SPL on the Atheist Analysis podcast
On Sunday night, SPL appeared on Atheist Analysis for what was intended to be a one-hour podcast. It wound up being closer to two hours. Nobody had any sudden pro-choice to pro-life conversions (or vice versa), but it was a great discussion and we found a lot of common ground. Watch/listen below, and let us know how we did!
Your next chance to catch Secular Pro-Life will be this Saturday at the second annual Vitae et Veritas conference at Yale. Details and registration here.
Glad to see this is up. I can't wait to watch it!
At work with the podcast in one earbud just increased my productivity! I found a lot more I could agree on with SPL. The deeper question of the ethics of abortion will surely never be settled, and with better medical technology available in the future, the answers to the questions will most likely change as well.
I for one think in the ideal world, abortion will not be a particularly attractive choice given other viable options society and technology has available. Maybe the outreach that SPL does with right wing pro-life will educate more of them into seeing the issue from a more social aspect and not purely religious, and facilitate changes to social attitudes that would make abortion less attractive. That is a long-term goal, but something I could also support.
22:30 "when I look at a picture of a zygote, I feel nothing. I don't feel anything at all. . . . they don't find it emotionally compelling."
When we look at a picture of a zygote, we're getting a technically-enhanced view compared to seeing it with the naked eye. In terms of what our visual function contributes to our emotional response to the zygote, our response would be even less if we saw it with the naked eye.
In terms of what my visual function contributes to my emotional response to a toddler, that contribution will be less if I have bad eyesight than if I have good eyesight.
However, the visual function is not the only function that contributes to our emotional responses to things. In the case of a toddler, we can hear it and touch it. In the case of a zygote, those two senses don't do much for us either. But beyond the physical senses, we can also think about things. If we think enough about zygotes, we will cease to think of them as if they were frozen in time in the microsopic form they presently have. We will "see" them as the first step in a process.
Personally, having learned to think of them as the first step in a process of an entire human life, I feel quite emotional about zygotes. If I had to choose between killing a toddler and killing a zygote, it would be easier for me to kill the zygote, but not much. And I'm talking about an emotional, or let's say an intuitional, response. I'm not talking about being constrained purely by an intellectual conviction.
If we think enough about zygotes, we will cease to think of them as if they were frozen in time
You mean, project onto them your hopes and dreams, in desperate attempt to anthropomorphize something that is merely a genetic blueprint.
I can do the same with a sperm and an ovum. Each gamete is 1/2 a person. The RCC even managed to do so, stating that not creating more children is a form of murder, because you are not allowing them to *live* by procreating.
"something that is merely a genetic blueprint"
Can a normal blueprint construct itself? No. A zygote is a blueprint that can construct itself. Just give it food and a safe environment, and watch it grow. If that's not awe-inspiring, what is?
"I can do the same with a sperm and an ovum. Each gamete is 1/2 a person."
No you can't, and no it's not. A gamete alone truly might as well be frozen in time. There is no process that will go anywhere significant. No gamete alone will ever become anything more than it already is.
Can't construct itself without specific help from the woman's body that goes beyond mere nutrition.
And a zygote won't go anywhere either without a boatload of help. Still doesn't change the fact that every sperm and every egg is half a "person".
>> A zygote is a blueprint that can construct itself. Just give it food and a safe environment, and watch it grow. If that's not awe-inspiring, what is?
You seem to be arguing that awe-inspiring is akin to miraculous, and that there for life is *special*. Keep in mind that all the things going on there obey the laws of thermodynamics, and while evolution has honed this amazingly well-choreographed process of self-replication, as a physical process, it is completely governed by ordinary physics. Also, while this process is awe-inspiring, it is also extremely mundane. Biological processes like this are in every nook and cranny of the earth.
That something is awe-inspiring says more about the prior model of the universe that is inside our brain. We see things as awe-inspiring when it looks improbable. But what looks improbable or rare is more a function of our limited experience of the world around us than the intrinsic amazingness of whatever you're seeing.
>> And I'm talking about an emotional, or let's say an intuitional, response. I'm not talking about being constrained purely by an intellectual conviction.
The problem is, your awe maybe completely misplaced due to your ignorance of the world around you. If you were a member of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, an airplane looks like god, and probably pretty awe-inspiring. This emotional reason for being pro-life is adequate for being personally pro-life, but is a terrible reason for pushing this value on others.
An awe-inspiring is not necessarily always a good thing. Anomalous synchronization of massive numbers of neurons in the brain during disease states like epilepsy is a collective mode of oscillation that is normally unstable in a healthy brain, but in disease, this mode can become stable and sustained due to defects in neurotransmitters, causing massive synchronized activity that can cause tremors. If you could visualize the activity of the neurons in this brain state, it would look pretty awesome, seeing all off them flashing nearly simultaneously in a spontaneous, self-organizing oscillation, but this is a disease state, and not desirable at all. It is awe-inspiring, but the basic mechanism behind this is fairly well-understood.
Everything in the post of mine that you're replying to was intended only to address the question of whether a zygote seems special due to my projection, or is really special.
Here I can see three issues that you may be raising, numbers 2& 3 of which are different from the "really special" issue:
1. Even if the zygote is somewhat special, it's not as special as it will be a little later once it becomes viable (if it is allowed to).
2. Even if it is special (and therefore deserves my feelings about it), it somehow lacks some degree of moral worth because it's not viable.
3. Even if it's special and/or has moral worth, the woman doesn't necessarily owe it any help.
If you meant 1 and/or 2, please explain the relevance of viability.
If you meant 3, I have thought as best I could about that topic here:
http://www.NoTerminationWithoutRepresentation.org/dismantling-the-bodily-rights-argument-without-using-the-responsibility-argument/
> You seem to say that awe-inspiring is akin to miraculous, and there for life is *special*
First of all, I didn't say that life is special. I implied that the zygote is special. It is alive and it is special, but that doesn't mean that life is special.
Secondly, why do you introduce "miraculous"? If the nature of the zygote is miraculous, would that better convince you that life is special than if the zygote's nature is only awe-inspiring? (I'm asking you about the specialness of life and not about the specialness of the zygote because you apparently consider the issue to be the specialness of life.)
> This emotional reason for being pro-life is adequate for being personally pro-life, but is a terrible reason for pushing this value on others.
Your above sentence indicates to me that you care about whether my reasons for being pro-life are good or not. This question matters to you. You have feelings about it.
If you did not have feelings about it, would you have written your long comment? If the answer is no, then should we say that your feelings were necessarily a terrible reason for writing your long comment?
Questions of the possible lack of correspondence of my feelings to reality, and of the possible role of disease in my feelings of awe (though I question how you framed that possibility) are good questions. However, does the existence of such possibilities, which may not be realities, mean that I should not get out of bed in the morning for fear that my desire to begin the day may be misplaced?
("I question how you framed that possibility": You said that I may feel awe AT my misbehaving neurons. Did you mean to say that I may feel awe BECAUSE OF my misbehaving neurons?)
I have written about moral intuitions here:
http://www.NoTerminationWithoutRepresentation.org/dismantling-the-bodily-rights-argument-without-using-the-responsibility-argument/
In that blog post I referred to some elementary neuroscience. If you know some neuroscience, I would appreciate your feedback about what I said.
That site is a babbling pile of manure. It also boils down to "the woman had sex, thus she is obligated to parent the embryo/fetus." Conveniently ignoring the fact that we do not force people to parent once a child is born.
Hi Acytanada
In fact, I am a neuroscientist! Still not famous or even independent, but I've published a few things in decent journals and received citations for my work (an academic Like! 🙂 ), so I think I am somewhat qualified to speak about what we know of the brain, and to give you some feedback. This first post is feedback on the neuroscience-y things I found in your blog post. It was a bit long, so I just did a search of "brain" and "neuro", sorry.
>> I would like to approach this from the perspective that an argument is an instrument for changing some of another person’s brain circuitry
Well, strength of synapses are always being modified, so I guess this is right, but a clumsy way of saying "changing someone's mind".
>> By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms and legs, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable
Really? I am not a developmental biologist, but I find this hard to believe. I wrote another response a while ago in response to a claim of brain activity at 4 weeks. Even at 10 weeks, fetuses are around 2cm or so considering the size of pyramidal neurons and the thickness of cortical layers in adult mice, I don't think there could be much of a neural circuit even formed at 10 weeks when the fetus is so small. Also in 1971, I don't know if they had the technology to even observe electrical activity of fetal brains. Recording technology we have now EEG, EcoG, MRI, NIRS etc. These are all "extracellular" methods of measuring electrical activity in bulk tissue, and all pick up quite a bit of noise, and all would be impossible to use on a fetus. EEG has a long history, but the other 3 are quite new, and would not have been around in 1971. Invasive intracellular and extracellular methods like multiunit recordings would never be used on a human, and are much too difficult to perform on a fetus, even if you didn't mind accidentally killing it. Granted, there is probably some electrical activity going on, but its most certainly not activity that is in response to input stimuli or "thought", but is more likely activity that is used in development to guide things like axon and dendrite growth.
So I doubt this claim.
>> Neuroscientists think that a neural pathway or pathways related to emotion are directly connected to frontal areas of the brain and can affect our higher decision-making circuitry. As a layman, I imagine science gradually moving towards an ability to actually map the circuitry affected by any thought experiment. Far enough in the future, neuroscience may be advanced enough to help both sides on any issue design their arguments taking into account all neurological factors of psychological impact.
I think you are basically correct here. Already at the turn of the century, Brodmann mapped out brain areas using relatively primitive techniques, and found that the architecture of the cortex was not uniform. These areas were later found to be well correlated to functional specialization uncovered later. We already know that cortex has a common 6-layered structure regardless of functional specialization, yet we know each area has some specialization in structure and statistics of neural activity within that 6-layered template. We can "read people's mind" using machine learning techniques which are statistical techniques that learn simple rules connecting inputs and outputs. However, these models still suffer from 2 drawbacks. 1 is that they are "wrong but useful models". Nothing wrong with this, we're still getting closer and closer to truth. 2 is that these are ultimately not models of the brain, but pattern learners, similar to what is used in things like weather prediction. But still, we are now very certain that the electrical activity in the neural circuits are meaningful.
Now the other issue I have with your blog post and your idea that conception and the resulting fetus is awe-inspiring are somewhat connected.
Just one tidbit before we begin, though. Your comment "In terms of what our visual function contributes to our emotional response to the zygote, our response would be even less if we saw it with the naked eye." kind of foreshadows what I'm about to write, and I think is a good observation, and I think you should read up on Bayesian Statistics to get a good understanding of how modern computational neuroscientists and data scientists view the world and make models of it.
Now then, the mind is very Bayesian in the way it integrates past experience and current data to form predictions about the near-future state of the world. The idea that our brains work on a Bayesian framework to build internal models of the universe based on our growing experience of the world is rapidly gaining traction in neuroscience, and there is much experimental evidence that neuronal circuits actually implement Bayesian decision making, with prior beliefs being written into the synapses. With that, let's examine intuition, and why it might not be so trustworthy in some cases.
The way I understand intuition is this: It is a prediction of an outcome given observed data. Bayes' formula states that
p(X | data) = p(Y | data) x p(data) (actually, proportional to, but we'll just say equal here, normalization constants be damned)
[I don't know if you're familiar with conditional probabilities, but p(X | data) is the probability of observing X given some observation of data.]
Let's begin with an example. What is your intuition about whether young African-American males are prone to violence (yAAmpv). You are looking at the probability of yAAmpv given all the things you see on TV, hear from people etc.
::The posterior probability
p(yAAmpv | data)
::The likelihood of the observed data
p(data | yAAmpv)
What is the probability of seeing these things on TV that you are seeing given that the hypothesis yAAmpv is TRUE?
::Prior belief that AA males are dangerous p(yAAmpv)
If you are fed Fox News all day, you will only be shown data that is best explained by the hypothesis AAmpv. It is akin to being shown a balanced set of data, but with a highly skewed probability p(yAAmpv).
If you are shown skewed data sets, or have a VERY strong preconception about yAAmpv, your posterior beliefs about yAAmpv will be highly negative. And this illustrates why intuition needs to be carefully examined before using it.
Now, in your case, *Is the FETUS or CONCEPTION special (FoCs)*? Given all your observations?
p(FoCs | data) = p(data | FoCs) x p(FoCs)
Given that most human couples don't have THAT much trouble (9% infertility rate in women, according to CDC) conceiving, I don't really think that the likelihood term supports your hypothesis that conception is THAT special, hence I called it mundane in the previous post. Now, if you're constantly told of the "miracle of life", "miracle of childbirth", or the "sanctity of life", your preconception, here represented by the prior p(FoCs) will be quite large, and your posterior will be highly colored by your preconception.
I think you're awe-inspired by the molecular choreography of the process, and it is quite awesome, but if you realize that as long as the supporting structures are all there, all provided by millions of years of evolution, you will see that this process is somewhat inevitable.
Hence, I don't share your view that the fetus or conception is particularly special. Neat machinery, yes, but special, NO. Sorry.
Woops, put the comment in the wrong place. Now the other issue I have with your blog post and your idea that conception and the resulting fetus is awe-inspiring are somewhat connected.
Just one tidbit before we begin, though. Your comment "In terms of what our visual function contributes to our emotional response to the zygote, our response would be even less if we saw it with the naked eye." kind of foreshadows what I'm about to write, and I think is a good observation, and I think you should read up on Bayesian Statistics to get a good understanding of how modern computational neuroscientists and data scientists view the world and make models of it.
Now then, the mind is very Bayesian in the way it integrates past experience and current data to form predictions about the near-future state of the world. The idea that our brains work on a Bayesian framework to build internal models of the universe based on our growing experience of the world is rapidly gaining traction in neuroscience, and there is much experimental evidence that neuronal circuits actually implement Bayesian decision making, with prior beliefs being written into the synapses. With that, let's examine intuition, and why it might not be so trustworthy in some cases.
The way I understand intuition is this: It is a prediction of an outcome given observed data. Bayes' formula states that
p(X | data) = p(Y | data) x p(data) (actually, proportional to, but we'll just say equal here, normalization constants be damned)
[I don't know if you're familiar with conditional probabilities, but p(X | data) is the probability of observing X given some observation of data.]
Let's begin with an example. What is your intuition about whether young African-American males are prone to violence (yAAmpv). You are looking at the probability of yAAmpv given all the things you see on TV, hear from people etc.
::The posterior probability
p(yAAmpv | data)
::The likelihood of the observed data
p(data | yAAmpv)
What is the probability of seeing these things on TV that you are seeing given that the hypothesis yAAmpv is TRUE?
::Prior belief that AA males are dangerous p(yAAmpv)
If you are fed Fox News all day, you will only be shown data that is best explained by the hypothesis AAmpv. It is akin to being shown a balanced set of data, but with a highly skewed probability p(yAAmpv).
If you are shown skewed data sets, or have a VERY strong preconception about yAAmpv, your posterior beliefs about yAAmpv will be highly negative. And this illustrates why intuition needs to be carefully examined before using it.
Now, in your case, *Is the FETUS or CONCEPTION special (FoCs)*? Given all your observations?
p(FoCs | data) = p(data | FoCs) x p(FoCs)
Given that most human couples don't have THAT much trouble (9% infertility rate in women, according to CDC) conceiving, I don't really think that the likelihood term supports your hypothesis that conception is THAT special, hence I called it mundane in the previous post. Now, if you're constantly told of the "miracle of life", "miracle of childbirth", or the "sanctity of life", your preconception, here represented by the prior p(FoCs) will be quite large, and your posterior will be highly colored by your preconception.
I think you're awe-inspired by the molecular choreography of the process, and it is quite awesome, but if you realize that as long as the supporting structures are all there, all provided by millions of years of evolution, you will see that this process is somewhat inevitable.
Hence, I don't share your view that the fetus or conception is particularly special. Neat machinery, yes, but special, NO. Sorry.
So in closing, I gave you a reason based on Bayesian statistics why I don't agree to the statement that conception and life being *special*. Please keep in mind this doesn't mean I devalue my fellow humans, the environment and civility.
Your writing and passion for the zygote reminds me of the young scientist who thinks she has discovered something new and exciting. She SO wants it to be true. And it is a common mistake among young scientists to believe that they're result is special or novel, because they haven't done the correct null-hypothesis testing.
I am confronted with this all the time. Scientists might seem cold and emotionless at times because science is a discipline in which we learn to control our desire to accept our amazing experimental results of our experiment that will get us tenures or make us Nobel Prize Winners, calm down, and make sure we are not introducing biases into our analyses.
My impression is that you are confusing awe at the machinery of conception with the notion that it is special, when in reality, conception itself is not that special, it happens all around us all the time. But because of the biases that you have been presented with over your life that life is miraculous, and we're all one in a trillion, you believe that conception is special.
BTW, my example of anomalous brain states is not in reference to your brain being diseased. It is pointing out that diseased brain states can show some awe-inspiring dynamics (if we could visualize them in real time). And therefore awe-inspiring phenomenon is not always a sign of a good thing.
He writes
>> I think that a rape victim should be given counseling emphasizing the
possible positive outcomes of continuing the pregnancy, not the negative
outcomes.
I was overall going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but then I read this. That is actually directly working against the best interest of the rape victim, and advocates lying. If he truly believes this, I think he is an as*hole.
Clinton stated, on a debate with well known atheist Matt Dillahunty, that a woman should be forced to give birth even if there was 100% certainty that she would be permanently paralzyed as a result. I assume that he would also force the pregnant rape victim to give birth, even if it did permanently disable her.
Acyu has complained, on his website, that pro-lifers are victims of oppression, because they are told 'if you don't want an abortion, don't have one'
I think we all know what a steaming pile that is…considering who murders doctors, and stalks and violently harasses women.
Love Matt!
Here is the debate:
http://blog.secularprolife.org/2012/10/atheist-experiences-matt-dillahunty.html
Followup:
https://www.facebook.com/matt.dillahunty/posts/10202613184585004
Wow, what a miserable human being.
Well now you know why I, and some of the other PC uterus owners here, dispense with the niceties:P (even if such a friendly method of debate *is* superior)
Even when I am trying to be nice, it probably comes across as angry…this is because it is terrifically insulting to be viewed as nothing more than a walking uterus – without a mind of your own – just a body part, a body that is owned by unborn humans and the state.
I just want people to think empirically and identify their biases going into an issue. This is probably why the pro-choice/pro-life ratio is so skewed to pro-choice among those with doctorates. They just are more likely to spot faulty reasoning and conclusions not supported by data than the average person.
But it is curious why as*holes like who thinks its within his right to fire someone just because their gay
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/09/08/3564205/pittenger-fire-gay-people-smoking/
also tend to be pro-life (I checked. He is staunchly pro-life).
I just want people to think empirically and identify their biases going into an issue.
Yep, the best way to go is with logic and facts!
He is staunchly pro-life).
Because, as I am sure you have noticed, the pro-life side is skewed towards those who believe in gender essentialism. It goes a lot deeper than just 'saving the babies' – it's a belief in moral purity + our god given roles. This is why naturalistic fallacies abound – the uterus was made for the prenate, a woman's job is to love being a mom etc etc. These things are *deeply* ingrained. Even atheists are not immune to this style of thinking, having grown up in a puritan culture:
http://skepticon.org/darreltranscript/
Gay people are discriminated against precisely because they don't fit into these strict gender roles. It's a woman's job to have babies and clean house, and it is a man's job to be head of the household and to rule his wife.
So, to recap, two things are at play here:
1) Moral purity – gay people make them uncomfortable, as do abortions. Both are seen as morally transgressive, and must be stamped out.
2) Social control – the world will be a better place if everyone does as God commands, and lives biblically (which is a fantasy, as they are thinking of the 1950s, and not *actual* biblical life, which involved lots of rape, concubines and incest).
Atheists are not immune to 1 and 2.
Not immune, but highly unlikely to fall into the buying this bull. Some pro-life SPLers are not of this mold and hold their views out of a genuine concern because they believe this is a human rights issue. I can respect that, but they also tend to be more willing to find other solutions that may not completely illegalize abortions, but that try to build a world where abortion is NOT an attractive solution. They have my support.
but that try to build a world where abortion is NOT an attractive solution. They have my support.
Yep, I can get behind that. Of course, many want to ban abortion *first* then worry about the social/economic support thing…which, imo, is a problem.
Of course, this also doesn't address the issue of bodily autonomy. Just because a woman has resources, should she then be obligated to gestate every time she gets pregnant? If it was merely a matter of resources, the billionaire wives of the world would all have 11+ kids, don't you think? Should rich girls be forced to give birth because they can pay for it, while the poor are given a pass because they can't afford a child?
And this sort of solution in the long-run is better because it requires a holistic look at society and fixing its ills.
And in order to be balanced, we also have to look at the opposite. Is creating more humans always an intrinsic good? Just because you can, should you? Especially in a world with diminishing resources, polluted fresh water, air and climate change.
Oh, and the needs of the poor are often handwaved away as 'well she can always put the child up for adoption, therefore, there is *never* a reason to abort'.
I very much appreciate your input about neuroscience and the time you took to give it. Whatever else you wrote in direct replies to me also seemed to provide a basis for a good discussion. But because of some of your tone in your replies to lady_black, sorry, I don't wish to continue. Your trying to implicate Clinton Wilcox in whatever I wrote that you don't like, when I clearly stated "This does not mean that he necessarily endorses any of the final contents," is also objectionable.
"we do not force people to parent once a child is born."
We don't allow them to kill it.
I think that it's okay, at any time, for a parent to take any step they want to take to relinquish parenting, as long as the child remains well.
The Atheist Analysis people started giving me a little feedback on the YouTube page for the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAj-NyWrF-w#t=952
Do born children live inside your body? No. Your point is irrelevant.
You have been told this already numerous times. A fetus uses, not just the woman's uterus, but her entire body. Bodily donation is not compelled from anyone, and that isn't "killing it." What kills it is that it's unfit for life without the use of someone else's organs. That's too bad. Women aren't obligated to cough up their organs for the benefit of someone else. That requires consent. PERIOD. You shall NOT give women less rights than a corpse.
No they are NOT victims of oppression. They want everyone else to pay the costs of their conscience. That isn't going to happen, and it's not "oppression" when it doesn't. Throughout history, there have been conscientious objectors and I have respect for that. Under no circumstances is it OK to transfer the burden to the shoulders of anyone but the objector.
That is UNINFORMED consent, and it's not happening.
They are like the xtians who claim persecution because gay people actually have rights.
Clinton is very good at laying burdens upon others that he himself wouldn't lift a finger to lift. Screw him.
What a surprise. That's because they have no intention of making the world a place that welcomes life. Ensuring that no woman has to suffer life consequences for giving birth would indeed cut WAY down on abortions. They have no intention of doing that, because they prefer women be punished for giving birth.
The post of yours to which I was replying did not use the bodily-rights argument. I replied to the argument that you used there. Now you're using the bodily-rights argument.
"You have been told this already numerous times."
Yes, I'm familiar with the bodily-rights argument. But you're also familiar with my response to it (blog post). You haven't addressed the points of my response, even though whatever you have just written is answered in that response.
Please see my reply a minute ago to lady_black.
NO. I did answer regarding the blog post. That amounts to " a woman had sex, so she is obligated to 'parent' the fetus." It's a junk blog post.
You're referring to the responsibility argument I make in the post.
But I introduce that section by saying "Though I do not think that a responsibility argument is necessary in order to dismantle the bodily-rights argument . . ."
The title of the whole post is "Dismantling the Bodily-Rights Argument without Using the Responsibility Argument."
I also say, “any version of the bodily-rights argument could be rebutted by pointing out that most pregnant women voluntarily engaged in a sex act that caused the pregnancy in the first place, and therefore have a responsibility for the child (the 'responsibility argument'); but this rebuttal does not work in cases of rape, and is not convincing to some people in any situation.” And then I proceed to make what I consider stronger points.
So you are rejecting a rebuttal of mine to the bodily-rights argument which I freely admitted to be a minor rebuttal (and you are rejecting it without explaining your reasoning), but you are not addressing my main points.