When does life start?

[Fred56]

There is a bit of discussion about this topic, particularly relative to the start (and end) of a human life.

Is human gestation like building a car (or a kind of machine) that gets put together on an assembly line, from a collection of parts, then eventually, it gets rolled somewhere, then it gets started and driven out the door.

 

Is this a valid kind of analogy, so a life starts once the organism is "ready to drive"? Or does it begin when it starts getting constructed? What's your point of view? Considering humans take a bit longer to get "ready to drive" --they need maybe a decade of 'instruction' from older humans, and they need to take a lot of driving lessons too. It's a toughie, we don't generally come in a ready-made way, like some other "simpler" forms of life, we have lots of learning to do before we're ready for the full monte, or whatever.

[T man831]

I like your analogy!

 

well i consider it to be the first breath you take. simply because you can have what ever car you want made it what ever frame of time. but its worthless until you turn it on. (taking first breath, would be turning the car on)

[ydoaPs]

I'm gonna have to say life begins when it becomes alive.

[Sisyphus]

I don't think there's any one moment you can point to and say that that is where life begins, because it's a continuous process. The assembly line analogy doesn't really work for me, because the parts aren't exactly added one by one, the beginnings of them are there all along, and all gradually become working parts at the same time. That makes me want to go back to conception, but that's not satisfying either, because all you have at conception is one cell, with far more in common with an amoeba than a living, breathing human. As far as I'm concerned, the beginning of life is one huge gray area.

 

At first glance, the end of life seems more straightforward, but it really isn't, either. Is a brain dead person dead, even though it's a living body made of living tissue? Or what happens when people come back from being "clinically dead?" We say they "weren't really dead." We don't start handing out inheritances when this happens, for instance. Yet it is possible (indeed, inevitable) to become undeniably dead. Mozart is DEAD. Gray areas!

[ydoaPs]

I can't help but be reminded by the abortion debate by this thread(and by the looks of the beginning of the OP, it seems that's where the question originated). I don't see why the question always comes up in the abortion debate. It is irrelevant; life in and of itself is not a morally relevant concept.

[Fred56]

Morals of building something like a car, then stopping and 'deconstructing' it? (when this happens 'normally' -i.e. a miscarriage, or an induced abortion) m8, u opnd it...

 

I'd say we generally allow different definitions. We can't say that a newly breathing infant is equivalent to a 16yr old, say, and we can't say that the 16yr old is equivalent to the other end, a 66yr old. There's a big difference in experience.

[ydoaPs]

Morals of building something like a car, then stopping and 'deconstructing' it? (when this happens 'normally' -i.e. a miscarriage, or an induced abortion) m8, u opnd it...

There's a BIG morally relevant distinction between most humans and "something like a car." Most humans are people. The question you should ask is, are fetuses people?

[foodchain]

There's a BIG morally relevant distinction between most humans and "something like a car." Most humans are people. The question you should ask is, are fetuses people?

 

 

 

fetuses is commonly misused at large, but that’s probably little more then a pointer to the reality that the debate has a huge amount of subjective thought bearing down on it. I wont say such is wrong but the use of science in the debate for instance I think is horribly misused.

[Fred56]

But there's an obvious moral problem with the mechanist view:

A life, especially if it's one of ours, is morally on higher ground than a machine that gets built, supposedly because the builder has a higher moral purpose, or because we are 'constructed' differently to a machine that has only a single limited 'purpose'...

[foodchain]

But there's an obvious moral problem with the mechanist view:

A life, especially if it's one of ours, is morally on higher ground than a machine that gets built, supposedly because the builder has a higher moral purpose, or because we are 'constructed' differently to a machine that has only a single limited 'purpose'...

 

There is no problem with the mechanist view. How else do you explain how people could put other people to death so easily as if almost being insect like. If a person could not do something, they would not do it. You ask a question as to where life starts, well obviously with conception sense it is living. If you want to know where a human life starts, well what do you mean by that? Does a human life have to have a CNS, at what stage of development does a CNS have to be in before it is considered "human". This is but one of a million questions that cannot satisfy a million people really. You ask about mechanism, well "morality" seems to come about mechanically, all confused as it is, killing people too.

[Fred56]

OK so it's how we classify it, according to whatever useful definition we need.

If it's an enemy or a criminal (a bad person), it's a machine and we have to turn it off; if it's a fetus it can't think yet, a child can only think to some of the extent or understanding (complexity, stratification, abstraction), of an older human; we don't get to be 'wise' until we are 'running out' of life, and the entropy is pretty low, or stable...

[ydoaPs]

There is no problem with the mechanist view. How else do you explain how people could put other people to death so easily as if almost being insect like. If a person could not do something, they would not do it. You ask a question as to where life starts, well obviously with conception sense it is living. If you want to know where a human life starts, well what do you mean by that? Does a human life have to have a CNS, at what stage of development does a CNS have to be in before it is considered "human". This is but one of a million questions that cannot satisfy a million people really. You ask about mechanism, well "morality" seems to come about mechanically, all confused as it is, killing people too.

It seems as though you are trying to confuse "human" with "person." Not all humans are people. Not all people are human.

[Mr Skeptic]

Oh, dear. I think you need to narrow down your question a little.

 

Life started a couple billion years ago and never quite ended.

 

An egg is alive, a sperm is alive, and a fetus is alive.

 

The exact difference between a live cell and a dead cell is hard to tell. The difference between a live multicellular creature and a dead multicellular creature is even harder to tell, since part of the creature can be alive and part dead, and part is normally dead (eg skin, hair).

 

A person starts when they were previously not a living person then became a living person. A person dies when they are no longer a living person. (That means that either they are no longer living, or no longer a person.)

 

Anyhow, we need to know what you are asking to be able to answer it.

[Realitycheck]

The OP is "When does life start?" It suddenly appears very clear that when the sperm penetrates the egg and sets off this chain of events, life has undoubtedly started, for none of these events could have happened without this union.

 

Now, "When does a living being attain legal rights to life?" is a completely different issue. I, for one, do not believe that rape victims should be forced to bear children just so they can have an unconscious mass of cells adopted, but that's besides the point. 3 months sounds good to me.

[Fred56]

Righty-ho then: When does A life (lowercase) start?

It seems that we want a narrow definition, but 'start' is a moving target, which depends what you shoot at it with. A doctor would say at birth, because this is the survival of a (not all that cozy and snug) gestation period, in which the "new" life has developed from something like an amoeba, to a fish, to a reptile, then a weird-looking thing that eventually grows all the bits a human needs, or a primate, so we go through the primate evolution during this phase too.

The first breath is arguably the end of the first risky stage of life (and this is something we share with a lot of other kinds of life, many insects and reptiles have a vulnerable development stage), when the egg-shell cracks, and a young chick breaks out and starts squawking to be fed, it's just the start of a rearing phase, that's extremely common in the animal kingdom.

Humans have one of the longest adolescences amongst the animals. We don't lock young children away in jail with adults -they get treated quite differently, etc.

[Fred56]

However; this thread was meant to be a more general kind of question to think about:

When does Life start?

What does this mean, or what does it mean that we can ask this (of our own existence, and others' existence, or instantiation of life).

Does Life actually stop, or is it something that is obliged to "keep going", and reproduction assures its continued "success"?

[falcon9393]

Honestly i hate your analogy!!! comparing humans to cars seems almost belittleing to the vast arugment over when a human life beguins! personally i believe that a human life beguins at first heart beat or in the terms of your analogy as soon as the "engine starts"...

[lucaspa]

There is a bit of discussion about this topic, particularly relative to the start (and end) of a human life.

 

Fred, the problem arises from that word "human". By that we don't mean "a member of the human species". Instead, we mean "a person in the ethical and legal sense; a member of the human community".

 

This in turn is tied to the philosophical idea of identity. What makes something a unique individual? Think of a picture of you 10 years ago and now a picture of you taken today. Are those pictures of the same person? Why? Why not?

 

Philosophers use the example of Theseus' boat. During the course of the story, the entire boat gets rebuilt (parts at a time) so that by the end of the story there is nothing of the original boat left. It's all been replaced. Is Theseus' boat the same boat before the rebuild? Why? Why not?

 

And let me say that no one has been able to put forward an entirely satisfactory answer to that.

 

So, when we look at human life, is a fertilized ovum you? Is a 5 day old blastocyst without any organs you? When in the course of embryonic development does an embryo become human in the ethical and legal sense?

 

Is human gestation like building a car (or a kind of machine) that gets put together on an assembly line, from a collection of parts, then eventually, it gets rolled somewhere, then it gets started and driven out the door.

 

Is this a valid kind of analogy, so a life starts once the organism is "ready to drive"?

 

It's not an entirely valid analogy. Remember that the body is being put together according to the "blueprint" of the DNA. However, what about the mind? The thoughts and experiences that make you different from everyone else?

 

Also, a building car is separate from every other entity. It exists separate from anything else. But a human embryo can't exist outside the mother's uterus. It's not independent. The "ready to drive" comes at birth, when the embryo is now a baby and does exist independently of the mother.

 

Of course, what you are getting at is the root question of the abortion debate: when is an embryo a "person" due the rights and protections we give "human beings"? And that is a question that can't be answered by science because it isn't a science question.

 

However; this thread was meant to be a more general kind of question to think about:

When does Life start?

What does this mean, or what does it mean that we can ask this (of our own existence, and others' existence, or instantiation of life).

Does Life actually stop, or is it something that is obliged to "keep going", and reproduction assures its continued "success"?

 

Now you are starting to display some of the philsophical parts. "Instantiation" is a philosophical term, not a biological or scientific one.

 

Once again, when you say "Life", you don't mean life in the biological sense; you mean it in an ethical, legal (and philosophical sense). Science can't answer those types of questions.

 

In biology, something is "alive" when it has all 4 of the following characteristics: metabolism, response to stimuli, growth, reproduction. Thus adult humans are alive by this definition. The cells in a 5 day old blastocyst are alive, but the blastocyst as a whole lacks the ability to reproduce, doesn't it? After all, no germ cells have formed by that time. Even after birth, humans cannot reproduce until the girls reach menarche and boys not only produce sperm but are able to have an erection and ejaculation.

[Mr Skeptic]

Also, a building car is separate from every other entity. It exists separate from anything else. But a human embryo can't exist outside the mother's uterus. It's not independent. The "ready to drive" comes at birth, when the embryo is now a baby and does exist independently of the mother.

 

But a baby is "ready to drive" well before it is born. If you suddenly decide to induce birth or do a c section, even if it is before the mother and baby started the birth process, the baby could survive independent of its mother. Kind of like a car needs to leave the building to be able to drive, otherwise it has nowhere to go and limited oxygen.

 

Of course, what you are getting at is the root question of the abortion debate: when is an embryo a "person" due the rights and protections we give "human beings"? And that is a question that can't be answered by science because it isn't a science question.

 

Well, part of the problem is defining a person, which is not a science question, though science could perhaps help. Once the definition is decided upon, it certainly is a science question whether a specific organism is a person.

 

In biology, something is "alive" when it has all 4 of the following characteristics: metabolism, response to stimuli, growth, reproduction. Thus adult humans are alive by this definition. The cells in a 5 day old blastocyst are alive, but the blastocyst as a whole lacks the ability to reproduce, doesn't it? After all, no germ cells have formed by that time. Even after birth, humans cannot reproduce until the girls reach menarche and boys not only produce sperm but are able to have an erection and ejaculation.

 

So then a castrated person, or a very old person, or any mule, wouldn't be alive because they can't reproduce? I think it is very significant that their cells are alive and able to reproduce.

[lucaspa]

But a baby is "ready to drive" well before it is born. If you suddenly decide to induce birth or do a c section, even if it is before the mother and baby started the birth process, the baby could survive independent of its mother.

 

Not "well before". The length of term of human gestation is variable and is not set at 40 weeks. Yes, a baby can be born at 38 weeks and be fine. Anytime before then and the baby needs some form of life support, which gets more severe the shorter the time in the uterus. Thus the dependence is simply transferred from the mother to the neonatal intensive care unit.

 

However, at every stage of building a car, the car is independent from the people putting it together. They can walk away from it, go home, have dinner, sleep, etc. and the car is fine. Not so with a human embryo: it is entirely dependent on mother and is never separate from mother.

 

Well, part of the problem is defining a person, which is not a science question, though science could perhaps help. Once the definition is decided upon, it certainly is a science question whether a specific organism is a person.

 

But at that point the question is trivial. What matters is the criteria to be a person. Once those criteria are set, it takes only the most elementary science of observation to determine whether a specific organism meets the criteria.

 

So then a castrated person, or a very old person, or any mule, wouldn't be alive because they can't reproduce? I think it is very significant that their cells are alive and able to reproduce.

 

That's the fun part of philosophy and deciding what is "alive". Yes, as a whole, a eunuch can't reproduce. Neither can a woman past menarch. Of course, they could reproduce at an earlier stage. So were they "alive" then and are not alive now?

 

At the cellular level it's also not so clear cut. Not all the cells are able to reproduce. Fully differentiated cells such as skeletal myotubes, hypertrophic chondrocytes, and osteocytes can reproduce.

 

That's why it really isn't a science question about deciding when a person is "alive" or what "Life" is according to the OP. If you try to pin down "life", there are all these exceptions and the problem becomes intractable. As a philosophical question it is even more intractable.

 

Thru most of history "person" or "human life" was at birth, at the youngest. In the Middle Ages when infant mortality was so high, being a person didn't come until your 5th birthday, when you were past most of the childhood diseases and had a decent chance of surviving to adulthood. That's why people could play catch with babies -- they really weren't "people" yet and, if you dropped one, it was no big deal.

 

The criteria of "alive" work best in going from non-life to life. Applied to what we call "living things" those criteria lead to some interesting paradoxes.

[Daecon]

When does life start? About 3 billion years ago. It's been going ever since.

[thedarkshade]

I (and everyone else) would love to be able to get simple definitions so we could define complicated phenomenas, in this case life!

 

It is without any doubt the most complicated entirety of processes possible. I'm saying entirety since life involves a huge variety of processes with by time change due to organism needs and the effect of other circumstances. Every single second something is changing in our organism (as long as we are alive), and the beauty of all is that every process is exactly defined and controlled by genetic factors. Every new protein created, ever new cell created, every cell dying, everything is absolutely controlled. By this harmony in our organism is disturbed by other factors from the outer medium.

 

So where does life come in in what I'm saying?

 

Well, that's life! A complicated entirety of physiological processes.

I remember in my first biology class in high school, we talked of three conditions that should me filled in order to make life possible! They are: 1) membrane system ; 2) energy source ; 3) reproductive ability.

But it's not as simple as it looks. A lot lot of specifics make these condition not so easy to be fulfilled. The first condition refers, first of all to be able to keep the cellular material inside, a protective shield from outer negative factors that might cause disorders in the well-functioning of the cell, as a gate where organic matter goes in and inorganic goes out etc. The second is quite simple, just the necessary energy able to cause the well-functioning of metabolic processes. And the third condition is need to make life possible to continue.

 

I once have read: "When we fully understand the cell, we will have understood life itself" -D.R. Godard

It's an absolutely meaningful phrase since if were able to completely understand how the metabolic processes work on a molecular stage, we would actually have understood how life works at that stage!

 

So what is life? Well, I'd like to know too!

[lokanath]

matter is the form of existence where subtle sub atomic particles join by energy bonding and when it comes to the molecular state it is detected. When it lose its form it goes back to its subtle form .

The structure of life be it human's or an atom's.........is like this.

Subtle----gross---to visible form----goes back to its subtle form---again evolve as gross---

 

A tree is available in a seed in the subtle form. When seed is planted in earth, the seed sprouta and the subtle seed comes out as a seedling..plant and ...tree..finally the tree hides in its seeds in the subtle fom again.. This is like a circle drawn with no beginning or end...

 

If you wish more clarification mail to lokanath@excite.com

[thedarkshade]

If you wish more clarification mail to lokanath@excite.com

This is getting quite habitual now!

 

If anyone has a better (or a good) explanation about the topic of any thread, please share it with us publicly. Everyone will appreciate that!

[mooeypoo]

matter is the form of existence where subtle sub atomic particles join by energy bonding and when it comes to the molecular state it is detected. When it lose its form it goes back to its subtle form .

The structure of life be it human's or an atom's.........is like this.

Subtle----gross---to visible form----goes back to its subtle form---again evolve as gross---

 

A tree is available in a seed in the subtle form. When seed is planted in earth, the seed sprouta and the subtle seed comes out as a seedling..plant and ...tree..finally the tree hides in its seeds in the subtle fom again.. This is like a circle drawn with no beginning or end...

 

 

 

Nice but .. that doesn't answer the question. When does *life* *start* ?

 

According to your description, it never ends, which is nice philosophically, but relates more to the "cycle of life" as an abstract. The question in this thread was quite specific -- when does life *start*. I believe it was also relating more to the human form. As in, when does a fetus become life (or.. a combination of sperm and egg).