{"id":39,"date":"2008-12-14T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-14T18:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/?p=39"},"modified":"2009-04-29T05:37:28","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T10:37:28","slug":"common-evidence-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/common-evidence-what-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Evidence &#8211; &#8220;What is it?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Jill Stanek\" href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.jillstanek.com\/archives\/2008\/12\/sunday_funnies_11.html#comments\" target=\"_blank\">Jasper&#8217;s comment at Jill Stanek&#8217;s<\/a> over Ilana Goldman&#8217;s refusal to answer Bob Enyarts question &#8220;What is it?&#8221; happened to coincide with an existing unpublished post of mine.<\/p>\n<p>While reading through <a title=\"Robert P. George bio\" href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.princeton.edu\/politics\/people\/bios\/index.xml?netid=rgeorge\" target=\"_blank\">Robert P. George<\/a> and Christopher Tollefsen&#8217;s book <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Embryo-Defense-Robert-P-George\/dp\/0385522827\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Embryo:A Defense of Human Life<\/span><\/a>, it occurred to me so few people who argue in the abortion debates, both pro-life and abortion-choice, really understand the scientific basis for life.  The biological depth is astounding, and invites a serious philosophical debate. The authors are disturbed by the diminishing level of discourse &#8211; where rationality regarding the evidence is being plainly and willfully ignored.  (<a title=\"Ilana Goldman gets irrational\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=r-khY8SsTAc\" target=\"_blank\">Ilana Goldman illustrates this irrationality<\/a> so well.)<\/p>\n<p>They point out various activities within the first 14 days after conception are not so easily explained. The possibilities of intercellular communication seem to be a fascinating area of biochemical research. There is sensing occurring, at a level we don&#8217;t yet comprehend.  (If you think intercellular communication is not possible &#8211; you need to check out how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/talks\/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html\">single cell bacteria communicate<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Some abortion-choice advocates call embryos non-sentient tissue, but their arguments are &#8211; subjective:<\/p>\n<p><strong>All human beings with rights are sentient; No embryo is sentient; therefore no embryo is a human being with rights.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If the argument is over living flesh and blood, and &#8220;what it is&#8221;, then sapience is a pre-requisite to sentience, because it is impossible to have a subjective (sentient) homo-sapien, without first having an objective one. Self-awareness does not require communicating self-insight to others, so any perceived observation of another&#8217;s self-awareness is completely subjective.  It is an imposition of an external idea of awareness upon another, completely impossible without the underlying matter &#8211; the flesh and blood.<\/p>\n<p>Put another way &#8211; arguments over flesh and blood rights doesn&#8217;t work if their own flesh and blood, (including their sense of self-awareness) is removed.  So another approach would have been to ask Ilana &#8211; &#8220;what are you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How can one demand rights while denying pre-requisites underlying their own sense of personhood?<\/p>\n<p>It begs the question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jasper&#8217;s comment at Jill Stanek&#8217;s over Ilana Goldman&#8217;s refusal to answer Bob Enyarts question &#8220;What is it?&#8221; happened to coincide with an existing unpublished post of mine. While reading through Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen&#8217;s book Embryo:A Defense of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/common-evidence-what-is-it\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[9,176,234],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-abortion","tag-cowardice","tag-flesh-blood"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thrufire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}