When Does Life Begin?

[needimprovement]

Topic says all I'm asking.

[Mr Skeptic]

It begins about 3.8 billion years ago, and hasn't stopped since. If you mean when does a person start, it is when they have a conscious brain, and a person ends when their brain becomes unconscious for the final time.

[needimprovement]

It begins about 3.8 billion years ago, and hasn't stopped since. If you mean when does a person start, it is when they have a conscious brain, and a person ends when their brain becomes unconscious for the final time.

It's a biological question, not historical one.

[AzurePhoenix]

It's a biological question, not historical one.

It was a perfectly biological answer.

 

From the origin of life to today every organism is a small piece of an ongoing continuum of life with no gaps of non-life between one cell and the cells it divides into along the way. In multicellular organisms such as ourselves living germ-line gametogonia divide into living gametes via meiosis, and when complimentary gametes fuse, a new genetically distinct organism is produced, but at no point is new life created, nor has it ever been created within the framework of life on earth as we know it since its initial origin.

 

Ergo, life began 3.8 billion years ago.

 

When Does Life Begin?

Assuming that this is related to abortion, which seems likely, the real question would be, when does an organism become a person with all of the rights entailed by personhood. (I apologize beforehand if this post honestly had nothing to do with human fetuses and abortion and whatnot)

 

"Personhood" is an entirely different matter from "life", and different people have different interpretations of what constitutes personhood.

 

Some people think a person is an individual organism representative of the human species, or genus if you'll kindly allow for neanderthals and other non-sapiens Homo species. From a mindless lump of cells (equivalent to a seedling potato) to fully functional self-aware adult to braindead meatpuppet on a respirator, they're all individual humans and so they are people.

Personally, I think this makes the term person redundant and simply another word for "human," with no deeper meaning than to make the distinction of "members of our species and no other are people just because we are humans ourselves and we feel smug about that."

 

 

Others, such as myself, think personhood is defined by a range of characteristics related to consciousness, sentience, sapience and self-awareness.

 

- Some people claim that the point a fetus becomes a person is the point that brain activity begins, but if that's the case, then why shouldn't any organism with the most rudimentary brain activity be considered a person? Like worms.

 

- You can move it up a bit and define personhood as sentience, the capacity to perceive subjective sensations (qualia), often it seems the most highly valued sensations being emotion, suffering and pleasure. This certainly includes fetuses after a certain period of development, and infants, but also, plenty of animal species most people wouldn't ever consider people. And you can't tell me a box turtle doesn't freaking love strawberries.

 

- Many others, and I myself, consider personhood a matter of self-awareness. If an entity is aware of its own existence as an independent entity, then it is a person. This includes all the other apes besides ourselves, pretty much all the toothed whales we've been able to study in an interactive manner, parrots and corvids, and elephants, and I happily consider non-braindead members of all of these species to be people. If we ever created a self-aware artificial intelligence, by my own definition I would consider the AI a person, no matter its form. However, it also means that human infants are NOT people until some time after they're born. I freely and often admit that human infants are not "really people," but for the sake of sentimentality are granted honorary personhood, particularly if they're cute.

 

- Other people take it further, and measure personhood against the potential for the sum of human cognitive and behavioral traits, including consciousness in general, sentience, self-awareness, language, culture, etc etc, and that it takes all of these things to make something a person. I kind've feel that this is just more human exceptionalism, as people with this viewpoint often tend to express it at the species level, without regard for the fact that plenty of people that people would definitely consider people without argument would be excluded for this reason or that. Like babies.

 

- There is also another group of people, who feel that personhood is a matter of having a soul. Now, most people who believe in the soul have no conceptualization of what a soul is supposed to be in the first place, but nevertheless they feel that having one is really important. Anecdotally, I know a woman who claims that the fully aware and fully human clone of another human, with all of the thoughts and feelings and biology of any other human, would NOT be a person on account that clones don't have souls. Which of course, seems patently absurd (if we're pretending for a moment that the concept of souls themselves isn't absurd). This raises the question then, if there is no such thing as an immortal immaterial soul and no one has one, then to a person who considers people people based on their soulishness, is anyone a person?

Edited October 16, 2010 by AzurePhoenix

[TonyMcC]

At the moment of conception the fertilised egg already contains the information about the fully formed person that will develop. Its sex, hair colour, height etc. All this fertlised egg needs from then on is nourishment and protection. Every milestone along the way is just another step in its devlopment. It seems illogical to me to chose some point after conception as a starting point for human existence. Whatever point you chose will, at the least, be debatable.

[insane_alien]

no-one is denying that fertilization is the starting point of an individual lump of human. what people argue over, is at what point the lump of cells gets treated the same as fully formed humans.

[TonyMcC]

I thought the question was "When does life begin" which is quite different to "When can you be considered a human being"?

[insane_alien]

the literal form is indeed when does life begin, but the actual meaning intended was when can you be considered human as was made clear by later discussion.

[ydoaPs]

the literal form is indeed when does life begin, but the actual meaning intended was when can you be considered human a person as was made clear by later discussion.

Fixed. Human refers to species.

[Sisyphus]

At the moment of conception the fertilised egg already contains the information about the fully formed person that will develop. Its sex, hair colour, height etc.

 

All of that information exists at the moment before conception, also.

 

All this fertlised egg needs from then on is nourishment and protection.

 

And the same for the unfertilized egg and the sperm.

 

Every milestone along the way is just another step in its devlopment.

 

True enough, but that milestone is not the first, because there is no first. Life is a continuous process. It doesn't have rigid boundaries.

 

It seems illogical to me to chose some point after conception as a starting point for human existence.

 

I disagree. It was human life before that, and it was human life afterward. In the biological sense, which was technically the original question. When does a life begin? It doesn't. Not at one particular point, any more than a new species begins at one identifiable point. What we call a life is part of a continuum.

 

In the moral/ethical/metaphysical sense of being a person (presumably the agenda behind the original question), I think that's much foggier, but it's hard to see how a one-celled organism could qualify. I think that what makes humans more morally significant than an amoeba is the fact that we have minds. So I would say the human being, the "person," begins when the mind does. This doesn't happen at one precise moment, but emerges gradually.

 

Whatever point you chose will, at the least, be debatable.

 

Exactly. Exactly. Nature doesn't give us one point. Our customs do, and any single point is necessarily arbitrary.

[TonyMcC]

I don't really disagree with what Sisyphus says but I am uneasy about one statement. Before the moment of conception there is enough information to make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different individuals. After conception there is normally only the start of one particular individual. I sometimes think how fortunate for me that the person I know as me was brought into existence. As a simple example if my mother's egg has been fertilised with a different sperm from my father I (or rather the different person born) might have been a female person instead of male. The information concerning the other possible hundreds or thousands of individuals is lost.

[Sisyphus]

I agree. Before conception, there are millions of potential people. Afterward, all but one (usually) are destroyed. If those are human beings, then even a sex act that results in conception is a massive holocaust ten times the size of Hitler's. I don't think of them as human beings, though, because they lack what makes humans important: minds.

[Mr Skeptic]

I don't really disagree with what Sisyphus says but I am uneasy about one statement. Before the moment of conception there is enough information to make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different individuals. After conception there is normally only the start of one particular individual. I sometimes think how fortunate for me that the person I know as me was brought into existence. As a simple example if my mother's egg has been fertilised with a different sperm from my father I (or rather the different person born) might have been a female person instead of male. The information concerning the other possible hundreds or thousands of individuals is lost.

 

But the sperm and egg existed before fertilization. That particular milestone is simply the elimination of the opportunity of all the other sperm. It is possible to take an individual sperm and put it at the egg. Doing it this way shows quite clearly that the information was there beforehand. Incidentally, this way the sperm can be examined for defects and even the sperm's chromosomes. This can be done to prevent certain genetic diseases. But if we choose the sperm, we are choosing which out of a million humans to make... yet not all of them can be made. Do we then hold a funeral for a million humans who could have been? Do we hold a funeral every time a girl has a period? Why is it that before fertilization is considered a valid time to end these lives, but afterward it becomes murder?

 

Fertilization is the starting point of one or more genetically distinct humans... No one has yet answered my question (from elsewhere), "If life starts at fertilization, then how many lives start at fertilization?" Remember, identical twins are from the same fertilized egg, and also we can artificially create twins by splitting the zygote very early in its development.

 

Because what makes us special is in our brain, without that brain there is nothing but what might someday be -- and that can be taken back as far as you like, well before fertilization.

[TonyMcC]

I guess this is a topic that many people have differing views about: All of them valid in one way or another. As for me, I am content to feel that I, as a unique human being, came into existence at the moment of conception. Given nourishment and protection throughout my developing years all that I had the possibility of becoming was decided (almost entirely by chance) at that time. If I had been born with a brain limited in ability such that it could keep my body alive but nothing more I would still be a live human being.

Edited October 16, 2010 by TonyMcC

[Mr Skeptic]

I guess this is a topic that many people have differing views about: All of them valid in one way or another.

 

Moral relativism is one thing; factual relativism quite another.

 

As for me, I am content to feel that I, as a unique human being, came into existence at the moment of conception. Given nourishment and protection throughout my developing years all that I had the possibility of becoming was decided (almost entirely by chance) at that time.

 

Wrong again, what you had the possibility of becoming was decided long before that, along many steps over billions of years. The particular line of cells that was to become you went through a long evolutionary pathway, accumulating mutations until developing into humans and some of the genetic variability of them.

 

Even if you wish to limit that to only humans, there is the process of gametogenesis, whereby the cells of your mother and father formed a sperm and egg via meiosis, at that point determining the possibilities for your genetics to about 1 in a million (approx for the number of sperm in a group) times 1 (the egg) (so total 10^6 or so). This out of all the possibilities, about 1 in 2^1000 or about 10^300, of each sperm and egg that could have been made. Why choose the point that limits the possibilities by 1 in 10^6 rather than the one that limits these possibilities by 1 in 10^294?

 

And even so, both the above also occurred for each of your ancestors, so that that was part of what limited the possibilities of what you could become.

 

And then after fertilization, your genetics continues to change. Certain things will forever change the genes that are expressed (part of epigenetics).

 

And then, you are not only your genes but what you are is a product of the environment as well. Different nutrition will change some of your attributes. Different education will change other of your attributes. So will chance events. Some of these things will have a larger effect than others, but roughly half of what you are will be determined more by your environment than by your genes.

 

If I had been born with a brain limited in ability such that it could keep my body alive but nothing more I would still be a live human being.

 

Then I would consider you both alive and human, just not a person.

[TonyMcC]

I suppose what you are saying is, Mr Skeptic, if we go back far enough we will find all animal life on this planet is related. More than that, it is at least possible that if we go back even further than that all life on this planet is related whether animal or vegetable. It may be possible that if life is found anywhere else in this galaxy we will find we are related to that life form. Apparently the "building blocks" of life have been found within meteorites. Some of these meteorites being possibly older than the solar system. I don't disagree with any of that. I just feel I am a unique specimen of life and my uniqueness stems from the moment of my conception. That is where life started for me. Whether one considers that a fact or just an emotional illogical response I leave for others to decide!

[AzurePhoenix]

I suppose what you are saying is, Mr Skeptic, if we go back far enough we will find all animal life on this planet is related. More than that, it is at least possible that if we go back even further than that all life on this planet is related whether animal or vegetable.

it's not just "possible," it's the established reality.

 

It may be possible that if life is found anywhere else in this galaxy we will find we are related to that life form. Apparently the "building blocks" of life have been found within meteorites. Some of these meteorites being possibly older than the solar system.

THIS is a different matter. The relatedness issue is a matter of the fact that all extant lifeforms on earth are descended from a shared ancestral organism. Unless panspermia were viable and involved, life from other worlds would be descended from an independent source, an isolated and separate abiogenic event.

 

I don't disagree with any of that. I just feel I am a unique specimen of life and my uniqueness stems from the moment of my conception. That is where life started for me.

well as I discussed, your point of origin as a unique and distinct organism is definitely the point of conception. But there are multiple levels to the question. At no point did you "start being alive," there is no point on the continuum of biological descent where that can be said to be true beyond the ultimate shared origin of all life on earth. But your individual organism was conceived. But beyond your conception, deeper than your random happenstance fusion of a particular of gametes, that which makes you YOU, what makes you a person, is more than just the genome you were born with and the shape of your body, its your mind and experiences, your self-awareness and personal sense of identity. If your head were removed and incinerated and your body kept alive on an advanced life support system, would that body be YOU or just what's left of what used to be the real, meaningful you.

[jackson33]

Legally in the US, life does begin at conception, at least in many States. In all States at the Nation the fetus is viable at the beginning of the third trimester and protected under law, with some exceptions. I have no idea where life beginning otherwise comes from, as under law, it was defined under Roe V Wade (1973), which simply states the bearer's (mother) rights supercede that of the fetus, for six months. Morally is a different subject and I've always had trouble accepting abortion, not so much for the tens of millions of potential Einstein's (pick your own elites), but for the stress later put on woman that have aborted their own children.

 

Then I would consider you both alive and human, just not a person. Then I would consider you both alive and human, just not a person.[/Quote]

 

Skeptic; By definition a person is a "human being", they are inseparable. Death is usually determined by brain dead, or reversed the death of the brain ends that persons life. People are mechanically kept alive all the time, by passing the heart.

 

Trying to define the product of two creatures, as a result of eons of generations of like creatures, it a bit a play on words. What is conceived in the woman's womb, by one of millions of sperm cells and one of the 50/80 eggs she will ever produce, is as unique as anything else possible. Any two persons born (or more) of the same two donors, will be as equally unique to the extent of their genetic structure. What effects the person, nurturing, education, environment or dozens of non related events happen are not relevant to that uniqueness. Tony IMO, has the correct outlook on his existence.

 

It begins about 3.8 billion years ago, and hasn't stopped since. If you mean when does a person start, it is when they have a conscious brain, and a person ends when their brain becomes unconscious for the final time. [/Quote]

 

Not meaning to pick on your reasoning; If you really feel everything is a reaction to an action, the matter that makes up this solar system and matter (elements) are required for life, then anyway you look at this, life or what lead to one persons existence has always been around, in some form...

[AzurePhoenix]

By definition a person is a "human being", they are inseparable.

That was only true so long as we were ignorant of the nature of the human mind and behaviors, and how that relates to other, non-human lifeforms. If you landed on an extraterrestrial world and found an intelligent, emotional, moral species that looked like terrestrial cuttlefish, who fell in love and wrote music and mourned their dead, could you honestly say that they are not people because they are not human? Or a species countless eons more advanced for ourselves, in all those senses, would they not be people too? And if they are considered people, and we're still considered people despite they're being more advanced in all those ways than us, can you honestly claim that a non-human species less advanced than us but clearly displaying those traits to some degree (like dolphins) isn't worthy of its members being called people too?

 

Like I've said before, if "person" simply means "human" then the term is arbitrary and meaningless.

 

And keep in mind, if we're going to bring legal definitions into this, then legally, corporate entities can be and often are considered persons too.

 

Death is usually determined by brain dead, or reversed the death of the brain ends that persons life. People are mechanically kept alive all the time, by passing the heart.

Which supports our point. If brain death is equivalent to death, when the body can be kept biologically alive, then the death is referring to the death of the individual person that is derived from the mind that once "inhabited" the body. This is in keeping with the concept that the "person" is the conscious mind itself. Or so it seems to me.

 

Not meaning to pick on your reasoning; If you really feel everything is a reaction to an action, the matter that makes up this solar system and matter (elements) are required for life, then anyway you look at this, life or what lead to one persons existence has always been around, in some form...

The initial question wasn't "what was the first cause of everything," it was specifically "when does life begin," and the abiogenesis of life from non-life is the most technically accurate answer to that question.

[ydoaPs]

Like I've said before, if "person" simply means "human" then the term is arbitrary and meaningless.

No, he's right. Our descendants a few million years from now will not be people.

[jackson33]

Azure; OK, on earth humans are people or people are humans, not dolphins or anything else. If you would like an addition to my post, then what makes Tony unique (your apparent problem) could not have been logically 100% duplicated anyplace, anytime in the history of the Universe, eternal or back to some Big Bang and another definition for matter. He is, as is every human/person biologically different, genetically and in other ways different to any other human living or has ever lived on the planet. Yes he has similar genetic characteristics of Dolphins or a Rose Bush, but different in total...

 

Which supports our point. If brain death is equivalent to death, when the body can be kept biologically alive, then the death is referring to the death of the individual person that is derived from the mind that once "inhabited" the body. This is in keeping with the concept that the "person" is the conscious mind itself. Or so it seems to me.[/Quote]

 

If the person is born, capable of living with out life support (the scenario), he/she remains both a person and human. I don't think many new born could live very long with out some support, but are in fact human and people.

 

The initial question wasn't "what was the first cause of everything," it was specifically "when does life begin," and the abiogenisis of life from non-life is the most technically accurate answer to that question. [/Quote]

 

Agree and I answered accordingly, however that response was directed at the evolution to humans and before. 3.8BYA implies human life began to evolve from micro organisms, which I don't disagree with, but those organisms could not have formed with out certain elements (as you suggest), primarily carbon (we are carbon based life forms) and carbon in my SSU World has always been around but under BBT after the first stars formed. The point being to guesstimate an existence on what was can go a long way back. Hope this clarifies....

[TonyMcC]

AzurePhoenix - Has panspermia been defintely been ruled not viable and so not responsible for life on earth? I only introduced it as possible link between life on this planet and any life to be found elsewhere in the galaxy. I believe the odds have been calculated at 10^24 against panspermia but that is a bit short of infinity!

[needimprovement]

Assuming that this is related to abortion, which seems likely, the real question would be, when does an organism become a person with all of the rights entailed by personhood. (I apologize beforehand if this post honestly had nothing to do with human fetuses and abortion and whatnot)

 

"Personhood" is an entirely different matter from "life", and different people have different interpretations of what constitutes personhood.

 

Some people think a person is an individual organism representative of the human species, or genus if you'll kindly allow for neanderthals and other non-sapiens Homo species. From a mindless lump of cells (equivalent to a seedling potato) to fully functional self-aware adult to braindead meatpuppet on a respirator, they're all individual humans and so they are people.

Personally, I think this makes the term person redundant and simply another word for "human," with no deeper meaning than to make the distinction of "members of our species and no other are people just because we are humans ourselves and we feel smug about that."

 

 

Others, such as myself, think personhood is defined by a range of characteristics related to consciousness, sentience, sapience and self-awareness.

 

- Some people claim that the point a fetus becomes a person is the point that brain activity begins, but if that's the case, then why shouldn't any organism with the most rudimentary brain activity be considered a person? Like worms.

 

- You can move it up a bit and define personhood as sentience, the capacity to perceive subjective sensations (qualia), often it seems the most highly valued sensations being emotion, suffering and pleasure. This certainly includes fetuses after a certain period of development, and infants, but also, plenty of animal species most people wouldn't ever consider people. And you can't tell me a box turtle doesn't freaking love strawberries.

 

- Many others, and I myself, consider personhood a matter of self-awareness. If an entity is aware of its own existence as an independent entity, then it is a person. This includes all the other apes besides ourselves, pretty much all the toothed whales we've been able to study in an interactive manner, parrots and corvids, and elephants, and I happily consider non-braindead members of all of these species to be people. If we ever created a self-aware artificial intelligence, by my own definition I would consider the AI a person, no matter its form. However, it also means that human infants are NOT people until some time after they're born. I freely and often admit that human infants are not "really people," but for the sake of sentimentality are granted honorary personhood, particularly if they're cute.

 

- Other people take it further, and measure personhood against the potential for the sum of human cognitive and behavioral traits, including consciousness in general, sentience, self-awareness, language, culture, etc etc, and that it takes all of these things to make something a person. I kind've feel that this is just more human exceptionalism, as people with this viewpoint often tend to express it at the species level, without regard for the fact that plenty of people that people would definitely consider people without argument would be excluded for this reason or that. Like babies.

 

- There is also another group of people, who feel that personhood is a matter of having a soul. Now, most people who believe in the soul have no conceptualization of what a soul is supposed to be in the first place, but nevertheless they feel that having one is really important. Anecdotally, I know a woman who claims that the fully aware and fully human clone of another human, with all of the thoughts and feelings and biology of any other human, would NOT be a person on account that clones don't have souls. Which of course, seems patently absurd (if we're pretending for a moment that the concept of souls themselves isn't absurd). This raises the question then, if there is no such thing as an immortal immaterial soul and no one has one, then to a person who considers people people based on their soulishness, is anyone a person?

Although there is a possibility of this discussion openning into religious or personal beliefs, but I was just looking for a scientific definition to compliment/contrast with the moral/ethical position of THIS LINK.

Edited October 17, 2010 by needimprovement

[zapatos]

At the moment of conception the fertilised egg already contains the information about the fully formed person that will develop. Its sex, hair colour, height etc. All this fertlised egg needs from then on is nourishment and protection. Every milestone along the way is just another step in its devlopment. It seems illogical to me to chose some point after conception as a starting point for human existence. Whatever point you chose will, at the least, be debatable.

I have a difficult time with the idea that the starting point for human existence begins at the point that all of the information necessary for a fully formed person is gathered together. It seems if this concept worked for persons, then it should also work for other things.

 

For example, let's say that my wife and I go into a closed room together and after a lot of activity, sweating and moaning, we emerge with a recipe for a cake. All of the information necessary to create that cake is contained in the recipe. But my wife is still going to add ingredients, in some particular order, passing various milestones, and then leave the properly assembled items in her oven at a certain termperature for a set period of time.

 

Now, it seems clear to me that we have a cake once it comes out of her oven, and probably at some time prior to that. But is it a cake when it still a recipe on a piece of paper?

[Moontanman]

Although there is a possibility of this discussion openning into religious or personal beliefs, but I was just looking for a scientific definition to compliment/contrast with the moral/ethical position of THIS LINK.

 

 

Needimprovement, while I am not a big fan of abortion, being a parent makes the idea of an abortion particularly difficult to justify... most of the time... However I have to say that the objection to abortion on moral grounds seems kinda weak coming from people who think birth control is also immoral...