A point of clarification since some people have missed the main point of the video. In most circumstances in everyday life, it makes common sense to separate humans out by their boundaries, namely by drawing a border around the cells that contain their DNA. I am not denying that "human organisms begin at conception" is a useful perspective to take. It is often taken by many biologists and philosophers alike (hence the '96% of biologists' statistic that people keep citing below). But what is crucial is that this perspective faces problems when it comes to twins, polaroid metaphors and the other things I talked about in the video. At a fundamental (i.e. metaphysical) level, there is no reason to place the border at conception. That is just a useful (epistemic) convention that is often taken to simplify the world for us humans and has allowed us to theorise about biology via population genetics and other similar fields. There are many other possible conventions we could take to understand where the beginning of life might lie. Some of these include: the "quickening" (when the baby first kicks), when the umbilical stump falls off, when the baby takes its first breath, or say that no border truly exists at all (my personal view). Each of these may have their use or purpose. But none will be "proven" by empirical data. *There is no experiment you can do to prove that one perspective is correct over the others.* That, I hope, was the main takeaway of the video: science does not "prove" that human organisms begin at conception. It is but one perspective. For a detailed outline of my position (aka the 'process' view) and an overview of some of the common alternatives, I highly recommend this paper by philosopher Anne Sophie-Meincke: doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01716-y Jake
The twins argument is weak because you have two humans developing with similar DNA. That's not a justification for claiming we don't know when those zygotes are human. Were their parents human? They are human.
For legal purposes, defining a boundary is relevant, even if within a certain range of variation. In my opinion, laws regarding abortion should focus on lessening the overall suffering. So, the starting point is when the neural development is complete enough to produce a mind. a consciousness, capable of suffering. Before this point, only the suffering of the pregnant person matters. This point of development is almost the same point in which we can have a premature birth (with a baby that can be kept alive outside the womb).
@Samura1313 I said both that I was talking about laws regarding abortion and about being CAPABLE of suffering. I never said that every law should ever consider only the suffering caused to the direct victim. in this particular case (abortion), I consider it (theboresence of a counsciousness, that is capable of suffering) a more useful and objective criteria than when individuality emerges. why should a mindless organism have priority over a person with a mind? It makes no sense.
@Samura1313 Again, I am talking about abortion only. Other situations will have other standards. A person who doesn't feel pain still has a mind and still can suffer (and suffer a lot because of their condition). my point is that an embryo doesn't even have a mind, so the suffering of the pregnant person is all that matters at this point. the counsciousness only is formed after 5 months of pregnancy. from that point on, we can factor the well-being of the fetus, but not before that moment. Talking about if it is an organism or an individual or "a life" is not really relevant before that point. our minds are what make us humans. You can't talk about murder before the organism has a mind, and not after the individual has not a mind anymore (cerebral death).
@@LeonardoRibeiro Define "a mind". And, no, I'm not try to be legalistic here. Part of the 'mind' of an individual is their unique genetic expression. Even if you did not count that, an embryo has consciousness earlier than the 5 months mark you spoke about and has a nervous system definitely well before the 5 months mark. I do not agree that using suffering as the sole standard is ever a good idea anyway. But, even if I did, I wouldn't agree with the timeline you're suggesting here in your comments. A lot of people are not comfortable calling an early zygote a 'person' because people don't want to feel like murderers if they use a pill or some other early method to stop the baby from implanting and forming. A lot of groups of people are made uncomfortable by the thought they may have killed or "murdered" a baby even if the baby was only days old and not implanted so they just argue it wasn't a person. But, just like there are complications with trying to define what a 'mind' is, how does one define 'person'? If we consider a person to be someone with a fully matured personality then many of us are not persons. Even, if we consider it when one starts having a developed personality even if not fully, then we're not persons until about 5 years of age maybe a little sooner. Yet, I don't know anywhere where it is legal (or if not illegal at least considered moral) to kill a 2 year old toddler. I used to try to rationalize the way this video maker and you do but I came to the conclusion that life overall is a complex web of processes and interactions that don't really have a true start or stop. But since that isn't a useful for definition for the lives of individual people, we need to look at when an individual becomes alive and they're "alive" zero to a few days after conception depending upon how long that process takes to start. They fulfill the definition of life at that point. Does being alive make them a person of worth? That's more of a moral or philosophical question like what is a person or a mind. But, if we remember that life is just a bunch of processes and things with mature through, I believe that means that just past conception is a part of that person's life. So, either they are a person, or they're a potential person, and therefore they have value or potentially will have value and it is a loss to kill them and it should be considered a murder or at minimum a killing.
If we continue this logic, then we have to accept that life doesn't begin after birth, because newborns need a lot of support, they are not fully developed, there is no guarantee that they will fully develop and they have no consciousness, at least no consciousness at the same level as an adult has. The same can be said for toddlers and young children, as well as some adults with certain disabilities. Is it ok to “abort” a newborn, toddler, or even an adult with developmental and/or mental health issues? I mean, they require constant care, rely on others for survival, haven't reach a fully functional "adult organism " standard, and there's no guarantee they ever will...
@@oliverdubsky6512 Yes, This man’s videos is a complete refutation of itself. When does life begin - he demonstrated it clearly - at conception. That is the exact moment the start of a new human life begins for every human being that has ever existed or will ever exist. His fallacious, reasoning that life does not begin at conception because the new human may not become fully formed to adult maturity is laughable… its is equivalent (in principle) to saying that because a human being is not fully matured and independent it is therefore not human. This is the same sadistic, dehumanising logic that led to abhorrent practices in eugenics and the current practice of abortion ls allowed right up to nine months of development. It an evil that God will justly judge to bring those who support this horrid practice to account for.
@@MorseAttack Human life begins at conception. Whether that life becomes twins, triplets, quadruplets or just a single human being The start of our life as humans begins at conception. The life we all went through before becoming mature and independent was at points very small, very dependent, went various through stages of development and took place in various locations.
1 minute in, he's saying that life does not start at conception, because it takes at least another 24 hours for the genes from the egg and sperm to start to mix. That would mean that after an egg is fertilized, its not a seperate human life for another 24 hours. That seems like a great argument in favor of the morning after pill. Not abortions though!
Conception is not a point in time, it is a process. Every process takes time and the conception is not an exception. The conception process starts when a sperm starts entering into an egg but the end of this process is… when the sperm and the egg form one unified cell. So the process of merging the nuclei is a part of the conception process. Therefore all conclusions based on the first minute of this video are BS.
Well in terms of fertilization he's taken a the maximum amount of time and hasn't factored in that this number includes the process of the sperm finding the egg. In reality. The morning after pill would often times kill the baby.
Human life is a cycle of development. A newborn is not fully developed, the body continues developing. Humans grow to different stages of the life cycle, and in none of those stages are we less human, we are just DEVELOPING. No matter how long it takes the genomes to fuse and form a new DNA, the cycle of life already started and, unless it is interrupted, will continue to develop and grow into new stages. A sperm by itself will never grow into an embryo.
maybe we should be asking when does a separate consciousness exist? What is meant by a lay person saying when does a person's life begin and end? What is a person? Something I learnt from mathematics is that when something is seemingly impossible to answer like what is 3apples minus 5 apples, or the square root of -4 adding a new dimension to the context, or shifting a limit or just asking a better question can help you find the answer you need to resolve the dilemma
That just makes things even less clear. We've been arguing about consciousness for eons, with even less agreement over it than over what is living or not. There's also a spectrum of consciousness, both between organisms and within organisms (like when you're asleep) as well as various stages of human development. So making it about consciousness just makes it even muddier.
Given that a conscious individual does exist (and I know one does, myself) and viewing retrospectively, some have suggested that its existence goes back to the oldest accessible memory.. But you couldn't call that a beginning because a beginning really shouldn't change, and I might forget my oldest memory, or remember an older one.
this is all very subjective tbh, science is descriptive not prescriptive. all the lines where something starts and something ends are all man-made, like where does a species start or end and what even is a species? kinda similar to the questions you asked.
Life doesn't "begin" at conception, or at birth, they are confusing "continuation" with the "beginning of life" which has never been truly observed in any living mammal species in the true since of what actual "new beginning living life" happens to be. But in reality "life" began long before anyone had the ability or the cognitive abilities to even contemplate the question. Living cells from your father mixed with living cells from your mother, and in doing so your mother and father created their continuing which is in the different form then the form they are currently in IE "you" So in a way you are immortal so long as you continue evolving and changing form (having kids) .
Steelman your opponent's arguments. 1:15 A steelmanned version of the pro-life argument would probably focus on the process or separateness of the zygote. A new genome is in the process of being formed. Still, it appears you have a valid point. To me, I don't think that a new genome is necessary nor sufficient for new life because I think life is fundamentally immaterial and grounded in the mind and/or soul. So whenever that human spirit and/or soul begins to exist (they're not the same thing) is when a new human begins to exist. Whether that corresponds neatly to the physical development, I do not know. 1:35 If by unique you mean unique genetic information, then I don't think you're being fair to the spirit of the argument. The claim is not that a unique genome means a unique individual. The claim is that a separate genome (referring to the physical structure) or a new genome belongs to the new individual. This explains why twins can have identical genomes while also being separate individuals. A separate genome is indicative of a separate individual. 4:21 Appealing to failed implantation or miscarriage doesn't seem to negate the spirit of the polaroid argument. The focus on the polaroid argument is on the function of the development of the embyro, that is the process itself and the end of the process. Saying that the process can be disrupted doesn't somehow indicate that a human is not developing. The steelmanned argument would not say a fully conscious creature is being yielded "by default" but that the process, if uninterrupted and functioning according to its telos, will result in a fully conscious human. 5:25 Trent's argument is referring to the Zygote. Comparing a zygote to a man and a woman runs into issues because they are two separate persons (minds, not referring to their physical bodies) and thus separate entities (i.e. they're discrete and so do not constant a single thing in the same sense Trent is talking about). I think you're playing fast and loose with Trent's use of the word "something" and equivocating two separate concepts of the word "something." 6:50 Mereological fuzziness and indeterminacy is resolved by recognizing the entities as separate due to their possession of a soul and/or mind. I think Alvin Plantinga's Essay "Against Materialism" is relevant here. 8:05 Whether life begins at conception is objective because it's either true or false, not subjective. As for me, I do not know when life begins for certain (though it has to begin at some point) and I'd rather not endanger another human when I lack such certainty.
@@nescius2 Ah, yeah, I was presupposing they are the same or very closely related since I was thinking from my perspective, but I can see how others might not think so. Currently, I lean towards an idealist perspective on philosophy of mind, so I think mind is fundamental rather than what's physical. As I understand it, identity is a core part of what it means to be a mind, so a human person can exist in some sense even if their body has been destroyed. As a result, it seems to me that life is about the mental, not the physical; the physical aspect is just the machines that allow minds and/or ensouled creatures to interact with the physical world in a physical sense.
I find it quite confusing that the same people who believe abotion is not killing a baby, also believe that if a pregnant woman is murdered, the killer should be charged with two murders.
@@C87-q9j If you believe the fetus is a womans body, why then is ending it called a murder in one aspect and not the other, which produces the exactly the same result? I'm not arguing one side or the other. Just pointing out the contradiction.
@@C87-q9j a baby's right to life is not up to someone else. pregnant women are not supposed to smoke, drink, or take drugs because it can affect the baby's mental and physical health. women who are not pregnant can safely do these things because it will not harm the baby. its scientifically proven that a baby is separate from his or her mother. and ive heard the "its a parasite" argument. when that is not true at all. Parasites are separate species from their host, and the host's immune system will attack them. a woman's body provides care for the child to stay alive.
if a pregnant woman is murdered, its called a double homicide. if a woman has an abortion, its an accepted practice. its confusing and truly contradicting.
This is why philosophy is the overseer of the sciences as David Hume said "you cannot get a ought from a is" and it's obvious that there are larger over arching issues with this topic and its implication on say the issue of abortion for example. Defining accurately the beginning of human life is only important to people who value it and our culture does very little to teach this and what the ancient Greeks called "Eudaimonia" which should be the chief aim of all the sciences. Yet we find ourselves here. Debating something rather irrelevant to the bigger picture questions. Using science to define life is like using sticks and stones to break apart grandma's family heirloom to find out what makes it valuable. Defining life at conception is a close approximation to an answer. The best we got in fact. This answer isn't pleasing to the scientific mind. But as far as I can tell it's a displeasing answer to the devil as well.
Yep. If one's value is to protect and nurture human life, they will discover and deploy science to that end. If ones value is center in woman's socio-economic success, they will deploy science to that end.
I appreciate how you expand on the concept of conception, and point of the details of the process, that’s fair, but I feel like your getting hung up on the metaphors and missing the point of the argument, in the instances of twins pretty much every pro-life person would agree that even though the genetic variation isn’t unique between the two, that they still deserve life, or in the other points you called out, like with miscarriages, or the child not having the nutrition it needs in development, pro-life people aren’t arguing against those things cause they don’t fit the specific unique genetic model metaphor, or don’t care about the other things involved in the child’s development, the main argument is that it’s a life, it should have the right to develop. In cases with miscarriages most pro-lifers see that as a loss of life, even in the case of the zygote failing to get to the womb, most pro-lifer are trying to give significance to the development of the embryo as a human life, yes there are more factors that play into developing the child, but just because you have a womb doesn’t mean you have a child, nor does just having the right nutrients, the zygote has to be there for a human to start developing, and it’s going to need help till birth and after, Pro-lifers want people to see it as it’s own life for at least 150 years (usually humans don’t last that long lol).
"want people to see it as it’s own life for at least 150 years" - wait wut?! Where'd that number come from? And when did they start arguing for culling the elderly?
@@neiltristanyabutyou are aware that ppl who get abortions still deliver their babies? The difference is that pro lifers don't want babies to die in the process. So that whole "forced birth" thing is ridiculous.
Pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Priest: "Life begins at conception." Blasé Could-Care-Less Episcopalian Cleric: "Life begins at birth." Orthodox Rabbi: "No, no, no my sons. Life begins when the children have graduated from medical school, and the dog has died."
The dilemma I have always had with the abortion argument is for cases where the mother’s life is in danger (ecoptic pregnancies, the mother having a medical condition where labor or even later stages of pregnancy could kill her, a mother being a child herself). If this is an argument about life, how could you say the the life of something not even breathing, feeling, or thinking is more important than the life of the person in front of you, the terrified individual who knows that without an abortion, they will die. In every other case: pregnancy through rape, an unplanned pregnancy, not having enough money to raise a child, not being ready to raise a child, there are other things we can do. We can give counseling, financial support, social services, etc. But in the case of that mother who will die? Who might have to leave other children who will be alone after her death? Who is scared and wondering what kind of God would forsake her like this? What am I going to give that will really help? Hold their hand? Tell them it’s all a part of “God’s plan”? That one, I struggle with.
@@chris4231 > If you have sex you're consenting to pregnancy except when a condom breaks or birth control fails? > if you can't afford it then give a child up for adoption this ignores all the potential health complications and physical toll of going through labor; it's easy to say "oh just go through pregnancy and give the child up for adoption" without knowing all the suffering caused by that process
First of all, we must remember that the person is giving birth in a hospital surrounded by professionals, and if things go wrong, then the doctors go ask the person who the woman trusted for the decision of "Who should we save?" Now we must understand that in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of knowledge, they brought sin into the world, sin is not a blessing, sin is death and everything that is wrong in this world. Is not god's plan for women to die in childbirth, nor did he create the animals with the purpose of them devouring each other, the reason all of this happens is because it is a fallen kingdom, which before Jesus died on the cross it belonged to Satan, So it's not god's plan, just like it wasn't god's plan for Hitler to rise to power, we humans tend to forget that there is a god, but there is also a devil. Also I don't understand abortion either, that's why I'm here :v
@LP-zcrgy quote: "If this is an argument about life, how could you say the the life of something not even breathing, feeling, or thinking is more important than the life of the person in front of you, the terrified individual who knows that without an abortion, they will die." This is reasonable to save the mother if the mother is going to die, but that is a very rare case, the vast majority of cases do not put the mothers life in jeopardy. The situations where the mother is told that their baby will have such and such disease or deformity is starting to cross the line as playing God. Morality is always between two or more persons. Never forget that.
Thank you for this stellar video on an interesting (and I’d imagine rather controversial) topic! I really enjoyed the clarity of the tie-ins of different points of view with current stances on the subject. Keep up the great videos!
No it doesn't, he's not trying to answer anything. He is refuting the idea that science "objectively proves" life begins at conception. The point is that the question of "what is life?" is not a scientific question at all, it is a philosophical problem.
@@Ely-zf4yt'What is life?' is a scientfic question. The zygote is a living cell since it meets the criteria used to define life. While some may argue that gametes are also living organisms, I would tend to disagree since they can't reproduce etc
@@FlyingPhilUKSo by your logic that would mean Worker Ants aren’t organisms because of their inability to reproduce and only relying on their queen to do so… despite that they have an entire anatomy working to keep it sustained and alive, even a consciousness more than something so small as normal gametes, which that part also goes to say that gametes have their own anatomies too that you forget about, one important thing such being a nucleus (although unclear if they really do have their own sort of goals). And here; this statement obviously does not seem right…
@@FlyingPhilUK Actually no, the whole point of the video-if you actually watched the whole thing- is that science hasn't gotten that far to determine when life begins and everyone who tries to argue that life begins at conception or fertilization is wrong and is just an opinion. Anyone who agrees that life begins at conception is just wrong because you can't actually prove that life begins at conception or fertilization. As he said in the video, 40-60% of the time, a zygote doesn't live past 2-3 weeks so it can implant into the mother's womb.
Science has told us rhat life starts though. Your only point that can come close to valid is the implantation point. However. With implantion. Just because some dont make it. Doesn't mean that they weren't alive. Same reason that just because some people with cancer die doesnt mean that people wirh cancer aren't alive until they get passed it. Another point of yours was the environment one. Your problem there was thay you confused an environment and an organism. Lets go to your bedroom example. The bedroom itself is no an organism. And in reality. Is just the place where the woman would be staying. The environment in which the baby develops would still be her womb. And the baby is an organism. Which with the right conditions. They will grow up and be born.
as much as this video is well-thought out, it's a total cop-out to say that "life began billions of years ago" when the topic is clearly about human conception. it's like you just want to distance yourself from the very clear concept that all people started out as zygotes, and that happens to be the standard that the conservative right wing usually adopts. i personally don't care if it's left or right, you'd have to have a good degree of intellectual dishonesty to completely disregard the zygote in the argument about how an individual begins to develop. just because a lot of zygotes don't make it into the womb, that doesn't make this stage any less crucial as far as the process is concerned. it's like saying that a baby that was stillborn isn't really a baby because it didn't make it out alive. you're running the risk of implying only healthy live births count just so you can disregard things like miscarriages, zygotes not implanting properly, etc. my point is, you may or may not have a philosophical answer to the question, but avoiding the question altogether and shifting the goal post to "life began eons ago" is just plain unscientific. it is interesting to note that it is still during the stage of zygote that the genes start to get to work, meaning, even if it takes up to 24 hours, the claim that zygote is the first stage is still technically correct. you may further subdivide this stage as pre-dna fusion and post-dna fusion, but the point is that it is technically correct that a human starts out as a zygote. furthermore, the question of when does life begin seems to be easily confused with when did the human species start to emerge? clearly the question is about the individual and not the entirety of humankind. it just seems like a lot of verbiage to try and avoid appearing like you agree with the right. it's cringe to use the christian narrative to berate people about abortion, but it's also cringe to avoid seeing the science for what it is just so you can say you disagree with a certain political party.
Genuinely great video. It goes straight into the heart of the question, and then is humble to admit we're not cabaple of defining it due to it's complexity, and any position taken is based on a subjective approach. The most compelling argument I've heard about it, and the one I have taken for myself ever since I've read it, is that based on our incapacity of defining when does a human life begins, one must take the safe approach which is to not disturb life while it's doing it's thing. Maybe it's just a bunch of cells with no human life behind it, but maybe it is. Would you pull the trigger of a firearm with your eyes closed? Maybe nothing happens, but maybe you end the life of a child. In most scenarios, it's better to put the gun down and do nothing.
No, because if that’s the case, then taking part in the interruption process of “life doing their on thing” is also life doing their own thing. We’re not dead neither we’re separated from it.
@@Torkieh We're not, however, on this frame of reference precisely because the original argument also isn't. We're talking about conscious human action against nature on it's most fundamental level.
@@ceshorty IHe pointed out the problem of individuation and trouble with hard limits on definitions on what organisms or environment is to illustrate how these processes are interpenetrated and there’s no clear distinction where a life starts. You should be fighting for prohibiting male teenagers from masturbating though, we can’t bet that spermatozoids are not alive, otherwise mass genocide is happening in an unbelievable large scale everyday!
I thought the question of when life begins had been settled years ago. Life begins at 40. More seriously though, you've pointed out quite well why science should not be invoked to answer questions of morality. The question about when life begins is really a distraction, when what we really want to ask is when is it no longer acceptable to kill an organism that may or may not be human. This is not a question for science, but more a question of belief or conscience. Religions give clear answers, but they are not universally accepted. The law gives some answers, but again, the edge-cases are open to debate. Science really cannot help in either case, and it is annoying that people say things like "science proves..." or "scientifically proven..." It's almost as though people who don't really believe or understand science are using it as a crutch to support their moral causes.
You wouldn’t knock down a building for construction if you thought there might be a person inside and you haven’t checked. In that same way, as long as there is a valid argument that a fertilized egg is a possible person, you wouldn’t kill him/her.
All your spermatozoids in joint with any woman's egg are possible people, so each time you jeez in ur toilet, more than a biliion possible people have no longer chance to develop
exactly. say you go hunting, and you lose your friend. you hear leaves rustling behind a bush. do you shoot? no, because it would be irresponsible. it could be your friend, not an animal. but thats more of a 50/50. pregnancy is not 50/50. its a baby, not a koala bear. there is a certainty that the baby growing inside the mother's womb is actually a human being with a right to life.
I believe the term "fertilization" is when the pro-nuclei of the sperm enters the egg. Conception is when both pro-nuclei merge into one nucleus. That does not determine when life begins for everyone, because we each choose to accept a particular convention. Not that it matters to anyone, but I subscribe to the moment of conception described above as the when life begins. Peace!
The "cell" is the fundamental unit of life. The plasma membrane is the initial "boundary". Of course, it gets complicated, but under ideal (or not always so ideal) conditions, we have a life with the potential of becoming a baby who has the potential of becoming an adult. Anything can happen after the moment of conception. Peace!
In a way, I also subscribe to this view, but it also opens a bigger debate on which life is worth living. After all, a life of an embryo might be worth the life of a parasite to people. Wanting to have a parasite removed is hardly a shocker in today's world, despite the sanctified life views.
Unique genetic code creates new human life. A humanist or a scientists that does not believe a spirit coming from God has no other possible initiation of life. Only a religious person could believe that a collection of cells in a fetus could be "quickened" by a spirit coming from God at a later time.
❤ I’ve watched many (admittedly not all.. yet) of your videos, and I have to say, you have added yet another reason I wish to live a lot longer. I hope to be around long enough to see all the wonderful things your broad intellect and inquisitive mind brings to the world and society at large. 🎉 Bonne Chance!
This completely misses the mark. And your conclusion is wrong: objectibly, we ARE individuals. We are open thermodynamic systems, with a unique set of quantifiable information (f.i. Shannon Information) that live far from thermodynamic equilibrium (dissipative structures). This does NOT mean that we are indistinguisable from our environment. The real question is: at which points of a human organism life cycle is appropiate to end it? This life cycle begins when the information (NOT the mass or energy) of the individual is first defined. Genetic information part of this set, but far from being all the needed for the full configuration (of the array) of the system (human being). The "pro-choice movement" also uses "science" to tell the people that abortion is right because we are just a bunch of cells. Which is obviously false.
Good points being discussed. A general framework can make use of comparative discussion of the (concepts of) origin of life as against the origin of a life. Good point being raised here on the fact that an individual must be a distinct individual (two identical twins are distinct individuals, and if they are not completely separated phisically, that is considered an anomaly). I had some thoughts about what we could say that the origin of life is not: my thoughts are that the origin of life is not a mismatch and indidual life is not continuously sustainable on a mismatch, although in practice, generally speaking, it is fertility that shows a good match, not the other way around.
I'll do you one better, what do you define as life? Or organic life vs non organic life? What separates living and non living. Everyone knows instinctively but how do you define it? If we're going to analyze this deeply whether life begins at conception that's a really important question to answer.
eh, that's just a sneaky way to avoid answering the question "when does human life begin", because the concern is only at the individual level, not the evolution of entire species. how come we don't overcomplicate the answer to the life cycle of a butterfly and actually just give the objective answer to it? we don't go answering "life began eons ago" when trying to demonstrate the life stages of this particular arthropod and yet when it's about the human life cycle, suddenly the answer is "oh well it began a zillion years ago" just to avoid confronting the reality of conception?
you yourself are avoiding the question. the question is "when does a person begin" not when does "human life begin". a brain dead human is still a human but as a person he is dead. a brainless fertilized cell is not a person. this is the obvious truth that some try to avoid.@@maggyfrog
You love to pick on many nuances however let's think about this logically. Something is either dead or it is living - period. Therefore if a sperm in an egg combine, they start along a pathway as its own separate life form that goes from development in the womb to adulthood onto old age. pretty simple huh? A rose is a rose by any other Nuance or definition you give it.
I do not understand why there is a question about this subject. Perhaps it is time for someone (namely me) to chuck a toolbox at the works. Life does not BEGIN ANYWHERE: it is ALREADY PRESENT in the organism(s) that generate the offspring - remembering that many plants, protozoans and some invertebrates are bisexual and therefore self-fertilising. We don't know what life IS to start with, nor do we know where, when and how it arose, so that to enter into a debate about "when it begins" it is absurd.
yep, but big butt - Life begins, or better, begun at one time (maybe few times) and one more thing - _bisexual_ means something else than hermaphrodite 😅
@@nescius2 No, you are dead wrong: hermaphroditic organisms MUST be bisexual, otherwise they would never be able to reproduce. Both the ovum and the spermatozoa are living organisms, just as a dormant seed is a living organism. Both are unicellular. They simply require the correct factors to be in place in order for them to meet, unite and begin the process that produces a MULTIcellular organism. Therefore life does not START at any point, but CONTINUES when the ovum is fertilised. If it is not fertilised, it is shed and expelled from the body of the female. It is only once it has left the body that it can be regarded as being "dead". I don't think anyone has retrieved such a shed ovum, placed it into a nutrient medium and endeavoured to fertilise it to discover if this is indeed the case, or if it can be revived after becoming desiccated. I DO know that still-born animals are generally not actually dead and can quite easily be brought to life with no special equipment, as I have done so with a number of puppies and a donkey foal. They grew up to be perfectly normal, despite having been delivered D.O.A. One ground-shaking case of a human stillborn child becoming alive has been recorded: th-cam.com/video/FJ39-KJr_vA/w-d-xo.html. Despite what the reporter and everyone else says: it appears to me that the issue is that the brain has not quite grasped what it is supposed to make the body do. I place the head of the stillborn directly over my heart and palpitate the chest to get heart and lungs to compress and expand. The puppies snatch their first breath after a minute, whereas the donkey foal needed about two minutes. We don't know what LIFE is, as I have already stated, so how the hell do we know exactly when it has ceased? Here is another perspective: how many people are aware that pregnant rabbit does (and no doubt certain other animals) have the ability to reabsorb their foetuses if conditions become unfavourable? Tasmanian devils have up to fifty babies at a time, but as they have only four teats in their pouches, only the first four to attach will live. The others die, but as the mother eats them, they don't actually go to waste. Somehow, I can't see the pro-abortion crowd emulating this behaviour, so that the life that is removed from the human mother is actually WASTED. THAT is the greatest crime!
This video reminds me of people who argue in detail about how tables don’t really exists, or how all people are the same and individuality is just an illusion. I think you can complicate any topic to the point where you lose sight of simple truths. Having said that, well put together video.
@@nati0598ha ha yeah I do like that about his approach, and I think it’s good to examine our beliefs and thoughts, but not at the expense of losing sight of truth. Many truths are self evident, and the more we examine our reality without being rooted in those foundations, the easier it is to lose sight of them.
@@PaulRezaei those foundations are not reality. if they were, you would not be referring to them distinctly. therefore, they are not *objectively* real. there is nothing - not even a semblance - of "truth," as we define it, in subjectivism.
You say, " I am not denying that "human organisms begin at conception". What the hell do you think the others are saying? If it's true that, "There is no experiment you can do to prove that one perspective is correct over the others." Why the argument? The organism that drops out of a womans vagina at the end of her pregnancy, when ever that is, had a beginning. Your argument is similar to a Zeno's Paradox.
The word Life needs more definition. Our skin is made of live and dead cells. We know the difference when we scrape our knees. The egg and sperm are both alive before they meet. An extreme example would be - "If each cell is a Life, and we have a mole removed, are we committing murder?" It appears that the religious are using the word Life when they mean Soul. They need to say what they mean.
if two entities contract to form a joint partnership with the intent of creating a new legal entity, when does that legal entity come into existence and when is it entitled to separate representation and protection from dissolution by it's parent bodies? If for a period the new entity is reliant on one of the parent bodies can its support be transferred to a new body?
This is tactical nihilism, the video. Things are complicated, therefore nothing really has any meaning, distinction, or boundaries. A philosophy that surely would not have any undesirable repurcussions.
The video points out that the argument is semantic, that doesn’t make it meaningless, in fact you could say there is more meaning in a world without hard lines than in a world with - you’re just assuming it’s negative because it goes against the way your brain works.
Did you watch past the 7:05 mark? He literally addresses the "problem" you've raised. He doesn't even remotely imply that because something is complicated we shouldn't debate it
@@karlvalteroja4675 Not really, its just more semantics to self jerk each other. what you mean by invididual, conciousness?, invididuality and conciousness begin on average by age 3 to 6. does that mean I can abort my shitty 1 year old baby cause its barely forming synapses yet so he isn´t really thinking about being alive yet?
@@ViDeTool I honestly think we're all going about this wrong. It's a mix between possibilities. What is the possibility, if nature's course isn't changed, that the entity we refer to as 'a human life' will have a future? An hour before birth: it is very clear that a specific baby will be born. A month before birth: it is very likely a specific baby will be born in a month. Six months before birth: it is mostly likely that a specific baby will be born in six months. One day after conception: it is very unlikely a specific baby will be born, as there are many factors that will change its outcome, and even very unlikely it will survive to birth. Then you have pre-conception, and we can all agree there is no argument here. There are so many possibilities for what sort of baby will be born that there is basically no future. Even a split second of difference between ejaculation, a different sperm will reach the egg. A sneeze will jostle the mother's insides at a microscopic level, enough that a different sperm will reach the egg. The butterfly effect simply does not allow a specific baby to likely be born until after conception, and even then the possibilities aren't very fixed until a few months after conception. It's all about whose future we are saving. Is there a specific future we are saving? Then it's immoral to abort. Is the future unlikely to exist? Then it's not as immoral, but still slightly immoral. Is it possible for any specific future to exist at all? If no, such as before conception, it is not immoral whatsoever to stop the conception through contraceptives. A bit clunky as I'm tired, but I believe my point is understandable at least.
If a life existing is what gives that life the same right to be here as any other life (and not a life's abilities). Note: The reason I'm thinking that is abilities are based on the mental and physical attributes the life has, and if we base how we treat a life on that, we are using the same guage as racists. I think it's a question of... at what point in someone's growth cycle do you feel bad for killing them? If existence is the measure, then you should feel remorse for any life's death as we live ours. Though I'd say for many it would be whenever the life has similarities to you, which effectively means abilities are the factor tayt make people care or not, which I find quite saddening.
When life begin In a way, it's like saying that the calendar starts with the year of Christ's birth. It's a convention. Then, you need to make differentiations like AC (After Christ) or BC(Before Christ) for the sake of communication and understanding between humans. After that, you establish legal statuses based on whether a person is born or not, baptized or not, or receives a name or is entered in a registry or any other cultural or social factors." We need a start somewhere. Then moral appears and so on.
The question for abortion is not even when an human organism begins but when such an organism becomes actually - as opposed to potentially - conscious. In absence of a scientific or philosophical theory of consciousness there's nothing to say. Drawing the legal line around brain formation seems sensible to prevent abuse of this impasse.
we can't draw a clear line to where a personhood starts to count biologically, so let's not. What we can do, however, is not take away people's right of bodily autonomy. We shouldn't police what people do with or decide to grow or not grow in their wombs and for how long
Completely agree. :) What we can do, and what we should do, is support and facilitate the ability for women to open their legs for as many men as they want, no matter what we have to sacrifice for it. All that should matter to us is the ability of women to have as much promiscuous sex as humanly possible, and if one innocent baby or a million have to be brutally slaughtered for it every year, well, then, so be it. :) The woman is the only thing that matters, the rest of the world, and everyone else, can go rot. :)
7:28 if it is a philosophical problem then you could even debate if a full grown adult is a person or not... there must be ab actual line otherwise everything is valid. The only consistent line we can draw leads back to conception...
I mean you can debate if a grown adult is a person but that would be quite stupid because as a community we agree that when a baby is born they are a person (hopefully we can agree) but that is the only line all reasonable person can conclude together, past that it Is up to interpretation like the whole video is about. You can cant have 2 argument, have one be absolutely absurd and then claim that the other one must be true. For example if there is a car in front of two people one says it’s an elephant and the other says no that’s absurd that’s clearly not an elephant they can’t then use that as proof to support their argument of it being a cow, clearly this is an absurd example but it shows that the burden of truth is one the one making the claim and you can’t just make an assumption like you have now. And to address that there must be a line or everything is valid, not necessarily, all that is required is that you have a period where outside of it we can agree it’s unreasonable, that being between conception and birth thus you can t reasonably debate an adult is not a person nor can you debate that that the whole system of 2 people in a bedroom is an organism.
This video is splitting hairs - rigidly defining terms such as "life" and "begin", creating a straw man fallacy. What most people mean by life is the whole life process for a human being. If that doesn't include consciousness or an umbilical cord YET, it's still a creature in process. So who are we to end that creature's life since it is God who made it and owns it? What most people mean by begin is the process of beginning - not necessarily the millisecond in which the sperms joins the egg. It's only the super serious Biology buff who also happens to be an Atheist with an axe to grind against prolifer Christians who will Split hairs making mountains out of molehills. This young man's time would be better spent searching for evidence of God's existence and His work in the world rather than explaining away the miracle of human life. Remember the old parable of the scientists climbing a huge mountain their whole lives pursing truth apart from God only to find at the top of the mountain theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
maybe 1. life starts after 24 hours or 2. (a lot harsher) if it cannot live outside the mother after a c-section-esque procedure, it is not a life ... what are more solutions to this topic besides life starting at conception or abortion within the first trimester? and in what ways are they better and worse based on different standpoints?
You gave no reasons for the moment other than conception and it`s just a convention in biological sciences to begin ontogenesis in this moment. You gave a standard philospohical critique of biological vocabulary, but it doesn`t change the fact these are terms established in the community and pretty much always were up until the latest decade when it became a partisan issue in medical sciences. And I`ve got a purely philosophical issue, a scientific realist which isn`t a physicalist would argue this is a question which can be answered with empirical investigation, so it`s not very philosopphical of you to sort problems into scientific and philosophical, that is a very lazy philosophy of science and very denigrating to philosophy to think it deals with questions which aren`t verifiable.
1. I didn't give a moment other than conception because I think the beginning of a new individual is a process. doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01716-y 2. No, the beginning of life at conception was not well-established up until the previous decade. In the 19th century, the 'quickening' was the standard (when you start to feel the baby kick). In Roe v Wade they explicitly AVOIDED the conversation of when life begins, declaring it too difficult and deferring it to the philosophers. Only in the aftermath of this did anti-abortion advocates settle on conception as their standard, influencing the rest of the world to ‘adopt’ this standard. The histories between the abortion debate and the when life begins debate are significantly more intertwined than you imply. Read the first chapter of Carl Zimmer's Life's Edge for more. 3. I am a perspectival realist. No I still defend that you can't test this with experiments. Please outline the experiment you would do to discover when life begins, I'd love to hear it. 4. I never said philosophy deals only with unverifiable claims (of course, there is experimental philosophy), nor do I defend a sharp difference between philosophy and science (I call myself a philosophical biologist). Just that in science, you need philosophy sometimes when you are dealing with conceptual issues like this one. You need philosophy *in* science. That doesn't change the fact that this is something you can't test, we need to have the philosophical debate. That's totally fine, not arguing with the debate itself. But you can't go around saying "science proves life begins at conception." EDIT: On that note, I think that having multiple perspectives about when life begins is valuable depending on the context. That doesn’t help solve the ethical dilemma and I still stand by that that is a seperate issue. See the pinned comment.
@Littleprinceleon I dont know, that’s up to you and I’m happy to be open minded about suggestions. But I certainly haven’t seen a good one from pro-lifers claiming that “science proves that life begins at conception.” Surely if that is the claim you are making, it is up to you to supply the proof.
@Tenzin Choezin as an ex-researcher I agree with that statement in general. However, it applies to concrete, relatively well defined experiments. But even the results of great significance may support lots of interpretations about the process(es) involving those findings. Some of such theories contain utterly contradicting elements. And each type of the experiments has some serious constraints (longer timescales, small regions of interest, lots of confounding factors, insufficient sample size, sensitive biomaterial/organism, "stubborn" viruses, etc.). So very often we need 3-4 variations of the exact same type of examination to get conclusive evidence on just one aspect of a given process which in itself is only a small part of a "pathway" which is delicately intertwined with lots of other "mechanisms" and so on.... I've learned molecular biology of the cell twenty years ago: just the most essential knowledge needed more sentences to be described than there are words in the Bible. And there were lots of open questions on these basics, which however still just describe a crude outline of the life of the more widespread cells. As this channel discusses elsewhere due to their flexible nature we won't be able to get a straitforward picture on the activities of many, many proteins. The embryogenesis is a whole another topics with so much epigenetically controlled interactions and very complex intercellular communication that we just begun to discover some of the crucial patterns. So do you think we can define what an organism is, if we don't even understand what processes are decisive to get as distinct species as fruitflies and us?
3:25 - 4:19 are you not aware that a computer's setup/programming does not provide everything a computer needs to produce it's future, developed state? are you trying to make the claim that a computers future state is not, in any part, determined by external feedback?
1. 0:37 Conception can simply be more accurately stated as the formation of unique DNA and the argument remains fully intact. 2. 1:30 Twins come from this unique formation (I'm a twin but that matters not). The life of both twins begins at this moment and that makes twins unique given that most of the time this only results in one unique individual. In the twin case the world gets a two-4-1 3. 2:00 The fact that conception doesn't necessarily lead to a successfull birth doesn't mean that the creation of the life (creation of a unique genetic code) wasn't a wilful act (barring rape or incest). There are consequences to actions and in the vast majority of abortions, a new life was created be wilfully committing to sexual intercourse. That's why the"pro life" side is sympathetic to the idea allowing abortion in three case of rape or incest, where the creation of new life was not a wilful act. 4. Going further back and locking people in a room makes the (my) point, the free will to commit an act in which a new life may be formed is part of the debate. 5. Are you that dumb or are you trolling? The distinction of a unique genome is the definition you're attacking and you're bringing up factors before that distinction like viruses. The point remains. Your are employing the tactic of gosh gallop at this point 6. Genome formation is argued because it's not arbitrary and every single human, including my twin, started at this point 7. Philosophical arguments can be made but you are certainly downplaying scientific facts. Trust the science bro 8. When did your female mother and male father's DNA combine to create the unique organism that would eventually become the body that would be inhabited by your blitheringly non-critical mind? 9. Nobody is defending the straw man sperm you reference, they're defending the new lives, as defined by their genetic code, which amazingly, was embedded in the uterus of your. Bless your mother. 10. "Organisms are processes" many of which I deny and or conflate for reasons that many others don't understand. 11. As if it could not get worse. "Distinct isolated individuals don't exist in earth" ... 🤨... WHAT? A
There's a lot here so I'll just respond to some of it. 1. Why should genome fusion mark the start of a new individual? You can certainly take that stance (see the pinned comment) but there is no experiment that you can do to prove that this is indeed the beginning of a new life. It's just a convention you can take and I can happily take other ones (e.g. there is no clear beginning and the formation of two individuals from one is a continuous process). 2. What scientific facts am I downplaying? I did plenty of research (see sources doc in description) and majored in developmental biology at uni. If there's something you want me to read, please do send a link to the paper. 3. Distinct isolated individuals don't exist. Are the bacteria inside you apart of you? What about the dead skin cells on top of you? Is a virus that invades your cells apart of you? What about one of your transplanted organs that has been given to someone else? Etc etc. Organisms don't have clear boundaries in space or time.
I enjoyed the background music of the video! It is my opinion that lots of straw-man arguments were made, however -one of a few of them being that human beings cannot be distinct from one another. If we are everything in general, then we are nothing in particular. Additionally, one of the purposes of philosophy is to strive to answer the questions that the sciences are not able to. Natural science, biology specifically, DOES tell us about the workings of what is naturally animated and alive in the world (this is even told to us in the etymology of the word “bios”) and a zygote certainly falls under the category of life. Just my initial thoughts
Thanks! Just because organisms are interconnected, doesn’t mean that we are nothing. Many eastern philosophies (buddhism, shintoism) function perfectly fine thinking of organisms as impermanent, constantly changing entities that are connected to everything else. If you want a more scientific exploration of this idea, i made a video on this stuff here: th-cam.com/video/vaJcmWjMNwo/w-d-xo.html If you want a book length treatment, check out Everything Flows by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré. Sure, zygotes are alive. I said as much in the video. The question is really when does a new human individual begin, which is much harder to answer. For me, there is no clear beginning. You can take other stances but there’s no objectively correct stance (see the pinned comment and the video i linked above).
@@SubAnima "The question is really when does a new human individual begin, which is much harder to answer. For me, there is no clear beginning." - this is impractical. Lines have to be drawn somewhere for law to work. Vague 'all is one'-isms are great for sounding wise, but you can't do anything with that. Including biology, which is why taxonomy exists.
@@derickd6150 Sure that's a line. But for it to be effective, it needs to have a sound basis, not just some arbitrary border. Else it's not gonna be law cos no one's gonna be convinced.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn but this the point of the video. There are people who are not convinced on all sides. I am personally not convinced life begins at conception in this simplistic manner. So merely saying, we need simple rules, just gets us back to where we are now
You're the only individual who I've ever heard to give the answer that I agree with (that life began a few billion years ago) - I commend you for that! I take the position that it's simply a new generation of life or that species of organism that begins at conception, rather than that life is beginning. When people take the position that, biologically, life begins either at birth or conception, one mistake or problem with that is it implies that life goes through this back-and-forth process of repeatedly stopping and starting back up again; I've never heard of that sort of process or phenomenon occurring in biology. As far as I'm aware, after the life of an organism has ended (death), it won't restart itself and it can only decay. We can also do the same with organisms that only reproduce asexually, such as with bacteria, when asking about when does life - or a new generation - begin, with that sort of organism. I don't know of any dispute against an assertion that life for it is continuous and doesn't come to a stop for some duration, even when parent cells split into daughter cells.
Sure life may not technically begin exactly after the sperm hits the egg. But even so there is a natural process with the sperm and egg. Life begins when an organism is beginning the process of growing
1)As I wrote in a comment under another video, genes are blueprints, just not deterministic ones. And they DO provide all the necessary information to make a human individual(just don't determine characteristics in each particular case, but rather on average). 2)Yes, strictly speaking it should be stated that life begins after zygote divides(and therefore genetic composition is formed), but it mostly doesn't change the abortions stance, as there are almost no chances to catch the moment when zygote formed, but not yet divided. 3)The argument about identical twins is ridiculous too, as genome is necessary, but not sufficient requirement. Basically human = living organism with human DNA, which also solves the problem with "sufficient conditions"(and the argument about environment and upbringing has absolutely zero value, as it only changes already existing individual) 4)Should be noted that I think ban on abortions won't reach its goals and I support permission of abortions - mostly to filter out genes that make people prone to do them in the first place.
I study embryology as one of medical courses. And I once read: Organs arise by cell-molecule interaction and cell- cell interaction... They called this induced pathways, while the cell-molecule is genetic, the cell-cell isn't... Which shows not DNA is entirely responsible for organogenesis... Even more, nutrients are needed, for instance vitamin B complexes, from my knowledge of pathways in Biochemistry, I suspect some of these are just needed to make enzymes function... but all in all, good video. Though, I feel...
Good point about nutrients supply: suggest that at most Life continues at conception from host to child, and why would this transfer be immediate instead of a process that takes some form of gradual "scaffolding" to happen....
ButI if we agree it’s is immoral to kill an innocent human life and we cannot a draw the line marking when such a life begins, then… isn’t it immoral to interfere at any stage of this process? I don’t have strong opinions about that.. I just have the feeling that people assume this can be the basis of a pro-choice defense, but to me it sounds more like a pro-life one.
@@tragicsink6056 the point is that the place where we put the line is always going to be arbitrary. This only debunks the Pro-life argument that pretends that "the conception is the moment where life begins" is a scientific fact. It is not, it's rather a belief, but they try to convice people it is scientific to validate their belief. Pro-choice arguments tend to be sustained on other directions, like the video of Philosophy Tube that is cited in this video.
We had 5 embryos during our IVF treatment that all died in the lab. My husband believed that life begins at conception yet he refused to acknowledge that we had 5 children. I mourned my loss but not in the way that lost children.
Yeah! It is obvious that life begins when your first memories are created. That is, with 2-3 years old. ¿Does anyone remember being at 1 y.o age? We should allow abortion till then. The child is not aware that will die.
Something is undeniably conceived when conception has taken place. What is conceived is not dead, therefore it is alive. What is cinceived is also not another animal, therefore it is human. Human life starts at conception.
@@callistoscali4344 whenever you guys are backed into a corner that you can't escape you people always default to arguing over definition of words and semantic based arguments.
@@callistoscali4344 you don't have a viable explanation for why your worldview is correct. So what you do is you question what is self evident in order to cast doubt on what is true. It's literally the very tool that Satan used to corrupt God's creation. Asking a seemingly innocent question. You know what conception is. If your a honest decent person that actually believes your worldview is true and just then your only option is to argue why human life does not start at conception instead posing insincere questions designed to cast doubt.
Individual in biology vs psychology vs humanities doesn't mean the same thing. They don't share an identity since the disciplines primary object of analysis and methods are different. Also, this position by religious individuals stating human life begins at conception is instrumental, not primitive nor terminal. It is a mean to an end. Biology as a materialist approach only goes so far. Its observations can be instrumentalized, still it doesn't define right or wrong.
I’m going to try and wriggle out of crimes by playing semantics / definitions. Your honor, how can you really differentiate, technically, between what’s “mine” and what’s “your’s”? What’s your definition is stealing? Etc, etc…
Yes. This is exactly what both sides of the abortion debate are doing. Some people are arbitrarily drawing the line at conception, while others are arbitrarily drawing the line at some other point, like first heartbeat or first neurological activity
I think you have inadvertently made an interesting point. It's pretty simple to understand theft and ownership of an object from a legal perspective. It makes a lot less sense when you examine ownership from a more nuanced perspective . Here's an example - my sister owns a house built on land that my father purchased from a farmer. How did the farmer get to own the land? He inherited it from his father. But at some point in history no one ( or if you prefer everyone) owned that patch of land until somebody claimed it as their own (or if you prefer they stole it).
The underlying problem is that this is all a semantics game to try to legally or politically justify actions or justify prohibiting actions by mis-applying the meaning of a word with a process of jumping back-and-forth between contextual settings. I generally take a position of being opposed to dominance or monopolization of the definitions of words by one group over another. For instance, the definition or meaning of the word "life" in a biology textbook is one thing, and there may be a scientific purpose or justification for the way it's presented in that setting; that doesn't mean that someone who isn't taking a biology test has to comply or conform to that biology textbook definition of life. It's also a two-way street, because it would be just as valid for the political camp to argue that the biology camp's definition of the word "life" is wrong in the circumstance where there's a discrepancy between the definitions from the two camps. You say that you don't see many individuals defending the life of sperm, then you move on from there to something else - is there an industry that's profiting from the slaughter of sperm? If not, would a call for a ban on such an industry crop up? Why do we have laws against murder and manslaughter of human beings after they're born? There must be a reason for why such laws exist and are allowed to continue to exist. Why not do away with these laws? Doing so would make things consistent.
The question in the title requires context, which is the abortion conversation. If the two genomes fuse 24 hours after the fertilization, that's what marks the beginning of new human life. What happens after that fusion is already a different discussion. In the vast majority of cases, we get one baby. Other times we get more or... unfortunately less. But again, the context of the question is important because its purpose is to establish a legal frame of reference around abortion. No amount of philosophy on the topic can change the fact that not providing nutrition and a favorable environment will end human life regardless of its stage in development.
My main PRACTICAL argument against "life begins at conception " is the minuscule survival rate of unborn life. Only a fraction of fertilised eggs actually makes it to a life birth. You mention the failure to implant and misscarrages afterwards, and combining these odds only leaves few. In most cases it fails so early that the mother doesn't even recognize that she had a miscarriage. So we are utterly incapable of giving unborn life the same protections as born life. Once a child is born however, we will resort to damn near everything thinkable to save it. And we can do so without endangering or forcing the mother. So with conception being an unsuitable moment to consider the child a full person who can receive all regular protections and services, the far more sensible choice for that is birth.
Human: noun: any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage. Parasite: A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. An unborn organism fits only the 2nd definition I posted. I would suggest that life MIGHT begin in the man since his issue is mobile while an egg is not.
I feel like the most moral option is to consider embryos "alive", when they develop the first neurons. This is the moment when the embryo can possibly feel pain. This is the moment where the concept of conscious is forming,
Is "conception" even a scientific term? I've heard that it has little purpose in biology and that it's actually a religious term, in particular in the roman catholic faith
Another thing. Maybe you would be happier if people said "Zygotes begin about 24 hours after conception and Zygotes should not be aborted" But most people don't use that type of jargon. BUT IF we translated "life begins at the moment of conception and babies should not be aborted" to your terminology field "Zygotes begin about 24 hours after conception and Zygotes should not be aborted" What is your reasoning as to why someone has the LEGAL right to interfere with a Zygotes life cycle?
I didn't know all these intricacies that you bring up, but reasoning through the implications of identical twins and human chimeras were what convinced me against my former pro-life position. If one embryo can split into two and form two people, or if two embryos can merge into one and become a single person with a mosaic of DNA, then it makes no sense to consider the origin of personhood as conception.
My view is that initially, one life begins at conception, and one or more new lives begin when a fertilized egg cell splits into two or more seperate cells.
@oitthegroit1297 No life begins in any of these points. Life arose around 4.000.000.000 years ago. No new life arises today. You may talk about a new organism, a new individuality, a new counsciousness, but not a new life. and, in my view, the only relevant point is counsciousness (that arise many months after conception).
@@LeonardoRibeiro Technically right in some senses but this topic isn't about aren't asking when did organic life arise on this planet or this universe, though if a person subscribes to creationism it may impact their views on this topic so a workable answer should be one that includes this perspective. We have to recognise on this debate the term "new life begins" is short hand a for and understood to mean all the terms you describe, and if you want to argue semantic pedantics, scientific definitions will be superseded by legal ones. I tend to agree with you that when does a separate consciousness exist (and end) is more relevant. Part of that could be when is a potential consciousness inevitable. Also whether levels of consciousness above and below the level of an individual exist. Group behaviour is a thing and groups can learn, are cellular processes such as somatic hypermutation a potential form of consciousness. Can a mother and fetus, a family be considered a single consciousness. Nation states can certainly act for the collective and decide matters of life and death for components of the body of the state. "What is the worth of a single mortal's life?" to each of this potential collective bodies to which we belong, is also part of the answer. Which collective takes precedence? If the body rejects the fetus, can the mother seek to save it? If the mother declines to carry it can the family or the state? What is acceptable intervention? Who can act as guardian/advocate to a fetus and in what matters? When is something a legal entity with rights? if part of your body can a state pass laws to prevent you altering your body and under what limits? The topic has broad ramifications.
If you resarch better, you'll see that identical twins don't have the same DNA, right after the separation they both develop diferrent mutations. They olny have the same DNA in the moment they slip.@@oitthegroit1297
@@Calamity8 yeah- and if I had stumbled across "Destroying a player player with Gandora deck😀😀" first i would've commented "First!!! (shit video :) ). What's your point?
I love your videos and I really cannot comprehend the huge amount of dislikes your videos have. Are your videos being targeted to the wrong audiences? anyway, I'm glad I found your channel in my home section of youtube
"The onus is on you" he says? No, the burden of proof lies with both parties making claims. You're claiming we cannot know is the same as someone claiming they do know, it is still a claim. So, if the onus is on me or Bob or whoever, then it is also on your, sir. Edit: Your logic with the twins dilemma is flawed. There is no dilemma. The twins start out as one organism and become two, it is that simple. If they rejoin, or two separate zygotes join then that's two becoming one. Essentially, they're transforming, growing or shrinking. This isn't much different from the parent organisms growing in the sense of pro-creating. In fact, in some ways, the forming zygote, then embryo is connected to the mother and a part of her, growing more and more distinct from her over time. But, it is a gradual 9 month process, so it doesn't make sense to say that the baby isn't an individual until it pops out of the womb. The child still needs care even after then, but it was a unique person (unless a twin) the whole time. And, again, the twins themselves are unique from others, so it is a weak argument to then say genetics don't matter for defining life starting or individuals. Surely, there are *other* factors to consider other than just DNA, but DNA is one of the important ones.
Surprised you didn't reference MRSGREN or MRSCGREN Is a virus particle alive before it enters a host cell, is a host cell with its reproducing virus strands alive? Is it a new organism, or the same
I can't understand the problem. If religious people are right, then an aborted fetus has skipped this vale of tears and innocently gone on to its god. If science is right, it was little more than a clump of cells, still not a problem.
It seems there's some basic confusion despite the efforts of this video, which also emphasizes that from a biologically also philosophically more precise point of view we should use *individual organism* instead of the general and symbolic term "LIFE".
Don't encourage ridiculous quibbling. No one oppose birth control. But no one can justify "partial-birth abortion." There are always two lives involved, mother and child. The ONLY question is how we balance those two lives. Most jurisdictions set limits in terms of weeks. That is the only rational approach.
This is semantics. Conception refers to the time that an individual comes into being. When the genetic components of the man and the woman merge. Also, the arguments given in this video are soooo inane that I can't even begin responding to it. All making the argument a philosophical one does is push back the time that life begins, it doesn't negate the fact that all life must be preserved. All it would say is that sperm and eggs should be treated as life also, which could also be a good argument. Either way, it would not support any type of abortion: of zygotes or even sperm or eggs.
9:18 "Distinct, isolated individuals don't exist..." and 8:10 [Life is just a cycle with not beginning or end]. Gross! This is as much a philosophical position as much as the positions you criticized in this video, but you're giving view that has the point of diminishing a person's fundamental value as an individual.
Well with birthrates in S Korea reaching 0.8, we have an existential threat. Pro choice says people should have children when they can afford them, yet, across the world the rich are dying out because they, especially women, have to wait too long to become rich & rich people naturally don't want a lot of kids. The poorer people are, the more kids they have ironically. Starving = lots of kids.
The human lifeform within the mother will go on, unless in the event of an accident or abortion, to become a whole adult human. Comparatively, it is statistically impossible to predict which sperm cell through an entire male's life would go on to conceive a child. For a child in the womb, their life is just as *determinate* as a child outside the womb from an objective perspective within a reasonable margin comparatively. That is to say, if we look at which point human life should be afforded value, we are not going to be strict on the margined, if the life has a reasonable possibility of reaching a period in their life where they would be afforded those rights, why aren't they? Also, the statistical vastness between either gametes alone compared to a zygote in determinism is so vast as to make the comparison with any less likelihood of reaching adulthood inside or outside the womb statistically insignificant. This is a powerful argument that could be explored objectively. If the human life inside the mother will most likely become a full-blown adult and child, what is the difference between a child in the womb or someone who is terminally ill or even slightly in threat of death from a broader existential perspective? Which is primarily what should be considered when dealing with human morality. @SubAnima
Depends on when. There is still the hurdle of implantation and fetal development. The likelihood of that to succeed is lower than 50%, even after the successful formation of the zygote.
@@callistoscali4344 What I mean by determinate is that this system of "human development" is set in place; barring random factors, a zygote is on track to become a human. This outlines two separate systems that overlap: human development and human reproduction. This is the boundary I draw in measuring the statistical likelihood of survival at the point of human development. Otherwise, I would be a hypocrite because I do not believe the likelihood of a person's death necessarily dictates their worth. I was giving too much credence to this argument of statistical worth by highlighting the vast difference between gamets and zygotes. This, instead, proves the outlines of human development and its deterministic nature. My argument summed up is that human development is deterministic; human development starts at conception, and there is no discernable difference from a moral perspective between different stages of human development because choosing to end that development at any stage would end all stages because human development is determinate.
Nice video! Lays out a lot of the problems with the "life at conception" consideration. I've had similar issues with even popular science defining a clear border of life and non-life between viruses and the rest. It's just too complicated and requires a lot more nuance. I'm not sure if that's even that clear and non-arbitrary, given the complex variations that exist in parasitic organisms, intercellular and -genetic competition within an organism or genome and the viruses' vital role in horizontal gene transfer making them almost part of their associated organisms. There's also the issue if you even can consider any "organism" fully isolated from its environment as complete, as you also mentioned in the video.
Good video. I think the idea that human life begins at conception (conceptionism) is clearly false. I don't see how conceptionists could succesfully respond to the argument from twinning. Another argument against conceptionism is that human beings cannot divide or fuse with another human to form new humans. However, a zygote and early embryos can divide to form new humans (identical twins) or fuse with another zygote/early embryo (quimerism). Therefore, a zygote and early embryos cannot be humans.
If they aren’t a human zygote then what species of zygote are they? Just because humans cannot do something now that they could when they were in the womb, doesn’t mean the human in the womb is not a human. There are plenty of things humans stop being able to do throughout their lifetimes it doesn’t take away there humanhood
I am pro-choice and I really enjoyed this video. Very informative, I never really thought the debate was about "when life begins" because obviously a cell is classified as a life form. It's more about what kinds of life forms humans prioritize, and their own species happens to be at the top of the human constructed hierarchy.
We humans make things way yo complicated. You a cluster of cells so how do we have the right to determine whether another human has right to life or not.
@@akinibitoye7908imo none of this matters. if the mother doesnt want it that's reason enough. you are not taking anything away from a small organism that hasnt even exited the womb. stripping women of their bodily autonomy this way is why there are literally dozens of cases of women being charged with manslaughter over the miscarriage of her baby. that is clearly dystopian.
@@automatic5 You, me and everyone around the world was once inside the mothers womb with life developing. So tell me what is so magical about the baby being alive outside the womb during labour and the baby inside the womb who jsabout to leave the womb. If you adovacting for pro choice you allowing people who will literally kill the baby before maybe even 1 week or days before due date. You will say no woman will do that there are plenty out there who will do it.
@automatic5 man, that's f***ed up. I don't want my newborn so get rid of it. That is a permissible action by what you've just said. "Bodily autonomy" is a euphemism. It's only used as a get out of jail free card to avoid having to discuss the issue and to absolve oneself of any moral consequences of your actions. Not to mention its selfish and narcissistic. It never gets invoked until after something you don't like happens.
Life starts in the bedroom😎😅 I would consider life beginning at conception even though it takes 24hr after conception to be considered different from parents. But the question is when does life begin... thats a tougher question to answer because we kind of know how life began on earth, but we know know how exactly it began. Defining what is life or whats considered to be alive is blurry.
A point of clarification since some people have missed the main point of the video.
In most circumstances in everyday life, it makes common sense to separate humans out by their boundaries, namely by drawing a border around the cells that contain their DNA. I am not denying that "human organisms begin at conception" is a useful perspective to take. It is often taken by many biologists and philosophers alike (hence the '96% of biologists' statistic that people keep citing below).
But what is crucial is that this perspective faces problems when it comes to twins, polaroid metaphors and the other things I talked about in the video. At a fundamental (i.e. metaphysical) level, there is no reason to place the border at conception. That is just a useful (epistemic) convention that is often taken to simplify the world for us humans and has allowed us to theorise about biology via population genetics and other similar fields.
There are many other possible conventions we could take to understand where the beginning of life might lie. Some of these include: the "quickening" (when the baby first kicks), when the umbilical stump falls off, when the baby takes its first breath, or say that no border truly exists at all (my personal view). Each of these may have their use or purpose. But none will be "proven" by empirical data.
*There is no experiment you can do to prove that one perspective is correct over the others.*
That, I hope, was the main takeaway of the video: science does not "prove" that human organisms begin at conception. It is but one perspective.
For a detailed outline of my position (aka the 'process' view) and an overview of some of the common alternatives, I highly recommend this paper by philosopher Anne Sophie-Meincke: doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01716-y
Jake
The twins argument is weak because you have two humans developing with similar DNA. That's not a justification for claiming we don't know when those zygotes are human. Were their parents human? They are human.
For legal purposes, defining a boundary is relevant, even if within a certain range of variation.
In my opinion, laws regarding abortion should focus on lessening the overall suffering.
So, the starting point is when the neural development is complete enough to produce a mind. a consciousness, capable of suffering. Before this point, only the suffering of the pregnant person matters.
This point of development is almost the same point in which we can have a premature birth (with a baby that can be kept alive outside the womb).
@Samura1313 I said both that I was talking about laws regarding abortion and about being CAPABLE of suffering.
I never said that every law should ever consider only the suffering caused to the direct victim.
in this particular case (abortion), I consider it (theboresence of a counsciousness, that is capable of suffering) a more useful and objective criteria than when individuality emerges.
why should a mindless organism have priority over a person with a mind? It makes no sense.
@Samura1313 Again, I am talking about abortion only. Other situations will have other standards. A person who doesn't feel pain still has a mind and still can suffer (and suffer a lot because of their condition).
my point is that an embryo doesn't even have a mind, so the suffering of the pregnant person is all that matters at this point. the counsciousness only is formed after 5 months of pregnancy. from that point on, we can factor the well-being of the fetus, but not before that moment. Talking about if it is an organism or an individual or "a life" is not really relevant before that point.
our minds are what make us humans. You can't talk about murder before the organism has a mind, and not after the individual has not a mind anymore (cerebral death).
@@LeonardoRibeiro Define "a mind". And, no, I'm not try to be legalistic here. Part of the 'mind' of an individual is their unique genetic expression. Even if you did not count that, an embryo has consciousness earlier than the 5 months mark you spoke about and has a nervous system definitely well before the 5 months mark. I do not agree that using suffering as the sole standard is ever a good idea anyway. But, even if I did, I wouldn't agree with the timeline you're suggesting here in your comments.
A lot of people are not comfortable calling an early zygote a 'person' because people don't want to feel like murderers if they use a pill or some other early method to stop the baby from implanting and forming. A lot of groups of people are made uncomfortable by the thought they may have killed or "murdered" a baby even if the baby was only days old and not implanted so they just argue it wasn't a person.
But, just like there are complications with trying to define what a 'mind' is, how does one define 'person'? If we consider a person to be someone with a fully matured personality then many of us are not persons. Even, if we consider it when one starts having a developed personality even if not fully, then we're not persons until about 5 years of age maybe a little sooner. Yet, I don't know anywhere where it is legal (or if not illegal at least considered moral) to kill a 2 year old toddler.
I used to try to rationalize the way this video maker and you do but I came to the conclusion that life overall is a complex web of processes and interactions that don't really have a true start or stop. But since that isn't a useful for definition for the lives of individual people, we need to look at when an individual becomes alive and they're "alive" zero to a few days after conception depending upon how long that process takes to start. They fulfill the definition of life at that point. Does being alive make them a person of worth? That's more of a moral or philosophical question like what is a person or a mind. But, if we remember that life is just a bunch of processes and things with mature through, I believe that means that just past conception is a part of that person's life. So, either they are a person, or they're a potential person, and therefore they have value or potentially will have value and it is a loss to kill them and it should be considered a murder or at minimum a killing.
If we continue this logic, then we have to accept that life doesn't begin after birth, because newborns need a lot of support, they are not fully developed, there is no guarantee that they will fully develop and they have no consciousness, at least no consciousness at the same level as an adult has. The same can be said for toddlers and young children, as well as some adults with certain disabilities. Is it ok to “abort” a newborn, toddler, or even an adult with developmental and/or mental health issues? I mean, they require constant care, rely on others for survival, haven't reach a fully functional "adult organism " standard, and there's no guarantee they ever will...
Did you finish the video?
@@oliverdubsky6512
Yes,
This man’s videos is a complete refutation of itself.
When does life begin - he demonstrated it clearly - at conception.
That is the exact moment the start of a new human life begins for every human being that has ever existed or will ever exist.
His fallacious, reasoning that life does not begin at conception because the new human may not become fully formed to adult maturity is laughable… its is equivalent (in principle) to saying that because a human being is not fully matured and independent it is therefore not human.
This is the same sadistic, dehumanising logic that led to abhorrent practices in eugenics and the current practice of abortion ls allowed right up to nine months of development.
It an evil that God will justly judge to bring those who support this horrid practice to account for.
@@justwannaridemabikewhen do twins become distinct individuals?
@@MorseAttack
Human life begins at conception.
Whether that life becomes twins, triplets, quadruplets or just a single human being
The start of our life as humans begins at conception.
The life we all went through before becoming mature and independent was at points very small, very dependent, went various through stages of development and took place in various locations.
@@justwannaridemabike So are you saying that twins are identical lifeforms? They are not separate individuals?
I've heard that life begins at 40.
😂
1 minute in, he's saying that life does not start at conception, because it takes at least another 24 hours for the genes from the egg and sperm to start to mix. That would mean that after an egg is fertilized, its not a seperate human life for another 24 hours. That seems like a great argument in favor of the morning after pill. Not abortions though!
Conception is not a point in time, it is a process. Every process takes time and the conception is not an exception. The conception process starts when a sperm starts entering into an egg but the end of this process is… when the sperm and the egg form one unified cell. So the process of merging the nuclei is a part of the conception process. Therefore all conclusions based on the first minute of this video are BS.
When is that? C'mon, crunch ALL OF THE NUMBERS. >=^}
Do you even know how the morning after pill works? It works by delaying or preventing ovulation. It has nothing to do with a fertilized egg 🤦♀️
Well in terms of fertilization he's taken a the maximum amount of time and hasn't factored in that this number includes the process of the sperm finding the egg.
In reality. The morning after pill would often times kill the baby.
When do the twins become distinct individuals?
Human life is a cycle of development. A newborn is not fully developed, the body continues developing. Humans grow to different stages of the life cycle, and in none of those stages are we less human, we are just DEVELOPING. No matter how long it takes the genomes to fuse and form a new DNA, the cycle of life already started and, unless it is interrupted, will continue to develop and grow into new stages. A sperm by itself will never grow into an embryo.
maybe we should be asking when does a separate consciousness exist? What is meant by a lay person saying when does a person's life begin and end? What is a person? Something I learnt from mathematics is that when something is seemingly impossible to answer like what is 3apples minus 5 apples, or the square root of -4 adding a new dimension to the context, or shifting a limit or just asking a better question can help you find the answer you need to resolve the dilemma
Good point. We are not just our bodies and building blocks.
That just makes things even less clear. We've been arguing about consciousness for eons, with even less agreement over it than over what is living or not. There's also a spectrum of consciousness, both between organisms and within organisms (like when you're asleep) as well as various stages of human development. So making it about consciousness just makes it even muddier.
Given that a conscious individual does exist (and I know one does, myself) and viewing retrospectively, some have suggested that its existence goes back to the oldest accessible memory.. But you couldn't call that a beginning because a beginning really shouldn't change, and I might forget my oldest memory, or remember an older one.
easy answer: when something is born
christian theocrats can't even wait for this fact before trying to enforce their stupid religion
this is all very subjective tbh, science is descriptive not prescriptive. all the lines where something starts and something ends are all man-made, like where does a species start or end and what even is a species? kinda similar to the questions you asked.
Life doesn't "begin" at conception, or at birth, they are confusing "continuation" with the "beginning of life"
which has never been truly observed in any living mammal species in the true since of what actual "new beginning living life" happens to be.
But in reality "life" began long before anyone had the ability or the cognitive abilities to even contemplate the question.
Living cells from your father mixed with living cells from your mother, and in doing so your mother and father created their continuing which is in the different form then the form they are currently in IE "you"
So in a way you are immortal so long as you continue evolving and changing form (having kids) .
The polaroid metaphor is no where NEAR as good as Bill Burr’s Baking Cake metaphor!
This one is excellent
Steelman your opponent's arguments.
1:15 A steelmanned version of the pro-life argument would probably focus on the process or separateness of the zygote. A new genome is in the process of being formed. Still, it appears you have a valid point. To me, I don't think that a new genome is necessary nor sufficient for new life because I think life is fundamentally immaterial and grounded in the mind and/or soul. So whenever that human spirit and/or soul begins to exist (they're not the same thing) is when a new human begins to exist. Whether that corresponds neatly to the physical development, I do not know.
1:35 If by unique you mean unique genetic information, then I don't think you're being fair to the spirit of the argument. The claim is not that a unique genome means a unique individual. The claim is that a separate genome (referring to the physical structure) or a new genome belongs to the new individual. This explains why twins can have identical genomes while also being separate individuals. A separate genome is indicative of a separate individual.
4:21 Appealing to failed implantation or miscarriage doesn't seem to negate the spirit of the polaroid argument. The focus on the polaroid argument is on the function of the development of the embyro, that is the process itself and the end of the process. Saying that the process can be disrupted doesn't somehow indicate that a human is not developing. The steelmanned argument would not say a fully conscious creature is being yielded "by default" but that the process, if uninterrupted and functioning according to its telos, will result in a fully conscious human.
5:25 Trent's argument is referring to the Zygote. Comparing a zygote to a man and a woman runs into issues because they are two separate persons (minds, not referring to their physical bodies) and thus separate entities (i.e. they're discrete and so do not constant a single thing in the same sense Trent is talking about). I think you're playing fast and loose with Trent's use of the word "something" and equivocating two separate concepts of the word "something."
6:50 Mereological fuzziness and indeterminacy is resolved by recognizing the entities as separate due to their possession of a soul and/or mind. I think Alvin Plantinga's Essay "Against Materialism" is relevant here.
8:05 Whether life begins at conception is objective because it's either true or false, not subjective.
As for me, I do not know when life begins for certain (though it has to begin at some point) and I'd rather not endanger another human when I lack such certainty.
i think you should first steelman your arguments a bit - you are confusing life, identity and consciousness which are three different things.
@@nescius2 Ah, yeah, I was presupposing they are the same or very closely related since I was thinking from my perspective, but I can see how others might not think so. Currently, I lean towards an idealist perspective on philosophy of mind, so I think mind is fundamental rather than what's physical. As I understand it, identity is a core part of what it means to be a mind, so a human person can exist in some sense even if their body has been destroyed. As a result, it seems to me that life is about the mental, not the physical; the physical aspect is just the machines that allow minds and/or ensouled creatures to interact with the physical world in a physical sense.
what soul?
I find it quite confusing that the same people who believe abotion is not killing a baby, also believe that if a pregnant woman is murdered, the killer should be charged with two murders.
Because abortion is about choice, and her own body. Glad I could clear that up for you
@@C87-q9j If you believe the fetus is a womans body, why then is ending it called a murder in one aspect and not the other, which produces the exactly the same result? I'm not arguing one side or the other. Just pointing out the contradiction.
@@C87-q9j I envy your delusion, my friend. “I had sex and now this baby wants to use MY BODY!! I’ll show them!!”
@@C87-q9j a baby's right to life is not up to someone else. pregnant women are not supposed to smoke, drink, or take drugs because it can affect the baby's mental and physical health. women who are not pregnant can safely do these things because it will not harm the baby. its scientifically proven that a baby is separate from his or her mother. and ive heard the "its a parasite" argument. when that is not true at all. Parasites are separate species from their host, and the host's immune system will attack them. a woman's body provides care for the child to stay alive.
if a pregnant woman is murdered, its called a double homicide. if a woman has an abortion, its an accepted practice. its confusing and truly contradicting.
This is why philosophy is the overseer of the sciences as David Hume said "you cannot get a ought from a is" and it's obvious that there are larger over arching issues with this topic and its implication on say the issue of abortion for example. Defining accurately the beginning of human life is only important to people who value it and our culture does very little to teach this and what the ancient Greeks called "Eudaimonia" which should be the chief aim of all the sciences. Yet we find ourselves here. Debating something rather irrelevant to the bigger picture questions.
Using science to define life is like using sticks and stones to break apart grandma's family heirloom to find out what makes it valuable.
Defining life at conception is a close approximation to an answer. The best we got in fact. This answer isn't pleasing to the scientific mind. But as far as I can tell it's a displeasing answer to the devil as well.
Yep. If one's value is to protect and nurture human life, they will discover and deploy science to that end. If ones value is center in woman's socio-economic success, they will deploy science to that end.
I appreciate how you expand on the concept of conception, and point of the details of the process, that’s fair, but I feel like your getting hung up on the metaphors and missing the point of the argument, in the instances of twins pretty much every pro-life person would agree that even though the genetic variation isn’t unique between the two, that they still deserve life, or in the other points you called out, like with miscarriages, or the child not having the nutrition it needs in development, pro-life people aren’t arguing against those things cause they don’t fit the specific unique genetic model metaphor, or don’t care about the other things involved in the child’s development, the main argument is that it’s a life, it should have the right to develop. In cases with miscarriages most pro-lifers see that as a loss of life, even in the case of the zygote failing to get to the womb, most pro-lifer are trying to give significance to the development of the embryo as a human life, yes there are more factors that play into developing the child, but just because you have a womb doesn’t mean you have a child, nor does just having the right nutrients, the zygote has to be there for a human to start developing, and it’s going to need help till birth and after, Pro-lifers want people to see it as it’s own life for at least 150 years (usually humans don’t last that long lol).
"want people to see it as it’s own life for at least 150 years" - wait wut?! Where'd that number come from? And when did they start arguing for culling the elderly?
pro-lifers or pro-forced birthers?
@@neiltristanyabutyou are aware that ppl who get abortions still deliver their babies? The difference is that pro lifers don't want babies to die in the process. So that whole "forced birth" thing is ridiculous.
@@Isabellajean2007 define 'baby'
@Isabellajean2007 They don't really die though do they.
How tf u dont have atleast 100k subs, great content
Thank you so much for the support, really appreciate it and glad you enjoyed the video!
Pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Priest: "Life begins at conception." Blasé Could-Care-Less Episcopalian Cleric: "Life begins at birth." Orthodox Rabbi: "No, no, no my sons. Life begins when the children have graduated from medical school, and the dog has died."
The dilemma I have always had with the abortion argument is for cases where the mother’s life is in danger (ecoptic pregnancies, the mother having a medical condition where labor or even later stages of pregnancy could kill her, a mother being a child herself).
If this is an argument about life, how could you say the the life of something not even breathing, feeling, or thinking is more important than the life of the person in front of you, the terrified individual who knows that without an abortion, they will die.
In every other case: pregnancy through rape, an unplanned pregnancy, not having enough money to raise a child, not being ready to raise a child, there are other things we can do. We can give counseling, financial support, social services, etc. But in the case of that mother who will die? Who might have to leave other children who will be alone after her death? Who is scared and wondering what kind of God would forsake her like this? What am I going to give that will really help? Hold their hand? Tell them it’s all a part of “God’s plan”?
That one, I struggle with.
@@chris4231
> If you have sex you're consenting to pregnancy
except when a condom breaks or birth control fails?
> if you can't afford it then give a child up for adoption
this ignores all the potential health complications and physical toll of going through labor; it's easy to say "oh just go through pregnancy and give the child up for adoption" without knowing all the suffering caused by that process
"If you have sex you're consenting to pregnancy"
consenting to sex DOES NOT equal consent to pregnancy.
@@chris4231
First of all, we must remember that the person is giving birth in a hospital surrounded by professionals, and if things go wrong, then the doctors go ask the person who the woman trusted for the decision of "Who should we save?"
Now we must understand that in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of knowledge, they brought sin into the world, sin is not a blessing, sin is death and everything that is wrong in this world.
Is not god's plan for women to die in childbirth, nor did he create the animals with the purpose of them devouring each other, the reason all of this happens is because it is a fallen kingdom, which before Jesus died on the cross it belonged to Satan, So it's not god's plan, just like it wasn't god's plan for Hitler to rise to power, we humans tend to forget that there is a god, but there is also a devil.
Also I don't understand abortion either, that's why I'm here :v
@LP-zcrgy quote: "If this is an argument about life, how could you say the the life of something not even breathing, feeling, or thinking is more important than the life of the person in front of you, the terrified individual who knows that without an abortion, they will die." This is reasonable to save the mother if the mother is going to die, but that is a very rare case, the vast majority of cases do not put the mothers life in jeopardy. The situations where the mother is told that their baby will have such and such disease or deformity is starting to cross the line as playing God. Morality is always between two or more persons. Never forget that.
A soul was put into being.
Thank you for this stellar video on an interesting (and I’d imagine rather controversial) topic! I really enjoyed the clarity of the tie-ins of different points of view with current stances on the subject. Keep up the great videos!
Thanks so much, will do! Yes certainly a tricky topic but hopefully what I've said isn't too controversial.
Video mixes up two different discussions (when starts life, what creates a unique person) and fails to answer both.
I agree - it's a terrible video, full of strawman arguments...
No it doesn't, he's not trying to answer anything. He is refuting the idea that science "objectively proves" life begins at conception. The point is that the question of "what is life?" is not a scientific question at all, it is a philosophical problem.
@@Ely-zf4yt'What is life?' is a scientfic question. The zygote is a living cell since it meets the criteria used to define life. While some may argue that gametes are also living organisms, I would tend to disagree since they can't reproduce etc
@@FlyingPhilUKSo by your logic that would mean Worker Ants aren’t organisms because of their inability to reproduce and only relying on their queen to do so…
despite that they have an entire anatomy working to keep it sustained and alive, even a consciousness more than something so small as normal gametes, which that part also goes to say that gametes have their own anatomies too that you forget about, one important thing such being a nucleus (although unclear if they really do have their own sort of goals).
And here; this statement obviously does not seem right…
@@FlyingPhilUK Actually no, the whole point of the video-if you actually watched the whole thing- is that science hasn't gotten that far to determine when life begins and everyone who tries to argue that life begins at conception or fertilization is wrong and is just an opinion. Anyone who agrees that life begins at conception is just wrong because you can't actually prove that life begins at conception or fertilization. As he said in the video, 40-60% of the time, a zygote doesn't live past 2-3 weeks so it can implant into the mother's womb.
Science has told us rhat life starts though.
Your only point that can come close to valid is the implantation point. However. With implantion. Just because some dont make it. Doesn't mean that they weren't alive. Same reason that just because some people with cancer die doesnt mean that people wirh cancer aren't alive until they get passed it.
Another point of yours was the environment one. Your problem there was thay you confused an environment and an organism. Lets go to your bedroom example.
The bedroom itself is no an organism. And in reality. Is just the place where the woman would be staying. The environment in which the baby develops would still be her womb.
And the baby is an organism. Which with the right conditions. They will grow up and be born.
This is my new favourite youtube channel. Greetings from Spain ❤
Just commenting for the algorithm. This should have WAY more views. Great video! Liked and subscribed as well.
Thank you so much, means a lot!
as much as this video is well-thought out, it's a total cop-out to say that "life began billions of years ago" when the topic is clearly about human conception. it's like you just want to distance yourself from the very clear concept that all people started out as zygotes, and that happens to be the standard that the conservative right wing usually adopts. i personally don't care if it's left or right, you'd have to have a good degree of intellectual dishonesty to completely disregard the zygote in the argument about how an individual begins to develop. just because a lot of zygotes don't make it into the womb, that doesn't make this stage any less crucial as far as the process is concerned. it's like saying that a baby that was stillborn isn't really a baby because it didn't make it out alive. you're running the risk of implying only healthy live births count just so you can disregard things like miscarriages, zygotes not implanting properly, etc.
my point is, you may or may not have a philosophical answer to the question, but avoiding the question altogether and shifting the goal post to "life began eons ago" is just plain unscientific.
it is interesting to note that it is still during the stage of zygote that the genes start to get to work, meaning, even if it takes up to 24 hours, the claim that zygote is the first stage is still technically correct. you may further subdivide this stage as pre-dna fusion and post-dna fusion, but the point is that it is technically correct that a human starts out as a zygote.
furthermore, the question of when does life begin seems to be easily confused with when did the human species start to emerge? clearly the question is about the individual and not the entirety of humankind. it just seems like a lot of verbiage to try and avoid appearing like you agree with the right. it's cringe to use the christian narrative to berate people about abortion, but it's also cringe to avoid seeing the science for what it is just so you can say you disagree with a certain political party.
Genuinely great video. It goes straight into the heart of the question, and then is humble to admit we're not cabaple of defining it due to it's complexity, and any position taken is based on a subjective approach. The most compelling argument I've heard about it, and the one I have taken for myself ever since I've read it, is that based on our incapacity of defining when does a human life begins, one must take the safe approach which is to not disturb life while it's doing it's thing. Maybe it's just a bunch of cells with no human life behind it, but maybe it is. Would you pull the trigger of a firearm with your eyes closed? Maybe nothing happens, but maybe you end the life of a child. In most scenarios, it's better to put the gun down and do nothing.
No, because if that’s the case, then taking part in the interruption process of “life doing their on thing” is also life doing their own thing. We’re not dead neither we’re separated from it.
@@Torkieh One is an unconscious effort by nature, the other is a conscious effort by men. They're not the same.
@@ceshorty Men is nature, nature is man. This separation is pointless if we’re talking about processes in the most fundamental level.
@@Torkieh We're not, however, on this frame of reference precisely because the original argument also isn't. We're talking about conscious human action against nature on it's most fundamental level.
@@ceshorty IHe pointed out the problem of individuation and trouble with hard limits on definitions on what organisms or environment is to illustrate how these processes are interpenetrated and there’s no clear distinction where a life starts.
You should be fighting for prohibiting male teenagers from masturbating though, we can’t bet that spermatozoids are not alive, otherwise mass genocide is happening in an unbelievable large scale everyday!
I thought the question of when life begins had been settled years ago. Life begins at 40.
More seriously though, you've pointed out quite well why science should not be invoked to answer questions of morality. The question about when life begins is really a distraction, when what we really want to ask is when is it no longer acceptable to kill an organism that may or may not be human. This is not a question for science, but more a question of belief or conscience.
Religions give clear answers, but they are not universally accepted. The law gives some answers, but again, the edge-cases are open to debate. Science really cannot help in either case, and it is annoying that people say things like "science proves..." or "scientifically proven..." It's almost as though people who don't really believe or understand science are using it as a crutch to support their moral causes.
You wouldn’t knock down a building for construction if you thought there might be a person inside and you haven’t checked. In that same way, as long as there is a valid argument that a fertilized egg is a possible person, you wouldn’t kill him/her.
All your spermatozoids in joint with any woman's egg are possible people, so each time you jeez in ur toilet, more than a biliion possible people have no longer chance to develop
exactly. say you go hunting, and you lose your friend. you hear leaves rustling behind a bush. do you shoot? no, because it would be irresponsible. it could be your friend, not an animal. but thats more of a 50/50. pregnancy is not 50/50. its a baby, not a koala bear. there is a certainty that the baby growing inside the mother's womb is actually a human being with a right to life.
I believe the term "fertilization" is when the pro-nuclei of the sperm enters the egg. Conception is when both pro-nuclei merge into one nucleus. That does not determine when life begins for everyone, because we each choose to accept a particular convention. Not that it matters to anyone, but I subscribe to the moment of conception described above as the when life begins. Peace!
The "cell" is the fundamental unit of life. The plasma membrane is the initial "boundary". Of course, it gets complicated, but under ideal (or not always so ideal) conditions, we have a life with the potential of becoming a baby who has the potential of becoming an adult. Anything can happen after the moment of conception. Peace!
In a way, I also subscribe to this view, but it also opens a bigger debate on which life is worth living. After all, a life of an embryo might be worth the life of a parasite to people. Wanting to have a parasite removed is hardly a shocker in today's world, despite the sanctified life views.
@@cipherhost human life begins at conception not all conceived is born. but that is the natural process.
no one talking about the quickening? 😮
so weird how you'll admit there's no true answer and then immediately give yourself an easy conclusion lol
People asking where the line of life is drawn, but actually there is no line at all. There is only a spectrum, a continuum of how "alive" something is
faks big man
Spectrum? Isn't that the long golden stick that royals hold?
-People like these, probably
yea this is kindof a stupid discussion in of itself.
Keep drinking your liberal koolaid BS propaganda.
If it’s growing, it’s alive.
This arguement nullifies hundreds of years of civil rights movements, and pretty much justifies every form of ableism
Unique genetic code creates new human life. A humanist or a scientists that does not believe a spirit coming from God has no other possible initiation of life. Only a religious person could believe that a collection of cells in a fetus could be "quickened" by a spirit coming from God at a later time.
❤ I’ve watched many (admittedly not all.. yet) of your videos, and I have to say, you have added yet another reason I wish to live a lot longer. I hope to be around long enough to see all the wonderful things your broad intellect and inquisitive mind brings to the world and society at large. 🎉 Bonne Chance!
me too
This completely misses the mark.
And your conclusion is wrong: objectibly, we ARE individuals. We are open thermodynamic systems, with a unique set of quantifiable information (f.i. Shannon Information) that live far from thermodynamic equilibrium (dissipative structures). This does NOT mean that we are indistinguisable from our environment.
The real question is: at which points of a human organism life cycle is appropiate to end it? This life cycle begins when the information (NOT the mass or energy) of the individual is first defined. Genetic information part of this set, but far from being all the needed for the full configuration (of the array) of the system (human being).
The "pro-choice movement" also uses "science" to tell the people that abortion is right because we are just a bunch of cells. Which is obviously false.
Well made and researched video I was surprised to see it only has 86 views.
Thank you!
Not anymore. :p
Good points being discussed. A general framework can make use of comparative discussion of the (concepts of) origin of life as against the origin of a life. Good point being raised here on the fact that an individual must be a distinct individual (two identical twins are distinct individuals, and if they are not completely separated phisically, that is considered an anomaly). I had some thoughts about what we could say that the origin of life is not: my thoughts are that the origin of life is not a mismatch and indidual life is not continuously sustainable on a mismatch, although in practice, generally speaking, it is fertility that shows a good match, not the other way around.
I'll do you one better, what do you define as life? Or organic life vs non organic life? What separates living and non living. Everyone knows instinctively but how do you define it? If we're going to analyze this deeply whether life begins at conception that's a really important question to answer.
eh, that's just a sneaky way to avoid answering the question "when does human life begin", because the concern is only at the individual level, not the evolution of entire species. how come we don't overcomplicate the answer to the life cycle of a butterfly and actually just give the objective answer to it? we don't go answering "life began eons ago" when trying to demonstrate the life stages of this particular arthropod and yet when it's about the human life cycle, suddenly the answer is "oh well it began a zillion years ago" just to avoid confronting the reality of conception?
you yourself are avoiding the question. the question is "when does a person begin" not when does "human life begin".
a brain dead human is still a human but as a person he is dead. a brainless fertilized cell is not a person. this is the obvious truth that some try to avoid.@@maggyfrog
You love to pick on many nuances however let's think about this logically. Something is either dead or it is living - period. Therefore if a sperm in an egg combine, they start along a pathway as its own separate life form that goes from development in the womb to adulthood onto old age. pretty simple huh? A rose is a rose by any other Nuance or definition you give it.
He actually touched this point when he said the egg and the sperm are both alive
I do not understand why there is a question about this subject. Perhaps it is time for someone (namely me) to chuck a toolbox at the works.
Life does not BEGIN ANYWHERE: it is ALREADY PRESENT in the organism(s) that generate the offspring - remembering that many plants, protozoans and some invertebrates are bisexual and therefore self-fertilising.
We don't know what life IS to start with, nor do we know where, when and how it arose, so that to enter into a debate about "when it begins" it is absurd.
yep, but big butt - Life begins, or better, begun at one time (maybe few times)
and one more thing - _bisexual_ means something else than hermaphrodite 😅
@@nescius2 No, you are dead wrong: hermaphroditic organisms MUST be bisexual, otherwise they would never be able to reproduce.
Both the ovum and the spermatozoa are living organisms, just as a dormant seed is a living organism. Both are unicellular. They simply require the correct factors to be in place in order for them to meet, unite and begin the process that produces a MULTIcellular organism. Therefore life does not START at any point, but CONTINUES when the ovum is fertilised. If it is not fertilised, it is shed and expelled from the body of the female. It is only once it has left the body that it can be regarded as being "dead". I don't think anyone has retrieved such a shed ovum, placed it into a nutrient medium and endeavoured to fertilise it to discover if this is indeed the case, or if it can be revived after becoming desiccated.
I DO know that still-born animals are generally not actually dead and can quite easily be brought to life with no special equipment, as I have done so with a number of puppies and a donkey foal. They grew up to be perfectly normal, despite having been delivered D.O.A.
One ground-shaking case of a human stillborn child becoming alive has been recorded: th-cam.com/video/FJ39-KJr_vA/w-d-xo.html. Despite what the reporter and everyone else says: it appears to me that the issue is that the brain has not quite grasped what it is supposed to make the body do. I place the head of the stillborn directly over my heart and palpitate the chest to get heart and lungs to compress and expand. The puppies snatch their first breath after a minute, whereas the donkey foal needed about two minutes.
We don't know what LIFE is, as I have already stated, so how the hell do we know exactly when it has ceased?
Here is another perspective: how many people are aware that pregnant rabbit does (and no doubt certain other animals) have the ability to reabsorb their foetuses if conditions become unfavourable? Tasmanian devils have up to fifty babies at a time, but as they have only four teats in their pouches, only the first four to attach will live. The others die, but as the mother eats them, they don't actually go to waste. Somehow, I can't see the pro-abortion crowd emulating this behaviour, so that the life that is removed from the human mother is actually WASTED. THAT is the greatest crime!
@@keithtaylor3347 of course, its _me_ who doesnt know the difference.. you dummy :)
This video reminds me of people who argue in detail about how tables don’t really exists, or how all people are the same and individuality is just an illusion. I think you can complicate any topic to the point where you lose sight of simple truths. Having said that, well put together video.
I mean, that's the point of this entire channel, lol.
@@nati0598ha ha yeah I do like that about his approach, and I think it’s good to examine our beliefs and thoughts, but not at the expense of losing sight of truth. Many truths are self evident, and the more we examine our reality without being rooted in those foundations, the easier it is to lose sight of them.
@@PaulRezaei those foundations are not reality. if they were, you would not be referring to them distinctly. therefore, they are not *objectively* real. there is nothing - not even a semblance - of "truth," as we define it, in subjectivism.
@@frqstbite1001is that a true statement?
Really enjoyed this vid! Subanima x Europe
You say, " I am not denying that "human organisms begin at conception".
What the hell do you think the others are saying?
If it's true that, "There is no experiment you can do to prove that one perspective is correct over the others."
Why the argument?
The organism that drops out of a womans vagina at the end of her pregnancy, when ever that is, had a beginning.
Your argument is similar to a Zeno's Paradox.
The word Life needs more definition. Our skin is made of live and dead cells. We know the difference when we scrape our knees. The egg and sperm are both alive before they meet. An extreme example would be - "If each cell is a Life, and we have a mole removed, are we committing murder?"
It appears that the religious are using the word Life when they mean Soul. They need to say what they mean.
yes!
if two entities contract to form a joint partnership with the intent of creating a new legal entity, when does that legal entity come into existence and when is it entitled to separate representation and protection from dissolution by it's parent bodies? If for a period the new entity is reliant on one of the parent bodies can its support be transferred to a new body?
This is tactical nihilism, the video. Things are complicated, therefore nothing really has any meaning, distinction, or boundaries. A philosophy that surely would not have any undesirable repurcussions.
Well you have to dissolve boundaries to be able to get the big picture, I don't see anything wrong in doing so.
@@MayankSingh-ge4jq How so?
The video points out that the argument is semantic, that doesn’t make it meaningless, in fact you could say there is more meaning in a world without hard lines than in a world with - you’re just assuming it’s negative because it goes against the way your brain works.
Did you watch past the 7:05 mark? He literally addresses the "problem" you've raised. He doesn't even remotely imply that because something is complicated we shouldn't debate it
Were you expecting him to determine and explain once and for all when life begins in a ten minute video?
perhaps its better to instead ask the question "when does the individual appear" rather than "when does life begin"
Nah, cant do that, that will make the pro-choicers right
@@karlvalteroja4675 Not really, its just more semantics to self jerk each other.
what you mean by invididual, conciousness?, invididuality and conciousness begin on average by age 3 to 6. does that mean I can abort my shitty 1 year old baby cause its barely forming synapses yet so he isn´t really thinking about being alive yet?
@@ViDeTool I honestly think we're all going about this wrong. It's a mix between possibilities. What is the possibility, if nature's course isn't changed, that the entity we refer to as 'a human life' will have a future?
An hour before birth: it is very clear that a specific baby will be born. A month before birth: it is very likely a specific baby will be born in a month. Six months before birth: it is mostly likely that a specific baby will be born in six months. One day after conception: it is very unlikely a specific baby will be born, as there are many factors that will change its outcome, and even very unlikely it will survive to birth.
Then you have pre-conception, and we can all agree there is no argument here. There are so many possibilities for what sort of baby will be born that there is basically no future. Even a split second of difference between ejaculation, a different sperm will reach the egg. A sneeze will jostle the mother's insides at a microscopic level, enough that a different sperm will reach the egg. The butterfly effect simply does not allow a specific baby to likely be born until after conception, and even then the possibilities aren't very fixed until a few months after conception.
It's all about whose future we are saving. Is there a specific future we are saving? Then it's immoral to abort. Is the future unlikely to exist? Then it's not as immoral, but still slightly immoral. Is it possible for any specific future to exist at all? If no, such as before conception, it is not immoral whatsoever to stop the conception through contraceptives.
A bit clunky as I'm tired, but I believe my point is understandable at least.
@@karlvalteroja4675 An individual appears at conception.
So if you can't see something isn't there & it doesn't exist? That sounds like the question of a self-centered selfish and ignorant person.
Another thing is for the first 4 weeks the egg is sustained by the yolk. It is only after that time that the umbilical comes into play.
If a life existing is what gives that life the same right to be here as any other life (and not a life's abilities).
Note:
The reason I'm thinking that is abilities are based on the mental and physical attributes the life has, and if we base how we treat a life on that, we are using the same guage as racists.
I think it's a question of... at what point in someone's growth cycle do you feel bad for killing them?
If existence is the measure, then you should feel remorse for any life's death as we live ours. Though I'd say for many it would be whenever the life has similarities to you, which effectively means abilities are the factor tayt make people care or not, which I find quite saddening.
When life begin In a way, it's like saying that the calendar starts with the year of Christ's birth. It's a convention. Then, you need to make differentiations like AC (After Christ) or BC(Before Christ) for the sake of communication and understanding between humans.
After that, you establish legal statuses based on whether a person is born or not, baptized or not, or receives a name or is entered in a registry or any other cultural or social factors."
We need a start somewhere.
Then moral appears and so on.
christianity is #fakenews
Good stuff! keep it coming
Thanks... that was really informational
The question for abortion is not even when an human organism begins but when such an organism becomes actually - as opposed to potentially - conscious. In absence of a scientific or philosophical theory of consciousness there's nothing to say. Drawing the legal line around brain formation seems sensible to prevent abuse of this impasse.
we can't draw a clear line to where a personhood starts to count biologically, so let's not. What we can do, however, is not take away people's right of bodily autonomy. We shouldn't police what people do with or decide to grow or not grow in their wombs and for how long
after a certain point (I think 20 or 22 weeks) it is not an abortion, but a premature birth.
Why don’t we draw the line to be sure we’re not killing thousands of innocent human beings?
Completely agree. :) What we can do, and what we should do, is support and facilitate the ability for women to open their legs for as many men as they want, no matter what we have to sacrifice for it. All that should matter to us is the ability of women to have as much promiscuous sex as humanly possible, and if one innocent baby or a million have to be brutally slaughtered for it every year, well, then, so be it. :) The woman is the only thing that matters, the rest of the world, and everyone else, can go rot. :)
Your bodily autonomy ends when you decide to knowingly partake in an event that is creatinw a life.
@@orkunakman1541 Love seeing these degenerates getting dragged in comments.
I like how open minded you are and recognize the importance of philosophy
7:28 if it is a philosophical problem then you could even debate if a full grown adult is a person or not... there must be ab actual line otherwise everything is valid. The only consistent line we can draw leads back to conception...
I mean you can debate if a grown adult is a person but that would be quite stupid because as a community we agree that when a baby is born they are a person (hopefully we can agree) but that is the only line all reasonable person can conclude together, past that it Is up to interpretation like the whole video is about. You can cant have 2 argument, have one be absolutely absurd and then claim that the other one must be true. For example if there is a car in front of two people one says it’s an elephant and the other says no that’s absurd that’s clearly not an elephant they can’t then use that as proof to support their argument of it being a cow, clearly this is an absurd example but it shows that the burden of truth is one the one making the claim and you can’t just make an assumption like you have now. And to address that there must be a line or everything is valid, not necessarily, all that is required is that you have a period where outside of it we can agree it’s unreasonable, that being between conception and birth thus you can t reasonably debate an adult is not a person nor can you debate that that the whole system of 2 people in a bedroom is an organism.
This video is splitting hairs - rigidly defining terms such as "life" and "begin", creating a straw man fallacy. What most people mean by life is the whole life process for a human being. If that doesn't include consciousness or an umbilical cord YET, it's still a creature in process. So who are we to end that creature's life since it is God who made it and owns it? What most people mean by begin is the process of beginning - not necessarily the millisecond in which the sperms joins the egg. It's only the super serious Biology buff who also happens to be an Atheist with an axe to grind against prolifer Christians who will Split hairs making mountains out of molehills. This young man's time would be better spent searching for evidence of God's existence and His work in the world rather than explaining away the miracle of human life. Remember the old parable of the scientists climbing a huge mountain their whole lives pursing truth apart from God only to find at the top of the mountain theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
maybe 1. life starts after 24 hours or 2. (a lot harsher) if it cannot live outside the mother after a c-section-esque procedure, it is not a life ... what are more solutions to this topic besides life starting at conception or abortion within the first trimester? and in what ways are they better and worse based on different standpoints?
You gave no reasons for the moment other than conception and it`s just a convention in biological sciences to begin ontogenesis in this moment. You gave a standard philospohical critique of biological vocabulary, but it doesn`t change the fact these are terms established in the community and pretty much always were up until the latest decade when it became a partisan issue in medical sciences. And I`ve got a purely philosophical issue, a scientific realist which isn`t a physicalist would argue this is a question which can be answered with empirical investigation, so it`s not very philosopphical of you to sort problems into scientific and philosophical, that is a very lazy philosophy of science and very denigrating to philosophy to think it deals with questions which aren`t verifiable.
1. I didn't give a moment other than conception because I think the beginning of a new individual is a process. doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01716-y
2. No, the beginning of life at conception was not well-established up until the previous decade. In the 19th century, the 'quickening' was the standard (when you start to feel the baby kick). In Roe v Wade they explicitly AVOIDED the conversation of when life begins, declaring it too difficult and deferring it to the philosophers. Only in the aftermath of this did anti-abortion advocates settle on conception as their standard, influencing the rest of the world to ‘adopt’ this standard.
The histories between the abortion debate and the when life begins debate are significantly more intertwined than you imply. Read the first chapter of Carl Zimmer's Life's Edge for more.
3. I am a perspectival realist. No I still defend that you can't test this with experiments. Please outline the experiment you would do to discover when life begins, I'd love to hear it.
4. I never said philosophy deals only with unverifiable claims (of course, there is experimental philosophy), nor do I defend a sharp difference between philosophy and science (I call myself a philosophical biologist).
Just that in science, you need philosophy sometimes when you are dealing with conceptual issues like this one. You need philosophy *in* science. That doesn't change the fact that this is something you can't test, we need to have the philosophical debate. That's totally fine, not arguing with the debate itself. But you can't go around saying "science proves life begins at conception."
EDIT: On that note, I think that having multiple perspectives about when life begins is valuable depending on the context. That doesn’t help solve the ethical dilemma and I still stand by that that is a seperate issue. See the pinned comment.
@@SubAnimawhat qualifies as scientific proof in general?
@Littleprinceleon I dont know, that’s up to you and I’m happy to be open minded about suggestions.
But I certainly haven’t seen a good one from pro-lifers claiming that “science proves that life begins at conception.” Surely if that is the claim you are making, it is up to you to supply the proof.
@@Littleprinceleon anytime when you can clearly replicate the same result upon doing the same method everytime.
@Tenzin Choezin as an ex-researcher I agree with that statement in general.
However, it applies to concrete, relatively well defined experiments. But even the results of great significance may support lots of interpretations about the process(es) involving those findings. Some of such theories contain utterly contradicting elements.
And each type of the experiments has some serious constraints (longer timescales, small regions of interest, lots of confounding factors, insufficient sample size, sensitive biomaterial/organism, "stubborn" viruses, etc.). So very often we need 3-4 variations of the exact same type of examination to get conclusive evidence on just one aspect of a given process which in itself is only a small part of a "pathway" which is delicately intertwined with lots of other "mechanisms" and so on....
I've learned molecular biology of the cell twenty years ago: just the most essential knowledge needed more sentences to be described than there are words in the Bible. And there were lots of open questions on these basics, which however still just describe a crude outline of the life of the more widespread cells.
As this channel discusses elsewhere due to their flexible nature we won't be able to get a straitforward picture on the activities of many, many proteins.
The embryogenesis is a whole another topics with so much epigenetically controlled interactions and very complex intercellular communication that we just begun to discover some of the crucial patterns.
So do you think we can define what an organism is, if we don't even understand what processes are decisive to get as distinct species as fruitflies and us?
Your channel is a goldmine
3:25 - 4:19
are you not aware that a computer's setup/programming does not provide everything a computer needs to produce it's future, developed state?
are you trying to make the claim that a computers future state is not, in any part, determined by external feedback?
1. 0:37 Conception can simply be more accurately stated as the formation of unique DNA and the argument remains fully intact.
2. 1:30 Twins come from this unique formation (I'm a twin but that matters not). The life of both twins begins at this moment and that makes twins unique given that most of the time this only results in one unique individual. In the twin case the world gets a two-4-1
3. 2:00 The fact that conception doesn't necessarily lead to a successfull birth doesn't mean that the creation of the life (creation of a unique genetic code) wasn't a wilful act (barring rape or incest). There are consequences to actions and in the vast majority of abortions, a new life was created be wilfully committing to sexual intercourse. That's why the"pro life" side is sympathetic to the idea allowing abortion in three case of rape or incest, where the creation of new life was not a wilful act.
4. Going further back and locking people in a room makes the (my) point, the free will to commit an act in which a new life may be formed is part of the debate.
5. Are you that dumb or are you trolling? The distinction of a unique genome is the definition you're attacking and you're bringing up factors before that distinction like viruses. The point remains. Your are employing the tactic of gosh gallop at this point
6. Genome formation is argued because it's not arbitrary and every single human, including my twin, started at this point
7. Philosophical arguments can be made but you are certainly downplaying scientific facts. Trust the science bro
8. When did your female mother and male father's DNA combine to create the unique organism that would eventually become the body that would be inhabited by your blitheringly non-critical mind?
9. Nobody is defending the straw man sperm you reference, they're defending the new lives, as defined by their genetic code, which amazingly, was embedded in the uterus of your. Bless your mother.
10. "Organisms are processes" many of which I deny and or conflate for reasons that many others don't understand.
11. As if it could not get worse. "Distinct isolated individuals don't exist in earth" ... 🤨... WHAT? A
There's a lot here so I'll just respond to some of it.
1. Why should genome fusion mark the start of a new individual? You can certainly take that stance (see the pinned comment) but there is no experiment that you can do to prove that this is indeed the beginning of a new life. It's just a convention you can take and I can happily take other ones (e.g. there is no clear beginning and the formation of two individuals from one is a continuous process).
2. What scientific facts am I downplaying? I did plenty of research (see sources doc in description) and majored in developmental biology at uni. If there's something you want me to read, please do send a link to the paper.
3. Distinct isolated individuals don't exist. Are the bacteria inside you apart of you? What about the dead skin cells on top of you? Is a virus that invades your cells apart of you? What about one of your transplanted organs that has been given to someone else? Etc etc. Organisms don't have clear boundaries in space or time.
Wow seriously on of the best scientifical and philosophical video I ever watch!!! That is true brilliant
Thank you! I really appreciate it and glad you enjoyed the video :)
I enjoyed the background music of the video!
It is my opinion that lots of straw-man arguments were made, however -one of a few of them being that human beings cannot be distinct from one another. If we are everything in general, then we are nothing in particular.
Additionally, one of the purposes of philosophy is to strive to answer the questions that the sciences are not able to. Natural science, biology specifically, DOES tell us about the workings of what is naturally animated and alive in the world (this is even told to us in the etymology of the word “bios”) and a zygote certainly falls under the category of life.
Just my initial thoughts
Thanks!
Just because organisms are interconnected, doesn’t mean that we are nothing. Many eastern philosophies (buddhism, shintoism) function perfectly fine thinking of organisms as impermanent, constantly changing entities that are connected to everything else. If you want a more scientific exploration of this idea, i made a video on this stuff here: th-cam.com/video/vaJcmWjMNwo/w-d-xo.html If you want a book length treatment, check out Everything Flows by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré.
Sure, zygotes are alive. I said as much in the video. The question is really when does a new human individual begin, which is much harder to answer. For me, there is no clear beginning. You can take other stances but there’s no objectively correct stance (see the pinned comment and the video i linked above).
@@SubAnima "The question is really when does a new human individual begin, which is much harder to answer. For me, there is no clear beginning." - this is impractical. Lines have to be drawn somewhere for law to work. Vague 'all is one'-isms are great for sounding wise, but you can't do anything with that. Including biology, which is why taxonomy exists.
@@ArawnOfAnnwnokay then life begins at birth. There we go. I've drawn a line for you
@@derickd6150 Sure that's a line. But for it to be effective, it needs to have a sound basis, not just some arbitrary border. Else it's not gonna be law cos no one's gonna be convinced.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn but this the point of the video. There are people who are not convinced on all sides. I am personally not convinced life begins at conception in this simplistic manner. So merely saying, we need simple rules, just gets us back to where we are now
omg I love you for acknowledging her as Abigail T-T 9:33
You're the only individual who I've ever heard to give the answer that I agree with (that life began a few billion years ago) - I commend you for that!
I take the position that it's simply a new generation of life or that species of organism that begins at conception, rather than that life is beginning.
When people take the position that, biologically, life begins either at birth or conception, one mistake or problem with that is it implies that life goes through this back-and-forth process of repeatedly stopping and starting back up again; I've never heard of that sort of process or phenomenon occurring in biology. As far as I'm aware, after the life of an organism has ended (death), it won't restart itself and it can only decay.
We can also do the same with organisms that only reproduce asexually, such as with bacteria, when asking about when does life - or a new generation - begin, with that sort of organism. I don't know of any dispute against an assertion that life for it is continuous and doesn't come to a stop for some duration, even when parent cells split into daughter cells.
Sure life may not technically begin exactly after the sperm hits the egg. But even so there is a natural process with the sperm and egg. Life begins when an organism is beginning the process of growing
1)As I wrote in a comment under another video, genes are blueprints, just not deterministic ones. And they DO provide all the necessary information to make a human individual(just don't determine characteristics in each particular case, but rather on average).
2)Yes, strictly speaking it should be stated that life begins after zygote divides(and therefore genetic composition is formed), but it mostly doesn't change the abortions stance, as there are almost no chances to catch the moment when zygote formed, but not yet divided.
3)The argument about identical twins is ridiculous too, as genome is necessary, but not sufficient requirement. Basically human = living organism with human DNA, which also solves the problem with "sufficient conditions"(and the argument about environment and upbringing has absolutely zero value, as it only changes already existing individual)
4)Should be noted that I think ban on abortions won't reach its goals and I support permission of abortions - mostly to filter out genes that make people prone to do them in the first place.
I study embryology as one of medical courses.
And I once read: Organs arise by cell-molecule interaction and cell- cell interaction... They called this induced pathways, while the cell-molecule is genetic, the cell-cell isn't... Which shows not DNA is entirely responsible for organogenesis...
Even more, nutrients are needed, for instance vitamin B complexes, from my knowledge of pathways in Biochemistry, I suspect some of these are just needed to make enzymes function... but all in all, good video. Though, I feel...
Good point about nutrients supply: suggest that at most Life continues at conception from host to child, and why would this transfer be immediate instead of a process that takes some form of gradual "scaffolding" to happen....
The only thing that we can be certain is that life is a continuum, there is not an exact moment where you can say that life begins or ends.
ButI if we agree it’s is immoral to kill an innocent human life and we cannot a draw the line marking when such a life begins, then… isn’t it immoral to interfere at any stage of this process?
I don’t have strong opinions about that.. I just have the feeling that people assume this can be the basis of a pro-choice defense, but to me it sounds more like a pro-life one.
@@tragicsink6056 the point is that the place where we put the line is always going to be arbitrary. This only debunks the Pro-life argument that pretends that "the conception is the moment where life begins" is a scientific fact. It is not, it's rather a belief, but they try to convice people it is scientific to validate their belief.
Pro-choice arguments tend to be sustained on other directions, like the video of Philosophy Tube that is cited in this video.
@@ricardoadancortesmartin3963pro choice arguments tend to be more practical and grounded in reality imo
We had 5 embryos during our IVF treatment that all died in the lab. My husband believed that life begins at conception yet he refused to acknowledge that we had 5 children. I mourned my loss but not in the way that lost children.
5 embryos does not mean 5 children.
One of my favorite pro choice debaters likes to ask "at what point of conception does life begin?" to pro lifers.
The first "kiss" of the participants? 🤔😊
Who is that? Honestly of the pro life vs pro choice debates I have seen, only one where the pro choice side argued the position well.
@@roar44879 Jovan Bradley. He does live debates on TikTok
Yeah! It is obvious that life begins when your first memories are created. That is, with 2-3 years old. ¿Does anyone remember being at 1 y.o age? We should allow abortion till then. The child is not aware that will die.
@@RectaRatioAgibilium"the child isn't aware that it will die"
better sleep with one eye open 😉
Something is undeniably conceived when conception has taken place. What is conceived is not dead, therefore it is alive. What is cinceived is also not another animal, therefore it is human. Human life starts at conception.
AMEN☦️
Why? How do you define conception?
@@callistoscali4344 whenever you guys are backed into a corner that you can't escape you people always default to arguing over definition of words and semantic based arguments.
@@keith86ify Backed in what corner? What's wrong with asking what you mean when you say conception? Sperm meets egg? What exactly?
@@callistoscali4344 you don't have a viable explanation for why your worldview is correct. So what you do is you question what is self evident in order to cast doubt on what is true.
It's literally the very tool that Satan used to corrupt God's creation. Asking a seemingly innocent question.
You know what conception is. If your a honest decent person that actually believes your worldview is true and just then your only option is to argue why human life does not start at conception instead posing insincere questions designed to cast doubt.
Life began with the first cell and it's been going ever since
Individual in biology vs psychology vs humanities doesn't mean the same thing. They don't share an identity since the disciplines primary object of analysis and methods are different.
Also, this position by religious individuals stating human life begins at conception is instrumental, not primitive nor terminal. It is a mean to an end.
Biology as a materialist approach only goes so far. Its observations can be instrumentalized, still it doesn't define right or wrong.
I’m going to try and wriggle out of crimes by playing semantics / definitions. Your honor, how can you really differentiate, technically, between what’s “mine” and what’s “your’s”? What’s your definition is stealing? Etc, etc…
Yes. This is exactly what both sides of the abortion debate are doing. Some people are arbitrarily drawing the line at conception, while others are arbitrarily drawing the line at some other point, like first heartbeat or first neurological activity
I think you have inadvertently made an interesting point. It's pretty simple to understand theft and ownership of an object from a legal perspective. It makes a lot less sense when you examine ownership from a more nuanced perspective . Here's an example - my sister owns a house built on land that my father purchased from a farmer. How did the farmer get to own the land? He inherited it from his father. But at some point in history no one ( or if you prefer everyone) owned that patch of land until somebody claimed it as their own (or if you prefer they stole it).
The underlying problem is that this is all a semantics game to try to legally or politically justify actions or justify prohibiting actions by mis-applying the meaning of a word with a process of jumping back-and-forth between contextual settings. I generally take a position of being opposed to dominance or monopolization of the definitions of words by one group over another. For instance, the definition or meaning of the word "life" in a biology textbook is one thing, and there may be a scientific purpose or justification for the way it's presented in that setting; that doesn't mean that someone who isn't taking a biology test has to comply or conform to that biology textbook definition of life. It's also a two-way street, because it would be just as valid for the political camp to argue that the biology camp's definition of the word "life" is wrong in the circumstance where there's a discrepancy between the definitions from the two camps.
You say that you don't see many individuals defending the life of sperm, then you move on from there to something else - is there an industry that's profiting from the slaughter of sperm? If not, would a call for a ban on such an industry crop up? Why do we have laws against murder and manslaughter of human beings after they're born? There must be a reason for why such laws exist and are allowed to continue to exist. Why not do away with these laws? Doing so would make things consistent.
Okay, so the conception process isn't instantaneous. We all knew that. How does this refute "Life begins at conception"?
The question in the title requires context, which is the abortion conversation. If the two genomes fuse 24 hours after the fertilization, that's what marks the beginning of new human life. What happens after that fusion is already a different discussion. In the vast majority of cases, we get one baby. Other times we get more or... unfortunately less. But again, the context of the question is important because its purpose is to establish a legal frame of reference around abortion. No amount of philosophy on the topic can change the fact that not providing nutrition and a favorable environment will end human life regardless of its stage in development.
My main PRACTICAL argument against "life begins at conception " is the minuscule survival rate of unborn life.
Only a fraction of fertilised eggs actually makes it to a life birth. You mention the failure to implant and misscarrages afterwards, and combining these odds only leaves few. In most cases it fails so early that the mother doesn't even recognize that she had a miscarriage.
So we are utterly incapable of giving unborn life the same protections as born life. Once a child is born however, we will resort to damn near everything thinkable to save it. And we can do so without endangering or forcing the mother.
So with conception being an unsuitable moment to consider the child a full person who can receive all regular protections and services, the far more sensible choice for that is birth.
It’s not “sensible” to imply that abortion should be just fine 1 day before birth. That’s what you just did.
Human:
noun:
any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage.
Parasite:
A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.
An unborn organism fits only the 2nd definition I posted.
I would suggest that life MIGHT begin in the man since his issue is mobile while an egg is not.
Your 2nd definition also covers all children (and people of all ages) not currently earning a salary.
Liberal spazes all over this video!
What about disable people?
@@GMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGM Technically, yes. But aimed at any organism that directly lives off a host.
@@Fix-kj3ih What about them?
I feel like the most moral option is to consider embryos "alive", when they develop the first neurons. This is the moment when the embryo can possibly feel pain.
This is the moment where the concept of conscious is forming,
Is "conception" even a scientific term? I've heard that it has little purpose in biology and that it's actually a religious term, in particular in the roman catholic faith
Another thing. Maybe you would be happier if people said "Zygotes begin about 24 hours after conception and Zygotes should not be aborted" But most people don't use that type of jargon. BUT IF we translated "life begins at the moment of conception and babies should not be aborted" to your terminology field "Zygotes begin about 24 hours after conception and Zygotes should not be aborted" What is your reasoning as to why someone has the LEGAL right to interfere with a Zygotes life cycle?
I didn't know all these intricacies that you bring up, but reasoning through the implications of identical twins and human chimeras were what convinced me against my former pro-life position. If one embryo can split into two and form two people, or if two embryos can merge into one and become a single person with a mosaic of DNA, then it makes no sense to consider the origin of personhood as conception.
My view is that initially, one life begins at conception, and one or more new lives begin when a fertilized egg cell splits into two or more seperate cells.
Good points
@oitthegroit1297
No life begins in any of these points. Life arose around 4.000.000.000 years ago. No new life arises today. You may talk about a new organism, a new individuality, a new counsciousness, but not a new life.
and, in my view, the only relevant point is counsciousness (that arise many months after conception).
@@LeonardoRibeiro Technically right in some senses but this topic isn't about aren't asking when did organic life arise on this planet or this universe, though if a person subscribes to creationism it may impact their views on this topic so a workable answer should be one that includes this perspective. We have to recognise on this debate the term "new life begins" is short hand a for and understood to mean all the terms you describe, and if you want to argue semantic pedantics, scientific definitions will be superseded by legal ones. I tend to agree with you that when does a separate consciousness exist (and end) is more relevant. Part of that could be when is a potential consciousness inevitable. Also whether levels of consciousness above and below the level of an individual exist. Group behaviour is a thing and groups can learn, are cellular processes such as somatic hypermutation a potential form of consciousness. Can a mother and fetus, a family be considered a single consciousness. Nation states can certainly act for the collective and decide matters of life and death for components of the body of the state. "What is the worth of a single mortal's life?" to each of this potential collective bodies to which we belong, is also part of the answer. Which collective takes precedence? If the body rejects the fetus, can the mother seek to save it? If the mother declines to carry it can the family or the state? What is acceptable intervention? Who can act as guardian/advocate to a fetus and in what matters? When is something a legal entity with rights? if part of your body can a state pass laws to prevent you altering your body and under what limits? The topic has broad ramifications.
If you resarch better, you'll see that identical twins don't have the same DNA, right after the separation they both develop diferrent mutations. They olny have the same DNA in the moment they slip.@@oitthegroit1297
First!!! (great video :) )
no you looked and searched accross the web for a video you agree with
@@Calamity8 yeah- and if I had stumbled across "Destroying a player player with Gandora deck😀😀" first i would've commented "First!!! (shit video :) ). What's your point?
I love your videos and I really cannot comprehend the huge amount of dislikes your videos have. Are your videos being targeted to the wrong audiences?
anyway, I'm glad I found your channel in my home section of youtube
Yeah, the algorithm is sending my content mostly to tech bros, it’s… something I guess 🤷♂️
Life begins at conception.
That is the start of a new human life and its journey of development to become mature and fully developed
It is a start of a totipotent stem cell, but a single totipotent stem cell is not a human being.
@
When does life begin?
@@justwannaridemabike advance human brain function.
@@justwannaridemabike human brain function.
"The onus is on you" he says? No, the burden of proof lies with both parties making claims. You're claiming we cannot know is the same as someone claiming they do know, it is still a claim. So, if the onus is on me or Bob or whoever, then it is also on your, sir.
Edit: Your logic with the twins dilemma is flawed. There is no dilemma. The twins start out as one organism and become two, it is that simple. If they rejoin, or two separate zygotes join then that's two becoming one. Essentially, they're transforming, growing or shrinking. This isn't much different from the parent organisms growing in the sense of pro-creating. In fact, in some ways, the forming zygote, then embryo is connected to the mother and a part of her, growing more and more distinct from her over time. But, it is a gradual 9 month process, so it doesn't make sense to say that the baby isn't an individual until it pops out of the womb. The child still needs care even after then, but it was a unique person (unless a twin) the whole time. And, again, the twins themselves are unique from others, so it is a weak argument to then say genetics don't matter for defining life starting or individuals. Surely, there are *other* factors to consider other than just DNA, but DNA is one of the important ones.
Surprised you didn't reference MRSGREN or MRSCGREN
Is a virus particle alive before it enters a host cell, is a host cell with its reproducing virus strands alive? Is it a new organism, or the same
I am imagining embryologist Ronan O'Rahilly cringing in horror at this sad attempt to use science to deny science.
I love the way you think
I can't understand the problem. If religious people are right, then an aborted fetus has skipped this vale of tears and innocently gone on to its god. If science is right, it was little more than a clump of cells, still not a problem.
So since the chromosomes mix approx. 24 hours after the sperm meets egg. Is it still not considered life after the 24 hours?
I’m not sure what you mean, are you saying that a new individual should begin when genome fusion occurs?
@subAnima. So I guess, what I'm trying to figure out is, when does "life" begin?
I see what you said later! Nvm!
It seems there's some basic confusion despite the efforts of
this video, which also emphasizes that from a biologically also philosophically more precise point of view we should use *individual organism* instead of the general and symbolic term "LIFE".
Don't encourage ridiculous quibbling.
No one oppose birth control. But no one can justify "partial-birth abortion."
There are always two lives involved, mother and child.
The ONLY question is how we balance those two lives. Most jurisdictions set limits in terms of weeks. That is the only rational approach.
This is semantics. Conception refers to the time that an individual comes into being. When the genetic components of the man and the woman merge. Also, the arguments given in this video are soooo inane that I can't even begin responding to it.
All making the argument a philosophical one does is push back the time that life begins, it doesn't negate the fact that all life must be preserved. All it would say is that sperm and eggs should be treated as life also, which could also be a good argument. Either way, it would not support any type of abortion: of zygotes or even sperm or eggs.
9:18 "Distinct, isolated individuals don't exist..." and 8:10 [Life is just a cycle with not beginning or end]. Gross!
This is as much a philosophical position as much as the positions you criticized in this video, but you're giving view that has the point of diminishing a person's fundamental value as an individual.
Well with birthrates in S Korea reaching 0.8, we have an existential threat. Pro choice says people should have children when they can afford them, yet, across the world the rich are dying out because they, especially women, have to wait too long to become rich & rich people naturally don't want a lot of kids. The poorer people are, the more kids they have ironically. Starving = lots of kids.
The human lifeform within the mother will go on, unless in the event of an accident or abortion, to become a whole adult human. Comparatively, it is statistically impossible to predict which sperm cell through an entire male's life would go on to conceive a child. For a child in the womb, their life is just as *determinate* as a child outside the womb from an objective perspective within a reasonable margin comparatively. That is to say, if we look at which point human life should be afforded value, we are not going to be strict on the margined, if the life has a reasonable possibility of reaching a period in their life where they would be afforded those rights, why aren't they? Also, the statistical vastness between either gametes alone compared to a zygote in determinism is so vast as to make the comparison with any less likelihood of reaching adulthood inside or outside the womb statistically insignificant.
This is a powerful argument that could be explored objectively. If the human life inside the mother will most likely become a full-blown adult and child, what is the difference between a child in the womb or someone who is terminally ill or even slightly in threat of death from a broader existential perspective? Which is primarily what should be considered when dealing with human morality.
@SubAnima
Depends on when. There is still the hurdle of implantation and fetal development. The likelihood of that to succeed is lower than 50%, even after the successful formation of the zygote.
@@callistoscali4344 What I mean by determinate is that this system of "human development" is set in place; barring random factors, a zygote is on track to become a human. This outlines two separate systems that overlap: human development and human reproduction. This is the boundary I draw in measuring the statistical likelihood of survival at the point of human development. Otherwise, I would be a hypocrite because I do not believe the likelihood of a person's death necessarily dictates their worth. I was giving too much credence to this argument of statistical worth by highlighting the vast difference between gamets and zygotes. This, instead, proves the outlines of human development and its deterministic nature. My argument summed up is that human development is deterministic; human development starts at conception, and there is no discernable difference from a moral perspective between different stages of human development because choosing to end that development at any stage would end all stages because human development is determinate.
Nice video! Lays out a lot of the problems with the "life at conception" consideration.
I've had similar issues with even popular science defining a clear border of life and non-life between viruses and the rest. It's just too complicated and requires a lot more nuance.
I'm not sure if that's even that clear and non-arbitrary, given the complex variations that exist in parasitic organisms, intercellular and -genetic competition within an organism or genome and the viruses' vital role in horizontal gene transfer making them almost part of their associated organisms.
There's also the issue if you even can consider any "organism" fully isolated from its environment as complete, as you also mentioned in the video.
I’ll answer the question for you. It’s when there’s a heartbeat.
Good video. I think the idea that human life begins at conception (conceptionism) is clearly false. I don't see how conceptionists could succesfully respond to the argument from twinning. Another argument against conceptionism is that human beings cannot divide or fuse with another human to form new humans. However, a zygote and early embryos can divide to form new humans (identical twins) or fuse with another zygote/early embryo (quimerism). Therefore, a zygote and early embryos cannot be humans.
Thanks!
If they aren’t a human zygote then what species of zygote are they? Just because humans cannot do something now that they could when they were in the womb, doesn’t mean the human in the womb is not a human. There are plenty of things humans stop being able to do throughout their lifetimes it doesn’t take away there humanhood
Of course it is human, not an animal or plant.
@@jsshay01 humans are animals
Men commit murder everytime they j off dude! The statistics are clear as s
Why focus on abortion when you can put that same effort and energy to take care of the kids that are outside of the womb?
I am pro-choice and I really enjoyed this video. Very informative, I never really thought the debate was about "when life begins" because obviously a cell is classified as a life form. It's more about what kinds of life forms humans prioritize, and their own species happens to be at the top of the human constructed hierarchy.
We humans make things way yo complicated. You a cluster of cells so how do we have the right to determine whether another human has right to life or not.
@@akinibitoye7908imo none of this matters. if the mother doesnt want it that's reason enough. you are not taking anything away from a small organism that hasnt even exited the womb. stripping women of their bodily autonomy this way is why there are literally dozens of cases of women being charged with manslaughter over the miscarriage of her baby. that is clearly dystopian.
@@automatic5ye frfr (I can expand on an argument for why it's purely a botdlf atonomy issue if anyone cares)
@@automatic5 You, me and everyone around the world was once inside the mothers womb with life developing. So tell me what is so magical about the baby being alive outside the womb during labour and the baby inside the womb who jsabout to leave the womb. If you adovacting for pro choice you allowing people who will literally kill the baby before maybe even 1 week or days before due date. You will say no woman will do that there are plenty out there who will do it.
@automatic5 man, that's f***ed up. I don't want my newborn so get rid of it. That is a permissible action by what you've just said. "Bodily autonomy" is a euphemism. It's only used as a get out of jail free card to avoid having to discuss the issue and to absolve oneself of any moral consequences of your actions. Not to mention its selfish and narcissistic. It never gets invoked until after something you don't like happens.
Life starts in the bedroom😎😅
I would consider life beginning at conception even though it takes 24hr after conception to be considered different from parents.
But the question is when does life begin... thats a tougher question to answer because we kind of know how life began on earth, but we know know how exactly it began.
Defining what is life or whats considered to be alive is blurry.
Life literally begins at the moment of conception and to deny this would be to deny science.
You are completely wrong about the real question here. It is "when does the right to life for a human organism begin."