stem cell research

[Sean]

What an interesting thread. I have to say that posts like the one from Cacophony surprised me by presenting an argument against stem cell research that I had never heard, and that frankly, makes a lot of sense to me. I personally don't share your subjective conclusions when it gets into the issue of "cannibalism", and I appreciate Deckard and BB representing the view that I agree with very clearly, but I believe I have to agree with your conclusions about public financing, Cacophony.

And now onto this post by bryantm3:

Originally Posted by bryantm3

Deckard, your argument is just as or more circular than mine. You keep going back to 'well, sperm and unfertilized eggs are sacred because they could potentially make life like an embryo could', but you completely ignore or throw away the fact that an embryo is alive with an existentialistic 'what is life anyway?' argument.

well, let's consult dictionary.com and wikipedia. these are both fairly secular resources.

dictionary.com:
life
   /laɪf/
noun, plural lives  /laɪvz/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [lahyvz]
adjective
–noun
1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

While the dictionary.com definition seems pretty cut and dry, I believe it's slightly misleading. Apparently, human eggs are capable of parthenogenic activation, which is basically the activation and development of the egg absent fertilization by sperm. Beyond that, there are cellular biologists who currently consider anything that is a cell to be "alive", which would include egg and sperm. And let's not ignore our evolutionary origins, which in recent years, we've traced all the way back to Choanoflagellates - sperm-like single-celled organisms that are the "evolutionary link between single-celled and multi-celled organisms". And finally, if you stop and imagine a hypothetical scenario or two keeping Choanoflagellates in mind, it's hard to imagine not referring to a sperm as being alive. Imagine a Mars rover analyzing some soil and discovering a sperm. Aside from being completely freaked out, would we not conclude that this was a form of life? A little, wiggly, single-celled organism flopping around on another planet?

So I believe Deckard's point stands, which is that the argument of exactly when the parts necessary to create a human life actually become a human life simply can't be won. A sperm and an egg are arguably living entities whose sole purposes are to join together to create a complete, human chromosomal complement (the point at which you assert the human life begins), but we could then go on to debate whether or not this small cluster of unformed cells that has no fingers, toes, limbs, brains, organs, nerve endings, thoughts, emotions, etc, actually constitutes a "human" life any more than the sperm and the egg do as two halves of the human chromosomal complement. After all, whether it's incomplete chromosomes, an incomplete nervous system, or an incomplete body, it's simply incomplete. So as has been noted, this is an un-winnable debate because the only conclusions we can reach based on our current scientific knowledge are purely subjective.

Originally Posted by bryantm3

now, let's look at the definition of circular reasoning.

Circular Reasoning – supporting a premise with the premise rather than a conclusion.

Circular reasoning is an attempt to support a statement by simply repeating the statement in different or stronger terms. In this fallacy, the reason given is nothing more than a restatement of the conclusion that poses as the reason for the conclusion. To say, “You should exercise because it’s good for you” is really saying, “You should exercise because you should exercise.”

It shares much with the false authority fallacy because we accept these statements based solely on the fact that someone else claims it to be so. Often, we feel we can trust another person so much that we often accept his claims without testing the logic. This is called blind trust, and it is very dangerous. We might as well just talk in circles.

I actually don't see Deckard employing circular reasoning here. All he's saying is that based on what we know definitively through science, there is no clear conclusion about exactly when a human life begins. Simply noting the limits of our knowledge as a species is not circular logic, it's a conclusion based on fact.

That of course doesn't mean that we can't all hold our personal beliefs on the subject. After all, that's where scientific discovery originates - with a hypothesis. And as I mentioned earlier, this thread has been very eye-opening for me thanks to the varied positions and reasoning people have on it all.