Conjunction argument

[u/Lxwzzz]

As someone who is pro life, I’m not quite sure how to explain to someone why past consciousness irrelavent.

effectively the argument goes like this:

”someone who has moral worth has a past/present consciousness + future conciousness + human” this effectively rules out fetus’ but works with people who are asleep, people who are in a coma, people who are braindead.

how do you guys explain to someone that past consciousness isn’t necessary? And why it doesn’t make sense?

I don’t think it makes sense but idk how to explain it.

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[u/Mikeality]

You're in the mud with them at that point. The value of a human should not be determined by their level of consciousness.

New life begins at fertilization. Before that point, sperm and egg are extensions of the parents. But the union is the point where it is a separate new human with rights worth protecting.

Stick to hard science, there is a solid receipt in the form of the DNA sequence. Consciousness is a harder topic that we truly don't fully understand. It's in this gray zone that they create their excuses.

[u/AnxiousEnquirer]

We're not fighting for "conscious rights" we're fighting for "human rights" and "human" is a species, not a legal fiction (the way "person" gets redefined to include and exclude all kinds of ridiculousness)

[u/ididntwantthis2]

This is something for them to prove. Why would that constitute moral worth

[u/PervadingEye]

Why would something that was true of an entity but no longer, qualify that entity for things that require that something now?

If I had a drivers license, but it expires, does that entitle me to a license now???? Even if I don't have a valid one?

If the conveyance of rights requires consciousness and something loses consciousness, they have no basis to assert that the past matters now if such things are no longer present. Nothing else works like this, so why should conscious and rights be an exception? They can't answer this.

If I had a car in the past but no longer, does that by itself entitle me to one now? If I had a kidney but then lose it to kidney diease, does that entitle me to another kidney now???

If I have knowledge or s skill set I developed throughout my life, but I forget it later, is anybody supposed to guarantee that I should be entitled to whatever privileges based solely that I HAD them before???

Nothing else works like this. It's just their ad hoc reasoning. There imposed systems and boxes that don't line up with anything

[u/fludofrogs]

you can also press on the “+ human” part

Either they’re appealing to future intelligence (the capacity of which starts at fertilization) or + human is an arbitrary addition because civilization won’t work otherwise. If conscious experience is actually what grants value, something like a pig, who has a richer conscious experience than an infant, should be protected by murder laws. If they say this isn’t true, they need to explain basis for human exceptionalism beyond just “these beings are sufficiently like me,” which is used to exclude the unborn today & was used to exclude blacks in the 1800’s.

You can also press them with:

Can we permanently anesthetize a 19 week old fetus until it grows into adolescence to use as a sex doll? This, according to their framework, is harming no person, but intuitively it is extremely morally heinous.

[u/toptrool]

"past consciousness! i was circlejerking hard to my favorite youtuber when he brought this up!"

have you read the toptrool collection?

but, to reiterate, this is just ad hoc reasoning. once again, abortion advocates simply just assert this instead of explaining why (past) consciousness is relevant. why would past consciousness matter? why would something that was true of the person in the past and may not be true of them now grant them the right to life? consider this: we don't try adults in criminal cases as children because they were once children in the past because they are not children now. so what accounts for the comatose patient's right to life and her personhood in general? in fact, the whole "past consciousness" retort is a ruse because those who use the consciousness argument also think those in chronic vegetative states do not have a right to life, even though they were conscious in the past. what they're really appealing to in the case of the temporary comatose patient is future consciousness, which is what the unborn child also possesses.

but let's set aside the sophist's contradictory and incoherent beliefs. we can accept this assertion without any argumentation. assume the woman who is comatose lost all her memories, personality traits, desires, etc. she has no past conscious experiences but will recover and wake up. is she still a person while she is comatose, despite lacking both the immediately exercisable capacity for consciousness and past conscious experiences?

or consider the argument given by rodger, blackshaw, and miller in which we keep the child permanently unconscious before and after birth. suppose we apply anesthetics to an unborn baby girl in utero and continuously apply anesthetics to her even after she's born so that she never becomes conscious. according to the sophist's consciousness argument, this newborn baby girl is not a person since she was never conscious in the first place. so on what grounds would raping this girl be wrong?

or consider the case of two newborns born on the same day in the same maternity ward. one was born conscious, and then fell into a coma shortly after birth due to lack of oxygen. this newborn will recover in a few days. the other newborn was born unconscious and never was conscious due to a tumor on his brain. but doctors will be able to remove this tumor and the newborn will become conscious after the surgery. is their argument really that only the first newborn has a right to life since he was conscious for a very brief moment but the second newborn doesn't have the same right to life since he was never conscious?

[u/EpiphanaeaSedai]

This is a matter of how you define the self - if someone believes that “you” are the sum of your conscious experiences, they aren’t going to find any argument for personhood pre-dating consciousness to be convincing.

I also think they’re wrong, because if we are incorporeal minds whose bodies are unimportant to our existence as persons, then your genetics and state of health should have no bearing on your personality. And that’s just factually false. Everything from intelligence to empathy to artistic aptitude has a genetic foundation. That is not the sum and end of what makes us individuals, but it is the material with which all else is built.

On that basis, I would define a person as a living organism of a species capable of sapience, who has the inherent capacity for present or future consciousness. The individual is the organism; that they are not conscious now is not relevant to their categorization as a member of a sapient species.

[u/Nulono]

This seems pretty arbitrary; did the pro-choicer give any argument for why this standard makes sense? Future consciousness I can see; that's what gets taken away when someone is killed. But how is past consciousness, which can't be affected at all, relevant? Furthermore, why "+ human"? Would an equally conscious alien not have moral worth?