when it's a person?

0:44:13 Tyler: Need to know, because I'm not the one that's trying to defend killing them, right? I don't need to know that it's not a human to not shoot in the bush. You need to know that it's not a human to shoot in the bush. Those are two different things.

0:44:24 Thomas: A person, a person, not a human?

0:44:26 Tyler: Well, the analogy is just that it's a human. So, I don't need to know to not shoot. You need to know to not to actually shoot. Those are two different things!

0:44:37 Thomas: I don't know. I I'd have to think about that because it sounds like a weird shifting of the burden of proof. Um, but I'll have to think about that. I grant that, uh, I, I don't have a good answer to what you just said, so I'll, I'll have to think about it.

0:44:52 Tyler: And by the way, I know these topics get heated and we discuss. I actually do appreciate the fact that we have a lengthy in-depth conversation about it more than memes that drop on Facebook. So even though it gets heated and neither of us have probably changed our mind on much going away from it, I do appreciate and I think it's important to have these conversations.

0:45:12 Thomas: I agree with you. We're going to have to start wrapping it up. Off the top of my head, I would say that this absolute certainty thing, I think, would give you all kinds of weird burdens. I mean, there's a weird criteria that you're setting up for being absolutely certain of something. How do I know that when I push my garage door remote, there is not someone stuck who is going to be murdered once the garage door opens a certain way? You could come up with a hypothetical of infinite things about how do you absolutely not know this for certain. And so you would have to debate the level of certainty there. And I don't know, fundamentally, what is epistemology maybe to get to that?

0:45:53 Tyler: Well, I don't think you have to go that far. You just just have to have reasonable belief. I think when we look at a fetus, we have reasonable belief that it's a human. And the question is, well, is it a human person? And I think there's a reasonable belief to say that it is a human persona.

0:46:03 Thomas: Oh, okay. So now, well, hold on. If you're saying, okay, now it's reasonable belief, then I mean, that's easy. Yeah, I have a reasonable belief that's a person. There you go. That's not a person?

0:46:11 Tyler: No, no, no. Sorry. I don't mean reasonable belief that you... We have reasonable believe that it IS a person. So in order to say it's NOT a person and you can shoot, you would have to acknowledge.

0:46:22 Thomas: Oh, see, I don't think we have reasonable belief. That's a person. So that would be the answer to that. Because my criteria is different. That's still, now we're still dependent on criteria. So I don't think that gets us any further. Further.

0:46:34 Tyler: Yeah. Which I think I've shown the criteria is inconsistent and largely we would loathe it in other situations with comatose patients and reversible comas, you in deep sleep. I mean, I think, well,

0:46:47 Thomas: No, that's easy. That's a transitory thing. Too much is made out of that objection, I think.

0:46:55 Tyler: I don't think it is because I think if you look at transitory, well an infant state is transitory. It's going towards possessing that attribute.

0:47:01 Thomas: Yeah, but they didn't start as a person. They didn't go into a phase where their capacities are a little diminished and then we know they're going to come out of it. It's not the same thing.

0:47:12 Tyler: Yeah, but they're both at the point of not yet. They're both to the point of not yet. The only difference is eight hours or eight months.

0:47:15 Thomas: They're both at the point of not yet, but with entirely different history. They

0:47:21 Tyler: Eight hours or eight months?

0:47:22 Thomas: Were never this. No, they weren't a person before the eight months. One of it was never a person. And the other thing, what is going to be a person at some point? It's not the same thing.

0:47:33 Tyler: Well, that begs the question that it's not a person. We can go round and round on this.

0:47:37 Thomas: Yeah, OK. It's it's not worth the time right now, but we'll have to clarify some things and maybe we can visit it again. But I thanks for coming on, Tyler. I appreciate the debate. I don't think we got anywhere, but that's the nature of these things.

0:47:51 Tyler: So it is.

0:47:52 Thomas: Yeah. Is there anything else we need to say in closing? I don't know. Maybe, I hope to do this again sometime about another issue. I'm happy to do it.

0:48:01 Tyler: Yeah. And I think, like I said, I think it's good to actually have these debates. I think people can see that we don't have to hate each other. I'm in Southern California, you're Northern. If we live close, I'd take you out for a beer afterwards. This isn't something where, contrary to your first belief, you know, I wouldn't want to go and shoot you.

0:48:20 Thomas: Yeah, I think you, well, that was something that you did make a good point that it might be, you might consider it more manslaughter. But I still think that if you took the consequences of your belief that a bunch of people were committing manslaughter in a certain building, should you just ignore it or should you do something about it? I still think it's a little weird. I think it's it's It's a hairy area.

0:48:39 Tyler: It's weird and I do see the point of it, but I'm just going to fall back and say, well, I think hopefully I have a consistent view of life where I wouldn't actively take life either. So keep

0:48:51 Thomas: Okay. Well, thanks again. Like I said, I echo that sentiment. I think It's good to actually have these discussions, although I regret that I don't know that anyone's mind has changed, but we can only do what we can do.

0:49:05 Tyler: On keeping on.

0:49:18 Thomas: Well, there you have it, that's the end of that discussion, yeah, so, definitely some things went a bit awry there, I think that, I, I said some things that I don't think I would quite stand behind, I definitely think he was right that the moment of conception is something, I just don't it's as morally significant as he would think it is, but, I'm gonna talk about that, we're already too long in this episode, so I'm going to talk about a lot of things on Thursday's episode about this, this debate, because I have a lot of thoughts. I think it's very fascinating. I've thought of a million counterexamples for his criteria for personhood. I think that's rather easy to think of counterexamples for that. But I mentioned one at the time, and I'm going to run more by Tyler.

0:50:06 Thomas: I think he'll be willing to discuss this. So let me know what you think. And again, I don't present this debate as this is exactly how I should have argued. It was very much on the fly with no, we didn't tell each other our arguments or anything. So that's what happens. I mean, we have to hash these things out. I think Tyler would actually agree. He sent me a message that he thought he was actually maybe not arguing the way he should have at the end, because we just were not, we weren't on the same page with the right question. So it doesn't, it didn't make sense to keep asking a question where we just, we're not on the the same page on. And I think that I gave some answers that I'm not totally happy with. But that's why we do this. We can re-examine the arguments and if, lo and behold, I totally am disproven in an argument, I'll change my mind.

0:50:57 Thomas: I don't think that's happened. And sure, Tyler probably feels the same way, but we do what we can do. So feel free to tell me what you think. Think, I just want to encourage commenters to not comment as though that I think this is every perfect argument on my, you know, it's not like sometimes people comment like, oh, I can't believe you didn't say this. And that's fine. But I mean, just realize that I'm not going to sit here and throw every single counter argument there is at someone. I'm going to try to respond to what they're saying. So if you have no problem, if you got feedback, that's great. But just realize that we are limited somewhat by already by a two hour discussion we had. So, all right. Thanks so much for listening as usual. Thanks to my patrons. And well, I guess it's only a Monday episode, so I don't have to do all that jazz.

0:51:45 Thomas: So yeah, thank you. And I will see you on Thursday for a bit of a diagnosis on what went right, what went wrong in this argument.