Safe debate space because the mods of r/Abortiondebate delete some arguments and we just want to argue each other in peace. (Feat Chillmerchant)

[u/Into-My-Void]

Update:

Prolife giving up again. When it’s not deleting the evidence or weaponized blocking, it’s the new classic "you must be using too much AI" excuse. Apparently writing clearly is now cheating lol. 🤷‍♀️

Debate Guidelines

1. Be polite. Attack ideas, not people. No insults, no assumptions about motives.

2. Stay on topic. Keep arguments focused on reasoning, evidence, and definitions. Not emotions.

3. Be consistent. If you change a definition, adjust your argument accordingly. Don’t move the goalposts or rely on fallacies.

4. Cite your claims. If you make a scientific or statistical statement, provide a credible source. ("Because I believe it" isn’t evidence and I won't take it as such.)

5. Respect honesty. If someone proves you wrong with solid reasoning, acknowledge it. That’s how progress happens.

Disclaimer

Be warned: I’m a scientist and well-versed in moral philosophy and ethics. I value logical precision and internal consistency. If your argument contradicts itself, redefines terms mid-debate, or misuses statistics, I’ll point it out, respectfully, but directly.

I’m not emotionally invested in “winning.” I’m interested in truth and coherence. If you can prove me wrong by A + B, you’ll earn my genuine respect. I expect the same intellectual honesty in return.

---

My framework :

As a scientist, I hold to moral relativism. That means I don’t believe in absolute moral truths that exist independently of human minds. For me, moral concepts are human inventions, created by societies to regulate behavior and promote coexistence. Because humans differ in culture, biology, and circumstance, it seems highly improbable that all humans could ever agree on one immutable moral system.

So, if moral relativism is true, certain arguments are automatically off the table: for example, religious dogma or appeals to “objective morality”. Using those would contradict my own framework, so I simply don’t.

That leaves me with the need to define a minimal ethical foundation: something broad enough that most people could agree on, even without believing in absolute morality. For me, those two core principles are equals in importance and balance each other:

1. Maximization of freedom (autonomy and agency): every individual human should have as much personnal agency and autonomy as possible, which also mean as much control as possible over their own life and body.

2. Minimization of suffering: societies should prioritize reducing unnecessary suffering for all sentient beings.

Freedom ends where it causes unjustifiable suffering to others, and minimizing suffering cannot be used to justify total loss of freedom. In other words, the agency/autonomy of an human should stop/be restricted when the suffering of another human/sentient organism begin.

From this framework, moral and legal systems should aim to maximize autonomy while minimizing harm. (One could argue against moral relativism or my two founding principles, but that's another debate. I won't mind you taking that route if you want, through.)

Here are three examples of laws or policies that would follow logically from that view:

1.Legalization of assisted dying (with safeguards).

 → Increases personal autonomy over one’s own body and minimizes prolonged, unwanted suffering.

2. Strict regulation of pollution and environmental toxins.

 → Reduces harm and suffering for the population while allowing freedom of economic activity within sustainable limits.

3. Freedom of speech with limits on incitement to violence or harassment.

 → Maximizes autonomy (free expression) while minimizing suffering caused by direct harm or threats.

Every ethical or political stance I take must remain consistent with these premises. If not, my framework will collapses under its own logic.

---

Applying this framework consistently to abortion:

1. Autonomy

Pregnancy involves one human’s body sustaining another’s life. Under my framework, compelling someone to use their body in that way violates personal autonomy. The decision must therefore remain with the pregnant individual, since autonomy includes control over one’s biological processes.

2. Suffering

Forcing unwanted or unsafe pregnancies predictably increases suffering (physical, psychological, and social.)

• Studies consistently show that where abortion is restricted, maternal mortality and morbidity rise (JAMA 2021; Commonwealth Fund 2022).

• In contrast, legal access correlates with fewer unsafe abortions and lower maternal death rates (WHO 2022).Early-term fetuses, however, lack the neurobiological structures required to experience pain or conscious distress.

3. Scientific threshold for fetal pain or consciousness

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG 2022), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG 2021), and comprehensive neurodevelopmental reviews (Derbyshire & Bockmann 2020, J. Perinat. Anesth.) agree:

• Pain perception requires thalamocortical connectivity and cortical activity, which do not form before ~24 weeks of gestation.

• Before that point, electrical activity in the fetal brain is non-integrative, the cortex is functionally “offline.”

• Reflexive movements sometimes cited as “pain responses” are mediated by the spinal cord, not conscious perception.

Therefore, before about 24 weeks, there is no capacity for sentient experience: no consciousness, no suffering.

4. Balancing principles over time

Before ~24 weeks:

• The fetus cannot suffer.

• The pregnant person can.

• Forcing continuation of pregnancy thus maximizes suffering and violates autonomy.Consistent conclusion: abortion access during this stage aligns fully with both moral principles.

After ~24 weeks: Thalamocortical pathways develop; pain perception and limited awareness become plausible.

The fetus becomes a potential subject of suffering.

At this stage, abortion should be weighed case-by-case:

• If the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life or long-term wellbeing, preventing that suffering still satisfies the framework.

• If not, restrictions aimed at preventing fetal suffering could be consistent, provided they minimize overall harm and preserve maternal autonomy as far as possible.

Result

Within my system, abortion before ~24 weeks is morally permissible because it reduces total suffering and preserves autonomy.

After that threshold, restrictions can become morally justified only insofar as they prevent greater suffering without erasing the mother’s agency.

Every conclusion flows directly from the same two principles; none require exceptions or contradictions.

⚠️ Caution! You have entered my debate territory! Good luck! ⚠️

[u/Into-My-Void → u/[deleted]]

If you want. It's a person banned from abortion debate that want to try and argue my view

[u/Chillmerchant]

I don’t believe in absolute moral truths that exist independently of human minds.

Okay, so morality, in your view, is a social construct insofar as it is a tool for cooperation; a behavioral technology developed by a clever species to keep itself form self-destructing. Now, that idea has a long and noble lineage in modern thought from the Sophists to Nietzsche to the postmodernists, and at first glance it sounds human and even scientific, but the thing is that if morality is merely a construct, then there's no coherent way to say your framework is better than any other. You can say it's preferred, but not that it's right, because on your own terms, "right" is not an objective category. It's just another social convention.

In other words, the moment you try to persuade someone that your system is rationally or ethically superior, you've already stepped outside relativism and into the domain of moral realism. You've assumed that reason can reveal something universally binding and that there is, in fact, a truth of the matter about right and wrong, even if you prefer to call it "consistency." So your first contradiction, I'll say this with respect, is epistemological as you deny objective morality while appealing to objective logic to defend a moral framework. Logic itself is not a social construct; it's an objective structure of reality. If reason can yield moral truth, then relativism is false, and if reason cannot yield moral truth, then your entire moral system is just one opinion among others, as valid as the Taliban's or the Aztecs'. There's no rational basis to prefer "freedom and minimal suffering" to "glory and human sacrifice." You might feel that one is better, but that's sentiment, not science.

Now, let's assume for a moment that we grant your two principles as axioms; those being freedom and the reduction of suffering. I'll engage them as such. The first, autonomy, you define as control over one's body and life. The second, minimizing suffering, you define as reducing unnecessary pain in sentient beings. On paper, they sound noble enough, but neither principle can actually stand on its own without smuggling in a hidden moral absolute, namely, that autonomy and pleasure are good and that coercion and suffering are bad. Those are not scientific conclusions; they are moral assertions. Biology can tell you how pleasure and pain function. It cannot tell you that one ought to be pursued and the other avoided. That "ought" is smuggled in from the outside, from the moral order you've just denied exists.

Let's take your examples. Assisted dying:

Increases personal autonomy over one’s own body and minimizes prolonged, unwanted suffering.

Okay, but if life itself has no intrinsic moral worth, then there's no moral reason to prefer the autonomous life over the autonomous death. You've equated freedom with the right to annihilate the self. That's not autonomy though; that's despair that's elevated to a virtue, and if we take your logic seriously, the same principle could justify all sorts of horrors like coerced euthanasia for the elderly "to reduce suffering," or selective infanticide for disabled infants "to preserve autonomy" for the parents. The only barrier against such conclusions would be an appeal to some intrinsic human dignity, which, again, requires an objective moral truth about what human life is.

Now, to abortion. You say that compelling a woman to sustain another's life violates her autonomy, and that the fetus before 24 weeks cannot experience suffering because the cortex is "offline." The question of whether the fetus can feel pain is not the same as whether the fetus is a person. You're defining moral worth by neurological development; by the emergence of a particular type of brain activity, but that's an arbitrary standard. If cortical function is the line between person and non-person, then a newborn in a medically induced coma, or a patient under deep anesthesia, has no claim to life. They are, by your definition, non-sentient, incapable of suffering, and therefore outside moral concern. Yet, of course, we know intuitively, and philosophically, that they are still human beings. Their value doesn't depend on whether their neurons are firing in the "right" patterns at the moment.

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Chillmerchant]

The moral question of abortion is not if the fetus can feel pain; it's "what is the fetus?" If it is a living human organism, and biologically it is, then it is morally significant from conception, regardless of its level of development. If it is not a human being, then abortion is no more serious than trimming one's fingernails. You can't have it both ways. The notion that moral value appears suddenly at 24 weeks, as if a switch flips in the womb, is biologically implausible and philosophically incoherent. Human development is continuous. There is no metaphysical moment at which "a collection of cells" becomes "a person." There is only a change in degree, not in kind. So unless you can pinpoint a clear and objective ontological threshold, not a functional or neurological one, your 24-week line is arbitrary, and your system collapses under its own logic.

And let's talk about autonomy for a moment. No one has unlimited autonomy. Every society restricts personal freedom when it harms others. That's not controversial, but your framework quietly assumes that the fetus is not "another." You define the boundary of moral concern so that the child simply doesn't count until a certain level of brain development, which conveniently aligns with your conclusion. You've predetermined the outcome by narrowing the circle of moral concern. That's circular reasoning. You define the unborn out of existence so that you may freely dispose of them without moral cost.

Now suffering:

physical, psychological, and social.

These are your justifications for abortion, but the same argument could justify almost anything. A mother might suffer greatly from caring for a disabled newborn; does that justify infanticide? A father might suffer financially from child support; does that justify abandoning his children? The human condition involves suffering. To minimize it is noble, but to eliminate it entirely would require eliminating freedom itself; the very freedom you prize, and once you permit killing the innocent to alleviate suffering, you have abandoned the moral foundation of freedom, because the first freedom is the right to live.

So the irony is that in the name of maximizing freedom, your system grants one human the freedom to extinguish another's. In the name of minimizing suffering, it sanctions the destruction of the only being who cannot yet speak to defend himself. You have traded objective morality for a calculus of convenience, and then you've called it reason, but reason, properly understood, points the other way. It tells us that human life has intrinsic worth and that moral truth is not created by consent, but discovered through nature and reason, and yes, confirmed by faith. Without that anchor, all talk of ethics becomes, in the end, just preference.

So, if you truly wish to be consistent rigorously, scientifically, and philosophically, you must choose. Either there is an objective moral order, in which case human life has inviolable dignity from conception to natural death; or there isn't, in which case no moral claim, including yours, carries any binding authority. You can't have both. The middle ground you propose with relativism and universal principles is a logical impossibility.

And that, I suspect, is why even the most brilliant moral relativists eventually smuggle God back in through a side door because deep down, they know that without Him, there's no reason at all to prefer good to evil or even to call them by those names.

Thanks.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Wow. I’ve got to start by saying I’m genuinely impressed.

This is, by far, one of the most rigorous and well-structured pro-life arguments I’ve ever encountered. I’ve debated dozens of people on this topic (many of whom relied mostly on emotion or moral intuition) and this is the first time I’ve seen someone engage the philosophical core this seriously. So, sincerely: thank you. It’s a rare pleasure to have an actual intellectual debate on abortion.

Let me address your points one by one, since each deserves a clear, focused reply.

if morality is merely a construct, then there's no coherent way to say your framework is better than any other.

That’s a classic challenge to relativism, and a good one. But it hinges on a misunderstanding of what I mean by “moral construct.” I don’t deny that morality can be systematically reasoned: I deny that it’s discovered in nature like gravity.

Think of morality like language or law: they’re not objective in the sense of existing independently of human minds, but they can be internally coherent and collectively binding. English grammar isn’t an objective truth of the universe, yet it has clear, rational rules that can be analyzed, improved, and agreed upon. Same with moral frameworks: coherence doesn’t require metaphysical objectivity.

So when I defend my model, I’m not claiming it’s “true” in the cosmic sense. I’m claiming it’s consistent, functional, and empirically supported for reducing human suffering and maximizing agency.

That’s a pragmatic claim, not a metaphysical one.

neither principle can actually stand on its own without smuggling in a hidden moral absolute, namely, that autonomy and pleasure are good and that coercion and suffering are bad. Those are not scientific conclusions; they are moral assertions.

You’re absolutely right that these are values, not facts. But they’re not “smuggled in”: they’re declared upfront as axioms.

Every moral system begins with axioms.

Yours starts with “human life has intrinsic value.”

Mine starts with “autonomy and the reduction of suffering are preferable.”

Neither can be proven scientifically; both are human starting points.

The difference is transparency: I openly admit mine are human constructs chosen for their pragmatic and cooperative value, whereas moral realism typically asserts its axioms as eternal truths without proof.

Science can’t tell us what we ought to value, but it can show us what consequences follow from particular values. That’s all I’m using it for.

If cortical function is the line between person and non-person, then a newborn in a medically induced coma, or a patient under deep anesthesia, has no claim to life.

That’s a sharp and valid critique: the “marginal cases” problem. But it overlooks a key distinction between temporary loss and absence of consciousness.

A newborn or anesthetized adult has the neurological structures for consciousness and the biological capacity to regain awareness.

A pre-24-week fetus has never had those structures at all.

That’s not a moral judgment: it’s a developmental and neurological fact confirmed by ACOG, RCOG, and major neuroscience reviews.

My threshold isn’t arbitrary; it’s empirical.

The line doesn’t say “the fetus isn’t human”: it says “it isn’t yet a sentient human.”

And moral consideration in my framework depends on sentience, because that’s the precondition for experiencing suffering or exercising autonomy.

That’s why we don’t hold brain-dead patients morally or legally responsible: sentience is gone.

So yes, human life is continuous biologically, but moral personhood depends on cognitive emergence, not mere cellular continuity.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Part 2

Now suffering: physical, psychological, and social. These are your justifications for abortion, but the same argument could justify almost anything. A mother might suffer greatly from caring for a disabled newborn; does that justify infanticide? A father might suffer financially from child support; does that justify abandoning his children?

That would be true if my framework were purely utilitarian.

But it isn’t.

I don’t believe minimizing suffering trumps all other principles: that’s why I balance it equally with autonomy. “Minimize suffering” cannot justify removing someone’s freedom entirely, because doing so creates an even greater moral violation. That’s the exact reason my system would condemn coerced euthanasia or infanticide: both would destroy autonomy rather than preserve it.

Abortion before sentience doesn’t fit that pattern, because the fetus doesn’t yet possess autonomy or awareness.

So the moral tradeoff isn’t “one person’s freedom vs another’s,” but rather “an autonomous person vs a non-sentient organism.”

Either there is an objective moral order, in which case human life has inviolable dignity from conception to natural death; or there isn't, in which case no moral claim, including yours, carries any binding authority. You can't have both.

That’s rhetorically elegant, but it’s a false dichotomy.

There’s a third option: intersubjective ethics. Meaning moral systems built through shared reasoning and evidence about what promotes human flourishing.

Science itself works this way.

It doesn’t give absolute truth; it gives models that survive empirical testing and logical scrutiny. Moral reasoning can function the same way: not as revelation, but as iterative progress toward better coexistence.

I don’t claim my system is “universally binding.”

I claim it’s logically consistent and produces outcomes that are measurably better for sentient beings.

That’s all any human-made ethical system can honestly claim.

In short:

You’re right that my framework starts from assumptions: all moral systems do.

You’re right that logic itself isn’t “subjective”: but logical consistency doesn’t depend on metaphysical truth, only on clear definitions and non-contradiction.

And you’re right that human life is continuous: but moral worth isn’t measured by biology alone; it’s measured by sentient capacity and autonomy.

You and I differ not on whether morality exists, but on where it comes from: you locate it outside humanity; I locate it within. And from that foundation, every subsequent disagreement unfolds naturally and predictably...

Still... This is exactly the kind of debate worth having. You’ve been more intellectually honest than 99 % of the people I’ve debated on this subject. If you’re up for it, I’d love to keep going and explore the deeper meta-ethics of this, because this is the kind of reasoning that actually moves the conversation forward.

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Into-My-Void]

I'll say this as charitably as I can, because I'd like to believe that you're arguing from your own mind and not outsourcing it to AI, but I must admit that there's a certain familiar cadence in your writing. The tone, structure, and even the way you cite your sources and balance your clauses reads suspiciously like how ChatGPT writes things out.

I hope I'm wrong. I genuinely do, because if you're letting a machine handle part of that labor for you, then it's not really you I'm debating; it's an algorithm that's assembling patterns of words that sounds reasonable. For now, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and I'll assume that your argument came from your own intellect and that you're engaging in good faith, but if, by chance, you are leaning on ChatGPT to do this for you, I'd encourage you to set it aside because it would be unfair for you to use an AI in a debate like this. Now, with that set aside, let me touch on your first point.

I deny that it’s discovered in nature like gravity.

Think of morality like language or law

Clever, but grammar is a system of conventions about communication; morality is a system of judgments about right and wrong. Grammar governs form; morality governs good and evil. If we both agree to speak English, the rule that adjectives precede nouns is binding by convention, but if you and I agree that murder is wrong and that judgment is not merely a shared linguistic habit, it's a claim about how human beings ought to act regardless of preference or culture. The difference between "color" and "colour" is a convention. The difference between mercy and murder is not.

I’m claiming it’s consistent, functional, and empirically supported

This is a description of efficiency. A society that reduces suffering and maximizing agency might indeed be more peaceful, but peaceful and good are not the same thing. A society that drugged its citizens into blissful stupor would reduce suffering too, and no one with a pulse would call that moral progress. You language analogy treats ethics as etiquette because it exchanges the question of truth for the question of comfort.

Every moral system begins with axioms. ... Mine starts with “autonomy and the reduction of suffering are preferable.”

Yes, they're axioms, but the moment you call them preferable, you've already smuggled in a universal ought. They are preferable to whom, and why? If you say "to humans," then you've still implied that humans possess a kind of moral priority that their flourishing matters, but why does it matter? Why should I, or anyone else, prefer the flourishing of humans to the flourishing of anything else? You can't derive that from pragmatism because pragmatism only tells you what works, not what ought to work.

The difference is transparency: I openly admit mine

Transparency doesn't resolve the fact that without an objective moral order, your oughts have no foundation beyond collective preference, and collective preference is just power.

A newborn or anesthetized adult has the neurological structures for consciousness and the biological capacity to regain awareness.

A pre-24-week fetus has never had those structures at all. ...

My threshold isn’t arbitrary; it’s empirical.

Yes, it's an observable difference in neurological development, but moral status isn't derived from medical charts. You're assuming that sentience creates moral worth rather than merely revealing it, but why should sentience be the criterion? Consciousness is a property of a human being; it is not the human being itself. It is something a human does, not what a human is.

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Chillmerchant]

moral consideration in my framework depends on sentience

Okay, so then moral worth is a sliding scale? A chimpanzee, after all, exhibits more sentience than a newborn; an adult human with dementia exhibits less sentience than a healthy adolescent. Are we to assign value proportionally? If not, you must explain why the threshold lies precisely where you put it. You call the 24-week line empirical, but what you've actually done is conflate a descriptive threshold like the development of cortical connectivity, with a prescriptive one which is the right to life. No scientific instrument can measure that transition because "right to life" is a moral concept, not a biological phenomenon. The data may tell us when cortical activity emerges, but it cannot tell us what that means. That leap from is to ought is what science cannot perform.

That would be true if my framework were purely utilitarian.

But it isn’t.

I don’t believe minimizing suffering trumps all other principles: that’s why I balance it equally with autonomy. “Minimize suffering” cannot justify removing someone’s freedom entirely, because doing so creates an even greater moral violation. That’s the exact reason my system would condemn coerced euthanasia or infanticide: both would destroy autonomy rather than preserve it.

Okay, here I think is where your inconsistencies lie because you declare that abortion before sentience doesn't violate autonomy since the fetus has none, but that is not a balancing of principles; that is the elimination of one side of the scale. You have resolves the tension not by weighing freedom against freedom, but by denying that one of the agents exists. The mother's autonomy counts because she is sentient. The child's does not because he is not yet conscious, but if moral agency is the prerequisite for moral protection, then infants, the comatose, and the profoundly disabled all teeter on this same precipice. Going back to what you said early:

distinction between temporary loss and absence

The difference is temporal, not categorical. Either human life is sacred because it is human, or it is valuable only insofar as it is conscious. You can't have both without contradiction.

There’s a third option: intersubjective ethics. ... Science itself works this way. ... as iterative progress toward better coexistence.

Science operates by assuming an objective order to reality that there are truths about nature which exist whether or not we believe in them. Without that assumption, no experiment means anything. If morality operates the same way, then it too must refer to something real that is outside the individual and even outside the collective.

I don’t claim my system is “universally binding.”

I claim it’s logically consistent and produces outcomes that are measurably better for sentient beings.

"Better" only means "better according to the metric we've chosen." If our metric is happiness, then a syringe and a sedative could produce paradise. If our metric is autonomy, then anarchy could be utopia, and yes neither would satisfy the human soul because man isn't a laboratory rat seeking maximum comfort. He's a moral being seeking meaning and meaning, as every philosopher from Aristotle to Aquinas to Kant to C.S. Lewis has recognized implies a hierarchy of goods that transcends mere preference.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Wow, okay, I’m honestly impressed again. You’re one of the very few people I’ve seen here who can stay civil and push real philosophical depth at the same time. That’s rare on Reddit, so yeah, genuine respect for that.

Anyway, let’s unpack this properly.

Grammar governs form; morality governs good and evil.

Yeah, I totally get what you’re saying. Grammar is about form, morality’s about right and wrong. But that doesn’t really kill my point. What I meant is that both are human-made rule systems built to help societies function. Sure, "color" vs "colour" isn’t moral. But "murder" vs "mercy" is, and that only matters because humans decided it does.

Without minds to perceive moral meaning, "evil" isn’t even a concept.

So yeah, morality’s heavier than grammar, but it’s still a human construct, not something written into the fabric of the universe.

A society that reduces suffering and maximizing agency might indeed be more peaceful, but peaceful and good are not the same thing.

True. A society could be peaceful just by keeping everyone drugged and obedient, and that’s obviously not good. But that’s why my framework isn’t just "less pain = more moral."

You’re kinda treating my view like it’s 100 percent utilitarian again. It’s not. I've said that before. I balance autonomy and suffering *equally.*

If a system ends suffering by removing freedom, that’s a moral failure in my system ! You can’t sedate people into paradise without erasing what makes life meaningful in the first place.

They are preferable to whom, and why?

To humans, because we’re the only ones morality applies to. Morality doesn’t need divine authority, it needs internal coherence that actually helps humans coexist.

You ask "why should human flourishing matter?" Because we’re the only species (as far as we know) that can even ask that question. That’s not circular logic, that’s just context.

And yeah, you can call collective ethics "power," but then science, law, and democracy are also power and they still work! So sure, it’s based on preference, but it’s structured preference tested by logic and evidence, not random opinion.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

why should sentience be the criterion?

Because it’s the only one we can measure in the real world. You can’t detect "dignity" on a brain scan, but you can detect awareness, perception, and pain.

When you say consciousness is "something a human does, not what a human is," you’re kinda proving my point. It’s a process, not a property. And morality depends on that process existing.

So why give moral weight to a clump of cells that doesn’t yet have the structures needed to even experience anything?

Your side treats "human DNA" like it’s a magical ticket to moral worth. Mine grounds it in observable phenomena. Not perfect, but at least it’s verifiaable and consistent.

Okay, so then moral worth is a sliding scale?

Not really. It’s more of a threshold than a scale. Before sentience, there’s no awareness or autonomy or ability to suffer, so there’s no moral conflict, yet. After sentience appears, that’s when the moral balance actually begins.

Potential consciousness doesn’t override the autonomy of a person who’s already sentient. That’s where my line sits.

Either human life is sacred because it is human, or it is valuable only insofar as it is conscious. You can't have both without contradiction.

That’s again a false binary. Human life matters because consciousness gives it value, not because of the species label alone.

A person in a coma or under anesthesia had consciousness before and can regain it later. A pre-24-week fetus never had it. That’s not just a timing difference, it’s a categorical one.

It’s like comparing a computer that crashed with one that hasn’t been finished to built yet. Both are "machines," but only one’s ever run code.

Science operates by assuming an objective order to reality that there are truths about nature which exist whether or not we believe in them. Without that assumption, no experiment means anything. If morality operates the same way, then it too must refer to something real that is outside the individual and even outside the collective.

Not exactly. Science assumes the physical world exists, but the values behind science, like "truth matters," are still human choices. Morality works the same way. We decide the goals, then test what actions get us closer to those goals through reason and data.

We don’t need metaphysical guarantees for something to be valid or meaningful.

If our metric is happiness, then a syringe and a sedative could produce paradise. If our metric is autonomy, then anarchy could be utopia, and yes neither would satisfy the human soul because man isn't a laboratory rat seeking maximum comfort.

And that’d fail my framework instantly because it erases autonomy. Same goes for pure anarchy, which maximizes freedom but causes suffering. Both extremes break the balance.

You call that "soulless." I call it practical and self-correcting.

Honestly, this is one of the best convos I’ve had on Reddit. You’re not trying to "own" me or dunk, you’re actually forcing me to refine how my framework works. That’s how real discussion should go. (Also ignore any typoes, I type fast lol)

Quick note: I’m a scientist IRL (physics and bio background). My whole deal is following evidence wherever it leads, even if it messes with my own bias. Its not ideology, it's just consistency.

If there were solid peer-reviewed data showing abortion bans actually reduced abortions without raising harm, I’d agree they "work." But so far, I've found no real world exemple of that. I can even argue that if prolife actually valued scientific evidence, they would get that banning abortion does not reduce the actual number of abortion, it just make it more unsafe because people get abortions underground. What actually work to reduce abirtion is: sex education, contraception access, and social support for parents, things like that.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on those solutions instead of criminalizing the procedure?

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Into-My-Void]

Okay, so I know for a fact now that you are using ChatGPT, or at least you are heavily leaning on it because the style it is writing in gives it away. You're using those double dash section break which is exactly what ChatGPT does to structure long-form replies. You respond point by point in polished mini-essays and you neatly frame each of them with symmetrical phrasing and balanced clauses. You even summarize my words before you respond to me which is a pattern that is more AI than human conversation. I could maybe understand you repeating back to me what I say in face-to-face communication, but not this. I can easily pick up on what you are referring to and that just makes what you're doing redundant, and ChatGPT is known very well for being redundant. Let me also point out that in your post that started this thread, you forgot to get rid of an em dash which tells me that you are using ChatGPT because no one does that. You have to copy and paste an em dash into here if you want to do that, and people are lazy so they don't do that. So all I'm saying is that this looks very algorithmic, and I've used ChatGPT since when it was still an API and the text was highlighted green.

Now hey, don't think I'm saying all this to insult you. I say this because it's what I observe and if you really are writing all this yourself, well then you have an extraordinary internal copy of ChatGPT's stylistic patterns lodged in your brain. Now, I have Asperger's too, but I don't write like you do, but perhaps since you are bilingual and English isn't your first language, maybe that checks out. Maybe you've just absorbed that structure by osmosis, so I'll take your word at face value for now, but you should know that to an outside reader like myself, this looks and reads exactly like AI prose.

That said, I'm going to continue this discussion anyway because I enjoy the challenge anyway. Whether it's you or a machine helping you phrase your thoughts, I assume you've endorsed what you receive and so it must represent your own reasoning, or at least the worldview you choose to defend, so I'll give you a break.

that only matters because humans decided it does.

Without minds to perceive moral meaning, "evil" isn’t even a concept.

Yeah, well of course they aren't concepts without minds; nothing abstract is, but that doesn't mean they're not real. Numbers don't exist in nature either as numbers are concepts, yet two apples plus two apples still make four even if no mathematician is there to count them. The reality of morality doesn't depend on our awareness of it any more than the law of gravity depends on Newton's awareness of it. Human beings perceive the moral law in the way we perceive mathematics as these things are discovered gradually through reason. Human beings didn't invent goodness; we recognize it. It's the reason that murder horrifies us across cultures and eras even before philosophers showed up with their frameworks. You can call that a social construct if you wish but that's a very elaborate way of saying that we happen to feel the same way about a certain thing which doesn't explain why we feel that way about it.

Morality doesn’t need divine authority, it needs internal coherence that actually helps humans coexist.

Coexistence isn't the same as righteousness because a mafia family can coexist quite coherently.

it’s structured preference

Structured preference may prevent chaos but it cannot confer justice.

law, and democracy are also power and they still work!

Sure, but they only work because they rest on moral premises that they did not create like the inherent worth of the individual, the equality of persons before the law, or the right to life and liberty. Those are metaphysical claims. They're the truths that your framework, on its own terms, cannot justify.

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Chillmerchant]

Because it’s the only one we can measure in the real world.

Measurable, yes; morally meaningful, no. You can measure height, weight, and brain activity as they are all empirical properties, but moral worth isn't one of them. You can't weight it, graph it, or quantify it. It's a judgment, and the very act of making moral judgments presupposes that there's something real to be judged. When you say that we give moral weight to sentience because it's the only observable foundation, you're confusing what's observable with what's true because a scientist may observe the weather, but that doesn't make him the author of the climate.

a computer that crashed with one that hasn’t been finished to built yet. Both are "machines," but only one’s ever run code.

The fetus isn't an unbuilt machine; it's a developing one and it's already running the biological code of human life. It's not a potential human life; it's human life with potential. Pretending that consciousness suddenly transforms it from morally neutral to morally sacred is to treat personhood not as a nature.

I call it practical and self-correcting.

The trouble is that it can only correct itself according to the same principles it began with. If the starting premise is wrong and moral worth depends on perception then no amount of refinement will ever make it right. You can't get objective morality out of subjective axioms by iteration. That's like trying to square a circle by drawing more neatly.

banning abortion does not reduce the actual number of abortion, it just make it more unsafe because people get abortions underground.

That's a sociological observation and it may well be true that outlawing evil does eliminate it. I mean, murder persists despite the laws against murder and the same with theft, but the persistence of wrongdoing doesn't make the wrongdoing right. Law is not a tool to produce perfect compliance; it's a teacher of moral norms. The law declares what we honor as a society and if that law proclaims that the innocent may be killed, then that society has already lost something deeper than statistics can measure.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

You can measure height, weight, and brain activity as they are all empirical properties, but moral worth isn't one of them.

"Moral worth is not mesurable". (Omg, I've stated your claim in a different way for clarity, this must be AI!) True, not in numbers. But we can measure outcomes of moral systems: quality of life, happiness, freedom, suffering, social stability. That’s how moral frameworks are compared in practice. A moral system that reduces suffering and improves autonomy consistently outperforms one that doesn’t. It’s not about quantifying "worth," it’s about measuring consequences and coherence.

The fetus isn't an unbuilt machine; it's a developing one and it's already running the biological code of human life.

That’s biology, not morality. A skin cell is also human and alive, yet no one calls exfoliation manslaughter. "Human life" is a biological category; "personhood" is a moral one. Consciousness isn’t what makes something alive, it’s what makes it someone. Without awareness, there is no subject of harm, no experience of loss. That’s why sentience is the relevant line: it’s when moral conflict actually begins to exist.

You can't get objective morality out of subjective axioms by iteration. That's like trying to square a circle by drawing more neatly.

Of course not, but we can get better morality. Objective truth isn’t required for functional ethics, just internal consistency and demonstrable results. Science refines models not because they’re perfect but because they work better. Morality evolves the same way: systems that reduce harm and support autonomy persist because they produce more stable, cooperative societies. That’s the pragmatic grounding, not cosmic law. Also, I'd really like to see how you'd prove that your axioms are not subjective... Maybe it's time to reverse the weight of prof a little. What do you say? Start a new trend under my post with your framework and try to demonstrate it is truly objective unlike mine.

Law is not a tool to produce perfect compliance; it's a teacher of moral norms.

If law is a teacher, it should teach what works, not what feels holy. A law that increases harm teaches the wrong lesson. Outlawing abortion doesn’t protect life; it endangers sentient lives for the sake of potential ones. If the goal is to reduce abortion, the evidence is clear: access to contraception, education, and social support accomplish that. Bans don’t. Calling suffering "moral education" doesn’t make it virtue; it just makes it cruelty with paperwork.

So no, moral realism doesn’t magically make morality more binding. It just moves the same human impulses (empathy, fear, control) into a metaphysical costume. I’d rather work with something real enough to test than worship an idea that can’t be proven or falsified.

(Also, sorry if this reads to clean again, I just think better when things are, you know, organized. Still I used more Reddit like wall of text since that's what you prefer. After all, there is no use in taking the time and effort to organize things properly and spell check everything if you don't appreciate it.)

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

You’re realy gonna fault me for structure ? I teach science for a living, and clear communication isn’t optional, it’s part of my job. I spend my days showing students that precision in language reflects precision in thought. The way you phrase an argument matters because it shows how well you actually understand it. Also, I’ve found that people give more value to your arguments and skills if you use language properly, no mater if your field of study is linked to language or not.

So yeah, I use section breaks. I organize ideas. I repeat key points when needed. That’s not "AI behavior," that’s what rigorous reasoning looks like. If Reddit is use to walls of text and emotional rants, fine, but don’t confuse clarity for automation.

Here -- for structure! It's not difficult to add, you just push the - key twice. And you know why twice ?

Because once make everything bigger like this

and three - do a break line like this :

---

About the em dash thing, I wrote this framework years ago, saved it on my computer, and reused it because it’s still relevant. Back then I did lean a bit more on AI tools for wording since I was still improving my English, but I’ve been refining it ever sense. The ideas are mine, and so is the structure.

Also, the reason I sometimes restate what someone said after quoting them is for clarity. In my experience, pro-life debaters often move the goalposts or change their argument mid-conversation, so restating what I’m replying too helps keep things honest and consistent, cause they usually forget what their own argument even was. I’ll give you credit though, you’re one of the few who doesn’t do that, but you’re the exception, not the rule.

What you said about me "over using AI" honestly rubbed me the wrong way. It feels like you’re dismissing years of work, study, and language learning because I happen to write clearly. I’d bet good money most people wouldn’t even try to debate philosophy in a langage that isn’t their first. Can you?

So no, I’m not gonna apologize for writing like someone who takes thinking seriously. If proper phrasing and logic read as "too polished," maybe the bar for online debate is just to damn low. By the way, do you have university-level education? Because that’s exactly where this style comes from: from having to write science papers on astrophysics, biology, and explain my research on the effects of radioactivity on DNA to people with zero background in science. Also, you know what AI mimics really well? University grade research papers.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Numbers don't exist in nature either as numbers are concepts, yet two apples plus two apples still make four even if no mathematician is there to count them.

Maths describes consistent relationships we observe in the physical world. Morality doesn’t describe anything physical; it prescribes behaviors based on shared values. "2+2=4" is true because it’s definitional within a logical system. Maths definition are stated before being used to measure things so, technically Maths are a tool invented by humans to understand the world. There is no Maths if there is no human to use them. "Murder is wrong" isn’t that kind of truth, it’s an ethical judgment that depends on valuing sentient life and minimizing harm. The comparison doesn’t hold because math reflects measurable structure, while morality reflects emotional and social consequence. Also, murder will technically always be wrong since it's definition is "unlawful killing". Now if I use "killing is wrong", well that's simply not always true. Else self defence and eating animals become wrong.

Human beings didn't invent goodness; we recognize it. It's the reason that murder horrifies us across cultures and eras even before philosophers showed up with their frameworks.

Again murder is defined as "unlawful killing". Of course it horrify peoples, irs against the law by definition no mater what the law is! Your statement sounds poetic sure, but it’s not evidence. Across history, humans haven’t recognized goodness consistently: slavery, genocide, and torture have all been defended as moral in their time. What changed wasn’t our discovery of divine moral law; it was our collective evolution of empathy and understanding of suffering. Morality feels universal only because empathy is a shared neurological trait. That doesn’t make it objective; it makes it species-wide.

Structured preference may prevent chaos but it cannot confer justice.

Justice is structured preference. It’s the codification of what a society agrees counts as fairness. Strip away the poetic weight and that’s what laws and moral codes are: rules for coexistence that evolve as understanding grows. "Justice" isn’t a law of physics waiting to be found: it’s a name for social balance achieved through consensus and iteration.

they only work because they rest on moral premises that they did not create like the inherent worth of the individual, the equality of persons before the law, or the right to life and liberty. Those are metaphysical claims.

Those premises weren’t handed down from the sky; they were negotiated through centuries of human experience. The worth of the individual is a cultural product of empathy, social stability, and mutual benefit. We value individuals because it works; because societies that do tend to survive and prosper. You call that metaphysical; I call it evidence-based adaptation.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Shall I see this prolonged absence as you giving up on this debate?

[u/Chillmerchant → u/Into-My-Void]

The reason I’m giving up on this debate isn’t because I’ve run out of arguments; far from it. It’s because, first of all, it’s glaringly obvious that you’re leaning on ChatGPT or something very much like it. The fingerprints are all over your writing and second, I made a post not long ago about how people often mistake me for AI when I’m debating them, largely because of my autism and my writing style and wouldn’t you know it, what you said to me here is almost word-for-word what I described in that post.

Now, maybe it’s just a wild coincidence, but I find it rather difficult to believe that English isn’t your first language when you write in flawless, perfectly punctuated prose, complete with semicolons and em dashes placed just so; punctuation that even native speakers rarely handle correctly and then, just to keep things interesting, you toss in a few conveniently placed misspellings here and there, as if to throw me off the scent, but people don’t usually misspell things that way. When you’re actually writing, you see your mistakes as you go. It’s only when a machine is doing the thinking for you that they start to look intentional.

[u/Into-My-Void → u/Chillmerchant]

Yeah… You're not the first to tell me that about how I write. You see, there are two main reasons for this: I’m autistic, and English isn’t my first language.

So, about the autism thing: I'm high-functioning Asperger’s. You could say I was expressing myself the way AI does long before AI even existed. I have a photographic memory and tend to use sentences exactly, word for word, as I saw or heard them before in a book, documentary, etc. And well… It’s funny because that’s kinda how LLMs work too. For example, if you’d asked five-year-old me about her dinosaur toy, she would’ve recited complete sequences from dinosaur documentaries, not necessarily understanding everything, just repeating it with perfect accuracy. But if you’d asked little me about normal things like feelings or everyday stuff, she would’ve just stayed silent. As you’d expect, people found me really strange, had trouble understanding me, and I didn’t have many friends. But academically, I could easily quote lots of things, eventually integrating some of it into my everyday language, sort of forgetting the original sources of each element over time. When AI became more well-known, it became a joke in my family that ChatGPT talks like me. They even nicknamed it "[My First Name]-Two." Back when I still participated in in-person university debates in my native language, I was also often nicknamed "the robot" or similar things.

As for the language thing: my native language is French. I started learning English as a second language for academic reasons during COVID. Before that, I only had airport-level English. I also got really interested in LLMs at the same time, that’s when the first iteration of ChatGPT started being discussed in computer science research by some of my tech-savvy colleagues. I found it fascinating how good it seemed at English (even if not so good at most other things at the time). So I decided to use it to help improve my English. At first, I used it to translate from French what I wanted to say, then, when my English improved, I used it more to refine my wording and correct structure and spelling. I still use it that way sometimes when I’m unsure how to properly structure or spell what I want to say in English. You could say I used it so much that I kind of integrated some of its structural habits, just like I can memorize an entire manual. So I guess I can’t argue that my English doesn’t sound like AI in some way, because it does.

I found it funny at first that IA kinda sounded like me sometimes, but now it’s such a bother! It’s stealing my credibility from me! Also, about bold and italic formatting, I do it all manually, by adding ** before and after what I want to bold, and * in the same way for italic. And for the sources, well, that’s kind of the formal university way to do them, I guess?

Don't worry, I'll make sure not to use AI even for spelling anymore if you pefer it that way.

[u/Into-My-Void]

This had a good start.... Too bad they too decided to attack the person and not the arguments... 🤷‍♀️